The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history\u00a0of class struggles.<\/p>\r\n
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf,\u00a0guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed,\u00a0stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an\u00a0uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time\u00a0ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at\u00a0large or in the common ruin of the contending classes.<\/p>\r\n
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a\u00a0complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a\u00a0manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome, we have\u00a0patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages,\r\nfeudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices,\u00a0serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate\u00a0gradations.<\/p>\r\n
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins\u00a0of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It\u00a0has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression,\u00a0new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the\u00a0epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive\u00a0feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a\u00a0whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps,\u00a0into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie\u00a0and Proletariat.<\/p>\r\n
From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers\u00a0of the earliest towns. From these burgesses, the first elements\u00a0of the bourgeoisie were developed.<\/p>\r\n
The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up\u00a0fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and\u00a0Chinese markets, the colonization of America, trade with\u00a0the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in\r\ncommodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to\u00a0industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the\u00a0revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid\u00a0development.<\/p>\r\n
The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production\u00a0was monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the\u00a0growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took\u00a0its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the\u00a0manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the\u00a0different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of\u00a0labour in every single workshop.<\/p>\r\n
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising.\u00a0Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and\u00a0machinery revolutionized industrial production. The place of\u00a0manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place of\u00a0the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the\u00a0leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.<\/p>\r\n
Modern industry has established the world-market, for which the\u00a0discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an\u00a0immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication\u00a0by land. This development has, in its time, reacted on the\u00a0extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce,\u00a0navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the\u00a0bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the\u00a0background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.<\/p>\r\n
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the\u00a0product of a long course of development, of a series of\u00a0revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.<\/p>\r\n
Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied\u00a0by a corresponding political advance of that class. An\u00a0oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an\u00a0armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune;\u00a0here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany),\u00a0there taxable \"third estate\" of the monarchy (as in France),\u00a0afterwards, in the period of manufacture proper, serving either\u00a0the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise\u00a0against the nobility, and, in fact, the corner-stone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the\u00a0establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market,\u00a0conquered for itself, in the modern representative State,\u00a0exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern State is\u00a0but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole\u00a0bourgeoisie.<\/p>\r\n
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary\u00a0part.<\/p>\r\n
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an\u00a0end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to\u00a0his \"natural superiors,\" and has left remaining no other nexus\u00a0between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous \"cash\u00a0payment.\" It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of\u00a0religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine\u00a0sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It\u00a0has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of\u00a0the numberless and indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that\u00a0single, unconscionable freedom\u2014Free Trade. In one word, for\u00a0exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, naked,\u00a0shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.<\/p>\r\n
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation\u00a0hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the\u00a0man of science, into its paid wage labourers.<\/p>\r\n
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental\u00a0veil and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.<\/p>\r\n
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the\u00a0brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists\u00a0so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful\u00a0indolence. It has been the first to show what man's activity can\u00a0bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian\u00a0pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has\u00a0conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses\u00a0of nations and crusades.<\/p>\r\n
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing\u00a0the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of\u00a0production, and with them the whole relations of society.\u00a0Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form,\u00a0was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all\u00a0earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of\u00a0production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions,\u00a0everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois\u00a0epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations,\u00a0with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and\u00a0opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated\u00a0before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all\u00a0that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face\u00a0with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.<\/p>\r\n
The need for a constantly expanding market for its products\u00a0chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It\u00a0must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions\u00a0everywhere.<\/p>\r\n
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market\u00a0given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in\u00a0every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has\u00a0drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on\u00a0which it stood. All old-established national industries have\u00a0been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged\u00a0by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death\u00a0question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer\u00a0work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the\u00a0remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only\u00a0at home but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old\u00a0wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new\u00a0wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant\u00a0lands and climes. In place of the old local and national\u00a0seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every\u00a0direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in\u00a0material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual\u00a0creations of individual nations become common property. National\u00a0one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more\u00a0impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures,\u00a0there arises a world literature.<\/p>\r\n
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of\u00a0production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication,\u00a0draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization.\u00a0The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with\u00a0which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the\u00a0barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to\u00a0capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to\u00a0adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to\u00a0introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to\u00a0become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world\u00a0after its own image.<\/p>\r\n
The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the\u00a0towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the\u00a0urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued\u00a0a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural\u00a0life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so\u00a0it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on\u00a0the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois,\u00a0the East on the West.<\/p>\r\n
The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the\u00a0scattered state of the population, of the means of production,\u00a0and of property. It has agglomerated production and has\u00a0concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence\u00a0of this was political centralization. Independent, or but\u00a0loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws,\u00a0governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into\u00a0one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national\u00a0class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff. The\u00a0bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has\u00a0created more massive and more colossal productive forces than\u00a0have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's\u00a0forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry\u00a0and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs,\u00a0clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of\u00a0rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground\u2014what\u00a0earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive\u00a0forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?<\/p>\r\n
We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose\u00a0foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in\u00a0feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these\u00a0means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which\u00a0feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organization of\u00a0agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal\u00a0relations of property became no longer compatible with the\u00a0already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters.\u00a0They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.<\/p>\r\n
Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a\u00a0social and political constitution adapted to it, and by the\u00a0economical and political sway of the bourgeois class.<\/p>\r\n
A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern\u00a0bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange\u00a0and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic\u00a0means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is\u00a0no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he\u00a0has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history\u00a0of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of\u00a0modern productive forces against modern conditions of production,\u00a0against the property relations that are the conditions for the\u00a0existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to\u00a0mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put\u00a0on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the\u00a0entire bourgeois society. In these crises, a great part not only\u00a0of the existing products but also of the previously created\u00a0productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises\u00a0there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would\u00a0have seemed an absurdity\u2014the epidemic of over-production.\u00a0Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary\u00a0barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of\u00a0devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence;\u00a0industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because\u00a0there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence,\u00a0too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at\u00a0the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development\u00a0of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they\u00a0have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are\u00a0fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring\u00a0disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the\u00a0existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois\u00a0society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them.\u00a0And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one\u00a0hand inforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the\u00a0other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough\u00a0exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the\u00a0way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by\u00a0diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.<\/p>\r\n
The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the\u00a0ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.<\/p>\r\n
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring\u00a0death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who\u00a0are to wield those weapons\u2014the modern working class\u2014the\u00a0proletarians.<\/p>\r\n
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital is developed,\u00a0in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working\u00a0class, developed\u2014a class of labourers, who live only so long\u00a0as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour\u00a0increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves\u00a0piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article of\u00a0commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of\u00a0competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.<\/p>\r\n
Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of\u00a0labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman. He\u00a0becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is\u00a0required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is\u00a0restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he\u00a0requires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his\u00a0race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of\u00a0labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage\u00a0decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and\u00a0division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden\u00a0of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working\u00a0hours, by increase of the work exacted in a given time or by\u00a0increased speed of the machinery, etc.<\/p>\r\n
Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the\u00a0patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers crowded into the factory, are\u00a0organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army, they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers\u00a0and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class,\u00a0and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by\u00a0the machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, by the\u00a0individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this\u00a0despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty,\u00a0the more hateful and the more embittering it is.<\/p>\r\n
The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual\u00a0labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes\u00a0developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of\u00a0women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive\u00a0social validity for the working class. All are instruments of\u00a0labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age\u00a0and sex.<\/p>\r\n
No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer,\u00a0so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash than he is\u00a0set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord,\u00a0the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.<\/p>\r\n
The lower strata of the middle class\u2014the small tradespeople,\u00a0shopkeepers, retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and\u00a0peasants\u2014all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly\u00a0because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale\u00a0on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the\u00a0competition with the large capitalists, partly because their\u00a0specialized skill is rendered worthless by the new methods of\u00a0production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes\u00a0of the population.<\/p>\r\n
The proletariat goes through various stages of development.\u00a0With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At\u00a0first, the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by\u00a0the workpeople of a factory, then by the operatives of one trade,\u00a0in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly\u00a0exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the\u00a0bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments\u00a0of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that\u00a0compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they\u00a0set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished\u00a0status of the workman of the Middle Ages.<\/p>\r\n
At this stage, the labourers still form an incoherent mass\u00a0scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual\u00a0competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies,\u00a0this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of\u00a0the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its\u00a0own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in\u00a0motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this\u00a0stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies,\u00a0but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute\u00a0monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty\u00a0bourgeoisie. Thus the whole historical movement is concentrated\u00a0in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a\u00a0victory for the bourgeoisie.<\/p>\r\n
But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only\u00a0increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses,\u00a0its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various\u00a0interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the\u00a0proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion as\u00a0machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly\u00a0everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing\u00a0competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial\u00a0crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The\u00a0unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing,\u00a0makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions\u00a0between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and\u00a0more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon\u00a0the workers begin to form combinations (Trades Unions) against\u00a0the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of\u00a0wages; they found permanent associations in order to make\u00a0provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and\u00a0there the contest breaks out into riots.<\/p>\r\n
Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time.\u00a0The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate\u00a0result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers. This\u00a0union is helped by the improved means of communication that\u00a0are created by modern industry and that place the workers of\u00a0different localities in contact with one another. It was just\u00a0this contact that was needed to centralize the numerous local\u00a0struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political\u00a0struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the\u00a0Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries,\u00a0the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.<\/p>\r\n
This organization of the proletarians into a class, and\u00a0consequently into a political party, is continually being upset\u00a0again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it\u00a0ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers,\u00a0by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus the ten-hours' bill in England was carried.<\/p>\r\n
Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society\u00a0further, in many ways, the course of development of the\u00a0proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant\u00a0battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those\u00a0portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become\u00a0antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the\u00a0bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles it sees\u00a0itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for its\u00a0help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The\u00a0bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its\u00a0own instruments of political and general education, in other\u00a0words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting\u00a0the bourgeoisie.<\/p>\r\n
Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling\u00a0classes are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the\u00a0proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of\u00a0existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements\u00a0of enlightenment and progress.<\/p>\r\n
Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive\u00a0hour, the process of dissolution going on within the ruling\u00a0class, in fact within the whole range of society, assumes such a\u00a0violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling\u00a0class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the\u00a0class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at\u00a0an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the\u00a0bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the\u00a0proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois\u00a0ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of\u00a0comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.<\/p>\r\n
Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie\u00a0today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.\u00a0The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of\u00a0Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential\u00a0product. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the\u00a0shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fights against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions\u00a0of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but\u00a0conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try\u00a0to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impending\u00a0transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their\u00a0present, but their future interests, they desert their own\u00a0standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.<\/p>\r\n
The \"dangerous class,\" the social scum, that passively rotting\u00a0mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may,\u00a0here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian\u00a0revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more\u00a0for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.<\/p>\r\n
In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at\u00a0large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without\u00a0property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer\u00a0anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern\u00a0industrial labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in\u00a0England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him\u00a0of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion,\u00a0are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in\u00a0ambush just as many bourgeois interests.<\/p>\r\n
All the preceding classes that got the upper hand, sought to\u00a0fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at\u00a0large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians\u00a0cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except\u00a0by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and\u00a0thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They\u00a0have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission\u00a0is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of,\u00a0individual property.<\/p>\r\n
All previous historical movements were movements of minorities,\u00a0or in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is\u00a0the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority,\u00a0in the interests of the immense majority. The proletariat, the\u00a0lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise\u00a0itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official\u00a0society being sprung into the air.<\/p>\r\n
Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the\u00a0proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle.\u00a0The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all, settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.<\/p>\r\n
In depicting the most general phases of the development of the\u00a0proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging\u00a0within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks\u00a0out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the\u00a0bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.<\/p>\r\n
Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have\u00a0already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions\u00a0must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its\u00a0slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised\u00a0himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to\u00a0develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary,\u00a0instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and\u00a0deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He\u00a0becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than\u00a0population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the\u00a0bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in\u00a0society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society\u00a0as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is\u00a0incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a\u00a0state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other\u00a0words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.<\/p>\r\n
The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of\u00a0the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of\u00a0capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour\u00a0rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The\u00a0advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie,\u00a0replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition,\u00a0by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The\u00a0development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its\u00a0feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and\u00a0appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces,\u00a0above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of\u00a0the proletariat are equally inevitable.<\/p>","rendered":"
The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history\u00a0of class struggles.<\/p>\n
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf,\u00a0guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed,\u00a0stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an\u00a0uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time\u00a0ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at\u00a0large or in the common ruin of the contending classes.<\/p>\n
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a\u00a0complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a\u00a0manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome, we have\u00a0patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages,
\nfeudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices,\u00a0serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate\u00a0gradations.<\/p>\n
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins\u00a0of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It\u00a0has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression,\u00a0new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the\u00a0epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive\u00a0feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a\u00a0whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps,\u00a0into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie\u00a0and Proletariat.<\/p>\n
From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers\u00a0of the earliest towns. From these burgesses, the first elements\u00a0of the bourgeoisie were developed.<\/p>\n
The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up\u00a0fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and\u00a0Chinese markets, the colonization of America, trade with\u00a0the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in
\ncommodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to\u00a0industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the\u00a0revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid\u00a0development.<\/p>\n
The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production\u00a0was monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the\u00a0growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took\u00a0its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the\u00a0manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the\u00a0different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of\u00a0labour in every single workshop.<\/p>\n
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising.\u00a0Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and\u00a0machinery revolutionized industrial production. The place of\u00a0manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place of\u00a0the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the\u00a0leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.<\/p>\n
Modern industry has established the world-market, for which the\u00a0discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an\u00a0immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication\u00a0by land. This development has, in its time, reacted on the\u00a0extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce,\u00a0navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the\u00a0bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the\u00a0background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.<\/p>\n
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the\u00a0product of a long course of development, of a series of\u00a0revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.<\/p>\n
Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied\u00a0by a corresponding political advance of that class. An\u00a0oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an\u00a0armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune;\u00a0here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany),\u00a0there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France),\u00a0afterwards, in the period of manufacture proper, serving either\u00a0the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise\u00a0against the nobility, and, in fact, the corner-stone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the\u00a0establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market,\u00a0conquered for itself, in the modern representative State,\u00a0exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern State is\u00a0but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole\u00a0bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary\u00a0part.<\/p>\n
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an\u00a0end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to\u00a0his “natural superiors,” and has left remaining no other nexus\u00a0between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash\u00a0payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of\u00a0religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine\u00a0sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It\u00a0has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of\u00a0the numberless and indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that\u00a0single, unconscionable freedom\u2014Free Trade. In one word, for\u00a0exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, naked,\u00a0shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.<\/p>\n
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation\u00a0hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the\u00a0man of science, into its paid wage labourers.<\/p>\n
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental\u00a0veil and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.<\/p>\n
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the\u00a0brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists\u00a0so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful\u00a0indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can\u00a0bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian\u00a0pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has\u00a0conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses\u00a0of nations and crusades.<\/p>\n
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing\u00a0the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of\u00a0production, and with them the whole relations of society.\u00a0Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form,\u00a0was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all\u00a0earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of\u00a0production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions,\u00a0everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois\u00a0epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations,\u00a0with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and\u00a0opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated\u00a0before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all\u00a0that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face\u00a0with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.<\/p>\n
The need for a constantly expanding market for its products\u00a0chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It\u00a0must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions\u00a0everywhere.<\/p>\n
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market\u00a0given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in\u00a0every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has\u00a0drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on\u00a0which it stood. All old-established national industries have\u00a0been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged\u00a0by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death\u00a0question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer\u00a0work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the\u00a0remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only\u00a0at home but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old\u00a0wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new\u00a0wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant\u00a0lands and climes. In place of the old local and national\u00a0seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every\u00a0direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in\u00a0material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual\u00a0creations of individual nations become common property. National\u00a0one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more\u00a0impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures,\u00a0there arises a world literature.<\/p>\n
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of\u00a0production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication,\u00a0draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization.\u00a0The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with\u00a0which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the\u00a0barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to\u00a0capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to\u00a0adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to\u00a0introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to\u00a0become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world\u00a0after its own image.<\/p>\n
The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the\u00a0towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the\u00a0urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued\u00a0a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural\u00a0life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so\u00a0it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on\u00a0the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois,\u00a0the East on the West.<\/p>\n
The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the\u00a0scattered state of the population, of the means of production,\u00a0and of property. It has agglomerated production and has\u00a0concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence\u00a0of this was political centralization. Independent, or but\u00a0loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws,\u00a0governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into\u00a0one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national\u00a0class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff. The\u00a0bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has\u00a0created more massive and more colossal productive forces than\u00a0have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s\u00a0forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry\u00a0and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs,\u00a0clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of\u00a0rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground\u2014what\u00a0earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive\u00a0forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?<\/p>\n
We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose\u00a0foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in\u00a0feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these\u00a0means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which\u00a0feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organization of\u00a0agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal\u00a0relations of property became no longer compatible with the\u00a0already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters.\u00a0They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.<\/p>\n
Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a\u00a0social and political constitution adapted to it, and by the\u00a0economical and political sway of the bourgeois class.<\/p>\n
A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern\u00a0bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange\u00a0and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic\u00a0means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is\u00a0no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he\u00a0has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history\u00a0of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of\u00a0modern productive forces against modern conditions of production,\u00a0against the property relations that are the conditions for the\u00a0existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to\u00a0mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put\u00a0on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the\u00a0entire bourgeois society. In these crises, a great part not only\u00a0of the existing products but also of the previously created\u00a0productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises\u00a0there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would\u00a0have seemed an absurdity\u2014the epidemic of over-production.\u00a0Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary\u00a0barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of\u00a0devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence;\u00a0industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because\u00a0there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence,\u00a0too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at\u00a0the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development\u00a0of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they\u00a0have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are\u00a0fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring\u00a0disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the\u00a0existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois\u00a0society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them.\u00a0And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one\u00a0hand inforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the\u00a0other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough\u00a0exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the\u00a0way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by\u00a0diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.<\/p>\n
The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the\u00a0ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.<\/p>\n
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring\u00a0death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who\u00a0are to wield those weapons\u2014the modern working class\u2014the\u00a0proletarians.<\/p>\n
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital is developed,\u00a0in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working\u00a0class, developed\u2014a class of labourers, who live only so long\u00a0as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour\u00a0increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves\u00a0piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article of\u00a0commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of\u00a0competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.<\/p>\n
Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of\u00a0labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman. He\u00a0becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is\u00a0required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is\u00a0restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he\u00a0requires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his\u00a0race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of\u00a0labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage\u00a0decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and\u00a0division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden\u00a0of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working\u00a0hours, by increase of the work exacted in a given time or by\u00a0increased speed of the machinery, etc.<\/p>\n
Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the\u00a0patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers crowded into the factory, are\u00a0organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army, they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers\u00a0and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class,\u00a0and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by\u00a0the machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, by the\u00a0individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this\u00a0despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty,\u00a0the more hateful and the more embittering it is.<\/p>\n
The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual\u00a0labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes\u00a0developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of\u00a0women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive\u00a0social validity for the working class. All are instruments of\u00a0labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age\u00a0and sex.<\/p>\n
No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer,\u00a0so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash than he is\u00a0set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord,\u00a0the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.<\/p>\n
The lower strata of the middle class\u2014the small tradespeople,\u00a0shopkeepers, retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and\u00a0peasants\u2014all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly\u00a0because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale\u00a0on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the\u00a0competition with the large capitalists, partly because their\u00a0specialized skill is rendered worthless by the new methods of\u00a0production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes\u00a0of the population.<\/p>\n
The proletariat goes through various stages of development.\u00a0With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At\u00a0first, the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by\u00a0the workpeople of a factory, then by the operatives of one trade,\u00a0in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly\u00a0exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the\u00a0bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments\u00a0of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that\u00a0compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they\u00a0set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished\u00a0status of the workman of the Middle Ages.<\/p>\n
At this stage, the labourers still form an incoherent mass\u00a0scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual\u00a0competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies,\u00a0this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of\u00a0the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its\u00a0own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in\u00a0motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this\u00a0stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies,\u00a0but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute\u00a0monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty\u00a0bourgeoisie. Thus the whole historical movement is concentrated\u00a0in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a\u00a0victory for the bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n
But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only\u00a0increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses,\u00a0its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various\u00a0interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the\u00a0proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion as\u00a0machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly\u00a0everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing\u00a0competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial\u00a0crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The\u00a0unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing,\u00a0makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions\u00a0between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and\u00a0more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon\u00a0the workers begin to form combinations (Trades Unions) against\u00a0the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of\u00a0wages; they found permanent associations in order to make\u00a0provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and\u00a0there the contest breaks out into riots.<\/p>\n
Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time.\u00a0The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate\u00a0result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers. This\u00a0union is helped by the improved means of communication that\u00a0are created by modern industry and that place the workers of\u00a0different localities in contact with one another. It was just\u00a0this contact that was needed to centralize the numerous local\u00a0struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political\u00a0struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the\u00a0Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries,\u00a0the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.<\/p>\n
This organization of the proletarians into a class, and\u00a0consequently into a political party, is continually being upset\u00a0again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it\u00a0ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers,\u00a0by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried.<\/p>\n
Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society\u00a0further, in many ways, the course of development of the\u00a0proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant\u00a0battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those\u00a0portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become\u00a0antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the\u00a0bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles it sees\u00a0itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for its\u00a0help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The\u00a0bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its\u00a0own instruments of political and general education, in other\u00a0words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting\u00a0the bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n
Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling\u00a0classes are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the\u00a0proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of\u00a0existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements\u00a0of enlightenment and progress.<\/p>\n
Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive\u00a0hour, the process of dissolution going on within the ruling\u00a0class, in fact within the whole range of society, assumes such a\u00a0violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling\u00a0class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the\u00a0class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at\u00a0an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the\u00a0bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the\u00a0proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois\u00a0ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of\u00a0comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.<\/p>\n
Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie\u00a0today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.\u00a0The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of\u00a0Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential\u00a0product. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the\u00a0shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fights against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions\u00a0of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but\u00a0conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try\u00a0to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impending\u00a0transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their\u00a0present, but their future interests, they desert their own\u00a0standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.<\/p>\n
The “dangerous class,” the social scum, that passively rotting\u00a0mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may,\u00a0here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian\u00a0revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more\u00a0for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.<\/p>\n
In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at\u00a0large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without\u00a0property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer\u00a0anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern\u00a0industrial labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in\u00a0England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him\u00a0of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion,\u00a0are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in\u00a0ambush just as many bourgeois interests.<\/p>\n
All the preceding classes that got the upper hand, sought to\u00a0fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at\u00a0large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians\u00a0cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except\u00a0by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and\u00a0thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They\u00a0have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission\u00a0is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of,\u00a0individual property.<\/p>\n
All previous historical movements were movements of minorities,\u00a0or in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is\u00a0the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority,\u00a0in the interests of the immense majority. The proletariat, the\u00a0lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise\u00a0itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official\u00a0society being sprung into the air.<\/p>\n
Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the\u00a0proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle.\u00a0The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all, settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n
In depicting the most general phases of the development of the\u00a0proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging\u00a0within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks\u00a0out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the\u00a0bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.<\/p>\n
Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have\u00a0already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions\u00a0must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its\u00a0slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised\u00a0himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to\u00a0develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary,\u00a0instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and\u00a0deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He\u00a0becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than\u00a0population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the\u00a0bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in\u00a0society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society\u00a0as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is\u00a0incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a\u00a0state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other\u00a0words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.<\/p>\n
The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of\u00a0the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of\u00a0capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour\u00a0rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The\u00a0advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie,\u00a0replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition,\u00a0by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The\u00a0development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its\u00a0feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and\u00a0appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces,\u00a0above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of\u00a0the proletariat are equally inevitable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":251,"menu_order":2,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[48],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-28","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","chapter-type-numberless"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/251"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/28\/revisions\/121"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/28\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}