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enrico_dandolo
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05 Dec 2011, 11:47 am

"Burgher" is a parallel historical term. In French, "bourgeois" is used for both "burgher" and "bourgeois" in the marxist sense. It relates to people living in pre-modern and early modern cities, in burgs. They were, within themselves, also divided between richer magnates (proto-industrial owners, bankers, merchants, etc.) and poorer proto-proletarians, with of course a proto-middle class of educated workers (clerks, etc.). In Western Europe, these people actually had the most money since at least the Late Middle Ages (especially in Northern Italy and the Netherlands), while the nobility had much political power, yet was otherwise in full decline relatively to the city-dwellers. (That was not the case in Central and Eastern Europe, possibly too in Iberia because I know little about this region.) Thus, by the 19th century, especially after the onset of the industrial revolution, the richer burghers had become the most powerful class, thus the use of the term to define the capitalist ruling class, but this definitions excludes other city-dwellers which would have been hitherto included by the terms -- namely, the proletariat.



peebo
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05 Dec 2011, 12:51 pm

Burnbridge wrote:
Merriam-Webster wrote:
1 bour·geois adj
1: of, relating to, or characteristic of the social middle class
2: marked by a concern for material interests and respectability and a tendency toward mediocrity
3: dominated by commercial and industrial interests : capitalistic

2, noun
1 a : burgher, b : a middle-class person
2: a person with social behavior and political views held to be influenced by private-property interest : capitalist


taken into English from middle French, in use since 1565, etymology from old French burgeis meaning "townsman"


Maybe I wasn't that far off the mark. Makes me wonder if Marx redefined the term to make the Burghers/Bourgeois the ruling class, and lump the upper middle class in with the aristocracy and capitalist tycoons? Because the bourgeois pander to the wealthy, and might as well be filthy rich compared to the Working Class?


well that's what i was saying. there is a history of it being used in this context, and i have on occasion observed it being used in this way. so no, you weren't wrong in your statement.

in terms of marx, i couldn't speculate specifically on why he appropriate the terms bourgeois and petit-bourgeois. perhaps because they were pre-existing terms that referred to the upper and lower middle class respectively and they could translate well to his ideas regarding class. or perhaps he was trying to spread these pre-existing categories somewhat to fit his model.

or you could look at it from the point of view of the development over time of the bourgeois class itself, originally the novel class of people who grew around the development of towns and mercantilism (and being, by definition, the "middle class" between the peasants and the nobility), and from whom, over the period of the decline of feudalism and conversely the power of the courts and merchants grew, the owning class actually originated*.


your last point i think could be countered simply by bringing up marx's use of "petit-bourgeois", which he used to refer to shopkeepers and the like, people who may own means of production, but who are lower in the hierarchy and work alongside those whose labour they purchase.




* foucault wrote at some length about this period in history, suggesting that the "new bourgeois class" self-consciously went about the task of undermining the nobility, and utilised the peasant class where necessary in order to do this. it's either in madness and civilisation or the first volume of the history of sexuality, near the start of the book, but i can't just at the minute remember which one of the two it is. i'll try and dig both out, as his perspective might add a new element of interest to the discussion here.


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Burnbridge
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05 Dec 2011, 12:53 pm

Thx for the clarifications, peebo. If you figure out which Foucault it is, let me know. I'd like to see if they have it at the library, I like reading Foucault. He's one of the only essayists I can read easily.


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peebo
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05 Dec 2011, 1:01 pm

i'd tentatively recommend both, especially madness and civilisation. i've only read the first volume of history of sexuality, but it was really good. i'm looking around to try and pick up the other two on the cheap, then it'll be on to discipline and punish, of which i've only read a few extracts.

have a look here for starters.


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?Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.?

Adam Smith


Burnbridge
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05 Dec 2011, 1:18 pm

Nice. I had to turn my screen 90 degrees to read that pdf...not it's giving me vertigo trying to type like this... o.O


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peebo
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05 Dec 2011, 5:06 pm

right, got it. it's neither of the books i mentioned, rather, it is discipline and punish (which would make sense really. been a long while since i read it).

i've found a good summary of the relevant section although the formatting is a bit off (spaces missing on certain lines) but try and bear with it.

page two of this document:


http://www.scribd.com/doc/38496453/Disc ... g-Workbook


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?Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.?

Adam Smith


visagrunt
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06 Dec 2011, 12:21 pm

Take a look at where investment capital comes from in our economy.

The two largest sectors for investment in publicly traded securities are pension funds and mutual funds--both of which are primarily held by the middle class. The third largest investment sector is insurance company assets which is the first point at which business as beneficial owners of capital starts to enter the picture. If the Marxist classification continues to be relevant, then the middle class most assuredly are bourgeois. In the ordinary course, we would expect to reach retirement age with sufficient investment to live off the proceeds.

We need to start rethinking the relationship between, "ownership," and, "control." Fund mangers exercise power disproportionate to their ownership interests because they act with the delegated power of hundreds of thousands of beneficial owners. When an institutional investor is interested in nothing more than a company's next quarterly results and is content to rip out the profit and bugger sustainability, then a fiscal disaster becomes inevitable.

The interests of each and every member of the middle class lie in becoming more active controllers of our wealth.


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peebo
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06 Dec 2011, 1:31 pm

are you suggesting that by more actively controlling their wealth the middle class can somehow liberate themselves?


and as an aside, are the middle class the new proles, with everything existing below them some sort of sub-class/detritus? just a couple of thoughts...


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Adam Smith


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06 Dec 2011, 2:35 pm

peebo wrote:
and as an aside, are the middle class the new proles, with everything existing below them some sort of sub-class/detritus? just a couple of thoughts...


Nah, the "proletariat" are just going back to their roots in the Roman Republic (proletarii)

People who weren't exactly slaves, but owned nothing except their children. Lit. Proliterius: one who produces offspring. "proletarii were largely deprived of their voting rights due to their low social status caused by their lack of "even the minimum property required for the lowest class"


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visagrunt
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06 Dec 2011, 4:45 pm

peebo wrote:
are you suggesting that by more actively controlling their wealth the middle class can somehow liberate themselves?


and as an aside, are the middle class the new proles, with everything existing below them some sort of sub-class/detritus? just a couple of thoughts...


As for the first, I think there are two separate issues in your question.

The first is the degree to which the middle class can expect to be liberated under current conditions. I think that varies considerably from country to country and sector to sector. As a middle class professional in Canada working in the public sector, there is absolutely no question that I will be liberated. I have a gold-plated, defined benefit pension plan that will ensure that my retirement savings are sufficient to provide for my needs from retirement to the grave.

But there are many middle class Americans who have no such assurances--their employment provides them with no retirement savings beyond social security and what they are able to scrape together to put into a 401(k).

Ironically, I probably have less control over my wealth than a typical holder of a 401(k)--but the control is exercised by an investment agency that has no profit motive in investing my funds, which cannot be said for mutual funds.


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peebo
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07 Dec 2011, 2:22 am

do you consider the middle class to be the new proles, visagrunt?


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ruveyn
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07 Dec 2011, 9:50 am

You guys ought to stop applying European political and economic categories to the United States. They don't fit very well. The U.S. is sui generis.

ruveyn



visagrunt
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07 Dec 2011, 12:51 pm

peebo wrote:
do you consider the middle class to be the new proles, visagrunt?


Not by a long shot.

Look at the number of people in our countries who are employed in unskilled or low-skilled work. How many of them are able to purchase a home and save for retirement based on their earnings?

The minimum wage in this province is in the vicinity of $10/hr. Based on full time work, a person can expect to earn $20,800 at that wage. That does not meet the poverty line in this city. A couple in which each partner works full-time for minimum wage will surpass the poverty line, but not if they have children.

What I see as the public policy challenge is that an increasing number of people are falling out of the middle class. In part this is due to underemployment, but it is also caused by inaccessible housing costs.


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peebo
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07 Dec 2011, 1:02 pm

ruveyn wrote:
You guys ought to stop applying European political and economic categories to the United States. They don't fit very well. The U.S. is sui generis.

ruveyn


now now, this is an international forum, we can't be putting up with americentrism here.


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peebo
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07 Dec 2011, 1:11 pm

visagrunt wrote:
peebo wrote:
do you consider the middle class to be the new proles, visagrunt?


Not by a long shot.

Look at the number of people in our countries who are employed in unskilled or low-skilled work. How many of them are able to purchase a home and save for retirement based on their earnings?

The minimum wage in this province is in the vicinity of $10/hr. Based on full time work, a person can expect to earn $20,800 at that wage. That does not meet the poverty line in this city. A couple in which each partner works full-time for minimum wage will surpass the poverty line, but not if they have children.

What I see as the public policy challenge is that an increasing number of people are falling out of the middle class. In part this is due to underemployment, but it is also caused by inaccessible housing costs.


it appears to me that many of those on the forum who justify capitalism are in favour of this, whether that be explicit or implicit. to state that "creativity" and "innovation" will only arise in a climate where they are rewarded by material gain at the expense of others, would also imply the opposite, don't you think?


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?Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.?

Adam Smith