Bourgeoisie

"With the spread of the bourgeois commodity economy the dark horizon of myth is illuminated by the sun of calculating reason, beneath whose icy rays the seeds of the new barbarism are germinating."

"Nietzsche, driven by the absolute demand of his existential truthfulness, could not abide the bourgeois world, even when its representative had human nobility."

"“Most men live in order to make a living; when they have that, they live in order to make a good living; when they have that, they die. …"

"If there were no politics, then all the bourgeois would have to fill him would be his inner life, i.e., nothing."

"It is not a mere coincidence that almost all prominent Socialists and Communists were of middle-class descent. The basic problem of middle-class life is security — in the national as well as in the personal sense. The two classes which have the greatest inner affinities and likeness, the working class and the middle class, both live in the cities and the vast majorities of both classes are employees and not free men. [...] He who had the greatest security was the most admired of all. The worker shares this admiration in all bourgeois civilizations and thus he is not immune against the terrible, bourgeois promise of bolshevism: "Ye shall all be state employees! Ye shall all get insurance and pensions!""

"It is not what he feels and aspires that moves him primarily; it is what the folks about him will think of him."

"The real villains of the piece are the clean, kind, industrious Family Men who use every known brand of trickery and cruelty to insure the prosperity of their cubs. The worst thing about these fellows is that they're so good and, in their work at least, so intelligent. You can't hate them properly, and yet their standardized minds are the enemy."

"While this bourgeois order found its rich—and even affirmative—representation in art and literature, … it remained an order which was over-shadowed, broken, refuted by another dimension which was irreconcilably antagonistic to the order of business, indicting it and denying it. And in the literature, this other dimension is represented not by the religious, spiritual, moral heroes (who often sustain the established order) but rather by such disruptive characters as the artist. the prostitute, the adulteress, the great criminal and outcast, the warrior, the rebel-poet, the devil, the fool—those who don't earn a living, at least not in an orderly and normal way. To be sure, these characters have not disappeared from the literature of advanced industrial society, but they … perform a function very different from and even contrary to that of their cultural predecessors. They are no longer images of another way of life but rather freaks or types of the same life, serving as an affirmation rather than negation of the established order."

"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley of ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value."

"The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid ers."

"The term bourgeois I use following Flaubert, not Marx. Bourgeois in Flaubert's sense is a state of mind, not a state of pocket. A bourgeois is a smug philistine, a dignified vulgarian. … The character I have in view when I say "smug vulgarian" is, thus, not the part-time philistine, but the total type, the genteel bourgeois, the complete universal product of triteness and mediocrity. He is the conformist, the man who conforms to his group, and he also is typified by something else: he is a pseudo-idealist, he is pseudo-compassionate, he is pseudo-wise."

"It’s the music in our conscience, the dance in our spirit, which wants to make all Puritan litanies, all moral sermons, and petty bourgeois respectability sound out of tune."

"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."

"Wie die Ökonomen die wissenschaftlichen Vertreter der Bourgeoisklasse sind, so sind die Sozialisten und Kommunisten die Theoretiker der Klasse des Proletariats."

"Ohne Klassenbewusstsein und ohne Organisiertheit der Massen, ohne ihre Schulung und Erziehung durch den offenen Klassenkampf gegen die gesamte Bourgeoisie kann von der sozialistischen Revolution keine Rede sein."

"Mit der Entwicklung der großen Industrie wird also unter den Füßen der Bourgeoisie die Grundlage selbst hinweggezogen, worauf sie produziert und die Produkte sich aneignet. Sie produziert vor allem ihren eigenen Totengräber. Ihr Untergang und der Sieg des Proletariats sind gleich unvermeidlich."

"Je rascher die Arbeiterklasse die ihr feindliche Macht, den fremden, über sie gebietenden Reichtum vermehrt und vergrößert, unter desto günstigern Bedingungen wird ihr erlaubt, von neuem an der Vermehrung des bürgerlichen Reichtums, an der Vergrößerung der Macht des Kapitals zu arbeiten, zufrieden, sich selbst die goldnen Ketten zu schmieden, woran die Bourgeoisie sie hinter sich herschleift."

"Der Staat ist eine Maschine in den Händen der herrschenden Klasse zur Unterdrückung des Widerstands ihrer Klassengegner. In dieser Hinsicht unterscheidet sich die Diktatur des Proletariats im Grunde genommen durch nichts von der Diktatur jeder anderen Klasse, denn der proletarische Staat ist eine Maschine zur Niederhaltung der Bourgeoisie."

""Diese Politik trifft das bürgerliche Lager der Arbeitnehmerinnen und Arbeitnehmer. Sie trifft das durchaus bürgerliche Lager der Geringverdiener. Sie trifft das bürgerliche Lager der Mehrheit der Bevölkerung. Sie sind in diesem Sinne nicht bürgerlich. Sie haben schlicht und ergreifend nur die Interessen der"

"Die moderne Staatsgewalt ist nur ein Ausschuss, der die gemeinschaftlichen Geschäfte der ganzen Bourgeoisklasse verwaltet."

"Die Bourgeoisie hat in der Geschichte eine höchst revolutionäre Rolle gespielt. Die Bourgeoisie, wo sie zur Herrschaft gekommen, hat alle feudalen, patriarchalischen, idyllischen Verhältnisse zerstört. Sie hat die buntscheckigen Feudalbande, die den Menschen an seinen natürlichen Vorgesetzten knüpften, unbarmherzig zerrissen und kein anderes Band zwischen Mensch und Mensch übriggelassen als das nackte Interesse, als die gefühllose »bare Zahlung«."