What Happens

Marx and Engels begin by arguing that all of history is defined by struggles between classes. Disagreements between “oppressor and oppressed,” they note, are more often than not the cause of social change—both major and minor. The authors bounce from time period to time period to illustrate this point, beginning with the history of serfdom in the Middle Ages to show how labor and ownership has since developed—although perhaps not improved. 

As compared to the many class distinctions in feudal times, society now has two main classes: the “bourgeoisie” and the “proletariat.” These two contemporary classes emerged, the authors explain, as a result of increased manufacturing during the Industrial Revolution and the resulting consumerism encouraged by American colonialism. Thus: “the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.”

This structure of capitalist production—at least as it existed in Engles and Marx’s lifetimes— was created around the bourgeoisie’s self-interests and disguised by the words “Free Trade.” In this system, the bourgeoisie profit from property ownership and industrial production while engaging in “exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions” that is now substituted for “naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.”

Globalization and technological expansion continue to fuel industrial production. As production needs grow and technology races to meet its ever-growing desires, the bourgeoisie continues to enrich themselves on the labor of the proletariat. Worse still, the ability to acquire inexpensive and mass-produced industrial commodities “compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production.” Therefore, national borders become indistinguishable, and, in place of national “self-sufficiency,” there grows a “universal inter-dependence of nations,” all of whom embody this class-based divide. 

Marx and Engels imagine this system unifying societies across the world, leading all nations to become alike in their dependence on commodities and industry. They imagine a perpetual cycle of overproduction, destruction, and new markets, an endless slew of creation and rebirth. Even if the bourgeoisie is overthrown, new systems, identical in their divisions, will rise up to replace it: “The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.”

Returning to the discussion of contemporary class distinctions, the authors explain that the bourgeoisie benefit from high amounts of production but do not participate in the labor that creates it. Instead, the proletariat, or working class, have become victims of the “fluctuations of the market.” They are an “appendage of the machine” forced to submit and poorly compensated for “monotonous” tasks and hard labor. Despite their efforts, the proletariat does not benefit from their work because “every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.”

Yet, the bourgeoisie is in a “constant battle” with itself and must enlist the proletariat for help. In doing this – through education – the “bourgeoisie itself… furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.” The battle is waged, and the proletariat fights, but it is nearly impossible for the working class to raise themselves higher on the social strata. They work endlessly yet sink lower into poverty.

The struggle now defined, Marx and Engels turn to the subject of the present: the main difference between the proletarian movement and movements throughout history, they explain, is that historical movements were in the “interests of minorities.” In contrast, the “proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority” for “the immense majority.”

Why It Matters

In trying to gain support for a communist revolution, Marx and Engels approach the subject by highlighting the downfalls of...