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Comment by giraffe_lady | Hacker News Reader

It is consistent with the meaning of bourgeoisie then, which transposed to modern systems means more like "the owner class" than the contemporary social connotation of well-compensated professionals. Owners benefit from more/harder work, both their own and that of others, and so it (reasonably) becomes a class value for them.

A non-owner worker doesn't benefit in the same way, but many still value work in the same way the bourgeoisie do. Workers don't benefit like owners do and so they shouldn't want to work like owners do. That's the point being made.

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so you're saying he's bourgeoisie. Yeah that's the irony. The irony is that he's rich enough to have that lifestyle and still have food, while poor people would not.

Nope, according to the wikipedia linked, the only time Lafargue came close to being an owner (i.e. petit bourgeois) was when he tried running that photolithography workshop.

Sounds a little bit like the fox and grapes.

You are trying very hard not to think out of your box. First Lafargue was by no means rich nor a capitalist. Then this is not about promoting a "lifestyle", it is basically a proposal to have everyone work less by sharing the workload. Think of it what you will but do not misrepresent it. I suggest you actually read the book.

>It is consistent with the meaning of bourgeoisie then, which transposed to modern systems means more like "the owner class" than the contemporary social connotation of well-compensated professionals.

That's still the definition used in Marxist circles today.

I know but HN is pretty far from a marxist circle in my experience. And it does also have, at least in american english, a connotation very similar to that of yuppie eg more about social class than relationship to the means of production.

HN skews pretty neo liberal. A lot of holy-than-thou proselytizing of Western exceptionalism, as if Western culture actually earned it's place as the dominant culture on Earth through the virtue of simply being better than everyone else, who I guess just didn't want it bad enough, rather than a combination of luck, ruthless exploitation, and general disregard for the well-being of their fellow man.

Yikes, someone has a chip on their shoulder.

Lafargue totally reminds me of the arch-contrarian Oscar Wilde —- who was not bourgeois in any sense of the word, but also a (“lifestyle”) anarcho-socialist

Think it may be helpful to point out how the term evolved over time.

Before Marx, the bourgeoisie only meant the middle, or upper-middle, class as opposed to the proletariat on the one side (which, despite its contemporary Marxist connotations, dates from Ancient Rome's proletarii) and the nobility on the other.

After the rapid industrialization and social displacement of the 19th century that saw the middle class' rise, it was Marx who coopted the term to mean the owner class.

Outside of Marxist circles today, I think the original upwardly mobile meaning is still more common, as in bougie.

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