The Nobility and the French Revolution
The nobility, or the aristocracy, already existed before the French Revolution, even since always in our world. Humans have always differentiated themselves by comparing the higher or lower means from which each can benefit; we even find this tendency among the Romans, between the patricians (higher rank) and the plebeians (lower rank).
Since then, the name of this social rank has changed; the French nobility, or nobility of France, means all the families recognized as noble or ennobled until 1870 under the reign of the various kings who sat during this period. Titles of nobility also bear the name of “crowns” which are knights, barons, viscounts, counts, marquises, dukes, kings and emperors. Maintained by the “non-nobles”, these people lived in remarkable luxury. Their wealth was linked to the imposing position appropriated by the Catholic Church, which was also a victim of the people during the French Revolution.
After 1789, the nobility gave way to the bourgeoisie. The poor reacted and the nobility drastically declined in France. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were sentenced to the guillotine, along with other high-ranking aristocrats. Most of the nobles left France leaving their fortune there, subject to the revolutionaries. This is why the nobles had to enrich themselves in a different way than on the backs of the poorest, and those who remained in France became bourgeois.
Among these aristocrats, some even wanted to return to the Old Regime. They missed the subjugated peasants and the enriched nobles; we call them the ultras .
The Bourgeoisie and liberalism
The 19th century marked the domination of the bourgeoisie, which occupied a large place in politics and gradually took power. After the French Revolution, the nobility gave way to the bourgeoisie. This class was the dominant class under capitalism.
In this social class were some merchants for whom business was good (petty bourgeoisie), but there were mainly doctors, lawyers and young people working in literature (middle bourgeoisie), as well as bankers accumulating gigantic fortunes and powerful families of industrialists, bosses whom the industrial revolution enriched more and who favored liberalism the most (high bourgeoisie).
Liberalism was primarily guided by the ideas of Adam Smith, an Enlightenment philosopher considered one of the founders of political economy. According to him, liberalism was a way to be more successful in his work by focusing only on his interest, and not on that of others. Thus, the company would also find its economic success there and this way of doing things allowed work to be carried out in complete freedom, without external constraints. This philosophy also favored freedom of thought, reinforced by the effects of the French Revolution.
Unlike the aristocrats, the bourgeois saw the benefits of the French Revolution and wanted to follow through on its consequences. Liberals have chosen to settle for laissez-faire, self-regulate their market and get rich with it. Above all, we see the negative side of this philosophy with the use made of it by company bosses in the 19th century:through this freedom of action, the workers always worked harder for better results but earned little money and the working conditions have completely deteriorated in the absence of state-imposed rules.
The Proletariat and Socialism
The proletariat is also called the working class - the most exploited - and it is in this social class that the majority of the population was found. These people were the poorest; they were employed or unemployed and often lived crammed into leprous buildings and sometimes even in dodgy neighborhoods, the current equivalent of which would be slums. The peasants found jobs in the many industries born in the 19th century, and became proletarians. They were soon the victims of the terrible working conditions of the time. Most industrialists believed in laissez-faire and opposed government intervention in the economy. Many fairly well-to-do people believed that poverty was the result of drunkenness, idleness, or lax morality.
It was from 1850, after having attempted several strikes and demonstrations without success, that the working conditions of the workers improved through the creation of unions which, above all, reduced working hours and increased the wages of the proletarians. They favored socialist thought so that it established more justice between the bourgeois and the proletarians.
For Karl Marx, a German philosopher and economist, workers were comparable to cheap commodities, serving as accessories because of the development of machines that the worker only "completed". To change this, he believed that a socialist and communist society would restore justice and eliminate social differences; thus was born Marxism .
Socialism already existed when it came to rural issues; Marxism appeared essentially for the workers and to defend their rights. Karl Marx strongly opposed capitalism and criticized individualistic liberalism. Communism joined the utopia of Marxism and also sought the annihilation of social classes and injustice among men.
Today…
During the 20th century, social classes lost their importance. From the Belle Epoque to the Second World War, there are still some social differences according to the trades and the wealth of each. Liberalism and socialism have become political parties, where liberals are on the right and socialists on the left. In 1933, in Germany, Nazism (National Socialism) appeared, where Chancellor Adolf Hitler promised the end of the economic crisis of 1929 to people with the lowest incomes. Currently, there is the Socialist Party in France, towards which the French left are turned.
Today, social classes are no longer distinct, or almost. Some families have kept the title of nobility of their ancestors, but this has no influence on their financial situation, except perhaps a preserved inheritance. Our social differences are perceived by the income of our salaries and the role we occupy in the hierarchy of our profession, but they are no longer nominalized and taken into account in our daily lives.