When Karl Marx used the word bourgeoisie he was referring to

A) the current structure of the world economy.

B) the people who currently owned the means of production.

C) the ideal structure of the world economy he envisioned.

D) the people who would seize the means of production from the powerful.

Karl Marx (1818-1883), better known around the world as the birth father, together with Friederich Engels, of The Communist Manifesto, from which Communism arose, was a sociologist, economist and revolutionary from Prussia who had to experience the difficulties and necessities faced by the working classes. These experiences and his contact with philophies such as those of Kant and Voltaire, but most importantly, his contact with Hegel's philosophy, moulded the young mind of this most controversial and important personage in history. One term that was widely used by this thinker was the french term bourgeoisie. The Bourgeoisie were a social class which existed in Europe almost since the Middle Ages and it defined those people who were not from the aristrocracy, but neither were the peasantry and whose capital come mainly from their profession or a craft. Almost, these people were those who lived in the cities and who had citizenship and citizen rights. However, Marx also used the term and he described it as the social class that came to be the controllers of the means of production and who were only interested in preserving their privileges of private property and the preservation of capital in denigration of the other social class mentioned by Marx, which was the proletariat, or working class. The correct answer then is B: the people who currently owned the means of production.

The correct answer is "B".

In his famous work "The Capital", which was published in 1883, Karl Marx introduced the concept of "The Burgoise", which were the social group who owned the capital and means of production. These people would hire "the Proletariat", or the working class in order to work in their businesses and make them earn a profit in exchange for wage or salary.