The Return of the Bourgeoisie?

I am interested in the formulation of contemporary power and redesign of the institutions of this power post neoliberalism. So, in continuum from my previous piece on Thatcherism and the paradoxical link with Foucault’s distrust of the state mechanism, I offer an extension to this theme.

The Return of the Bourgeoisie? 

I am interested in the formulation of contemporary power and redesign of the institutions of this power post neoliberalism. 

In continuum from my previous piece on Thatcherism and the paradoxical link with Foucault’s distrust of the state mechanism, I offer an extension to this theme. The flow of these last pieces argues and explores a key work of classical Marxism which has been manipulated, reinterpreted and thus emboldened to fit a contemporary narrative of progressive power; the middle class, a bourgeoisie owning, controlling and sustaining their control on the means of production.  

This piece offers analysis of the process that this has taken and how a bourgeoise, has enabled Marxism to be redesigned via a progressive agenda. This piece argues a clarity of agenda which has its origins in the themes discussed in the previous short piece I wrote on Thatcherism and a form of symbiotic link, via Foucault/Deridda, post modernism, neoliberalism, and progressive reinterpretation, and redesign of what left wing politics; in short, the bourgeoisie, to survive, has redesigned the left in the neoliberal age.  

This of course is a huge area of research. There has been, I argue, a grand redesign of the nature and definition of politics; a grand narrative arc of with multiple competing and engaging forces, which have, as the bourgeoisie understand so compellingly, beguile and divide via changing technology and political reinvention. New competing economic and social forces; neoliberalism, post modernism, globalisation, progression, critical theory, all pursue a redesign of institutions of power of the post war world. My interest is, where does the left, and where the new bourgeoisie, embrace these moveable parts to formulate and most importantly, maintain power.  

In continuation on my piece on Thatcherism, the postmodern economic agenda, neoliberalism, work inherently together - they are intertwined. To continue power, the bourgeoisie redesign the nature of power, the means to control power and through neoliberal economic fluidity, its opaque nature runs hand in hand perfectly with the innocuous brutality of postmodernism. A perfect juxtaposition of no control but absolute control, and this eschews the redesign of economic liberalism – an invisible hand but without the morality of Smith, but the redesign of progressive institutionalism.  

The menage is imposing in its lack of clarity, but the principles are timeless. The ideals of the bourgeoisie are formulated in eternity; the recognition and pursuit of power of group A over group B. The Marxist dialectic does not defer; it rolls on ad nauseum and is as transparent today as in 1848 – a continuation, this simplicity of bourgeoisie over a working proletariat. This clarity of power, beautifully encapsulated by Lukes’ definition that, “A exercises power over B when A affects B in a manner contrary to B’s interests". 1 Lukes’ definition has a beautiful clarity to it, and I will offer future articles offering analysis of this and the contrast to postmodern limitless reinterpretation; there is a timeless dynamic which, I argue links clearly with a dialectic historicism of societal disconnect that is clear today.  

The Marxist dialectic clearly identifies the power dynamic from ancient civilisation which is still overtly present in 2026. Power via the means of production, capital has reinvented itself repeatedly, and the beguiling nature of the bourgeoisie has reinvented the narrative repeatedly. Lenin argues,  

"In all capitalist Countries throughout the world, the bourgeoisie resorts to two methods in its struggle against the working – class movement and the workers parties. One method is that of violence, persecution, bans, and suppression. The other method the bourgeoisie employs against the movement is that of dividing the—workers, disrupting their ranks, bribing individual representatives or certain groups of the proletariat with the object of winning them over to its side". 2 

There is a simple brutality to the historical constant – suppression of working-class voices. suppression of working voices. As the United Kingdom has demonstrated, certainly since the 2008 Banking Crisis and the subsequent austerity of multiple institutional players, from academia, local government, policing and the media, have redefined themselves to preserve a status quo. There is no longer overt violence, but through cultural delineation and a redesign of the middle-class obedience to the historical bourgeoisie, the forms of - persecution, bans, and suppression – have morphed and emerged in a different form.  

Essentially, Lenin did not factor the changing dynamism of a class who now do not need violence yet thoroughly suppress. How have the tools changed, how has the methodology morphed so that Lukes’ criterion of A over B is still so prevalent, and yet so sanitised, so opaque so distant, to not allow a proletariat to conjure the will advance their cause?  

The methodology has changes, and this will be examined, but the concept is eerily similar to the historical pattern of oppression. The problem and indeed the riddle is how to solve where the power is and how to observe and ultimately challenge Lenin’s classical interpretation of “suppression” - it isn’t obvious, it is, quite frankly and intriguing riddle that has served a new, pre-AI, progressive agenda very well in that the oppressor has put on the cloak of oppressed and the proletariat, well, they have are now the forgotten, the non exists, the, as Marx describes, the lumpenproletariat, or sans culottes of the French Revolution.  

Successive economic collapse, most apparently in 2008 has decimated working class, not simply via a decimation in trade union corporate power, but in living standards, but not for all - the progressive generation has not seen economic decline. The post-industrial class has been decimated, has been marginalised and ultimately through neoliberal oppression, a decimation of social capital and the decline of and indeed the destruction of the proletariat. 

The progressive bourgeoisie is hegemonic - they have not returned; they simply never went away.