Petite bourgeoisie

“ It is the bourgeoisie which, more than any other class, is conservative and retrogressive. It is the bourgeoisie which makes and unmakes ministries. It is the bourgeoisie which has destroyed the influence of the Upper Chamber, and which will dethrone the King whenever he shall become unsatisfactory to it. ”

“ The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. ”

“ After a long and difficult struggle against feudalism the bourgeoisie, the class possessing the means of production, came out victorious. It has grown and become more powerful, and in almost all the countries where capitalism exists it is still the directing class. ”

“ The industrial magnates, he says, saw that the best policy for preventing the growth of a public sentiment favoring the encroachments of labor would be to increase the number of bourgeoisie interested in industrial affairs. ”

“ And at times his figure grew and expanded till it became, as it were, an incarnation of the whole bourgeoisie—that bourgeoisie which at the division of the spoils in 1789 appropriated everything, and has since fattened on everything at the expense of the masses, and refuses to restore anything whatever. ”

“ Then follows a history of the fall of feudalism, leading to a description of the bourgeoisie as a revolutionary force "The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part." "For exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation." "The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe." ”

“ Ah! the brave middle class, the solid and valiant bourgeoisie which France still possesses! What laborious officers, what skillful and tenacious diplomatic agents, what excellent professors, what honest artisans has this bourgeoisie furnished for the past twenty years! I sometimes hear: “What vitality there is in this country! It has survived where another would have perished.” Yes, it lives because this young bourgeoisie has made every sacrifice in order to serve the country. ”

“ For if the workers are afraid of losing their jobs, so too are the burgesses, and with almost better reason—for they have more to lose, have further to fall. They fall from a precarious heaven of gentility into the abysses of unrelieved poverty, into the workhouse and the glutted labour exchanges; can you wonder that they live in fear? And as for hate—you can talk about the hate of the proletariat for the bourgeoisie, but it’s nothing, I assure you, to the hate that the bourgeoisie feel for the proletariat. Your burgess loathes the worker because he is afraid of him ”

“ Now, it is the bourgeoisie are uppermost. Trade and money-getting, railroads and mines, have seized hold of the nation’s heart; and where the bâton of a Maréchal was once the most coveted of all earthly distinctions, a good bargain on the Bourse, or a successful transaction in scrip, are now the highest triumphs. ”

“ The bourgeoisie broke up the feudal system and built upon its ruins the capitalist order of society, the kingdom of free competition, of personal liberty, of the equality, before the law, of all commodity owners, of all the rest of the capitalist blessings. Thenceforward the capitalist mode of production could develop in freedom. ”

“ Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and its rule. ”

“ But now that the bourgeoisie was raised to power it did not prove itself any more liberal than the aristocracy of birth and fortune in dealing with educational, fiscal and industrial questions. In spite of the increase of riches, the bourgeois régime maintained a fiscal and social legislation which, while it assured to the middle class certainty and permanence of benefits, left the labouring masses poor, ignorant, and in a state of incessant agitation. ”

“ Thus the struggle of the two classes landed, after a short and stormy flare-up, in a compromise, which gave the bourgeoisie for many years to come more unlimited power than in any other land with the modern system of production. ”

“ The modern labourer, instead of bettering himself with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. The workman becomes a pauper, and pauperism increases even more rapidly than either population or wealth. It is therefore perfectly clear that the bourgeoisie is unfit to be any longer the ruling class in society and to impose its class conditions on society as a ruling law. ”

“ This new comfort, knowledge, and wealth went not merely to nobles and prelates; it was noticeable most of all in a new class, the "bourgeoisie." In the towns of Europe lived bankers, merchants, and shop-keepers,—intelligent, able, and wealthy enough to live like kings or princes. These bourgeois or townspeople (bourg = town) were to grow in intelligence, in wealth, and in political influence; they were destined to precipitate revolutions in industry and politics, thereby establishing their individual rule over factories, and their collective rule over legislatures. ”

“ But the fact remains that [264] the present economic system produces a class who are not forced to work and can dissipate what others produce. The luxury displayed by the bourgeoisie has injurious consequences for the whole population. ”

“ If I had any predilection for homiletical discourse, Gentlemen, I should be quite justified in saying that I have exhorted the working classes to a filial piety toward the bourgeoisie, in that I have shown that the dominance of the bourgeoisie was the indispensable prerequisite and condition by transition out of which alone the idea of the working class could come forth. ”

“ To appreciate the demoralizing effects of an income obtained without labor and without trouble on men of small culture, we need only witness the bourgeoisie at great watering places, pilgrimage places, seats of courts and university cities supported largely by students. ”

“ The bourgeoisie, when they Page 123 recovered from their astonishment and found that the stone they had set rolling under the name of reform had dislodged their own Revolution of 1830, and the peasants of the provinces, when they found that all the praise and all the profits were solely for the working-men of the capital, were very far from satisfied. ”

“ The capitalist bourgeoisie, the most revolutionary class that ever oppressed human societies, cannot increase its wealth without continuously revolutionizing the means of production, continuously incorporating into its industrial [Pg 73] equipment new applications of mechanics, chemistry and physics. ”

“ This influence of the bourgeois state, has, in every country, its peculiarities. Each country has its method for the corruption of the working class, and the bourgeoisie of each country uses these methods very successfully for its own interests. ”

“ With the bourgeoisie, work becomes work that transforms historical conditions. The bourgeoisie is the first ruling class for which work is a value. And the bourgeoisie, which suppresses all privilege and recognizes no value that does not stem from the exploitation of labor, has appropriately identified its own value as a ruling class with labor, and has made the progress of labor the measure of its own progress. The class that accumulates commodities and capital continually modifies nature by modifying labor itself, by unleashing labor’s productivity. ”

“ Only those who have been able to save a part of their capital from the wreck can try fortune once more in another branch of industry where great capital has not yet begun to compete, but they are sure to be pursued and finally overtaken by their enemy.
As in the case of the bourgeoisie, the relations which the different members of the petty bourgeoisie have among themselves are determined by the economic system ”

“ If the crisis demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer [122] modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies, trusts, and State property, show how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose. ”

“ It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society ... The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeosie itself. ”

“ The mediaeval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little developed, industrially and commercially, these two classes still vegetate side by side with the rising bourgeoisie. ”

“ But the bourgeois mistrust the workers and turn against them, when they should sustain them, guide them, direct them in the uprisings whose object is the reconquest of their common rights. The people have so far borne witness by their conduct to their affection, their trust in the bourgeoisie. They have had, they will have faith in it to the end. But sad and irreparable will be the evil for you and for us, if one day the bourgeoisie, having utilized the people to overcome the nobility, should seek to reign in the shadow of a fictitious royalty ”

“ I often think that modern bourgeoisie, the so-called big capital, follows in the footsteps of the old aristocracy. “Fate leads the willing and drags the unwilling.”
The problem of socialization requires very earnest and sincere thinking and good intelligence on the part of both wrorkingmen and capitalists. But I look on the task of socialization as being not merely an economic, but also a moral demand. ”

“ In reality the line of demarcation between the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie is not drawn with the precision desirable for a theoretical exposition. Just as there are numerous gradations in the bourgeoisie, so are there in the petty bourgeoisie.
It is the petty bourgeoisie which has among its different classes the most ancient traditions. There was a time when it was strong and powerful. But the development of capitalism has changed all that. Industrialism has arisen and undermined the petty bourgeoisie. In the combat the small capitalist must eventually go down. ”

“ The Manifesto tells next the manner of growth of the class struggle. "The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves." ”

“ That jealous class called the bourgeoisie in France, which is beginning to arise in England, was then not known: nothing came between the rich land-owners and the men occupied with their trades. Everything had not yet become machinery in the manufacturing professions, folly in the privileged classes. ”

“ Next below this is a numerous body of the Middle Classes (bourgeoisie) , consisting of two distinct sets; the one, the active class, is engaged in commerce, manufactures, agriculture, and the liberal professions; the other, generally designated amongst us as the bourgeoisie oisive, consists of men without active employment, landholders who derive an income of 500 or 1500 dollars from their estates, by rents or sharing the produce with the cultivator, without attempting to increase it, and the small body of holders of public stock. ”

“ It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself."
"In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family-relations; modern industrial labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. ”

“ It is evident that the wealth of the bourgeoisie is rapidly increasing, and their consequence with it; so rapidly, indeed, that the republicans are taking fright at it,—they see before them a new enemy, and begin to talk of the abominations of an aristocratic bourgeoisie. ”

“ Each party, in accordance with the economic position of its adherents, necessarily demanded a different type of republic. We must here make clear in advance that it is a bourgeois revolution of which we speak; the point was the economic emancipation of the large-scale bourgeoisie, of merchant and industrial capital, the first form of capital to develop the tendency to the formation of surplus value. ”

“ Whence does the bourgeoisie recruit itself? In great part from the descendants of the bourgeoisie, in a less degree from the other classes. If a “petit-bourgeois” or a proletarian finds himself incorporated into the ranks of the bourgeoisie it is by virtue of extraordinary circumstances. They may reach this station because they have qualities which especially fit them to direct capitalistic enterprises ”

“ From the mouths of the bourgeois themselves come complaints of that moral and intellectual decay of the elite of the English laborers which they share with the bourgeoisie itself and to-day indeed they are scarcely more than little bourgeois and are distinguished from them only by a somewhat greater lack of culture. ”