"Within Marxism and historical materialism" by Wikipedia

By Wikipedia

Marxism defines the bourgeoisie as the social class that owns the means of production in a capitalist society. As such, the core of the modern bourgeoisie is industrial bourgeoisie, which obtains income by hiring workers to put in motion their capital, which is to say, their means of production - machines, tools, raw material, etc. Besides that, other bourgeois sectors also exist, notedly the commercial bourgeoisie, which earns income from commercial activities such as the buying and selling of commodities, wares, and services.

In medieval times, the bourgeois was typically a self-employed proprietor, small employer, entrepreneur, banker, or merchant. In industrial capitalism, on the other hand, the bourgeoisie becomes the ruling class - which means it also owns the bulk of the means of production (land, factories, offices, capital, resources - though in some countries land ownership would still be a monopoly of a different class, landed oligarchy), and controls the means of coercion (national armed forces, police, prison systems, court systems). Ownership of the means of production enables it to employ and exploit the work of a large mass of wage workers (the working class), who have no other means of livelihood than to sell their labour to property owners; while control over the means of coercion allows intervention during challenges from below.[2] Marx distinguished between "functioning capitalists" actually managing enterprises, and others merely earning property rents or interest-income from financial assets or real estate (rentiers).[3]

Marxism sees the proletariat (wage labourers) and bourgeoisie as directly waging an ongoing class struggle, in that capitalists exploit workers and workers try to resist exploitation. This exploitation takes place as follows: the workers, who own no means of production of their own, must seek employment in order to make a living. They get hired by a capitalist and work for him, producing some sort of goods or services. These goods or services then become the property of the capitalist, who sells them and gets a certain amount of money in exchange. Part of this money is used to pay workers' wages, another part is used to pay production costs, and a third part is kept by the capitalist in the form of profit (or surplus value in Marxist terms). Thus the capitalist can earn money by selling the surplus (profit) from the work of his employees without actually doing any work, or in excess of his own work. Marxists argue that new wealth is created through work; therefore, if someone gains wealth that he did not work for, then someone else works and does not receive the full wealth created by his work. In other words, that "someone else" is exploited. In this way, the capitalist might turn a large profit by exploiting workers.

Marx himself primarily used the term "bourgeois", with or without sarcasm, as an objective description of a social class and of a lifestyle based on ownership of private capital, not as a pejorative. He commended the industriousness of the bourgeoisie, but criticised it for its moral hypocrisy. This attitude is shown most clearly in the Communist Manifesto. He also used it to describe the ideology of this class; for example, he called its conception of freedom "bourgeois freedom" and opposed it to what he considered more substantive forms of freedom. He also wrote of bourgeois independence, individuality, property, family, etc.; in each case he referred to conceptions of these ideals which are compatible with condoning the existence of a class society.