Embourgeoisement

The term “embourgeoisement” has become a scientific term used regularly in research related to the postindustrial transformation period, and it is also applied to the era of capitalist transformation in later industrialized and postsocialist societies. Through universal welfare provision, rising real income, and redistributive justice, the working class is viewed as converging toward a middle‐class lifestyle, values, opinions, and modes of conduct. The result is that more people are becoming incorporated into a large middle class; the affluent worker replaces the impoverished proletarian. The political orientation and values of embourgeoised laborers changed from radical leftism to a more moderate stance or even conservatism. In late industrialized and postsocialist countries, the concept of embourgeoisement might be thought to apply to the rise of the postwar welfare state and full employment. The embourgeoisement process is understood as an organic, one‐way evolution toward middle‐ground values and behavior

Conservatism · Development economics · Economics · Middle class · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Post-industrial society · Proletariat · Sociology · Underclass · Welfare · Welfare state · Working class · Law · Social Policy and Reform Studies

• The Affluent Worker and the Thesis of Embourgeoisement

  Open Access•John H Goldthorpe, David Lockwood et al.•Sociology•1967

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