Bourgeoisie Research Paper

Life and circumstances in France were not favorable for everyone in the 18th century. The absolute monarchy was exercising divine rule, being lavish and getting rich and, the aristocracy and nobility, forming the bourgeoisie, were tremendously powerful and getting a lot of money thus showing aspects of feudalism. The bourgeoisie was more affluent than the farmers because they simply did not pay their taxes. The social and economic disorder of France allowed the rise of the Physiocrats. The Physiocrats were a group of social reformers who had François Quesnay as their main figure and founder. Pierre le Pesant de Boisguilbert (1646-1714), another physiocrat and French politician, saw how people were living in poverty under the burden of the tax

This model is called the Tableau Economique, which layed the ground for the physiocrats. First the ordered tableau presented three classes with three types of expenditures: the farmers or productive class with expenditure relative to agriculture, the sterile class with expenditure relative to industry and trading leaving nor surplus into the economy and the landowners who received the taxes from the farmers but should also be receiving taxes from the sterile class. His tableau showed that all expenditure should and will end up with the productive class resulting in a net product. It shows how this surplus is being flowed back into the economy. “The Tableau économique is a zigzag diagram, showing a circular flow diagram of the economy and showing who produced what and who spent what in order to explain how to obtain growth. Quesnay believed that only the agricultural sector could produce a surplus that could then be used to produce more the next year and therefore help growth” (Quesnay

In 18th century Europe mercantilism was soaring and governments had a heavy hand on trade and the organization of society. To the physiocrats mercantilism seemed unfair and disorderly. The physiocrats views were opposite to the mercantilist who claimed that coins, gold and silver were the source of wealth. They considered the laws giving privileges to the nobility and aristocrats and taxing the farmers to be bad laws and unnatural, while considering laws that supported expanses on agriculture and consumption to be good. “The whole magic of a well-ordered society’, said Quesnay, ‘is that each man works for others, while believing he is working for himself” (Sandelin: 12). Quesnay’s concept is an influence on the idea of self-interest. Quesnay considered the industrial and manufacturing sector to be sterile; Therefore, physiocrats viewed it as nonproductive, but not useless because they made manufactured goods in order to be sold and trade, to the physiocrats these were just reusing resource to be resold, to them this recycling was not benefiting the economy and there was no