A Demonic Chrysalis: The Concept of Bourgeoisie in Poland

This paper investigates the history of concept bourgeoisie in Poland, emphasising troubles with its assimilation into Polish language, and special entanglement socialist modernist discourse. The concept, it is argued, was borrowed late nineteenth century from France, where concerned urban upper-middle class; arrived Poland as part discourse time, which gave strong negative derogatory connotations. ambiguity that arose further complicated by a number other factors well. First, understanding term ‘bourgeoisie’ within leftist itself ambivalent, combining strictly theoretical definition encompassing class capitalist owners means production, practical emotional label attached to classes. Second, also for reasons indicated above, not able replace older concepts regarding population [mieszczaństwo], differences between them remained vague, occasionally disputable. Third, only did never fully emancipate domination indigenous concepts, but suffered translation Polish, regularly omitted when Western European realities, permanent fixture case Russian Soviet literature. Finally, searches behind relative elimination discourse, or at least large segments thereof, last half-century.