Burgess (title)
Under bourgeoisie is today understood mostly urban middle class. Sociologically, it is a historically distinct form of socialization of middle classes, provided that similar action-guiding value orientations and social ideas of order form and thus also affect the political stability of a country due to special, more or less common interests.
As part of the political economy of Marxism, the term bourgeoisie is the class that exerts control over the social means of production in the social formation of capitalism, as usual.
As word goes citizenship ( citizens) as the term for a group of people from the Middle Latin burgus, a region protected by walls ( recovered ) and provided with special privileges and Others Markets settlement, lived in the merchants and artisans. This social group has been, however, inferior to a strong socio-historical change in the course of history and has thereby pronounced clearly distinct subtypes. Thus the concept of the middle class is in different societies because of those different historical developments never completely identical in meaning.
On the Sociology of the bourgeoisie
In sociology, the middle class is distinguished from the nobility and clergy, as well as against peasants and workers as a social layer. It comprises largely in itself heterogeneous social groups who, either through their economic independence ( possession ), it is characterized by specific vocational preparation (education) and thus with respect to assets as a social group certain privileges self-government as well as opportunities to gain control of social power means.
" Bourgeoisie " is the collective term for a complex structured, in detail difficult definable layer between upper-class society as well as peasants and workers. It consists primarily of the sub-layers of the upper classes and the petty bourgeoisie. Since the Industrial Revolution, it is usually associated with the middle class.
Since, therefore, the middle class usually consists of largely heterogeneous layers, the process of socialization for the middle class is even more problematic than in more homogeneous social categories (on the issue of the development of a class consciousness or class in itself and class for itself, see: The misery philosophy ). Strictly speaking, is the fact that in a given society, there is a middle class, not sufficient to infer the social and cultural existence of a bourgeoisie can. The bourgeoisie requirement is a sufficiently differentiated social structure of the society; must also have prevailed there on its incentives tuned notions of order (eg: economic liberalism for the Groß-/Wirtschaftsbürgertum or enlightenment, education and freedom of personal living, the art and science in the educated middle class ).
Emergence and transformation of the bourgeoisie
During the period of Western feudalism the bourgeoisie fought in contrast to peasants and nobility his civil liberties, first in the imperial free cities, based on commercial guilds and craft guilds. The formulated during the Enlightenment and among other things, in the French Revolution fought by the citizens of civil rights are now considered human rights.
A first modern definition to the legal provisions of the middle class comes from the year 1794 and can be found in the General Law for the Prussian States (ALR ):
Civil rights was thus a ständisches law. It was acquired by birth or awarded to those applicants who had applied for and fulfill important conditions there. If they were powerful and they possessed wealth, they were welcome. The General Land Law refers to this definition already on three basic types of the concept of citizenship: City citizens ( master craftsmen, wealthy merchants, shopkeepers, innkeepers - collectively referred to as petty bourgeois ), education citizens in the civil service ( Eximierte ) and economic citizen or Bourgeois ( also Eximierte ).
During the 19th century, then enlarged the "citizen" - term, increasingly also asked about the status of employment. Through the process of gentrification new layers can always be pulled into the middle classes (eg: higher employee). Rash of this is the extent to which these layers independence and access to social power means win ( autonomy and autocephaly loud Max Weber).
By contrast, may in the process of bourgeoization the social base for the middle class shrink, for example by certain circles of self and professionally schooled to cede social privileges and / or they are widespread in society.
Bourgeoisie as a social and cultural phenomenon
The idea of civil society was developed in the Enlightenment, but they already first favorable development conditions in the " occidental city " (according to Max Weber). It was initially a stand ( in the French Revolution of 1789 than the whole of society decisive " Third Estate " ), then in Marxism as a class ( " bourgeoisie " ), most recently seen as stylish defining milieu that survives at least insular in the present and acts.
A unique world-historical role played by the bourgeoisie in the transformation of feudalism and absolutism in the economy and society through his ideas of democracy ( popular sovereignty ), human rights, rule of law and liberalism. In the field of poetry and theater, it emancipated itself by sat by the bourgeois tragedy as a genre. In his published in 1962 habilitation dissertation structural transformation of the public, the philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas describes the bourgeoisie as a social formation that brought about a new form of public, a new relationship between state and society, and so, finally, the emergence of modern mass society.
The bourgeoisie coined in the period of early capitalism "bourgeois ideology ", which is closely associated with the " civic virtues " performance, hard work and thrift. The bourgeois intellectuals formed themselves into a state either alimentierten or professional educated middle class, which could partly to formulate criticisms of the prevailing bourgeois notions and ideas.
During the communist criticism on the one hand defined the bourgeoisie as a class enemy of the working and doing " petty bourgeois " as between the class fronts politically back and have her seen swaying, the concept of the citizen has been used negative connotations in other contexts, such as the terms " bourgeois " or " make verbürgerlichtes Christianity " clearly. The same applies for as adopted by the youth movement of the 17th century concept of the " philistine ", a product from the jargon of the army of knights dirty word.
In the decline of ( eg " Victorian " or " Wilhelmine " ) bourgeoisie in the late 19th century already heard which - partly by the nobility ago - Ideal spreading that the woman only own ceremonial duties and the budget at best still supervise. For homework, there were staff. So had the bourgeois women's time to take off the money -earning man of the bourgeois education efforts to organize the socializing in the public, if necessary, to be charitable.
Looking at the social changes since the mid-20th century, the view is taken that the bourgeoisie had gone as oustanding overall lifestyle to an end. Emerged was a nachbürgerliche Society of employees, officials and other groups that were essentially merged into a new middle class and not be discriminated regardless of their roots in the middle class in the style from the general style of the industrial society. (See also: Levelled middle-class society! ) This does not preclude that bourgeois lifestyles still occur, mostly as family styles.