Sunday, February 18, 2007

english paper
Flaubert, who denounced its banality and mercenary aspirations. The earliest recorded pejorative uses of the term "bourgeois" are associated with aristocratic contempt for the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie. Successful embourgeoisement typically meant being able to retire and live on invested income.
With the expansion of commerce, trade, and the market economy, the bourgeoisie grew in size, influence, and power. In all industrialized countries, the aristocracy either faded away slowly or found itself overthrown by a bourgeois revolution. Thus, the bourgeoisie rose to the top of the social hierarchy. This, coupled with the advances of industry, resulted in the birth of an entirely new lower class, the proletariat or working class. Increasingly, criticisms of the bourgeoisie began to come from below.
The Marxist view
One of the most influential of the aforementioned criticisms came from Karl Marx, who attacked bourgeois political theory and its view of civil society and culture for believing these concepts and institutions to be universally true; in Marx's view, these concepts were only the ideology of the bourgeoisie as a new ruling class, which sought to reshape society after its own image.
Marxism defines the bourgeoisie as the social class which obtains income from ownership or trade in capital assets, or from commercial activities such as the buying and selling of commodities, wares, and services. In medieval times, the bourgeois was typically a self-employed proprietor, small employer, entrepreneur, banker, or merchant. In industrial capitalism, on the other hand, the bourgeoisie becomes the ruling class - which means it also owns the bulk of the means of production (land, factories, offices, capital, resources). This enables it to employ and exploit the work of a large mass of wage workers (the working class), also known as the industrial middle class, who have no other means of livelihood than to sell their labour to property owners.
Marx distinguished between "functioning capitalists" actually managing enterprises, and others mereley earning property rents or interest-income from financial assets or real estate ('rentiers').
Marxism sees the proletariat (wage laborers) and bourgeoisie as directly waging an ongoing class struggle, in that capitalists exploit workers and workers try to resist exploitation. This exploitation takes place as follows: the workers, who own no means of production of their own, must seek employment in order to make a living. They get hired by a capitalist and work for him, producing some sort of goods or services. These goods or services then become the property of the capitalist, who sells them and gets a certain amount of money in exchange. Part of this money is used to pay workers' wages, another part is used to pay production costs, and a third part is kept by the capitalist in the form of profit (or surplus value). Thus the capitalist can earn money (profit) from the work of his employees without actually doing any work, or in excess of his own work. Marxists argue that new wealth is created through work; therefore, if someone gains wealth that he did not work for, then someone else works and does not receive the full wealth created by his work. In other words, that "someone else" is exploited. Thus, Marxists argue that capitalists make a profit by exploiting workers.
In the rhetoric of some Communist parties, "bourgeois" is sometimes used as an insult, and those who are perceived to collaborate with the bourgeoisie are called its lackeys. Marx himself primarily used the term "bourgeois", with or without sarcasm, as an objective description of a social class and of a lifestyle based on ownership of private capital, not as a pejorative. He commended the industriousness of the bourgeoisie, but criticised it for its moral hypocrisy. This attitude is shown most clearly in the Communist Manifesto.
In the view of some 20th century Marxist currents, the nomenklatura or lower state bureaucrats in "communist states" were or are a state bourgeoisie presiding over a system of state capitalism. To anarchists, all prominent members, functionaries and leaders of any kind of state are part of this state bourgeoisie. According to these interpretations, the bourgeoisie is composed of any individuals who have exclusive control over the means of production, regardless of whether this control comes in the form of private ownership or state power.
ISA PA
In the original French, a bourgeois was originally merely a free inhabitant of a bourg, or town. Through a natural evolution it became the label for members of the property-owning class, then of the middle class. As an adjective it is used with contempt by bohemians and Marxists to label conservatives whose views are not sufficiently revolutionary. The class made up of bourgeois (which is both the singular and the plural form) is the bourgeoisie. Shaky spellers are prone to leave out the E from the middle because “eoi” is not a natural combination in English; but these words have remarkably enough retained their French pronunciation: boorzhwah and boorzhwazee. The feminine form, “bourgeoise,” is rarely encountered in English.
ETO PA

bourgeois
1564, "of the Fr. middle class," from Fr., from O.Fr. burgeis "town dweller" (as distinct from "peasant"), from borc "town, village," from Frank. *burg (see borough). Sense of "socially or aesthetically conventional" is from 1764; in communist and socialist writing, "a capitalist" (1883). Bourgeoisie (n.) "middle class" is first recorded 1707.
"It is better to be a good ordinary bourgeois than a bad ordinary bohemian." [Aldous Huxley, 1930]
bourgeois. (n.d.). Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved February 18, 2007, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bourgeois

bourgeois

adjective
1. (according to Marxist thought) being of the property-owning class and exploitive of the working class
2. conforming to the standards and conventions of the middle class; "a bourgeois mentality"
3. belonging to the middle class

noun
1. a capitalist who engages in industrial commercial enterprise [syn: businessperson]
2. a member of the middle class


MARAMI PA


1. a member of the middle class.

2. a person whose political, economic, and social opinions are believed to be determined mainly by concern for property values and conventional respectability.

3. a shopkeeper or merchant.
–adjective

4. belonging to, characteristic of, or consisting of the middle class.

5. conventional; middle-class.

6. dominated or characterized by materialistic pursuits or concerns.

bourgeois. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved February 18, 2007, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bourgeois

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