Marxism in 10 Minutes

A Summary of The Manifesto of the Communist Party


Marx and his co-author Friedrich Engels, begin The Communist Manifesto with the famous and provocative statement that the “history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle.” They argue that all changes in the shape of society come from the collective struggle on the part of groups of people with similar economic situations in order to realize their material or economic interests. These struggles, occurring throughout history from ancient Rome through the Middle Ages to the present day, have been struggles of economically SUBORDINATE classes against economically DOMINANT classes who opposed their economic interests – slaves against master, serfs against landlords, and so on.

The modern industrialized world has been shaped by one such subordinate class – the BOURGEOISIE, or merchant class – in its struggle against the aristocratic elite of feudal society. Over time, the bourgeoisie, whose livelihood is accumulating wealth, grew wealthier and more powerful politically, eventually taking the place of the elites they were struggling against. The bourgeoisie has risen to the status of dominant class in the modern industrial world, shaping political institutions and society according to its own interests. Far from doing away with class struggle, this once subordinate class, now dominant, replaced one class struggle with another.

The bourgeoisie is the most spectacular force in history to date. Their zeal for accumulating wealth led them to conquer the globe, forcing everyone everywhere to adopt capitalism as the main mode of economy. The bourgeoisie view, which sees the world as one big market for exchange, has fundamentally altered all aspects of society, even the family, destroying traditional ways of life and rural civilizations and creating enormous cities in their place. By doing so, the bourgeoisie created a new subordinate class that is responsible for driving this process of industrial expansion. This class is the industrial PROLETARIAT, or modern working class. These workers have been uprooted (and in some cases simply stolen) by the expansion of capitalism and forced to sell their labor to the bourgeoisie. This fact offends them to the core of their existence as they recall those workers of earlier ages who owned and sold what they created. Modern industrial workers are exploited by the bourgeoisie and forced to compete with one another for ever-shrinking wages since the means of production grow more sophisticated with new developing technologies.

The factory is the arena where class struggle will spill over into society at large. Modern industrial workers will come to recognize their exploitation at the hands of the bourgeoisie. Although the economic system forces them to compete with one another for ever-shrinking wages, through common association on the factory floor they will overcome the divisions between themselves, realize their common fate, and begin to engage in a collective effort to protect their economic interests against the bourgeoisie. The workers will form collective groups and gradually take their demands to the political sphere as a force to be reckoned with.

Meanwhile, the workers will be joined by an ever-increasing number of the lower middle class whose economic livelihoods are being destroyed by the growth of huge factories owned by a shrinking number of super-rich industrial elites. Gradually, all of society will be drawn to one or the other side of the struggle: bourgeoisie or proletariat (or as Marx would say, the “HAVES” and the “HAVE NOTS”). Like the bourgeoisie before them, the proletariat and their allies will act together in the interests of realizing their economic aims. They will move to sweep aside the bourgeoisie and its institutions, which stand in the way of this realization. The bourgeoisie, through its established mode of production, produces the seeds of its own destruction: the working class.







This text is originally from Sparknotes 101: Philosophy (2005) by Spark Educational Publishing. Portions of the text have been modified to suit the needs of my students and this unit.