Marx And Engels: The Manifesto Of The Communist Party

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Marx and Engels begin the Manifesto of the Communist Party by describing the “history of class struggles” and the perpetuation of oppressors versus oppressed (14). This includes the shift from complex class systems; from feudal society to commercial industrialization. The feudal system was unable to compete with modernized manufacturing and “free competition”, which resulted in political power being held by the bourgeoisie (17). As exemplified by the Industrial Revolution, the bourgeoisie have often been the product of revolutions in the modes of production and exchange. Marx and Engels show that new social and economic systems are established by the bourgeoisie, but that the “bourgeoisie forge the weapons that bring death to itself” (17). …show more content…

These unions were under the influence of the bourgeoisie, and thus served to further the objectives of the bourgeoisie (19). These unions are divided by the very work forces that are in competition with each other, thus proletarians cannot stand as one to rise against the bourgeoisie (19). The proletarians are left with no options to demand class equality within the capitalist mode of production. Proletarians, without property of their own to retain or expand, are left with little to no power (20). Without the resources for proletarians to create class balance, Marx and Engels suggest that proletarians must eradicate all approaches to securing private property (20). They must do this in order to “abolish their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation” …show more content…

This includes extinguishing the exploitation of women as instruments for reproduction, which lowers a woman’s status to that of a manufacturing machine, with children as the commodity (25). They intend to “abolish countries and nationality”, assuming the labourer as the nation, as itself “national” (25). As the labourers become one with the nation, so too do their religious, philosophical, or moral ideologies. Communism abolishes eternal truths instead of imposing new constitutional truths. This is done so as to not repeat failures of constitution from past historical experience (26). Communism challenges the false notions of "freedom, culture, [and] law" attributed to bourgeois private property, recognizing that these ideas are the result of the bourgeois modes of production of bourgeois property (24). Class division determines character, according to the economic conditions of existence for a particular class. Ending class antagonisms will instill equality in a