History of Europe Bourgeoisie, Industrial Revolution, Enlightenment

The bourgeoisie, sometimes called the capitalists, own the means of production. Children of the bourgeoisie and middle classes possess more cultural capital – the dominant values, attitudes, and knowledge recognised by schools. The bourgeoisie uses this power to maintain the capitalist system and the class inequality that benefits them.

Bourgeoisie

• To prevent the“superfluous” from multiplying, and “demoralised”parents from influencing their children, families are broken up; the husband isplaced in one wing, the wife in another, the children in a third, and they arepermitted to see one another only at stated times after long intervals, andthen only when they have, in the opinion of the officials, behaved well.
• The education system plays a key role in maintaining class divisions.
• In the workhouse at Greenwich, in the summer of 1843, a boy five years oldwas punished by being shut into the dead-room, where he had to sleep upon thelids of the coffins.

The education system serves the interests of the capitalist class (bourgeoisie). The bourgeoisie economic dominance translates directly into political and ideological power. The bourgeoisie are the owners of factories, land, and capital, who profit from business and control economic power. At the same time, however, the workhouseshave intensified, more than any other measure of the party 1win india in power, the hatredof the working-class against the property-holders, who very generally admirethe New Poor Law. The workers have taken it intotheir heads that they, with their busy hands, are the necessary, and the richcapitalists, who do nothing, the surplus population. It would reach its highest perfection in a wholly ungovernedanarchic society, where each might exploit the other to his hearts content.Since, however, the bourgeoisie cannot dispense with government, but must haveit to hold the equally indispensable proletariat in check, it turns the powerof government against the proletariat and keeps out of its way as far aspossible.

The man, George Robson, had a wound upon theshoulder, the treatment of which was wholly neglected; he was set to work atthe pump, using the sound arm; was given only the usual workhouse fare, whichhe was utterly unable to digest by reason of the unhealed wound and his generaldebility; he naturally grew weaker, and the more he complained, the morebrutally he was treated. The details of the treatment of the poorin this institution are revolting. In November, 1843, a man died at Leicester, who had been dismissed two daysbefore from the workhouse at Coventry.

The bourgeoisie

But the workers are no longer to be misled by thebourgeoisie, especially since the insurrection of 1842. And as to the efficiency of this philanthropy,Canon Parkinson himself says that the poor are relieved much more by the poorthan by the bourgeoisie; and such relief given by an honest proletarian whoknows himself what it is to be hungry, for whom sharing his scanty meal isreally a sacrifice, but a sacrifice borne with pleasure, such help has a whollydifferent ring to it from the carelessly-tossed alms of the luxuriousbourgeois. And if the operative will not be forced into thisabstraction, if he insists that he is not Labour, but a man, who possesses,among other things, the attribute of labour-power, if he takes it into his headthat he need not allow himself to be sold and bought in the market, as thecommodity “Labour”, the bourgeois reason comes to a standstill. I have never seen a class so deeply demoralised, so incurably debased byselfishness, so corroded within, so incapable of progress, as the Englishbourgeoisie; and I mean by this, especially the bourgeoisie proper,particularly the Liberal, Corn Law repealing bourgeoisie.

The CornLaws being repealed, the price of bread falls, and wages gradually approachthose of other European countries, as must be clear to every one from ourprevious exposition of the principles according to which wages are determined.The manufacturer can compete more readily, the demand for English goodsincreases, and, with it, the demand for labour. Charity which degrades himwho gives more than him who takes; charity which treads the downtrodden stilldeeper in the dust, which demands that the degraded, the pariah cast out bysociety, shall first surrender the last that remains to him, his very claim tomanhood, shall first beg for mercy before your mercy deigns to press, in theshape of an alms, the brand of degradation upon his brow. As though you rendered the proletarians aservice in first sucking out their very life-blood and then practising yourself-complacent, Pharisaic philanthropy upon them, placing yourselves beforethe world as mighty benefactors of humanity when you give back to the plunderedvictims the hundredth part of what belongs to them! Thehuckstering spirit penetrates the whole language, all relations are expressedin business terms, in economic categories. He who has money is of “the better sort of people”, is “influential”,and what he does counts for something in his social circle. The relation of the manufacturer to his operatives hasnothing human in it; it is purely economic.