The Communist Manifesto

A brief preamble outlines Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ reasons for writing the Manifesto. Various European powers have united against the “spectre” of communism, which is, to the authors, an anxiety response to the movement. This response proves that communism is a force to be reckoned with and that it is high time for Communists to lay out their philosophy and game plan.

Part 1, “Bourgeois and Proletarians,” centers on the authors’ social and political theories regarding Europe’s newly industrialized society. Class struggle has been a mainstay throughout history, they argue, but before industrialization, inequality existed on a spectrum; stages of gradation separated the most powerful citizens from the most powerless. For example, in ancient Rome, the noble class were the most powerful members of society, followed by knights, plebeians, and slaves. Marx and Engels distinguish the current age, “the bourgeoisie,” by its simplification of this spectrum. A widening inequality gap eroded the middle classes, leaving only two parties in direct conflict with each other: the ruler class (the bourgeoisie) and the working class (the proletariat).

This change was brought about by two major factors: globalization and industrialization. 16th and 17th century European colonization of the Americas and Asia created a new, interconnected world market, but the demands of this market could not be met by the older, more localized modes of production, like guilds, in the feudal system. Steam-powered factory machinery was invented, revolutionizing the way goods were produced and launching the owners of this new means of production, the bourgeoisie, into positions of incredible power.

The power of the bourgeoisie grew, and soon, the state itself (i.e. the government) functioned primarily to protect their interests: “The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” (12). As a result, the bourgeoisie achieved not only class supremacy, but political supremacy, which Marx posits are fundamentally interconnected.

To Marx, bourgeois prioritization of free trade and profit had dire social ramifications. It reduced the worth of a person to what he or she can produce. Previously, religious and social customs hid the exploitation of the lower classes behind a veneer of civility; later, egotism and greed reigned supreme, to the detriment of the workers (12).

The bourgeois system is defined, the authors argue, by its rapacious nature. Capitalism relies on a constantly changing and expanding market to thrive. Its relentless expansion erodes the boundaries between countries, forcing new areas to submit to its way of life. Poorer countries cannot resist conversion and survive; bourgeois imperialism relies not on military might, but economic conquest as “the cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery” (14). Unmanageable overproduction caused severe economic crises in Europe in the 1830s and 40s, a fact Marx uses while arguing that the bourgeoisie can no longer control expansion and growth.

Ultimately, the system’s weakness is its dependence on the exploitation of a downtrodden working class, known as the proletariat. The working class has been reduced to commodities in the system, subject to the ups and downs of the market. They have become “a class of laborers who live only so long as they can find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital” (15). Their role as cogs in the machine was rarely rewarding; worse, the more unappealing the job, the less the wages (15-16).

But cutthroat competition among the bourgeois themselves—and the deplorable conditions they forced on workers—drove workers to unite against them. The globalization which propelled the bourgeoisie to prominence also provided the mass transportation and communication networks necessary for workers to unite, even across geographical lines (17). As a result, as the power of the bourgeoisie grew, so too did the power of the proletariats.

Marx predicts that conflict between the bourgeoisie and proletariats will inevitably turn violent. As petty-bourgeois manufacturers and shopkeepers see their business dwindle, unable to compete with richer or more powerful competitors, they will abandon their class and side with the proletariats, who vastly outnumber the bourgeoisie. This conflict will be the tipping point: “All previous movements were movements of minorities […] The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority” (18). The bourgeoisie will inevitably be overthrown, Marx argues, because it has proved itself unfit to rule as their systems rely entirely on the impoverishment of others.