[D66] The Bourgeois(ie) as Concept and Reality

[A.OUT]

"In the mythology of the modern world, the quintessential protagonist is
the bourgeois. Hero for some, villain for others, the inspiration or
lure for most, he has been the shaper of the present and the destroyer
of the past. In English, we tend to avoid the term ‘bourgeois’,
preferring in general the locution ‘middle class’ (or classes). It is a
small irony that despite the vaunted individualism of Anglo-Saxon
thought, there is no convenient singular form for ‘middle class(es)’. We
are told by the linguists that the term appeared for the first time in
Latin form, burgensis, in 1007 and is recorded in French as burgeis as
of 1100. It originally designated the inhabitant of a bourg, an urban
area, but an inhabitant who was ‘free’. Free, however, from what? Free
from the obligations that were the social cement and the economic nexus
of a feudal system. The bourgeois was not a peasant or serf, but he was
also not a noble. . ." [READ PDF]
https://cominsitu.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/nlrbourg.pdf

https://cominsitu.wordpress.com/2019/09/02/the-bourgeoisie-as-concept-and-reality-wallerstein-1988/