Section 2, Part 6 Summary and Analysis

"The Bourgeoisie as a Joint-Stock Company" The author begins this section with an examination of the term "bourgeoisie," a term for the French working class that, he says, has essentially lost all meaning. He suggests that one reason for this is that those of the "bourgeoisie" (the so-called "petit-bourgeois") do not want to be associated with the socio-political-economic connotations of the term—"bourgeoisie" having been defined on the leftist side of the socio-political-economic spectrum as the Marxist/Communist "proletariat," On the rightist side, they are deemed the hard-working cogs of the machinery of capitalism. He then suggests that another reason the term has lost its meaning is that over time it has become synonymous with the term of "nation." He writes that the "bourgeoisie" having nurtured this development in the hope of gaining broader support from those outside...