The middle class. In the 1800's the middle class was a class growing with the industrial revolution. They tended to make up a very conservative group, often seen as uninterested in the welfare of the lower classes.

The capitalist class ( see capitalism below) that came to be known as the middle class, between the aristocracy and the working class. A new middle class of merchants and businessmen prospered throughout Europe from the 16th century, and especially in Britain, which Napoleon described as a 'nation of shopkeepers'. The term 'bourgeois' is used derogatorily to describe anything considered humdrum, unimaginative and/or selfishly materialistic.

the middle class. (p. 766)

One of Marx's opposed classes; owners of the means of production (factories, mines, large farms, and other sources of subsistence).

the social class between the lower and upper classes

Prosperous urban middle class that emerged in the wake of the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION and gained wealth and power in the nineteenth century. In MARXIST theory, the bourgeoisie is identified as the owners and operators of industry, as opposed to the PROLETARIAT, who live by the sale of their labor.

(from ‘burghers') - The economically dominant (and thus ruling) class in a capitalist society, the bourgeoisie owns the means of production and employs wage labour; this class stands in opposition to the working class.

The middle class. In Marxist theory, the capitalist class opposing the proletariat in the class struggle.

Karl Marx's term for the class comprised of those who own and control the means of production.

the ruling class in capitalism which owns the means of production; creative agents of change from feudalism to capitalism; the exploiters of the proletariat, or working class; originally meant "city-dwellers". Marx, Manifesto, (11).

The class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour.

The French Revolutionary term for working class civilians.

well-educated, prosperous, middle-class groups. (p. 692)

In Marxist theory, the owners of the means of production; the capitalist ruling class.

Bourgeoisie (RP [], GA []) is a classification used in analyzing human societies to describe a class of people who are in the middle class nobility, whose status or power comes from employment, education, and wealth as opposed to aristocratic origin. In a capitalist society the term often refers to the owning and ruling classes. The term is widely used in many non-English countries as an approximate equivalent of middle class, but in English speaking countries usage is largely confined to those with socialist opinions, and it has strong pejorative connotations.