History, The Bourgeoisie, The Proletariat, and Communism

Karl Marx begins the first chapter of his The Communist Manifesto with the opening line: “The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles” (ch. 1). Underlying all of history is this fundamental economic theme, that each society has its own economic structure which breeds different classes—“a manifold gradation of social rank,” he calls it (ch. 1). These classes inevitably becomes in conflict with each other—that because of their economic structure, some class becomes the oppressors while others become the oppressed.

He argued that the oppressors and oppressed “stood in constant opposition to one another… on an uninterrupted… fight… that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes” (ch. 1). He described his time as a struggle between two classes: the Bourgeoisie and the Ploretariat. Marx claims that the modern bourgeois society of his time has not helped to remove, although have simplified, clash antagonisms, but had, instead, “established new classes, new conditions of oppression, [and] new forms of struggle in place of the old ones” (ch.

1). He saw the bourgeoisie as a “product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange,” and that each step of its development “was accompanied by a corresponding political advance” (ch. 1). He claims that the “executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie,” that it “cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society” (ch.

1). He said that it has torn the “feudal ties that bound men to his ‘natural superiors,’ and has left no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest” (ch. 1). He goes on to explain that the bourgeoisie draws all nation into civilization with all the rapid improvements of production and by the immensely facilitated means of communication. However, he claims that they create “a world after its own image,” that is, for all nations to adopt the bourgeois mode of production.

The bougeiosie, according to Marx, has “created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life” but that it has also “concentrated property in a few hands” (ch. 1). He argued that “for many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule” (ch.

1). At the end, he states that “its existence is no longer compatible with society” and is unfit to be the ruling class of society since “it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery” (ch. 1). The proletarians, on the other hand, are, during Marx’s time, the modern working class—“a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital” (Marx ch. 1).

Marx claims that the proletarians lost its individual character and charm because of the extensive use of machinery and of the division of labour. They have become an “appendage of the machines. ” He said that lobourers are commodities which are “expensive to use” but are exploited by the bougeoisie. Marx explains that the proletariat began its struggle as soon as this class was created, at first as an induvidual struggle of the laborer, and later groups of workers.

Workers before were still disorganized, divided by goegraphy and by competition with one another. Marx claims that when workers first formed unions, they did so under the influence of the bourgeois and served to further the objectives of the bourgeoisie. The distinction between workers was obliterated due to the wages being reduced to low level. As the proletariat increased in numbers and concentrated in greater mass by forming Trade Unions, they also increased in strenght and local struggles were centralized into one national struggle between classes.

Marx further explains that “the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class,” that other classes are conservatives or reactionary that fight against the bourgeoisie in order to “save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class” (ch. 1). Because proletarians have nothing of their own to secure, Marx claims that their mission is “to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property” (ch. 1). The proletarian movement, Marx further explains, “is the self-concious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority” (ch.

1). Marx explains that the Communist Party points out and addresses the common interests of the entire proletariat, in their national struggles in different countries, independent of nationality, and represents the interests of the working class in the various stages of development it has to pass through from the struggle against the bourgeoisie. The Communist Party, therefore, still according to Marx, is the most advanced, resolute section “of the working-class of every country, that section which pushes forward all others” (ch.

2). It has the same aim as that of all the other proletarian parties, which is to overthrow the bourgeois supremacy and to seek its own political power. Marx goes on to explain that the abolition of existing property relations is not a distinctive feature of Communism, that the feature of Communism is not the abolition of property in general, but the abolition of the bourgeois property, which is, according to him, “the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products” (Marx ch.

2). Simply put, Marx states that Communism is a struggle that aims for the “abolition of private property. ” Communism would like to abolish the conception that the labourer merely lives to increase capital, and is allowed only to live insofar as the interest of the ruling class requires it; that labour is meant to widen, enrich and promote the existence of the labourer is what the Communism is fighting for. Communism is, in a way, a struggle of the lower strata of the society against the upper strata.

However, it is not a personal struggle of the poor against the rich, it is a societal and political struggle for equality of appropriation of property. Marx explains that “Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation” (ch. 2). With its teachings and goals, labour groups and lower working class would have found The Communist Manifesto appealing.

The Capitalists, of course, would not have found it appealing, as the manifesto seeks to destroy their current stature and their self-interest would be compromized. On the other hand, Communism would seek to empower labour groups and they would find it all to their advantage to support its cause. The Industrial Revolution has created a majority lower class workers, many of whom lived in poverty under terrible working conditions. The Communist Manifesto calls on all labourers to unite, promising them a better life sprouting from a better world.