Two billion more bourgeois

The Economist, in Two billion more bourgeois, admits that Karl Marx was right:

... But Marx thought “the bourgeoisie…has played a most revolutionary part” in history. And although The Economist rarely sees eye to eye with the father of communism, on this Marx was right.

The definition of the middle class in this article is that it ...consists of people with about a third of their income left for discretionary spending after providing basic food and shelter. Whereas the Marxist definition of the bourgeois is by property relations. The bourgeois own the means of production: factories, farms, mines, etc.

This is a classic case of the Capitalist economists dividing society up by income, whereas the true class divisions are by how people derive that income. The interests of the worker are different from that of the shareholder, bondholder, rentier, farmer, small business owner, etc.

The article goes onto make an important point:

As people emerge into the middle class, they do not merely create a new market. They think and behave differently. They are more open-minded, more concerned about their children’s future, more influenced by abstract values than traditional mores. In the words of David Riesman, an American sociologist, their minds work like radar, taking in signals from near and far, not like a gyroscope, pivoting on a point. Ideologically they lean towards free markets and democracy, which tend to be better than other systems at balancing out varied and conflicting interests. A poll we commissioned for our special report on the middle class in the developing world finds that such people are happier, more optimistic and more supportive of democracy than are the poor.

Emphasis Mine

The bourgeois have a different view of the world by virtue of their property relationships. They own things that make them money. They want to keep those things for themselves and make enough money to survive.

Here democracy is another one of those fluid terms that means different things to different classes. The bourgeois want to make decisions for their own benefit. Since they are a minority, they are not in favour of majority rule. So they continually devise means to keep the rabble under control, and behaving in a manner conducive to the bourgeois making money.

For the rabble (aka the poor), democracy means majority rule to defend their rights against the predations of the bourgeois.

Guess which version of democracy is more acceptable to The Economist?

The article contends that the growth of the bourgeois is a result of the global economic boom, and is rightly worried about the fate of the new members of this class:

Those at the bottom of the ladder do not have far to fall. But what happens if you have clambered up a few rungs, joined the new middle class and now face the prospect of slipping back into poverty? History suggests middle-class people can behave in radically different ways. The rising middle class of 19th-century Britain agitated peacefully for the vote; in Latin America in the 1990s the same sorts of people backed democracy. Yet the middle class also supported fascist governments in Europe in the 1930s and initially backed military juntas in Latin America in the 1980s.

Emphasis Mine

This article suggests that the improvishment of the bourgeois only occurs during economic downturns. Not so! The rate of improvishment merely increases in these times. The bourgeois have their property taken all the time by banks when their businesses fail. This is all part of Capitalism's ruthless efficiency.

How the bourgeois reacts depends on how they see their interests are best served. The petite bourgeois can swing either way: left or right. Despite what The Economist wants us to believe, the Capitalist Revolution in Great Britain was just as violent as elsewhere: the English Civil War, Peterloo, the Highland Clearances, the Irish Occupation, etc. It only appears peaceful in contrast to the energies unleashed by the French Revolution.