Editing Bourgeoisie (section)

===Modern history in Italy===
Because of their ascribed cultural excellence as a social class, the [[Italian fascism|Italian fascist]] régime (1922–45) of Prime Minister [[Benito Mussolini]] regarded the bourgeoisie as an obstacle to [[modernism]].<ref name="Bellassai05">{{cite journal |last=Bellassai |first=Sandro |date=2005 |title=The Masculine Mystique: Anti-Modernism and Virility in Fascist Italy |journal=[[Journal of Modern Italian Studies]] |volume=10 |issue=3 |pages=314–335|doi=10.1080/13545710500188338 |s2cid=144797296 }}</ref> Nonetheless, the Fascist state ideologically exploited the Italian bourgeoisie and their materialistic, middle-class spirit, for the more efficient cultural manipulation of the upper (aristocratic) and the lower (working) classes of Italy.

In 1938, Prime Minister Mussolini gave a speech wherein he established a clear ideological distinction between capitalism (the social function of the bourgeoisie) and the bourgeoisie (as a social class), whom he dehumanized by reducing them into high-level abstractions: a moral category and a state of mind.<ref name="Bellassai05" /> Culturally and philosophically, Mussolini isolated the bourgeoisie from Italian society by portraying them as social parasites upon the fascist Italian state and "The People"; as a social class who drained the human potential of Italian society, in general, and of the working class, in particular; as exploiters who victimized the Italian nation with an approach to life characterized by [[hedonism]] and [[Consumption (economics)|materialism]].<ref name="Bellassai05" /> Nevertheless, despite the slogan ''The Fascist Man Disdains the "Comfortable" Life'', which epitomized the anti-bourgeois principle, in its final years of power, for mutual benefit and profit, the Mussolini fascist régime transcended ideology to merge the political and financial interests of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini with the political and financial interests of the bourgeoisie, the Catholic social circles who constituted the [[ruling class]] of Italy.

Philosophically, as a [[Materialism|materialist]] creature, the bourgeois man was stereotyped as irreligious; thus, to establish an [[Existentialism|existential]] distinction between the supernatural faith of the [[Roman Catholic Church]] and the materialist faith of temporal religion; in ''The Autarchy of Culture: Intellectuals and Fascism in the 1930s'', the priest Giuseppe Marino said that:

{{Blockquote|Christianity is essentially anti-bourgeois. ... A Christian, a true Christian, and thus a Catholic, is the opposite of a bourgeois.<ref>{{cite book |last=Marino |first=Giuseppe Carlo |date=1983 |title=L'autarchia della cultura. Intellettuali e fascismo negli anni trenta |language=it |trans-title=The Autarchy of Culture: Intellectuals and Fascism in the 1930s |location=Rome |publisher=[[Editori Riuniti]]}}</ref>}}

Culturally, the bourgeois man may be considered effeminate, infantile, or acting in a pretentious manner; describing his [[philistinism]] in {{lang|it|Bonifica antiborghese}} (1939), Roberto Paravese comments on the:

{{Blockquote|Middle class, middle man, incapable of great virtue or great vice: and there would be nothing wrong with that, if only he would be willing to remain as such; but, when his child-like or feminine tendency to camouflage pushes him to dream of grandeur, honours, and thus riches, which he cannot achieve honestly with his own "second-rate" powers, then the average man compensates with cunning, schemes, and mischief; he kicks out ethics, and becomes a bourgeois.

The bourgeois is the average man who does not accept to remain such, and who, lacking the strength sufficient for the conquest of essential values—those of the spirit—opts for material ones, for appearances.<ref name=paravese39>Paravese, Roberto (1939) "Bonifica antiborghese", in Edgardo Sulis (ed.), ''Processo alla borghesia'', Roma: Edizioni Roma, pp. 51–70.</ref>}}

The economic security, [[Financial independence|financial freedom]], and social mobility of the bourgeoisie threatened the philosophic integrity of Italian fascism, the [[Ideology|ideological monolith]] that was the régime of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. Any assumption of [[Legitimacy (political)|legitimate]] political power (government and rule) by the bourgeoisie represented a fascist loss of [[Totalitarianism|totalitarian]] state power for social control through political unity—one people, one nation, and one leader. Sociologically, to the fascist man, to become a bourgeois was a character flaw inherent to the masculine mystique; therefore, the ideology of Italian fascism scornfully defined the bourgeois man as "spiritually castrated".<ref name="paravese39" />