Page 264 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Unit 13: Changing Dimensions of Social Stratification

oppressed, always having clash of interests. The class struggle ended in a revolutionary Notes
reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
Marx and Engels write : “The modern bourgeoisie society that has sprouted from the ruins of
feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has established new classes, new
conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.” However, the present
epoch of the bourgeoisie has simplified the class antagonisms. “Society as a whole is more and
more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other :
bourgeoisie and proletariat.”

Bourgeoisie
The class structure can be seen as an evolutionary process -from the serfs to the chartered burghers,
and from there to the bourgeoisie. The feudal society disintegrated because the guilds could not
suffice for the new markets. The manufacturing middle class, and division of labour between the
different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop. The
manufacture was further replaced by the giant, modern industry, industrial millionaires, the
leaders of whole industrial armies - the modern bourgeoisie.
Modern industry has developed the world market. As a result, commerce, navigation and
communication by land immensely developed. In proportion to such a development, the bourgeoisie
developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every earlier class. Marx and
Engels thus observe : “We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a
long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.”
Further, “each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding
political advance of that class”. The development can be seen in terms of an oppressed class
during feudalism, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune/independent
urban republic/taxable “third estate” of the monarchy, a manufacture producer, serving either
semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the mobility, and lastly, the
bourgeoisie since the establishment of modern industry and of the world market, under the
modern representative state, exclusive political sway. “The executive of the modern state is but a
committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary role. The following points may be
noted :
1. The bourgeoisie has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. No “natural superiors”,
only naked self-interest, “cash payment” are valued. Only exchange value and free trade, and
naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation in place of personal worth have occurred.
2. Honoured and looked up occupations have been stripped of their halo. It has converted the
physician, the lawyer, the priest, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.
3. The bourgeoisie has taken away from the family its sentimental veil. It has been reduced to a
mere money relation.
4. The bourgeoisie has shown what man’s activity can bring about.
5. The bourgeoisie has constantly revolutionized the instruments of production, and thereby the
relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. This has also constantly
expanded market for its products.
6. The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character
to production and consumption in every country. New industries and new wants have become
the order of the day. National boundaries are broken. The national seclusion and self-suffering
are outdated.
7. The bourgeoisie has brought about rapid improvement of all instruments of production by the
immensely facilitated means of communication. A new civilization has ushered in. In one
word, it creates a world after its own image.

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