“The Manifesto of the Communist Party”

In “The Manifesto of the Communist Party,” Marx and Engels argue that society divides people based on social rank as oppressor vs. oppressed. The capitalism of “civilized” society divides society into the groups of bourgeoisie vs. proletariat. The categorization and eventual loss of individual character of the working class turns the class of laborers into commodities unworthy of anything but their function as “appendages of the machine” (479). As a Communist doctrine on a revolutionary strategy for reform, the immediate aims of The Manifesto are presented as, “the formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat” (484) and abolition of bourgeois property.

1.      Marx and Engels speak of capital as the kind of property which exploits wage-labour which cannot increase except upon condition of getting a new supply of wage labour for fresh exploitation. The laborer lives only to increase the capital.

2.      Proletariats are the class of industrial wage-earners whose only asset is selling themselves for labor.

3.      Bourgeoisie are the exploitative middle class who produce wealth by utllizing the working class.

4.      Class is defined by business dictionary as, “a status hierarchy in which individuals and groups are classified on the basis of esteem and prestige acquired mainly through economic success and accumulation of wealth.

Capital: “material wealth in the form of money or property.”

Proletariat: “is a term used to describe the class of wage-earners (industrial workers) in a capitalist society whose only possession of significant material value is their labor power (ability to work)”

Bourgeoisie: “the class that, in contrast to the proletariat or wage-earning class, is primarily concerned with property values”

The idea of social divides based on superiority and inferiority are a truth that is part of human history. In the reading, the issues with the need for property and production are addressed along with social divides. Due to human nature, the divisions among humans will continue. Marx and Engels state that a society’s economic production should not reduce a person to mere property or a laborer. Instead, the Manifesto supports revolutionary movement against the political order. It calls for the oppressed laborer to rise against the bourgeoisie oppressor.

Felice Doynov