It is interesting to note how the word "bourgeois", and its most common meaning, Middle Class, have different connotations depending on where you are. In France, the word bourgeois sounds sexy and trendy; it means you are rich and influential. In Germany, it is seen as decadent and corrupt, a negative slur.
Even more interestingly is how this corresponds to the manner of speech. To the Germans, the flowing accents of the French and posh English Classes are seen as effeminate, most definitely unmanly and undesirable. The French, on the other hand, take great pride in their correct pronunciation and cultured speech.
The English sit in the middle of this. Bourgeois, and middle class, can mean rich and powerful, depending on whom you are talking to. In the same way, a flowing accent with all endings, S’s and T’s emphasised, can earn you respect in some circles. More often, however, the Bourgeois name and accent are decried as ‘posh’ and the term “middle class” is used as an insult. Middle class means sheltered, naïve, and ignorant of the real workings of the world, ineffectually pampered liberal.
Marx used the term “bourgeois” to refer to those who owned their means of production. This included outright capitalists as well as those he described as “petty bourgeois”, the kleinburgershaft, (lower middle class). (In the US these would be the Upper class and the Middle class, here in England they are referred to as upper-middle and lower-middle, as we are still burdened with the surviving landed aristocracy, who still occupy the title Upper Class, so the super rich entrepreneurs can’t make that leap to the top and are still stuck in middle class mode.)
Marx theorised that the petty bourgeois would be impoverished by the advance of capitalism. This would be because as technology advanced, production would become more capital intensive. Those without sufficient investment funds for the latest machines would be less efficient and so out competed by the big players. So the petty bourgeois would lose their small enterprises, and the weavers, tailors, hair dressers, blacksmiths, and so on would all be forced into wage labour – joining the proletariat.
This hasn’t happened, partly because of the existence of the service sector, which is more labour intensive, so small enterprises are not out competed by larger ones in the same was as happened in the manufacturing sector. More importantly, Das Kapital was always a gross oversimplification, (though a long winded one). Differentiation in the marginal productivity of labour prevented wages falling in the manner the labour theory of value imagined, and so the middle class has grown exponentially with the economy as a whole.
Part of this is due to government policy. Margaret Thatcher’s government pursued policies of embourgeoisment – turning people middleclass. The lowest qualification for middle class status is homeownership, so Britain’s Conservative government in the 1980s pursued a policy of selling council houses to their occupiers. Once a working class man took out a mortgage to buy the house he was already living in, he immediately joined the blue-collar middle-class, and turned from being a traditional Labour voter to an ardent Conservative. Margaret Thatcher’s was from a lower middle-class background, and this was her core constituency.
I hope I have shown, despite the fact that Tony Blair declared the class war to be over, what constitutes “Bourgeois” is still an intensely political issue. As Tony Benn pointed out, the Prime Minister didn’t tell us who won. But it would be much better to just give peace a chance.