Women In The Communist Manifesto By Marx And Engels

After the fall of the feudal society to the rise of modern bourgeois society, certain aspects, mainly societal issues, remained unchanged. Of all the issues involved, the main point brought up by Marx and Engels is the treatment of women just as an instrument of production to exploit. These women were treated as an underclass group within their own classes, and could not change this, unless a new society were to take over. Through the work force, first off, women were exploited in this bourgeois state of society. Marx and Engels, in the first part of the Communist Manifesto, interpret that, “The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labor, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social

Early on within the manifesto, Marx and Engels illustrate that “The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation” (16). The family used to be an important part of one’s life in the old society, yet after the bourgeoisie took charge in their own, the family just became a way for personal gain. This made family more of a form of ownership, instead of any form of relationship between the members, as well as more work for the women involved. In society, women would usually be the ones doing the work at home as well as any work they did outside the home. As they would be dealing with their children, as well as the sick and elderly involved in their family, they would do all these things for free. The extra labor the women accomplished went unpaid and generally added to the struggle they faced in the system. The women were treated as underclass individuals in their own social class, whether they were part of the proletarian or the bourgeois