BOURGEOISIE. — In a broad and general sense, the term bourgeoisie designates the intermediate class between the class that holds wealth, culture, and political power by hereditary right and the class of the destitute, who live exclusively by manual labor. This class acquires a distinct configuration and its own traditions during a rather prolonged period of social development. Its emergence is a phenomenon commonly observed among all peoples whose life progresses toward civilization. To limit ourselves to Roman society, the small landowners, artisans, and merchants who, during the Republican era, succeeded in improving their initial positions, gradually transformed into what today would be called the bourgeoisie, forming a separate group (the *equites*), endowed with wealth and culture and thus wielding particular political influence, which they had achieved through their own initiative rather than by mere inheritance, as was the case with the patrician class (*gentes*).
In its specific and historical sense, however, the bourgeoisie is a distinctly modern phenomenon, whose origins date back to the late Middle Ages, when, in the feudal societies of various European countries, a third class inserted itself between the class of landed feudal lords and the class of serfs, who, though differently, were also bound to the land by hereditary ties. This class consisted predominantly of those who, emancipating themselves from a more or less servile condition and rising to a certain degree of legal and economic independence, engaged in commerce and industry—activities still in their infancy at the time—and settled in cities, where social life was more intense. The word *bourgeoisie* is therefore etymologically linked to the origins of medieval cities, which arose in places of trade or consisted of small inhabited nuclei that later expanded, often around castles built for defense (*burgus*), which, when enclosed by walls, became the new urban centers in addition to those already in existence. Hence the name *cives burgenses*, in contrast to the inhabitants of the countryside, who remained under the tutelage and authority of the feudal lord without the relative autonomy granted to city dwellers within the limits of the privileges accorded to them. The early boroughs included not only newcomers but also the old inhabitants who served the local lord, whether lay or ecclesiastical, to whom political power sometimes remained and would continue to belong for centuries. Alongside the economic factor, the men of culture (philosophers), jurists, and professional soldiers (standing armies) living around the prince’s residence also contributed to nourishing and strengthening the nascent medieval bourgeoisie.
The extent and importance of the bourgeois class in the late Middle Ages are clearly reflected in the literature of the time (cf., for example, the historical world of Dante’s *Divine Comedy*). The 14th century, in fact, marks almost everywhere in Europe the full flourishing of the bourgeoisie, though with differences: in countries where sovereign authority remained intact due to the formation of national states, it assumed a predominantly courtly character and activity; elsewhere, as in Italy during the era of the communes and maritime republics, where it could seize political power and govern itself, it devoted itself more to trade and banking and organized itself into guilds of arts and crafts. Over time, in both cases, it assumed the role of the ruling class, a role definitively fulfilled by the bourgeoisie until the contemporary period. Within the bourgeois class, especially in the latter case, a further division emerged between the haute bourgeoisie and the lower bourgeoisie. The former was represented by the most influential men of culture and capable administrators (professionals, scholars, doctors, lawyers, etc.), wealthy merchants and bankers, and the most skilled and well-to-do artisans, who often took on the role of small entrepreneurs; the latter, by contrast, consisted entirely of lower employees and the category of workers.
During the Renaissance and then until the Revolution of 1789, the bourgeoisie held in its hands the development of culture and wealth, both movable and immovable, and stood alongside the privileged classes of the nobility and clergy, which remained powerful thanks to the privileges they had secured and the traditions that commanded respect, despite the autonomous and individualistic tendencies of the new class. This continued until the bourgeois class, having gained greater awareness of its strength in various spheres of social life, abolished all subordination to other privileges, overturning ancient political constitutions and tempering sovereign power with representative bodies, without regard even for ecclesiastical laws and institutions sanctioned by centuries of tradition. The spread of a distinctly secular culture and new conceptions about the origin of society (the Enlightenment), and especially the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, led the bourgeois class to absolute dominance over culture and wealth (capitalism).
In this latter sphere, the bourgeoisie rendered great service by accelerating the pace of economic progress in the past two centuries through the application of experimental sciences and technology to production methods, the ever-wider introduction of machinery, and the scientific organization of labor, thanks to the spirit of initiative, courage, and tenacity with which it embraced new productive processes. However, the utilitarian conception of economics espoused by 19th-century bourgeoisie hindered a just distribution of the new wealth in favor of the working classes, who were unable to enjoy it to the extent it was produced, in accordance with the natural needs and dignity of man, thus giving rise to the proletariat as a mass phenomenon. In this conception, labor was treated as a “commodity,” like other productive factors, and thus remunerated with low wages and exploited through excessive working hours and the employment of women and children in the workforce, until labor unions and social legislation acquired their current effectiveness in defending workers’ rights, limiting the freedom of the producing classes in labor relations. To the same causes can be attributed, during the same period of bourgeois dominance, the rise and consolidation of industrial concentrations (private monopolies, trusts, cartels), which often exercised a monopoly over the market, suppressing competition among producers and imposing unilateral prices without regard for the needs of consumers.
The 19th century thus marked the apogee of the bourgeoisie, which asserted itself under the banner of liberalism, dominating every sector of national life, including the political, despite the establishment of democratic systems based on universal suffrage. Yet this very triumph contained the latent seeds of the bourgeoisie’s decline, whose decline became increasingly pronounced in the contemporary period. The very factors that had determined its rise—the awareness of its social importance and thus the aspiration for autonomy and the conquest of power—initiated its disintegration, paving the way for the demands of the working masses, impoverished and oppressed by capitalism, no longer willing to remain subject to the bourgeois class.
The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels (1848) is the rallying cry of the proletariat in their struggle against the bourgeoisie, against which the criticism and revolutions of socialism are directed with relentless and merciless force. The accusations leveled by socialist writers against the bourgeoisie—still recurring a century later despite the markedly changed economic conditions of the two classes—reduce to the systematic exploitation of the working class, inherent in the bourgeois mentality, and to the unlimited individual freedom at the expense of collective interests, to which are attributed in particular the recurrence of periodic crises and the origin of private monopolies. Since then, the bourgeoisie, as a ruling class, and with it liberalism, of which it was the most extravagant champion, have been in grave crisis. This crisis, which spread with unprecedented magnitude after the First World War and is still far from resolved today, encompasses the entire social problem of our time.
For the bourgeoisie has succeeded in reaffirming and indisputably asserting, though beyond reasonable limits, the rights of the individual and the sovereignty of the law that protects those rights within the established order; and in this it has an undeniable merit. Yet on the other hand, it has failed to extend the recognition of human dignity to the lower strata of society, exposing them to the unchecked freedom of initiative and the tyranny of the stronger. In vain have totalitarian regimes believed they could solve the problem left unresolved by the bourgeoisie, assuming the defense of the masses and establishing the bureaucratic and centralized State of all powers: to the actual freedom of a few, who replaced the ancient ruling caste, has succeeded the subjection of all to the authority of the State, held by a new caste of leaders (technicians and bureaucrats), themselves dominated in turn by politicians who have managed to seize, more or less legally, public power.
The distinction made above between the haute bourgeoisie and the lower bourgeoisie must also be kept in mind in the contemporary period, in which the former, composed of representatives of large industrial and agricultural property and high finance, tends to be stripped of its directive role in political and economic life. The latter, which in recent times has taken the name of the middle class, contrary to Marxist predictions of a progressive expansion of the proletariat, has instead steadily grown as a result of the general increase in wealth and its distribution according to principles of greater social justice. This bourgeoisie is made up of those who, often rising from the lower strata of society, have attained a certain degree of culture and comfort within individual freedom (freelance professionals and small property owners) or conditions of relative independence (civil servants and employees of public and private administration), and represents the central and most stable core of modern societies. Alien to both exaggerated conservatism and violent, precipitate upheavals of the established order, this bourgeoisie is thus a factor of equilibrium and constancy in the evolution of social life, in which it seems destined to play a decisive role in the future, being itself a mass of evolved and conscious citizens in which the other two opposing and extreme tendencies are appropriately neutralized, and the most suitable and disinterested leaders for the pursuit of the common good are prepared.
Alberto De Marco