MBA CENTRAL APTITUDE QUIZ-3

Bourgeoisie is a term dating from the thirteenth century which originally denoted a category of town dwellers in medieval Europe, who enjoyed a special status and rights within feudal society. But with the development of capitalism the meaning of the term gradually changed and it came to refer more specifically to wealthy employers who were active in manufacture, commerce and finance – a usage which is partly reflected in Hegel’s conception of burgerliche Gesellschaft (civil society) as the sphere of private economic interests. Marx started out from Hegel’s distinction between the bourgeois and the citizen but soon developed, from his critical study of Hegel’s philosophy and still more from his voracious reading of political economy, an entirely different conception of the bourgeoisie as the dominant class in a specific (capitalist) mode of production. As Engels summarised this view, the bourgeoisie ‘is the class of the great capitalists who, in all developed countries, are now almost exclusively in possession of all the means of consumption necessary for their production’; and later ‘the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour’.

Marx’s conception formed part of a general theory of history as the succession of modes of production and forms of society, each characterised by a determinate level of development of the forces of production and a particular class structure within which there is endemic conflict. In a capitalist society, which emerged, according to the Marxist view, from the growth of new productive powers and the class struggle of the bourgeoisie against the feudal system, historical change is more rapid than ever before: ‘The bourgeoisie, during its rule has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than all preceding generations together’ but at the same time it brought into existence a new class, the proletariat, which engages in ever more widespread and intense conflict with it.

Two distinct processes, therefore, go on in capitalist society. The bourgeoisie continues to revolutionise the system of production, one effect of which is an increasing centralisation of capital in large corporations, facilitated by the expansion of credit money provided by the banks, and, in the twentieth century particularly, a massive internationalisation of capital. But bourgeois dominance is also increasingly challenged by the industrial proletariat whose struggle, according to Marx, would eventually give rise to a new, socialist and classless, society. Marx’s expectations partly depended on his view that society would be increasingly polarized between the two major classes, a small bourgeoisie formed as a result of the ‘expropriation of many capitalists by few’, and a large proletariat constituting the ‘immense majority’ of the population; though he also recognised that there were significant intermediate strata, including the petty bourgeoisie, made up of small independent producers, traders and professionals.

Later Marxists, in the twentieth century, have had to deal with more complex problems arising from the rapid growth of the ‘new middle class’, higher living standards and more extensive social welfare, which have almost everywhere diminished the intensity of class conflict in recent times. The bourgeoisie of the present day, still immensely wealthy, is nevertheless more constrained in various respects than its nineteenth-century predecessor.

Some social thinkers had always emphasized other aspects of the social role of the bourgeoisie. Max Weber associated the capitalist spirit with the Protestant ethic, and saw the bourgeoisie as being animated by ideas of rationality and enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, which equipped them for the leadership required to maintain a dynamic and democratic society. J.A.Schumpeter similarly emphasized the importance of entrepreneurship and connected the development of modern democracy with the rise of capitalism, but unlike Weber he saw in socialism a continuation of the bourgeois outlook: ‘The ideology of classical socialism is the offspring of bourgeois ideology. In particular, it shares the latter’s rationalist and utilitarian background and many of the ideas and ideals that entered the classical doctrine of democracy’.

Answer these questions on the basis of the information given below.

There are three divisions A, B and C in class V of a school. Each division has 40 students and the average weight of the students in divisions A, B and C are 35 kg, 42 kg and 38 kg respectively.