What do Russell Brand, J.K. Rowling and Eddie Izzard have in common? I could summon a few harsher common attributes, but I will restrain myself to mentioning the attribute of primary concern to the subject of this article: they all epitomize the Bourgeois, the quintessence of hypocrisy.

What does it mean to be bourgeois?

The term Bourgeois is a French one that has its origins in the time period just preceding the French Revolution of 1789. Prior to the catastrophic revolution that saw the rise of liberalism through Post-Enlightenment philosophy, and which also resulted in the brutal and unjust execution of King Louis XVI, France had been divided into three classes, known as “Estates”. The First Estate was the Clergy, who took direct orders from the Pope. The Second Estate consisted of the Aristocracy, those who made decisions and owned swathes of land from which they directed and guided the Third Estate: The masses. Most individuals belonged to the Third Estate, which could be colloquially deemed “ the peasantry”.

The term bourgeois was used to attempt to categorise those members of the Third Estate who were economically affluent, but were nevertheless not Clergy or Nobility. As a result, it can be said that the Bourgeois occupies a kind of “ in-between class” and as a result has in a sense an ambiguous, androgynous characteristic. The word comes from the French burgeis, meaning “walled city”, due in course to the large proportion of the bourgeois who had abandoned the rural lifestyle that in many defined and romanticized the traditional Third Estate, which can be considered the true working class. It could be said that the emergence of the Bourgeois can be attributed to the Industrial Revolution which began in the mid 18th century, which saw an influx of the peasantry into the cities and the emergence of so-called “white collar professions”.

The Bourgeois and White Collar Professions:

The attitudes embodied by the occupants of these white collar professions can be summarised as those of consumerism, hedonism, materialism, decadence and a desire for social comforts that was initially utterly alien to the rest of the nation, for the White Collar Class is a combination of the worst qualities of the 2nd estate and the 3rd estate: they possess the inferior education of the Working Class (to which I proudly belong, for we have other better qualities), but possess the attitude of superiority of the Upper Classes, but unlike the Upper Classes, have achieved nothing of value in order to have earned this attitude.

Self-styled conservatives, who cannot bring themselves to correlated free-market capitalism with our current societal decline, will find little to grasp onto in this article and may feel subsequently alienated and confused. However, it must be said that what I am about to write attacks equally, if not more so, the current swathe of “ Conservative” voters as much as it does those of a cultural Marxist inclination.

The descent of society into the throes of so-called civilization, development and secular moralism, when they are carefully observed, can be seen to emerge not from the Aristocracy, nor from the working class, who have traditionally abided loyally by the principles willed by their spiritual and intellectual superiors in the form of the Clergy and Aristocracy, but filter downwards from the bourgeois to the Working class and upwards from the bourgeois to the Aristocracy, who have in recent times adopted consumerist and colloquial attitudes, and even in some cases a feeling of shame at their superior qualities that make them, and only them, fit for a position of authority in government and the intelligencia.

Mussolini on the Bourgeois:

Benito Mussolini once described Britain as “the fattest and most bourgeois country in the world”, and it is no wonder, for the British like no other race, are a people renowned somewhat infamously the world over for our supposedly posh and snobby sensibilities which in actuality do not reflect the true spirit of the British at all, but reflect the shadow that Post-Enlightenment philosophy has encouraged us to become.

The real cultural damage impacted by the bourgeois class has very little to do with economics, but rather with the sensibilities and consumerist appetites that the lifestyle invites. The archetype of the culturally damaging bourgeois figure is often described as the “Champagne Socialist”, an advocate of excessive but pretentious moralising that emerges from a feeling of guilt and inadequacy, subconsciously generated from the realisation that the middle class to which they belong has neither the grandeur or authority of the Aristocratic class, which they attack, nor any of the humility and dignity of servitude possessed by the working class, to which they pretend to belong to or at least be in the service of.

The Bourgeois on the International Stage:

The bourgeois was at one point confined to Europe, but is no longer. At one time, subsequently after its establishment, the USA existed almost entirely as one large conglomerate of the Third Estate, populated by gold prospectors, fisherman, labourers and agricultural workers, with a small Aristocratic fringe that was confined to New England known as the “Boston Brahmin”, though they had little in the way of a true Aristocratic authority despite their title’s suggestion. The bourgeois emerged in America comparatively later than in Britain: in the early 20th century, and is now so prevalent that it applies to the vast majority of Americans, particularly those along the coasts.

The bourgeois class can be found in all societies they infest to be meddlers and modernisers, attempting to uproot the status quo due to their feeling of purposelessness. Since the bourgeois cannot feel a purpose or profound meaning in society, rather than changing themselves they attempt to change society to suit themselves, attempting to destroy the Aristocratic class and elevate the Working Class from humility into decadence.

In many ways, this behaviour mirrors that of the Diaspora Jew, the stereotype of a wandering minority that feel an urge to uproot societal norms and impose a new societal order that adequately accommodates them, encouraging through guilt an alteration of the conduct of the society, but never providing any positive contributions, only being interested in changing the society to better suit their own interests.

Bourgeois and Champagne Socialism:

Hypocrites though they may be, the Champagne Socialists never seem to see the hypocrisy of their actions or intentions; claiming to be selfless and in pursuit of the Common Good, selfishly, everything that the Champagne Socialist seeks to do is in the interests of the Middle Class and at the expense of those at either end of the economic spectrum. They seek only to fatten the Middle Class and to create a Communistic society in which the upper classes and the working classes are both eliminated.

The bourgeois, despite their facade, have no interest in preserving or enhancing the quality of the Working Class. In actuality, their fiscal egalitarianism would result in the complete elimination of Working Class society, traditions and values, and replace the class system with one large Middle Class. In actuality, the world “class” would have no relevance in a Socialist system; rather, there would only be one perennial and all-consuming Bourgeois.

There is much more to be said on this matter, and the works of the philosophers Julius Evola and René Guénon provide an excellent avenue through which to understand the concepts I have touched upon more thoroughly. I highly recommend Guénon’s The Reign of Quantity and the Sign of the Times for a more comprehensive exploration of the subject matter.