Proletariat: _______________________________________________ Class (pun intended): _________

The Communist Manifesto

Inspired by the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Age was the very reason for Karl Marx to
write the Communist Manifesto. He saw how the
working people (Proletariat) were treated and exploited
by the wealthy people that owned the means of
production (bourgeoisie). To understand his intention
behind writing that book, you need to know the
circumstances in that time. He saw how the people went
from the villages in the lands to the huge cities and
metropoles to find work. But as you can imagine, the
cities weren’t in the condition in that they are nowadays.
The cities were ruled by filth, dirt, rats, and illnesses.

Primary Source Perspectives of the time period:

“I have had frequent opportunities of seeing people
coming out from the factories and occasionally attending as patients. Last summer I visited three
cotton factories with Dr. Clough of Preston and Mr. Barker of Manchester and we could not
remain ten minutes in the factory without gasping for breath. How it is possible for those who are
doomed to remain there twelve or fifteen hours to endure it? If we take into account the heated
temperature of the air, and the contamination of the air, it is a matter of astonishment to my
mind, how the work people can bear the confinement for so great a length of time.”

“When I was a surgeon in the infirmary, accidents were very often admitted to the infirmary,
through the children's hands and arms having being caught in the machinery; in many instances
the muscles, and the skin is stripped down to the bone, and in some instances a finger or two
might be lost. Last summer I visited Lever Street School. The number of children at that time in
the school, who were employed in factories, was 106. The number of children who had received
injuries from the machinery amounted to very nearly one half. There were forty-seven injured in
this way”

Source: House of Lords Committee (Interviewer) & Michael, W. (Interviewee). (1819).

Excerpt from Minutes of Evidence taken before the Lords Committees appointed to enquire into the State and Condition of the
Children employed in the Cotton Manufactories of the United Kingdom. House of Lords Sessional Papers (1806-1859).

Karl Marx:
 The most radical of the socialists was probably Karl Marx, a German theorist who
believed that revolution – not reform – was the only solution to the misery and unfairness
that resulted from industrialization
 Often known as the father of communism, he addressed the issues in a sweeping
interpretation of history and vision for the future, The Communist Manifesto, written in
1848
 He believed capitalism – or the free market – to be an economic system that exploited
workers and increased the gap between the rich and the poor
Proletariat: _______________________________________________ Class (pun intended): _________

 He believed that conditions in capitalist countries would eventually become so bad that
workers would join together in a revolution of the proletariat (workers), and overcome
the bourgeoisie, or owners of factories and other means of production
 Marx envisioned a new world after the revolution, one in which social class would
disappear because ownership of private property would be banned
 According to Marx, communism encourages equality and cooperation, and without
property to encourage greed and strife, governments would be unnecessary, and they
would wither away
 He developed his views fully in a longer work called Das Capital

Excerpts from The Communist Manifesto

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word,
oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an
uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary
reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society
into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians,
knights, plebians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen,
apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done
away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression,
new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has
simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great
hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat…

Questions:
1. According to Marx and Engels, what is the history?
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2. What class struggles existed in the past?
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3. What class struggle exists in the modern epoch?
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4. How does the class struggle in the modern epoch differ from earlier class struggles?
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Proletariat: _______________________________________________ Class (pun intended): _________

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5. By the way, what does “class struggle” mean?
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“…Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism
of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be
assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of
serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the
yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the
contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the
conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more
rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any
longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as
an overriding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave
within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed
him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other
words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation
and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labor. Wage labor rests exclusively
on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the
bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by the revolutionary
combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from
under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products.
What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the
victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”

Questions:
1. According to Marx and Engels, what has every form of society been based on?
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2. How does the modern laborer differ from the serf or the petty bourgeois?
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3. Why is the bourgeoisie unfit to rule?
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4. What is the essential condition for the existence of the bourgeois class?
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Proletariat: _______________________________________________ Class (pun intended): _________

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5. What do the bourgeoisie really produce?
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Enrichment Activities (To Be Completed on a Separate Piece of Paper):

1. List ten facts about the kind of society that Marx and Engels believed would exist after a
communist revolution.

2. Write a thesis statement either agreeing or disagreeing with Marx and Engels vision of
history, class struggle, and revolution.

3. Create an obituary for Karl Marx.