this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
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No, it means merchant class. Capitalists and industrialists, as opposed to hereditary nobility. They are the ruling class now and have been for well over a century at least, but it's true that they were the middle class at the time the term was coined, although rapidly gaining in power.
Exactly! People need to stop translating it as middle class, because it throws people off.
Nobody is coming for Joe Schmoe who makes 70k a year to take away his primary (and only) residence. Or at least, they shouldn't be.
People these days are so bad at understanding historical context. That, like you said, "middle class" back then meant the merchant class who were neither peasants nor nobility, and that the modern-day bourgeoisie have become the de facto ruling class. Nowadays we call them "Upper class," "Owner caste," or "financial oligarchs."
I've tried explaining this to people and they get so caught up in the nomenclature. They say "Bourgeoisie means middle class" as if that's some definitive argument, and they ignore me when I explain to them what that actually meant in the 18th/19th centuries when it was coined.
The modern day "middle class," which another commenter rightly describes as the "petit bourgeois," emerged in the post-WWII era as a result of FDR's policies and similar societal shifts around the world. It's a subset of the working class. Even upper-middle class (doctors, lawyers, accountants, cybersecurity professionals, etc.) who make six figures and live in mcmansions are still working class. Still petit bourgeois proletarians, though they're less likely to think in those terms.
The bourgeoisie are those who own enough capital that they can live off of investment income without actually working beyond sitting in board meetings and telling other people what to do. That's not "middle class" anymore, except maybe in monarchical countries that still have an aristocracy. And even in most of those countries, the bourgeoisie have become more powerful than the "nobility."
The one thing I'd dispute is
As you correctly identify in your last paragraph, class is defined by your relationship to labour and the means of production, and not strictly related to how much money you have. The petit bourgeois may generally be what we commonly think of as middle class, but it more specifically refers to small business owners. People who make money from the labour of others, but still have to do real work themselves in order to maintain it. A doctor at a hospital is not petit bourgeois, but a doctor running their own clinic and employing a nurse and a secretary is, and would be even if they had less income. Even a sports player who makes tens of millions is not really petit bourgeois or bourgeois if that's all they do - although they often go in that direction after some time.
Where it gets complicated in our financialised world is that our savings, if we have any, are often invested in corporations, and after a lifetime of working for a decent wage, some of us are fortunate enough to be able to live out our last decades or years from investment income. It feels a bit tough to describe retirees as bourgeois even though by the strict definition that would be the case.
Despite this complication, I think it's much clearer to think of class distinction in terms of the relationship to work, as this is what mainly incentivises attitudes to political and economic policy. If you get your income from other people working for you, you're more likely to want to drive wages down and not pay for healthcare. If you get paid for working, you're more likely to want wages to increase, even if your wage is already high.
That makes sense
I'd really like to see a rework of terms that separates the corporate conglomerates from say the local pizza place. Yes both make money from the labor of others, but the average person has way more in common with a local buisness owner than Bezos.
I personally thinks this is something people get caught up on. A small buisness owner could be less well off than say an electrical engineer. They struggle to hate someone they see as like them. Which is truthfully the case a small buisness owner is more like the average worker these days than they are like a national corporation.
Truthfully I don't know how this is navigated by modern theory. I think the distinction would truthfully only help warm people up to the idea of dealing with the wealthy