Bourgeoisie

BOURGEOISIE. - According to a broadly generic meaning, the term b. designates the intermediate class between the class that holds wealth, culture and political power for hereditary reasons and the class of the dispossessed, living exclusively by manual labor; a class that acquires its own particular configuration and its own traditions during a rather prolonged period of social development. Its rise is a phenomenon that tends to occur among all peoples whose life unfolds progressively toward civilization. To confine ourselves to Roman society, the small landowners of the countryside, the artisans and the traders, who during the republican age managed to improve their starting positions, were transformed in time into what today would be called the b., forming a separate group (equites), endowed with wealth and culture and therefore with particular political influence, won through their own initiative, that is, not derived simply from belonging to a pre-existing group, as could happen for the patrician class (gentes).

In its specific and historical meaning, however, the b. is a quintessentially modern phenomenon, whose origins go back to the last centuries of the Middle Ages, when in the feudal societies of the various countries of Europe a third class inserted itself between the class of landed feudal lords and the class of serfs, who were also, though in a different way, bound to the land by hereditary ties. This class turned out to be composed prevalently temente by those who, emancipating themselves from a more or less servile condition and rising to a certain degree of juridical and economic independence, devoted themselves to the activities of commerce and industry, which in those times was in its beginnings, and moved to the cities, where the relations of associated life were more intense. The word b. is therefore connected etymologically to the origin of medieval cities, which arose in places of traffic or were constituted of small inhabited nuclei, subsequently enlarged, and around castles erected for defense (burgus), which, surrounded by walls, later became the urban centers of new formation, in addition to those already existing. Hence the name of cives borgenses, in opposition to the inhabitants of the countryside, who remained under the tutelage and patronal authority, without that relative autonomy granted by the lord to the inhabitants of the city within the limits of the privileges accorded. The first bourgeois included, besides the newcomers, also the old inhabitants, assigned to the local service of the lord, lay or ecclesiastical, to whom the political power sometimes remained and would remain for centuries more. Together with the economic factor, there thus contributed to feeding and strengthening the nascent medieval b. the men of culture (philosophy) and of law, as well as the men of arms (professional militias) living around the dwelling of the prince.

The extension and importance of the bourgeois class of the late Middle Ages are easily visible from the literature of the time (cf., e.g., the historical world of Dante's Commedia). The 14th century marks, in fact, almost everywhere in Europe, the full flourishing of the b., with the difference that in the countries where sovereign authority remained standing, thanks to the formation of national States, it had a predominantly curial character and activity; elsewhere, on the other hand, as in Italy in the era of the communes and the maritime republics, where it was able to conquer political power and govern itself, it devoted itself rather to trade and banking activity, and organized itself into the guilds of arts and crafts, later coming with the passage of time to assume in both cases the role of ruling class, definitively fulfilled by the b. up to the contemporary period. Within the bourgeois class, especially in the second case, the subdivision between high and low b. is furthermore determined, the former represented by the most influential men of culture and those most capable in the government of public affairs (professionals, teachers, doctors, men of the robe, etc.), by the rich merchants and bankers, by the artisans most skilled professionally and well-off, who often assumed the figure of small entrepreneurs; the latter, on the contrary, constituted by the lower dependents and by the category of workers.

During the period of the Renaissance and then subsequently up to the Revolution of 1789, the b. now everywhere holds in its hands the development of culture and of wealth, both movable and immovable, and stands alongside as a third estate the privileged classes of the nobility and the clergy, which remained such and still powerful thanks to the privileges they had secured for themselves and to the traditions that made them respected, despite the autonomist and individualistic tendency proper to the new class. This continued until, having now acquired greater awareness of its own strength in the various fields of social life, the bourgeois class suppressed every subordination of its own to the privilege of others, overturning ancient political constitutions and tempering sovereign power with representative bodies, without even concerning itself with the ecclesiastical laws and ordinances sanctioned for centuries. The greater diffusion of a purely lay culture and the new conceptions concerning the origin of society (Enlightenment), and especially the industrial revolution of the 18th-19th centuries, brought the bourgeois class to the absolute dominion of culture and of wealth (capitalism).

In this latter field particularly the b. rendered itself greatly deserving for having prodigiously accelerated the rhythm of economic progress in the last two centuries, through the application of the experimental sciences and of technology to the methods of processing, the ever more extensive introduction of machines and the scientific organization of labor, thanks to the spirit of initiative, the courage and the tenacity with which the difficulties of the new productive processes were faced. The utilitarian conception of the economy, proper to the 19th-century b., was however an obstacle to a just distribution of the new wealth in favor of the working classes, to whom it was not made possible to enjoy it in the measure with which it was produced, in conformity with the natural needs and the dignity of man, giving origin to the proletariat as a mass phenomenon. In that conception, in fact, labor was considered as a «commodity» like the other productive factors, as such remunerated with low wages and exploited with the excessive duration of the working day and the employment of the labor of women and children, until the trade-union organizations and social legislations acquired their present effectiveness in defense of the workers, limiting the freedom of the producing classes in labor relations. To the same motives must be attributed, in the same period of the ascent of the b., the rise and affirmation of industrial concentrations (private monopolies, trusts, cartels), which often exercised an extortionate tyranny over the market, suppressing competition among producers and imposing the price unilaterally, without regard for the needs of consumers.

The 19th century thus marked the apogee of the b., which affirmed itself under the name of liberalism, dominating in every sector of national life, including the political one, despite the establishment of democratic systems founded on universal suffrage. But the same triumph contained in a latent state the germs of the decadence of the b., whose decline became ever more accentuated in the contemporary period. The very motives that had determined its rise (awareness of itself and of its social importance, and therefore aspiration to autonomy and to the conquest of power) initiated its disintegration, opening the way to the claims of the working masses, indigent and oppressed by capitalism, no longer disposed to remain subject to the bourgeois class.

The Manifesto of the Communists by Marx and Engels (1848) is the rallying cry of the proletarians in the struggle against the bourgeoisie, against which the criticism and the revolutions of socialism will hurl themselves fiercely and ruthlessly. The accusations leveled by socialist writers against the bourgeoisie, still recurring a century later, although the economic conditions of the two classes have changed considerably, come down to that of the systematic exploitation of the working class, inherent in the bourgeois mentality, and that of unlimited individual freedom to the detriment of collective interests, to which are attributed in particular the recurrence of periodic crises and the origin of monopolies of a private character. Since then the bourgeoisie, as a ruling class, and with it liberalism, of which it was the champion to an unbelievable degree, have been in serious crisis. In this crisis, which spread with unprecedented vastness at the end of the First World War and at present is far from being overcome, lies the whole social problem of our days. For the bourgeoisie has known how to revalue and indisputably assert, albeit beyond reasonable limits, the rights of the individual and the sovereignty of the law, which protects those rights within the established order; and in this lies its undeniable merit. But on the other hand it has not known how to extend the recognition of the dignity of the human person to the lower strata of society, exposing them to the uncontrolled freedom of initiative and the tyranny of the strongest. In vain have totalitarian regimes believed they could solve the problem left unresolved by the bourgeoisie, by taking upon themselves the defense of the masses and establishing the bureaucratic State centralizing all powers: to the effective freedom of a few, who replaced the old ruling caste, there succeeded the subjection of all to the authority of the State, held by a new caste of leaders (technicians and bureaucrats), dominated in turn by politicians who had succeeded in seizing public power more or less legally.

The distinction made further on between high and low bourgeoisie must be kept in mind also in the contemporary period, in which the former, composed of the representatives of large industrial and agricultural property and of high finance, tends to be dismissed from its directing role in political and economic life. The latter, which in recent times has taken the name of middle class, contrary to the Marxist predictions of a progressive expansion of the proletariat, has instead gone on expanding more and more following the general increase in wealth and its distribution according to the principles of a better social justice. This bourgeoisie is constituted by those who, rising not infrequently from the lower strata of society, have reached a certain degree of culture and prosperity in individual freedom (liberal professions and medium proprietors) or conditions of relative independence (officials and employees of public and private administration), and represents the central and most stable nucleus of modern societies. Averse both to an exaggerated conservatism and to the violent and precipitate upheavals of the established order, such a bourgeoisie is therefore a factor of equilibrium and constancy in the evolution of social life, in which it seems destined to have a decisive function in the future, being itself a mass, but of evolved and conscious citizens, in which the other two extreme and opposing tendencies are opportunely neutralized and the most suitable and disinterested leaders are prepared for the pursuit of the public good.

Alberto De Marco