bourgeois society
Capitalist social order
Bourgeois society is a Marxist term for a social order dominated by the middle class—property owners, merchants, and professionals who control capital and shape culture to serve their interests.
The phrase carries critical weight, implying materialism, conformity, and exploitation of workers: The revolution would sweep away bourgeois society and its false values.
Outside Marxist discourse, it describes any social milieu marked by conventional respectability and commercial priorities.
- middle classIntermediate socioeconomic group
- industrializationTransition to factory-based economy
- capitalismPrivate profit-based economy
- commodificationTransforming into sellable goods
- materialismPrioritizing goods over spirit
private property · class struggle · philistine · wage labor · cultural hegemony · rentier · old money · nouveau riche · social climbing · individualism · French Revolution · Balzac · proletariat · false consciousness · Protestant work ethic · Victorian morality · conformity · social mobility
- French RealismBalzac, Flaubert, Zola, Gustave Flaubert, Emile Zola
- French RomanticismVictor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, Balzac, romantic hero
bourgeois societyaristocratic society
Social world of nobles
classless society · feudal society · socialist society · dictatorship of the proletariat · the proletariat
bourgeois societysocialist society
Community with shared resources
feudalism · command economy · gift economy · subsistence economy · barter economy
bourgeois societycounterculture
Rejection of mainstream values
avant-garde · underground culture · Beat Generation · hippie culture