The Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels

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The Communist ManifestoMarx and Engels

• Today (1848), two hostile classes bourgeoisie
  and proletariat
• Bourgeoisietypically means middle class
  bourgeoisie vs. petty bourgeoisie
• Marx bourgeoisie as large-scale capitalists
• Petty bourgeoisiesmall business owners
• Proletariat the dispossessed workers enrolled in
  the capitalist army

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Bourgeoisie1

• has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal,
  idyllic relations
• left remaining no other nexus between man and
  man than naked self-interest, than callous cash
  payment.
• drowned religious fervor, chivalrous
  enthusiasm, sentimentalism in the icy water of
  egoistical calculation
• has resolved personal worth into exchange value

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Bourgeoisie2

• Converts all holders of noble professions into
  paid wage laborers
• Reduces the family relation to a mere money
  relation
• Must revolutionize modes of production
• Needs constantly expanding market
• Gives cosmopolitan character to pro-duction and
  consumption in every country

4
Bourgeoisie3

• by the rapid improvement of all instruments of
  production, by the immensely facilitated means of
  communication, draws all, even the most barbarian
  nations into civilization.

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Bourgeoisie4

• It compels all nations, on pain of extinction to
  adopt the bourgeois mode of production it
  compels them to introduce what it calls
  civilization into their midst, i.e., to become
  bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a
  world after its own image.

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Bourgeoisie5

• Just as it has made the country dependent on the
  towns, so it has made barbarian and
  semi-barbarian countries dependent on the
  civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of
  bourgeois, the East on the West.

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Bourgeoisie6

• It has agglomerated production, and has
  concentrated property in a few hands. The
  necessary consequence of this was political
  centralization.

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Bourgeoisie7

• The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one
  hundred years, has created more massive and more
  colossal productive forces than have all
  preceding generations together.

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Bourgeoisie8

• Destroys feudal relations, social organization,
  and means of production
• Replaces feudal order by free competition with
  the bourgeoisie in control
• But, these very productive forces, unleashed by
  the bourgeois themselves, overwhelm bourgeois
  society
• Bourgeois society is internally inconsistent

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Crisis of the Bourgeois1

• Series of commercial crises epidemic of
  over-production
• These crises threaten the bourgeois system
• there is too much civilization, too much means
  of subsistence, too much industry, too much
  commerce.

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Crisis of the Bourgeois2

• The conditions of bourgeois society are too
  narrow to comprise the wealth created by them.
• Uncontrolled destructive spiral of
  over-production, mad seeking of new markets, more
  intensive exploitation of old markets

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Crisis of the Bourgeois3

• The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled
  feudalism to the ground are now turned against
  the bourgeoisie itself.

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The Proletariat

• Beyond internal inconsistency, bourgeois society
  has called into existence the proletariatthe
  army of wage laborers
• The proletariat will oppose and destroy the
  bourgeois and their society

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The Proletariat1

• Live only so long as they find work
• Find work only so long as the help to build
  capital
• .must sell themselves piecemeal, are a
  commodity, like every other article of commerce,
  and are consequently exposed to all the
  vicissitudes of competition, to all the
  fluctuations of the market.

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The Proletariat2

• Work performed by the proletariat has lost all
  individual character and charm
• Worker as an appendage of the machine is
  confined to the simplest tasks

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The Proletariat3

• Hence, the cost of production of a workman is
  restricted, almost entirely, to the means of
  subsistence that he requires for his maintenance,
  and for the propagation of his race.
• slaves of the bourgeois class
• enslaved by the machine

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The Proletariat4

• Modern means of production de-emphasize manual
  labor, so the labor of men is superseded by that
  of women
• Differences of age and sex have no longer any
  distinctive social validity for the working
  class. All are instruments of labor, more or less
  expensive to use, according to their age and sex.

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Petty Bourgeoisie1

• Landlord, shopkeeper, pawnbroker, tradespeople
  try to exploit the proletariat
• As soon as the worker receives his wage, he is
  set upon by the other portions of the
  bourgeoisie

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Petty Bourgeoisie2

• But the petty bourgeoisie themselves sink into
  the proletariat because
• They lack sufficient capital to compete with
  larger capitalist
• The new means of production render their
  specialized skills worthless

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Proletarian Struggle1

• First, a frustrated destruction of capital,
  sabotage of machines, etc.
• Formation of unions
• Slow development of proletarians into a class
  with consciousness of their class and true
  situation
• Developing class solidarity

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Proletarian Struggle2

• Local and scattered struggles consolidate and
  become national struggles
• Class identity transcends national boundaries,
  and proletarians form international associations
• Eventually, proletarian class overwhelms entire
  bourgeois society