Upper class in modern societies is the social class composed of people who hold the highest social status. Usually, these are the wealthiest members of class society, and wield the greatest political power. According to this view, the upper class is generally distinguished by
immense wealth which is passed on from generation to generation. Prior to the 20th century, the emphasis was on aristocracy, which emphasized generations of inherited noble status, not just recent wealth.
Because the upper classes of a society may no longer rule the
society in which they are living, they are often referred to as the old upper classes, and they are often culturally distinct from the newly rich
middle classes that tend to dominate public life in modern social
democracies. According to the latter view held by the traditional upper
classes, no amount of individual wealth or fame would make a person from
an undistinguished background into a member of the upper class as one
must be born into a family of that class and raised in a particular
manner to understand and share upper class values, traditions, and
cultural norms. The term is often used in conjunction with terms like upper-middle class, middle class, and working class as part of a model of social stratification.
Historical meaning
Portrait of the family Fagoaga Arozqueta, about 1730. Painter unknown.
The family was part of the upper class in Mexico City, New Spain.
Historically in some cultures, members of an upper class often did
not have to work for a living, as they were supported by earned or
inherited investments (often real estate), although members of the upper class may have had less actual money than merchants. Upper-class status commonly derived from the social position of one's
family and not from one's own achievements or wealth. Much of the
population that composed the upper class consisted of aristocrats,
ruling families, titled people, and religious hierarchs. These people were usually born into their status and historically there was not much movement across class boundaries.
In many countries, the term "upper class" was intimately associated with hereditary land ownership. Political power was often in the hands of the landowners in many pre-industrial societies
despite there being no legal barriers to land ownership for other
social classes. Upper-class landowners in Europe were often also members
of the titled nobility,
though not necessarily: the prevalence of titles of nobility varied
widely from country to country. Some upper classes were almost entirely
untitled, for example, the Szlachta of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The upmarket Harrods department store in London, 1909
In Great Britain and Ireland, the "upper class" traditionally comprised the landed gentry and the aristocracy
of noble families with hereditary titles. The vast majority of
post-medieval aristocratic families originated in the merchant class and
were ennobled between the 14th and 19th centuries while intermarrying
with the old nobility and gentry. Since the Second World War, the term has come to encompass rich and powerful members of the managerial and professional classes as well. In the years since Irish independence in 1922 the upper class has all
but vanished in the Republic of Ireland. Aristocratic titles within the
Peerage of Ireland granted by the British monarch have no recognition in
the Irish Constitution. Contemporary Ireland is generally perceived to
have a two-tier social class system composed of working class and middle
class (with the exception of a small number of wealthy billionaires).
The American upper class is a social group within the United States consisting of people who have the highest social rank primarily due to economic wealth.The American upper class is estimated to constitute less than 1% of
the population. By self-identification, according to this 2001–2012
Gallup Poll data, 98% of Americans identify with the five other class
terms used, 48–50% identifying as "middle class".
The main distinguishing feature of the upper class is its ability to derive enormous incomes from wealth
through techniques such as money management and investing, rather than
engaging in wage-labor salaried employment, although most upper-class
individuals today will still hold some sort of employment, which differs
from historical norms.Successful entrepreneurs, CEOs, investment bankers, venture capitalists, heir to fortunes, celebrities, and a few number of professionals, are considered members of this class by contemporary sociologists, such as James Henslin or Dennis Gilbert. There may be prestige differences between different upper-class households. An A-list actor, for example, might not be accorded as much prestige as a former U.S. President, yet all members of this class are so influential and wealthy as to be considered members of the upper class. At the pinnacle of U.S. wealth, 2004 saw a dramatic increase in the numbers of billionaires. According to Forbes Magazine,
there are now 374 U.S. billionaires. The growth in billionaires took a
dramatic leap since the early 1980s, when the average net worth of the
individuals on the Forbes 400 list was $400 million. Today, the average net worth is $2.8 billion.
Upper-class families... dominate
corporate America and have a disproportionate influence over the
nation's political, educational, religious, and other institutions. Of
all social classes, members of the upper class also have a strong sense
of solidarity and 'consciousness of kind' that stretches across the
nation and even the globe.
— William Thompson & Joseph Hickey, Society in Focus, 2005
Since the 1970s, income inequality in the United States
has been increasing, with the top 1% (largely because of the top 0.1%)
experiencing significantly larger gains in income than the rest of
society. Alan Greenspan, former chair of the Federal Reserve, sees it as a problem for society, calling it a "very disturbing trend".
According to the book Who Rules America? by William Domhoff,
the distribution of wealth in America is the primary highlight of the
influence of the upper class. The top 1% of Americans own around 34% of
the wealth in the U.S. while the bottom 80% own only approximately 16%
of the wealth. This large disparity displays the unequal distribution of
wealth in America in absolute terms.
In 1998, Bob Herbert of The New York Times referred to modern American plutocrats as "The Donor Class" (list of top donors) and defined the class, for the first time, as "a tiny group – just one-quarter of 1 percent of the population –
and it is not representative of the rest of the nation. But its money
buys plenty of access."
Political correctness (adjectivally "politically correct"; commonly abbreviated to P.C.) is a term used to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended to avoid offense or disadvantage to members of particular groups in society. Since the late 1980s, the term has been used to describe a preference for inclusive language and avoidance of language or behavior that can be seen as excluding,
marginalizing, or insulting to groups of people disadvantaged or
discriminated against, particularly groups defined by ethnicity, sex,
gender, sexual orientation, or disability. In public discourse and the
media,the term's use is generally pejorative, with an implication that these policies are excessive or unwarranted. It can also be humorous, or ironic in nature.
The phrase politically correct first appeared in the 1930s, when it was used to describe dogmatic adherence to ideology in totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Early usage of the term politically correct by leftists in the 1970s and 1980s was as self-critical satire; usage was ironic, rather than a name for a serious political movement. It was considered an in-joke among leftists used to satirise those who were too rigid in their adherence to political orthodoxy. The modern pejorative usage of the term emerged from conservative criticism of the New Left in the late 20th century, with many describing it as a form of censorship.
Commentators on the political left in the United States
contend that conservatives use the concept of political correctness to
downplay and divert attention from substantively discriminatory behavior
against disadvantaged groups. They also argue that the political right enforces its own forms of political correctness to suppress criticism of its favored constituencies and ideologies. In the United States, the term has played a major role in the culture war between liberals and conservatives.
Conceptual background
Several researchers describe political correctness not only as a
political label but also as a practice of linguistic reform aimed at
reducing exclusionary or derogatory expressions in public language,
often in line with egalitarian or inclusive norms. Geoffrey Hughes and Norman Fairclough both note that these language
reforms are intertwined with broader social efforts to reshape public
discourse and social relations.
In the early-to-mid 20th century, the phrase politically correct was used to describe strict adherence to a range of ideological orthodoxies within politics. In 1934, The New York Times reported that Nazi Germany was granting reporting permits "only to pure 'Aryans' whose opinions are politically correct".
The term political correctness first appeared in
Marxist–Leninist vocabulary following the Russian Revolution of 1917. At
that time, it was used to describe strict adherence to the policies and
principles of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, that is, the party line. Later in the United States, the phrase came to be associated with accusations of dogmatism in debates between communists and socialists. According to American educator Herbert Kohl, writing about debates in New York in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The term "politically correct" was
used disparagingly, to refer to someone whose loyalty to the CP line
overrode compassion, and led to bad politics. It was used by Socialists
against Communists, and was meant to separate out Socialists who
believed in egalitarian moral ideas from dogmatic Communists who would
advocate and defend party positions regardless of their moral substance.
In the 1970s, the American New Left began using the term politically correct. In the essay The Black Woman: An Anthology (1970), Toni Cade Bambara said that "a man cannot be politically correct and a [male] chauvinist, too". William Safire records this as the first use in the typical modern sense. The term political correctness was believed to have been revived by the New Left through familiarity in the West with Mao's Little Red Book, in which Mao
stressed holding to the correct party line. The term rapidly began to
be used by the New Left in an ironic or self-deprecating sense.
Thereafter, the term was often used as self-critical satire. Debra L. Shultz said that "throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the New Left, feminists, and progressives... used their term 'politically correct' ironically, as a guard against their own orthodoxy in social change efforts".PC is used in the comic book Merton of the Movement, by Bobby London, which was followed by the term ideologically sound, in the comic strips of Bart Dickon.[12][29] In her essay "Toward a feminist Revolution" (1992) Ellen Willis said, "In the early eighties, when feminists used the term 'political correctness', it was used to refer sarcastically to the anti-pornography movement's efforts to define a 'feminist sexuality'."
Stuart Hall suggests one way in which the original use of the term may have developed into the modern one:
According to one version, political
correctness actually began as an in-joke on the left: radical students
on American campuses acting out an ironic replay of the Bad Old Days BS
(Before the Sixties) when every revolutionary groupuscule had a party
line about everything. They would address some glaring examples of
sexist or racist behaviour by their fellow students in imitation of the
tone of voice of the Red Guards or Cultural Revolution Commissar: "Not
very 'politically correct', Comrade!"
1980s and 1990s
Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, a book first published in 1987, heralded a debate about political correctness in American higher education in the 1980s and 1990s. Professor of English literary and cultural studies at CMUJeffrey J. Williams wrote that the "assault on ... political correctness that simmered through the Reagan years, gained bestsellerdom with Bloom's Closing of the American Mind". According to Z.F. Gamson, Bloom's book "attacked the faculty for 'political correctness'". Sociologist Anthony Platt says the "campaign against 'political correctness'" was launched by Bloom's book in 1987.
An October 1990 New York Times article by Richard Bernstein is credited with popularizing the term. At this time, the term was mainly being used within academia: "Across
the country the term p.c., as it is commonly abbreviated, is being heard
more and more in debates over what should be taught at the
universities." Nexis
citations in "arcnews/curnews" reveal only seventy total citations in
articles to "political correctness" for 1990; but one year later, Nexis
records 1,532 citations, with a steady increase to more than 7,000
citations by 1994.In May 1991, The New York Times had a follow-up article, according to which the term was increasingly being used in a wider public arena:
What has come to be called
"political correctness", a term that began to gain currency at the start
of the academic year last fall, has spread in recent months and has
become the focus of an angry national debate, mainly on campuses, but
also in the larger arenas of American life.
— Robert D. McFadden, "Political Correctness: New Bias Test?", 1991
The previously obscure far-left term became common currency in the
lexicon of the conservative social and political challenges against progressive teaching methods and curriculum changes in the secondary schools and universities of the U.S. Policies, behavior, and speech codes that the speaker or the writer
regarded as being the imposition of a liberal orthodoxy, were described
and criticized as politically correct. In May 1991, at a commencement ceremony for a graduating class of the University of Michigan, then U.S. President George H. W. Bush
used the term in his speech: "The notion of political correctness has
ignited controversy across the land. And although the movement arises
from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris of racism and sexism
and hatred, it replaces old prejudice with new ones. It declares certain
topics off-limits, certain expression off-limits, even certain gestures
off-limits."
After 1991, its use as a pejorative phrase became widespread amongst conservatives in the US. It became a key term encapsulating conservative concerns about the left
in cultural and political debates extending beyond academia. Two
articles on the topic in late 1990 in Forbes and Newsweek both used the term "thought police" in their headlines, exemplifying the tone of the new usage, but it was Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (1991) which "captured the press's imagination". These trends were at least in part a response to multiculturalism and the rise of identity politics,
with movements such as feminism, gay rights movements and ethnic
minority movements. That response received funding from conservative
foundations and think tanks such as the John M. Olin Foundation, which funded several books such as D'Souza's.
Herbert Kohl, in 1992, commented that a number of neoconservatives who promoted the use of the term "politically correct" in the early 1990s were former Communist Party members, and, as a result, familiar with the Marxist
use of the phrase. He argued that in doing so, they intended "to
insinuate that egalitarian democratic ideas are actually authoritarian,
orthodox, and Communist-influenced, when they oppose the right of people
to be racist, sexist, and homophobic".
During the 1990s, conservative and right-wing
politicians, think tanks, and speakers adopted the phrase as a
pejorative descriptor of their ideological enemies, especially in the
context of the culture wars about language and the content of public-school curricula. Roger Kimball, in Tenured Radicals, endorsed Frederick Crews's
view that PC is best described as "Left Eclecticism", a term defined by
Kimball as "any of a wide variety of anti-establishment modes of
thought from structuralism and poststructuralism, deconstruction, and
Lacanian analyst to feminist, homosexual, black, and other patently
political forms of criticism".
Liberal commentators have argued that the conservatives and
reactionaries who used the term did so in an effort to divert political
discussion away from the substantive matters of resolving societal
discrimination, such as racial, social class, gender, and legal inequality, against people whom conservatives do not consider part of the social mainstream. Jan Narveson
wrote that "that phrase was born to live between scare-quotes: it
suggests that the operative considerations in the area so called are merely political, steamrolling the genuine reasons of principle for which we ought to be acting...". Commenting in 2001, one such British journalist, Polly Toynbee, said "the phrase is an empty, right-wing smear, designed only to elevate its user", and in 2010 she wrote "the phrase 'political correctness' was born as a coded cover for all who still want to say Paki, spastic, or queer". Another British journalist, Will Hutton, wrote in 2001:
Political correctness is one of the
brilliant tools that the American Right developed in the mid–1980s, as
part of its demolition of American liberalism.... What the sharpest
thinkers on the American Right saw quickly was that by declaring war on
the cultural manifestations of liberalism – by levelling the charge of
"political correctness" against its exponents – they could discredit the
whole political project.
— Will Hutton, "Words Really are Important, Mr Blunkett", 2001
Glenn Loury
wrote in 1994 that to address the subject of "political correctness"
when power and authority within the academic community is being
contested by parties on either side of that issue, is to invite scrutiny
of one's arguments by would-be "friends" and "enemies". Combatants from
the left and the right will try to assess whether a writer is "for
them" or "against them". Geoffrey Hughes suggested that debate over political correctness
concerns whether changing language actually solves political and social
problems, with critics viewing it less about solving problems than
imposing censorship, intellectual intimidation and demonstrating the
moral purity of those who practice it. Hughes also argues that political
correctness tends to be pushed by a minority rather than an organic
form of language change.
Right-wing political correctness
"Political correctness" is a label typically used to describe liberal
or left-wing terms and actions but rarely used for analogous attempts
to mold language and behavior on the right. Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute referred to the right's own version of political correctness as "patriotic correctness".
As a socio-linguistic phenomenon
In subsequent academic scholarship, some scholars have examined
political correctness as a form of linguistic and moral reform. Linguist
Geoffrey Hughes described political correctness as "liberal in its aims
but often illiberal in its practices," identifying a tension between
its reformist intentions and its perceived coerciveness. Similarly, Norman Fairclough has analyzed political correctness as part
of a broader discourse of linguistic and moral reform, in which
"changing language practices is part of changing social relations" and
"critical awareness of language" is linked to the pursuit of "fairness
and inclusiveness".
Usage
The modern pejorative usage of the term emerged from conservative criticism of the New Left in the late 20th century. This usage was popularized by a number of articles in The New York Times and other media throughout the 1990s,and was widely used in the debate surrounding Allan Bloom's 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind. The term gained further currency in response to Roger Kimball's Tenured Radicals (1990), and conservative author Dinesh D'Souza's 1991 book Illiberal Education. Supporters of politically correct language have been pejoratively referred to as the "language police".
Education
Modern debate on the term was sparked by conservative critiques of perceived liberal bias in academia and education, and conservatives have since used it as a major line of attack.
Preliminary research published in 2020 indicated that students at
a large U.S. public university generally felt instructors were
open-minded and encouraged free expression of diverse viewpoints;
nonetheless, most students worried about the consequences of voicing
their political opinions, with "[a]nxieties about expressing political
views and self-censorship ... more prevalent among students who identify
as conservative."
Some conservative commentators in the West argue that "political correctness" and multiculturalism are part of a conspiracy with the ultimate goal of undermining Judeo-Christian values. This theory, which holds that political correctness originates from the critical theory of the Frankfurt School as part of a conspiracy that its proponents call "Cultural Marxism". The theory originated with Michael Minnicino's 1992 essay "New Dark
Age: Frankfurt School and 'Political Correctness'", published in a Lyndon LaRouche movement journal. In 2001, conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan wrote in The Death of the West that "political correctness is cultural Marxism", and that "its trademark is intolerance".
In the US, the term has been widely used in books and journals, but
in Britain the usage has been confined mainly to the popular press. Many such authors and popular-media figures, particularly on the right,
have used the term to criticize what they see as bias in the media. William McGowan argues that journalists get stories wrong or ignore
stories worthy of coverage, because of what McGowan perceives to be
their liberal ideologies and their fear of offending minority groups. Robert Novak, in his essay "Political Correctness Has No Place in the
Newsroom", used the term to blame newspapers for adopting language use
policies that he thinks tend to excessively avoid the appearance of
bias. He argued that political correctness in language not only destroys
meaning but also demeans the people who are meant to be protected.
Authors David Sloan and Emily Hoff claim that in the US,
journalists shrug off concerns about political correctness in the
newsroom, equating the political correctness criticisms with the old
"liberal media bias" label. According to author John Wilson, left-wing forces of "political correctness" have been blamed for unrelated censorship, with Time
citing campaigns against violence on network television in the US as
contributing to a "mainstream culture [that] has become cautious,
sanitized, scared of its own shadow" because of "the watchful eye of the
p.c. police", protests and advertiser boycotts targeting TV shows are
generally organized by right-wing religious groups campaigning against
violence, sex, and depictions of homosexuality on television.
Inclusive or Equity Language is a language style that avoids expressions that its proponents perceive as expressing or implying ideas that are sexist, racist, or otherwise biased, prejudiced, or insulting to any particular group of people; and instead uses language intended to avoid offense and fulfill the ideals of egalitarianism.
This language style is sometimes referred to as a type of "political
correctness", either as a neutral description or with negative
connotations by its opponents. At least some supporters deny an association between the two
("Political correctness is focused on not offending whereas inclusive
language is focused on honoring people's identities.").
Groups who oppose certain generally accepted scientific views about evolution, second-hand tobacco smoke, AIDS, climate change, race and other politically contentious scientific matters have used the term political correctness
to describe what they view as unwarranted rejection of their
perspective on these issues by a scientific community that they believe
has been corrupted by liberal politics.
Virtue signalling is a pejorative neologism for the expression of a moral viewpoint with the intent of communicating good character, frequently used to suggest hypocrisy. An accusation of virtue signalling can be applied to both individuals and companies.
Virtue signalling often describes behaviour meant to gain social approval without taking meaningful action, such as in greenwashing, where companies exaggerate their environmental commitments. On social media, large movements such as Blackout Tuesday
were accused of lacking substance, and celebrities or public figures
are frequently charged with virtue signalling when their actions seem
disconnected from their public stances. However, some argue that these
expressions of outrage or moral alignment may reflect genuine concern,
and that accusing others of virtue signalling can itself be a form of
signalling. This inverse concept has been described as vice signalling
and refers to the public promotion of negative or controversial views
to appear tough, pragmatic, or rebellious, often for political or social
capital.
Definition and usage
According to the Cambridge Dictionary,
virtue signalling is "an attempt to show other people that you are a
good person, for example by expressing opinions that will be acceptable
to them, especially on social media... indicating that one has virtue
merely by expressing disgust or favour for certain political ideas or
cultural happenings". The expression is often used to imply that the virtue being signalled is exaggerated or insincere.
The concept of virtue signalling is most often used by those on the political right to denigrate the behaviour of those on the political left. It is similar to the idea of grandstanding. One practice sometimes cited as an example of virtue signalling is greenwashing, when a company deceptively claims or suggests that its products or policies are more environmentally friendly than they actually are. Some sustainability advocates have suggested ecological virtue
signalling by corporations is not necessarily negative, as long as it is
accompanied by taking responsibility for past environmental harms. Merriam-Webster editor Emily Brewster has likened virtue signalling to the term humblebragging.
History
David Shariatmadari writes in The Guardian that the term has been used since at least 2004, appearing for example in religious academic works in 2010 and 2012. Nassim Nicholas Taleb cites Matthew 6:1
as an example of "virtue signalling" being condemned as a vice in
antiquity ("Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be
seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven").
British journalist James Bartholomew claims to have originated the pejorative usage of the term "virtue signalling" in 2015. He wrote in The Spectator that:
No one actually has to do anything.
Virtue comes from mere words or even from silently held beliefs. There
was a time in the distant past when people thought you could only be
virtuous by doing things...[that] involve effort and self-sacrifice.
Examples
Social media
Angela Nagle, in her book Kill All Normies, described Internet reactions to the Kony 2012 viral video as "what we might now call 'virtue signaling'",
and that "the usual cycles of public displays of outrage online began
as expected with inevitable competitive virtue signaling" in the
aftermath of the killing of Harambe. B. D. McClay wrote in The Hedgehog Review
that signalling particularly flourished in online communities. It was
unavoidable in digital interactions because they lacked the qualities of
offline life, such as spontaneity. When one filled out a list of one's
favourite books for Facebook, one was usually aware of what that list said about oneself.
Blackout Tuesday, a 2020 collective action that was ostensibly intended to combat racism and police brutality
mainly by businesses and celebrities through social media in response
to the killings of several Black people by police officers, was
criticized as a form of virtue signalling for the initiative's "lack of
clarity and direction".
Recycling and trash separator paired with a single can that co-mingles all waste, pretending to sort waste.
In 2024, the pro-Palestinian political slogan "All Eyes on Rafah"
went viral after an AI-generated image of the phrase was shared on
social media. Some users criticized the campaign as a form of virtue
signalling and compared it to Blackout Tuesday, and believed that it
would be more important for people to post actual pictures of Rafah.
Marketing
In addition to individuals, companies have also been accused of virtue signalling in marketing, public relations, and brand communication. Companies have also been accused of using virtue signalling as a form of marketing.
Actors and other celebrities may be accused of virtue-signalling if their actions are seen to contradict their expressed views.
Reception
Psychologists Jillian Jordan and David Rand
argue that virtue signalling is separable from genuine outrage towards a
particular belief, but in most cases, individuals who are virtue
signalling are, in fact, simultaneously experiencing genuine outrage. Linguist David Shariatmadari argues in The Guardian that the very act of accusing someone of virtue signalling is an act of virtue signalling in itself. Zoe Williams, also writing for The Guardian, suggested the phrase was the "sequel insult to champagne socialist".
Vice signalling
Financial Times editor Robert Shrimsley suggested the term vice signalling as a counterpoint to virtue signalling:
A vice-signaller boasts about sneaking meat into a vegetarian meal.
He will rush on to social media to denounce as a "snowflake" any woman
who objects to receiving rape threats, or any minority unhappy at a
racist joke ... Vice-signallers have understood that there is money to
be made in the outrage economy by playing the villain. Perhaps,
secretly, they buy their clothes at the zero-waste shop and help out at
the local food bank, but cannot be caught doing so lest their image is
destroyed.
Stephen Bush, also in the Financial Times, describes vice signalling as "ostentatious displays of authoritarianism designed to reassure voters that you are 'tough' on crime or immigration",
and that it "risks sending what is, in a democracy, the most dangerous
signal of all: that politicians do not really care about their
electorate’s concerns, other than as a device to win and to hold on to
their own power". In particular, Bush cited Donald Trump's Mexican border wall pledge and Boris Johnson's Rwanda asylum plan.
Examples of vice signalling have been described as
"show[ing] you are tough, hard-headed, a dealer in uncomfortable truths,
and, above all, that you live in 'the real world'", in a way that goes
beyond what actual pragmatism requires, or to "a public display of immorality, intended to create a community
based on cruelty and disregard for others, which is proud of it at the
same time".
According to Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, "a vice signaler is trying to look bad—but not to everyone. A vice signaler typically violates moral or other standards of an out-group
precisely in order to look good to the fellow members of some
in-group...The moral commitments of the in-group are basically
irrelevant: all that matters is owning the enemy."
Austrian linguist Ruth Wodak described the "antisemitic and revisionist utterances" of Austrian politician Jörg Haider in the 1980s as an example of vice signalling.
The aristocracy (from Greekἀριστοκρατίαaristokratía, "rule of the best"; Latin: aristocratia) is historically associated with a "hereditary" or a "ruling" social class. In many states, the aristocracy included the upper class with hereditary rank and titles. They are usually below only the monarch of a country or nation in its social hierarchy.
The term aristocracy derives from the Greekἀριστοκρατία (aristokratia from ἄριστος (aristos) 'excellent' and κράτος (kratos) 'power'). In most cases, aristocratic titles were and are hereditary.
The term aristokratia was first used in Athens with reference to young citizens (the men of the ruling class) who led armies at the front line. Aristokratia roughly translates to "rule of the best born". Due to martial bravery being highly regarded as a virtue in ancient Greece, it was assumed that the armies were being led by "the best". This virtue was called arete (ἀρετή). Etymologically, as the word developed, it also produced a more political term: aristoi (ἄριστοι). The term aristocracy is a compound word stemming from the singular of aristoi, aristos (ἄριστος), and the Greek word for power, kratos (κράτος).
From the ancient Greeks, the term passed to the European Middle Ages for a similar hereditary class of military leaders, often referred to as the nobility.
As in Greece, this was a class of privileged men and women whose
familial connections to the regional armies allowed them to present
themselves as the most "noble" or "best" of society.
In some societies, such as ancient Greece, ancient Rome, or ancient and medieval India, aristocratic status came from belonging to a military class. It has also been common, notably in African and Southeast Asian societies, for aristocrats to belong to priestly dynasties. Aristocratic status can involve feudal or legal privileges.
While family background and wealth could enhance one’s
suitability for public office, they were not definitive. Prominent
families could produce unworthy heirs, while talented newcomers might
possess the qualities necessary for political leadership. This notion of
social status clashed with the medieval system, which divided society into three estates and defined aristocrats primarily as warriors, gradually making aristocracy more rigidly tied to noble birth.
Across Europe, the aristocracy wielded immense economic, political, and social influence. In England,
a small high aristocracy—about two hundred families—controlled roughly a
quarter of the kingdom’s land, while in seventeenth-century Bohemia,
an even smaller noble class owned two-thirds of the land. This
dominance extended beyond landownership, as aristocrats and gentry often
monopolized high-ranking positions in the church, military, and
administration. Before the French Revolution, aristocratic privilege was deeply embedded in Europe’s social order, shaping both governance and ideology.
The centralization of royal courts
in early modern Europe reshaped aristocratic power, shifting influence
from regional noble domains to the monarchy’s court. This transition
reflected a broader shift across European aristocracies, where status
and influence became increasingly tied to proximity to the sovereign,
court patronage, and administrative roles, rather than independent
territorial rule.
Modern aristocracy
Despite their decline in the 19th and 20th centuries, aristocrats and gentry remained influential, adapting to modernization as industrialization and democracy
eroded traditional claims to privilege. Their response to these changes
played a crucial role in shaping the broader transformation of European
society.
In modern European societies, the aristocracy has often coincided with the nobility, a specific class that arose in the Middle Ages, but the term "aristocracy" is sometimes also applied to other elites, and is used as a more general term when describing earlier and non-European societies. Aristocracy may be abolished within a country as the result of a revolution against them, such as the French Revolution.
Revolutionary leaders, aiming to dismantle hierarchical structures,
labeled even non-noble opponents as "aristocrats" in their push for a
society without inherited privilege.
The Modern French word bourgeois is derived from the Old Frenchborgeis or borjois ('town dweller'), which derived from bourg ('market town'), from the Old Frankishburg ('town'); in other European languages, related etymologic derivations include the Middle Englishburgeis, the Middle Dutchburgher, the German Bürger, the Modern Englishburgess, the Spanish burgués, the Catalan burgès, the Portuguese burguês, and the Polish burżuazja, which occasionally is synonymous with the intelligentsia.
In the 18th century, before the French Revolution (1789–1799), in the French Ancien Régime, the masculine and feminine terms bourgeois and bourgeoise identified the relatively rich men and women who were members of the urban and ruralThird Estate – the common people of the French realm, who violently deposed the absolute monarchy of the Bourbon King Louis XVI (r. 1774–1791), his clergy, and his aristocrats in the French Revolution of 1789–1799. Hence, since the 19th century, the term bourgeoisie usually is politically and sociologicallysynonymous with the ruling upper class of a capitalist society. In English, the word bourgeoisie, as a term referring to French history, refers to a social class oriented to economic materialism and hedonism, and to upholding the political and economic interests of the capitalist ruling-class.
Historically, the medieval French word bourgeois denoted the inhabitants of the bourgs (walled market-towns), the craftsmen, artisans, merchants,
and others, who constituted "the bourgeoisie". They were the
socio-economic class between the peasants and the landlords, between the
workers and the owners of the means of production, the feudalnobility. As the economic managers of the (raw) materials, the goods, and the services, and thus the capital (money) produced by the feudal economy, the term bourgeoisie
evolved to also denote the middle class – the businessmen who
accumulated, administered, and controlled the capital that made possible
the development of the bourgs into cities.
Contemporarily, the terms bourgeoisie and bourgeois (noun) identify the ruling class in capitalist societies, as a social stratum, while bourgeois (adjective or noun modifier) describes the Weltanschauung (worldview) of men and women whose way of thinking is socially and culturally determined by their economic materialism and philistinism, a social identity famously mocked in Molière's comedy Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670), which satirizes buying the trappings of a noble-birth identity as the means of climbing the social ladder.The 18th century saw a partial rehabilitation of bourgeois values in genres such as the drame bourgeois (bourgeois drama) and "bourgeois tragedy".
Emerging in the 1970s, the shortened term bougie became slang, referring to things or attitudes which are middle class, pretentious and suburban. In 2016, hip-hop group Migos produced a song "Bad and Boujee", featuring an intentional misspelling of the word as boujee – a term which has particularly been used by African Americans in reference to African Americans. The term refers to a person of lower or middle class doing pretentious activities or virtue signalling as an affectation of the upper-class.
The 16th-century German banker Jakob Fugger
and his principal accountant, M. Schwarz, registering an entry to a
ledger. The background shows a file cabinet indicating the European
cities where the Fugger bank conducts business (1517).
The bourgeoisie emerged as a historical and political phenomenon in the 11th century when the bourgs
of Central and Western Europe developed into cities dedicated to
commerce and crafts. This urban expansion was possible thanks to
economic concentration due to the appearance of protective
self-organization into guilds. Guilds arose when individual businessmen (such as craftsmen, artisans and merchants) conflicted with their rent-seeking feudal landlords who demanded greater rents than previously agreed.
In the event, by the end of the Middle Ages (c. AD 1500),
under regimes of the early national monarchies of Western Europe, the
bourgeoisie acted in self-interest, and politically supported the king
or queen against legal and financial disorder caused by the greed of the feudal lords.[citation needed]
In the late-16th and early 17th centuries, the bourgeoisies of England
and the Netherlands had become the financial – thus political – forces
that deposed the feudal order; economic power had vanquished military power in the realm of politics.
The English Civil War (1642–1651), the American War of Independence (1775–1783), and French Revolution
(1789–1799) were partly motivated by the desire of the bourgeoisie to
rid themselves of the feudal and royal encroachments on their personal
liberty, commercial prospects, and the ownership of property. In the 19th century, the bourgeoisie propounded liberalism, and gained political rights, religious rights, and civil liberties
for themselves and the lower social classes; thus the bourgeoisie was a
progressive philosophic and political force in Western societies.
After the Industrial Revolution (1750–1850), by the mid-19th century the great expansion of the bourgeoisie social class caused its stratification – by business activity and by economic function – into the haute bourgeoisie (bankers and industrialists) and the petite bourgeoisie (tradesmen and white-collar workers). Moreover, by the end of the 19th century, the capitalists (the original
bourgeoisie) had ascended to the upper class, while the developments of
technology and technical occupations allowed the rise of working-class men and women to the lower strata of the bourgeoisie; yet the social progress was incidental.
Denotations
Marxist theory
Karl Marx
According to Karl Marx, the bourgeois during the Middle Ages usually was a self-employed businessman – such as a merchant, banker, or entrepreneur – whose economic role in society was being the financial intermediary to the feudallandlord and the peasant who worked the fief, the land of the lord. Yet, by the 18th century, the time of the Industrial Revolution (1750–1850) and of industrial capitalism, the bourgeoisie had become the economic ruling class who owned the means of production (capital and land), and who controlled the means of coercion (armed forces and legal system, police forces and prison system). Friedrich Engels
defined the bourgeois as, "...the class of modern capitalists, owners
of the means of social production, and employers of wage labour."
In such a society, the bourgeoisie's ownership of the means of
production allowed them to employ and exploit the wage-earning working
class (urban and rural), people whose only economic means is labor; and
the bourgeois control of the means of coercion suppressed the
sociopolitical challenges by the lower classes, and so preserved the
economic status quo; workers remained workers, and employers remained
employers.
In the 19th century, Marx distinguished two types of bourgeois capitalist:
the functional capitalists, who are business administrators of the means of production;
rentier capitalists whose livelihoods derive either from the rent of property or from the interest-income produced by finance capital, or from both.
In the course of economic relations, the working class and the bourgeoisie continually engage in class struggle, where the capitalists exploit
the workers, while the workers resist their economic exploitation,
which occurs because the worker owns no means of production, and, to
earn a living, seeks employment from the bourgeois capitalist; the
worker produces goods and services that are property of the employer,
who sells them for a price.
Besides describing the social class who owns the means of production, the Marxist use of the term "bourgeois" also describes the consumerist style of life derived from the ownership of capital and real property.
Marx acknowledged the bourgeois industriousness that created wealth,
but criticised the moral hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie when they ignored
the alleged origins of their wealth: the exploitation of the
proletariat, the urban and rural workers. Further sense denotations of
"bourgeois" describe ideological concepts such as "bourgeois freedom",
which is thought to be opposed to substantive forms of freedom;
"bourgeois independence"; "bourgeois personal individuality"; the
"bourgeois family"; etc., all derived from owning capital and property
(see The Communist Manifesto, 1848).
France and Francophone countries
In English, the term bourgeoisie is often used to denote the middle classes. In fact, the French term encompasses both the upper and middle economic classes, a misunderstanding which has occurred in other languages as well. The
bourgeoisie in France and many French-speaking countries consists of
five evolving social layers: petite bourgeoisie, moyenne bourgeoisie, grande bourgeoisie, haute bourgeoisie and ancienne bourgeoisie.
The petite bourgeoisie
is the equivalent of the modern-day middle class, or refers to "a
social class between the middle class and the lower class: the lower
middle class".
Nazism
Nazism rejected the Marxist concept of proletarian internationalism and class struggle,
and supported the "class struggle between nations", and sought to
resolve internal class struggle in the nation while it identified
Germany as a proletariat nation fighting against plutocratic nations. The Nazi Party had many working-class supporters and members, and a strong appeal to the middle class. The financial collapse of the white collar middle-class of the 1920s figures much in their strong support of Nazism. In the poor country that was the Weimar Republic
of the early 1930s, the Nazi Party realised their social policies with
food and shelter for the unemployed and the homeless—who were later
recruited into the Brownshirt Sturmabteilung (SA – Storm Detachments).
Adolf Hitler was impressed by the populistantisemitism and the anti-liberal bourgeois agitation of Karl Lueger,
who as the mayor of Vienna during Hitler's time in the city, used a
rabble-rousing style of oratory that appealed to the wider masses. When asked whether he supported the "bourgeois right-wing", Hitler claimed that Nazism was not exclusively for any class, and he also indicated that it favored neither the left nor the right,
but preserved "pure" elements from both "camps", stating: "From the
camp of bourgeois tradition, it takes national resolve, and from the
materialism of the Marxist dogma, living, creative Socialism."
Hitler distrusted capitalism for being unreliable due to its egotism, and he preferred a state-directed economy that is subordinated to the interests of the Volk. Hitler told a party leader in 1934, "The economic system of our day is the creation of the Jews." Hitler said to Benito Mussolini that capitalism had "run its course". Hitler also said that the business bourgeoisie "know nothing except their profit. 'Fatherland' is only a word for them." Hitler was personally disgusted with the ruling bourgeois elites of
Germany during the period of the Weimar Republic, whom he referred to as
"cowardly shits".
Fascist Italy
Because of their ascribed cultural excellence as a social class, the Italian fascist régime (1922–45) of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini regarded the bourgeoisie as an obstacle to modernism. Nonetheless, the Fascist state ideologically exploited the Italian
bourgeoisie and their materialistic, middle-class spirit, for the more
efficient cultural manipulation of the upper (aristocratic) and the
lower (working) classes of Italy.
In 1938, Prime Minister Mussolini gave a speech wherein he
established a clear ideological distinction between capitalism (the
social function of the bourgeoisie) and the bourgeoisie (as a social
class), whom he dehumanized by reducing them into high-level
abstractions: a moral category and a state of mind. Culturally and philosophically, Mussolini isolated the bourgeoisie from
Italian society by portraying them as social parasites upon the fascist
Italian state and "The People"; as a social class who drained the human
potential of Italian society, in general, and of the working class, in
particular; as exploiters who victimized the Italian nation with an
approach to life characterized by hedonism and materialism. Nevertheless, despite the slogan The Fascist Man Disdains the "Comfortable" Life,
which epitomized the anti-bourgeois principle, in its final years of
power, for mutual benefit and profit, the Mussolini fascist régime
transcended ideology to merge the political and financial interests of
Prime Minister Benito Mussolini with the political and financial
interests of the bourgeoisie, the Catholic social circles who
constituted the ruling class of Italy.
Philosophically, as a materialist creature, the bourgeois man was stereotyped as irreligious; thus, to establish an existential distinction between the supernatural faith of the Roman Catholic Church and the materialist faith of temporal religion; in The Autarchy of Culture: Intellectuals and Fascism in the 1930s, the priest Giuseppe Marino said that:
Christianity is essentially
anti-bourgeois. ... A Christian, a true Christian, and thus a Catholic,
is the opposite of a bourgeois.
Culturally, the bourgeois man may be considered effeminate, infantile, or acting in a pretentious manner; describing his philistinism in Bonifica antiborghese (1939), Roberto Paravese comments on the:
Middle class, middle man, incapable
of great virtue or great vice: and there would be nothing wrong with
that, if only he would be willing to remain as such; but, when his
child-like or feminine tendency to camouflage pushes him to dream of
grandeur, honours, and thus riches, which he cannot achieve honestly
with his own "second-rate" powers, then the average man compensates with
cunning, schemes, and mischief; he kicks out ethics, and becomes a
bourgeois.
The bourgeois is the average man who does not accept to remain such, and
who, lacking the strength sufficient for the conquest of essential
values—those of the spirit—opts for material ones, for appearances.
The economic security, financial freedom, and social mobility of the bourgeoisie threatened the philosophic integrity of Italian fascism, the ideological monolith that was the régime of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. Any assumption of legitimate political power (government and rule) by the bourgeoisie represented a fascist loss of totalitarian
state power for social control through political unity—one people, one
nation, and one leader. Sociologically, to the fascist man, to become a
bourgeois was a character flaw inherent to the masculine mystique;
therefore, the ideology of Italian fascism scornfully defined the
bourgeois man as "spiritually castrated".
Bourgeois culture
Cultural hegemony
Karl Marx said that the culture of a society is dominated by the mores of the ruling-class, wherein their superimposed value system
is abided by each social class (the upper, the middle, the lower)
regardless of the socio-economic results it yields to them. In that
sense, contemporary societies are bourgeois to the degree that they
practice the mores of the small-business "shop culture" of early modern France; which the writer Émile Zola (1840–1902) naturalistically presented, analyzed, and ridiculed in the twenty-two-novel series (1871–1893) about Les Rougon-Macquart
family; the thematic thrust is the necessity for social progress, by
subordinating the economic sphere to the social sphere of life.
Conspicuous consumption
Clothing worn by ladies belonging to the bourgeoisie of Żywiec, Poland, 19th century (collection of the Żywiec City Museum)
The critical analyses of the bourgeois mentality by the German intellectual Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) indicated that the shop culture of the petite bourgeoisie
established the sitting room as the center of personal and family life;
as such, the English bourgeois culture is, he alleges, a sitting-room
culture of prestige through conspicuous consumption. The material culture of the bourgeoisie concentrated on mass-produced luxury goods of high quality; between generations, the only variance was the materials with which the goods were manufactured.
In the early part of the 19th century, the bourgeois house
contained a home that first was stocked and decorated with hand-painted porcelain, machine-printed cotton fabrics, machine-printed wallpaper, and Sheffield steel (crucible and stainless). The utility
of these things was inherent in their practical functions. By the
latter part of the 19th century, the bourgeois house contained a home
that had been remodeled by conspicuous consumption. Here, Benjamin
argues, the goods were bought to display wealth (discretionary income),
rather than for their practical utility. The bourgeoisie had transposed
the wares of the shop window to the sitting room, where the clutter of
display signaled bourgeois success (see Culture and Anarchy, 1869).
Two spatial constructs manifest the bourgeois mentality: (i) the
shop-window display, and (ii) the sitting room. In English, the term
"sitting-room culture" is synonymous for "bourgeois mentality", a "philistine" cultural perspective from the Victorian Era
(1837–1901), especially characterized by the repression of emotion and
of sexual desire; and by the construction of a regulated social-space
where "propriety" is the key personality trait desired in men and women.
Nonetheless, from such a psychologically constricted worldview,
regarding the rearing of children, contemporary sociologists claim to
have identified "progressive" middle-class values, such as respect for
non-conformity, self-direction, autonomy, gender equality,
and the encouragement of innovation; as in the Victorian Era, the
transposition to the US of the bourgeois system of social values has
been identified as a requisite for employment success in the
professions.
Bourgeois values are dependent on rationalism, which began with the economic sphere and moves into every sphere of life which is formulated by Max Weber. The beginning of rationalism is commonly called the Age of Reason.
Much like the Marxist critics of that period, Weber was concerned with
the growing ability of large corporations and nations to increase their
power and reach throughout the world.
Satire and criticism in art
Beyond the intellectual realms of political economy, history, and political science that discuss, describe, and analyze the bourgeoisie as a social class, the colloquial usage of the sociological terms bourgeois and bourgeoise describe the social stereotypes of the old money and of the nouveau riche, who is a politically timid conformist satisfied with a wealthy, consumerist style of life characterized by conspicuous consumption and the continual striving for prestige. This being the case, the cultures of the world describe the philistinism
of the middle-class personality, produced by the excessively rich life
of the bourgeoisie, is examined and analyzed in comedic and dramatic
plays, novels, and films (see Authenticity).
The 17th-century French playwright Molière (1622–73) catalogued the social-climbing essence of the bourgeoisie in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670).
The term bourgeoisie has been used as a pejorative and a term of
abuse since the 19th century, particularly by intellectuals and artists.
Theater
Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Would-be Gentleman, 1670) by Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), is a comedy-ballet that satirises Monsieur Jourdain, the prototypical nouveau riche
man who buys his way up the social-class scale, to realise his
aspirations of becoming a gentleman, to which end he studies dancing,
fencing, and philosophy, the trappings and accomplishments of a
gentleman, to be able to pose as a man of noble birth,
someone who, in 17th-century France, was a man to the manner born;
Jourdain's self-transformation also requires managing the private life
of his daughter, so that her marriage can also assist his social ascent.
Literature
Thomas Mann (1875–1955) portrayed the moral, intellectual, and physical decadence of the German upper bourgeoisie in the novel Buddenbrooks (1926).
Buddenbrooks (1901), by Thomas Mann (1875–1955), chronicles the moral, intellectual, and physical decay of a rich family through its declines, material and spiritual, in the course of four generations, beginning with the patriarch
Johann Buddenbrook Sr. and his son, Johann Buddenbrook Jr., who are
typically successful German businessmen; each is a reasonable man of
solid character.
Yet, in the children of Buddenbrook Jr., the materially
comfortable style of life provided by the dedication to solid,
middle-class values
elicits decadence: The fickle daughter, Toni, lacks and does not seek a
purpose in life; son Christian is honestly decadent, and lives the life
of a ne'er-do-well; and the businessman son, Thomas, who assumes
command of the Buddenbrook family fortune, occasionally falters from
middle-class solidity by being interested in art and philosophy, the
impractical life of the mind, which, to the bourgeoisie, is the epitome of social, moral, and material decadence.
Babbitt (1922), by Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951), satirizes the American bourgeois George Follansbee Babbitt, a middle-aged realtor, booster,
and joiner in the Midwestern city of Zenith, who – despite being
unimaginative, self-important, and hopelessly conformist and
middle-class – is aware that there must be more to life than money and
the consumption of the best things that money can buy. Nevertheless, he fears being excluded from the mainstream of society more than he does living for himself, by being true to himself – his heart-felt flirtations with independence (dabbling in liberal politics and a love affair with a pretty widow) come to naught because he is existentially afraid.
Yet, George F. Babbitt sublimates his desire for self-respect,
and encourages his son to rebel against the conformity that results from
bourgeois prosperity, by recommending that he be true to himself:
Don't be scared of the family. No, nor all of Zenith. Nor of yourself, the way I've been.
Films
Many of the satirical films by the Spanish film director Luis Buñuel
(1900–1983) examine the mental and moral effects of the bourgeois
mentality, its culture, and the stylish way of life it provides for its
practitioners.
The Spanish cinéast Luis Buñuel (1900–1983) depicted the tortuous mentality and self-destructive hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie.
L'Âge d'or (The Golden Age, 1930) illustrates the madness and self-destructive hypocrisy of bourgeois society.
Belle de Jour (Beauty of the day, 1967) tells the story of a bourgeois wife who is bored with her marriage and decides to prostitute herself.
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