Text: Page 54

By creating a city-centric and a less agrarian and rural civilization, the Industrial Revolution changed the economic order and human psychology forever. During the Industrial Revolution, the bourgeoisie assumed control over the means of production, and it was the bourgeois class who protected private property and fought to preserve private capital to ensure their socioeconomic power and supremacy. It was the bourgeoisie that laid the socioeconomic foundation for the modern “middle class.”