The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

86 chapter 3upper-entrepreneurial class” or “SES I, II, and the higher-status members ofIII and IV,” or even Schama’s “burghers,” which is all I mean?Well, I admit to a contrariness here, a wish to slow down the corruptionof meaningful words. The word “rhetoric,” for example, which for two millenniameant “the offering of good reasons,” has been corrupted since theseventeenth century to become in English—less so in other European languages,I think—another of the very numerous English words for falsespeech. Let’s recover it. “Anarchism,” which means in Greek “without aruler,” that is, without an all-powerful state, has been corrupted in AmericanEnglish since the late nineteenth century to become just another wordfor nihilistic bomb-throwing. Let’s recover it. And “feminism,” which meantat its coinage an advocacy for the flourishing of women, has been corruptedin some minds since the 1970s to become just another word for bra-burningman hating—thus the late Bob Hope: “Feminists burn their bras, thencomplain about lack of support.” Let’s recover it, too.I want to recover the word “bourgeois” by taking it back from its enemies.The word “capitalist,” referring in the opinion of Communists in the1880s to greedy monopolists of the means of production, was taken back inthe 1980s to mean “advocates for and actors in free markets.” “Quaker” and“Tory” originated as sneers, but were calmly appropriated by the victimsand made honorable.In April 1566 two hundred armed and Protestant-sympathizing aristocratsfrom the Low Countries presented a petition to Margaret of Parma,Catholic Philip’s regent in Brussels, urging her to grant religious tolerance.She was advised by one of her counselors to pay them no heed. They weremerely, said he in his aristocratic French, gueux, that is, “beggars.” Nevermind that the petitioners were themselves French-speaking aristocrats.The Netherlandish noblemen seized upon the word, and called themselvesproudly thereafter Beggars, Dutch Geuzen. Baron Henry Brederode,their leader, was called Le Grand Gueux. That summer the new word wasclaimed too by the Protestant iconoclasts. “Vivent les Gueux,” the rioterscried in Antwerp, or perhaps “Leven de Geuzen,” as they trashed centuriesof religious art. 20The word has remained alive in the Dutch language. A group in 1568devoted to the murder of Catholic priests called itself the Bosgeuzen, ForestBeggars. The pirate navy which took Brill from the Spanish in 1572 calleditself the Watergeuzen, Sea Beggars. The orthodox Calvinists marching to