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La sortie du bourgeois, painted by Jean Béraud (1889). The bourgeoisie (/ ˌ b ʊər ʒ w ɑː ˈ z iː / ⓘ BOOR-zhwah-ZEE, French: ⓘ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between peasantry and aristocracy.
Commoners were universally considered the lowest order. The higher estates' necessary dependency on the commoners' production, however, often further divided the otherwise equal common people into burghers (also known as bourgeoisie) of the realm's cities and towns, and the peasants and serfs of the realm's
The aristocracy [1] is historically associated with a "hereditary" or a "ruling" social class. In many states, the aristocracy included the upper class of people (aristocrats) with hereditary rank and titles. [2] In some, such as ancient Greece, ancient Rome, or India, aristocratic status came from belonging to a military class. It has also ...
In sociology, the ruling class of a society is the social class who set and decide the political and economic agenda of society.. In Marxist philosophy, the ruling class are the class who own the means of production in a given society and apply their cultural hegemony to determine and establish the dominant ideology (ideas, culture, mores, norms, traditions) of the society.
Following industrialization and the French Revolution altered the social structure of France and the bourgeoisie became the new ruling class. The feudal nobility was on the decline with agricultural and land yields decreasing, and arranged marriages between noble and bourgeois family became increasingly common, fusing the two social classes together during the 19th century.
Marx also suggests that it would be better for the bourgeoisie not to wield power directly because this would make their dominance too obvious, creating a clear target for proletarian attack. [14] It is better to make the workers fight a "two front war" (Elster) against the aristocracy in government and the bourgeoisie in the economy.
However, Louis XVI, his ministers, and the widespread French nobility had become immensely unpopular because the peasants and, to a lesser extent, the bourgeoisie were burdened with ruinously high taxes, which were levied to support wealthy aristocrats and their sumptuous lifestyles.
Nobility in its most general and strict sense is an acknowledged preeminence that is hereditary: legitimate descendants (or all male descendants, in some societies) of nobles are nobles, unless explicitly stripped of the privilege. The terms aristocrat and aristocracy are a less formal means to refer to persons belonging to this social milieu.