What Is Bourgeoisie: Political Philosophy

Direct Answer

The bourgeoisie is the capitalist class that owns the means of production in a capitalist society. In Marxist theory, the bourgeoisie is defined by its ownership of the factories, machinery, land, and financial capital that are necessary to produce goods and services, and by its employment of wage laborers (the proletariat) who work for a wage.

The term "bourgeoisie" originated in medieval Europe, where it referred to the inhabitants of the bourg or town -- the merchants, artisans, and professionals who lived in the growing urban centers of the feudal system. Marx and Engels adopted the term to describe the capitalist class of modern industrial society, which had evolved from the medieval burghers and had become the dominant class of the capitalist era.

The bourgeoisie is defined in opposition to the proletariat. The bourgeoisie owns the means of production; the proletariat owns only its labor power. The bourgeoisie extracts surplus value from the labor of the proletariat, paying workers less than the value they produce and keeping the difference as profit. This relationship of exploitation is the fundamental dynamic of capitalist society.

Historical Context

Marx and Engels provided a complex historical analysis of the bourgeoisie. In The Communist Manifesto (1848), they acknowledged that the bourgeoisie had played a historically revolutionary role. The bourgeoisie had emerged from the feudal towns and had gradually broken down the feudal system, replacing it with a new social order based on the market, private property, and wage labor.

The bourgeoisie, Marx and Engels wrote, "has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals." The bourgeoisie had created the world market, developed the productive forces to an unprecedented degree, and drawn all nations into a single global civilization. It had "rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life" and had created the modern state as the executive committee of the ruling class.

However, Marx and Engels also argued that the bourgeoisie had become a fetter on further development. The very forces of production that the bourgeoisie had created were increasingly in conflict with the capitalist relations of production. The crises of overproduction, the falling rate of profit, and the growing immiseration of the proletariat all pointed to the historical limits of the bourgeois order.

The bourgeoisie, Marx and Engels argued, was creating its own gravediggers. By concentrating workers in factories, by organizing them through the discipline of industrial production, and by unifying them through the development of communication and transportation, the bourgeoisie was creating the conditions for its own overthrow. The proletariat, the class that the bourgeoisie had brought into existence, would eventually rise up and destroy the capitalist system.

Philosophical Perspectives

The concept of the bourgeoisie is central to Marx's theory of history. Marx's historical materialism holds that the economic structure of society -- the relations of production -- determines the political, legal, and cultural superstructure. Each historical epoch is characterized by a dominant mode of production and a corresponding ruling class. In capitalist society, the bourgeoisie is the ruling class, and its ideas are the ruling ideas of the age.

The bourgeoisie exercises power not only through economic ownership but also through the state. Marx argued that the modern state is "the executive committee of the bourgeoisie" -- an institution that manages the common affairs of the capitalist class and ensures the conditions for capitalist accumulation. The state protects private property, enforces contracts, and suppresses challenges to the capitalist order, all in the interests of the bourgeoisie.

The concept of the bourgeoisie also extends to the analysis of ideology. Marx argued that the ideas of the ruling class are, in every epoch, the ruling ideas. The bourgeoisie propagates ideas that justify its dominance: the idea that private property is a natural right, that the market is a sphere of freedom, that inequality is the result of individual merit and effort. These ideas are not simply false; they are functional for the maintenance of capitalist social relations.

The relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is not static. Marx analyzed how the bourgeoisie is constantly transforming itself and the conditions of production. The concentration of capital, the centralization of the banking system, the formation of joint-stock companies and corporations, and the separation of ownership from management all represent transformations of the bourgeois class. The modern corporation, Marx noted, represents the "abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself" -- a development that paradoxically points beyond capitalism.

Modern Reflection

The concept of the bourgeoisie has been adapted and transformed in the century and a half since Marx's death. The development of the modern corporation, the separation of ownership from management, and the rise of a professional managerial class have complicated the simple distinction between bourgeoisie and proletariat. Some theorists argue that the traditional bourgeoisie has been replaced by a "managerial class" or a "professional-managerial class" that occupies an intermediate position between the capitalist class and the working class.

The globalization of capitalism has also transformed the bourgeoisie. The twenty-first-century bourgeoisie is increasingly a transnational class, with members whose interests and identities are tied to global capital rather than to any particular nation-state. The transnational capitalist class includes the executives of multinational corporations, global financiers, and the owners of globally diversified portfolios. This class exercises significant influence over global economic policy through institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Economic Forum.

The financialization of capitalism has created a new stratum of the bourgeoisie: the financial capitalist class, whose wealth derives from financial speculation, private equity, and hedge fund management rather than from industrial production. This financial bourgeoisie has been the subject of intense criticism since the 2008 global financial crisis, which exposed the risks and inequalities generated by the financial sector.

The concept of the bourgeoisie remains essential to the Marxist analysis of capitalism. Despite the transformations of the past century, the fundamental structure of capitalist society -- the division between those who own the means of production and those who must sell their labor power to survive -- remains intact. The names and forms of the bourgeoisie may change, but the class that owns and controls the productive resources of society continues to be the dominant force in capitalist social relations.