Western Civilization II / Unit 9 WC2 0818 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Class as Condition: Workers, Industrialists, the Middle Class, and the Petty Bourgeoisie
Captions available
The idea
Class replaced legal estate as identity by condition: workers united by poverty, industrialists by wealth and control, a middle class of engineers, foremen, accountants and bureaucrats proud of morality, sobriety and work, and a petty bourgeoisie of shopkeepers and artisans fearing descent.
In practice
Workers as animals, old nobles as archaic, in the middle-class view.
Where people slip
Marx's classes, unit 10, are built from this.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it