Meaning people who make their living through commerce or management/representation of some sort and who do not have inherited wealth and get their income through salary.
Laborers, artists, and skilled labor salaried professionals like teachers or doctors are not bourgeoisie. Financiers, lawyers, business owners who have assistants or others doing most of the work are bourgeoisie. Petty Bourgeoisie are clerks, book-keepers, and the "department head/floor lead/supervisors, and they are called "petty" because while they aren't at the banker/lawyer/Capitan of industry level, that is the top of the hierarchical structure that they are working towards.
The term Bourgeoisie is not based on economic status; it is used to refer more to a social middle class where, while people need to be trained to a career as any skilled laborer does, they work during the day, do not have to be constantly re-training themselves or expanding knowledge, and can leave work to socialize. Their wages and jobs are not dependent on a skill or a talent and under their personal control, rather, they are dependent on competency, reliability, and sociability and needs of the employer.
I am Petty Bourgeoisie. I am not a business owner, nor a specialist in management or finance, but I support management and have some knowledge in business practices. As a former Field Service Engineer/jack of all trades, I was once a Prole, but am now pretty much a desk jockey.
My co-worker, a contract Engineering Specialist who is actually working on networks and network equipment, is not Bourgeoisie. He is skilled labor, in effect, a Prole, even though he likes to think of himself as more than just a skilled worker.
My boss is also Petty Bourgeoisie, even though she is in charge of me and several other groups of workers under contract.
My boss's boss's boss, who is responsible for an entire operation in the company and is pulling down middle six figures and hob-knobs with the business elite in the area, is Bourgeoisie.
That's how the hierarchy goes.
Haele
= new reply since forum marked as read