As time went on, civilization began to experience its first forms of capitalism. During this time, the middle class, which comprised of the shop keepers, skilled crafts workers, and so on, were the first class to be known as capitalist. They were starting to earn more money, because they were generating larger profits, and they were gaining more control over their occupations and businesses. Now, the once family owned business was starting to employee twenty-five to hundreds of people at a time. The relatively small groups of Nobles were beginning to become upset because the peasants that were once producing for solely for their use, were now leaving that land to become wage laborers for the middle class. As time went on, the middle class would soon be the new ruling class. Yet, in a capitalist society, the ruling class would now be known as the bourgeoisie. .
This is when Marx tries to understand what a bourgeoisie society is, what elements encompass it, and what are the consequences of capitalism. He wanted to define the power of money in a capitalist nation, and try to explain how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Marx was also very interested in the concept of alienation and its relations to capitalism, that he theorized an idea to explain why a person could become so isolated from their own society. .
According to Marx, in bourgeoisie or capitalist society, businesses make a profit by the products or services that they are selling to a market of consumers. The employees, or proletarians, that makes these products usually consist of working class citizens, and the owner/CEOs of the businesses are comprised of a small elite upper class. .
Although it is the proletarians who are doing all of the work and producing all of the products, the bourgeoisie is the only one sees the immense profit and revenue from the sales. The workers are paid hourly, so it does not matter how many millions that the company makes in a year.