The Individual and Society in the Communist Manifesto The end of 19th century, Western Society was changing physically, philosophically, economically, and politically. It was an influential and critical time in that the Industrial Revolution created a new class. Many contemporary observers realized the dramatic changes in society. Among these were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who observed the conditions of the working man, or the proletariat, and saw a change in how goods and wealth were distributed. In their Communist Manifesto, they described their observations of the inequalities between the emerging wealthy middle class and the proletariat as well as the condition of the proletariat. They argued that the proletariat was at the mercy of the new emerging middle class, or bourgeoisie, and could only be rescued by Communism: a new economic form. During the 19th century, the proletariat was at the mercy of the bourgeoisie for survival. The bourgeoisie imposed conditions that required the proletariat to work under harsh, unsafe, and unhealthy industries. Cities were overcrowded, unsafe, and hazardous due to the many factors including the smoke from the factories that clouded the skies. Earlier, Friederich Engels had described the conditions of the proletariat in the town of Manchester. He saw, “everything which here [aroused] horror and indignation [as] of recent origin which [belonged] to the Industrial Epoch”.1 Not only did the proletariat have to work in unsafe factories but also was doomed to life long misery. Marx and Engels saw both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie as an outgrowth of feudal society. They argued that the bourgeoisie emerged as a result of exploration and discovery of new land, ... ... middle of paper ... ... 8 Hadley Cantril, The Politics of Despair (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1958), 41 9 Bertell Ollman, Alienation: Marx’s Conception of Man in the Capitalist Society (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 131. 10 Neil Harding, “Marx, Engels and the Manifesto: Working Class, Party, and Proletariat.” Journal of Political Ideologies (1998): 13-44 11 Karl Marx and Friederich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (London: England 1848): Proletarians and Communists. 12 Hadley Cantril, The Politics of Despair (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1958), 85-86, 87, 95. 13 Hadley Cantril, The Politics of Despair (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1958), 87 14 Hadley Cantril, The Politics of Despair (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1958), 94 15 Antonio Gilman, “The Communist Manifesto, 150 years later.” Antiquity (1998): 910- 913.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party is well known for its revolutionary zeal, but we often think of the proletariat as the revolutionary force. However, Marx and Engels suggest that the bourgeoisie also came about through revolution. In your own words, explain how the “bourgeoisie played a most revolutionary part.”
In Marx’s opinion, the cause of poverty has always been due to the struggle between social classes, with one class keeping its power by suppressing the other classes. He claims the opposing forces of the Industrial Age are the bourgeois and the proletarians. Marx describes the bourgeois as a middle class drunk on power. The bourgeois are the controllers of industrialization, the owners of the factories that abuse their workers and strip all human dignity away from them for pennies. Industry, Marx says, has made the proletariat working class only a tool for increasing the wealth of the bourgeoisie. Because the aim of the bourgeoisie is to increase their trade and wealth, it is necessary to exploit the worker to maximize profit. This, according to Marx, is why the labor of the proletariat continued to steadily increase while the wages of the proletariat continued to steadily decrease.
The Bourgeoisie were the landowners, employers, and those who received capital in the society. They had other people work under them and controlled labor in order to increase personal capital. “Marx delineates his vision of history, focusing on the development and eventual destruction of the bourgeoisie, the dominant class of his day.”3 The Bourgeoisie came up with the idea to create a new social class known as the Proletariats, which were the laborers for the production of Bourgeoisie industry.
From the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century major historical events such as the Industrial revolution had occurred. During this period of time Europe was switching into an economy that is focused mostly in the industrial field. From this emerged two social-economic classes, the rich bourgeoisie and the poor proletariats. Furthermore tension brewed from the two groups since the bourgeoisie source of wealth was from the exploitation of the proletariats. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ book The Communist Manifesto responded to the situation and created a vision of an equal communist society. The Communist Manifesto was defined by the abolishment of the bourgeois sovereign rule that followed to a revolution against capitalism
The changes which arose by way of the Industrial Revolution had a significant and long-term impact on the economy, the political arena, and society. Because of all the negative changes caused by industrialization and urbanization the Europeans wanted and needed answers on how to deal with these changes. Society was now divided into different classes the upper-middle class (wealthy) and the lower class (working), “Although reform organizations grew rapidly in the 1830s and 1840s, many Europeans found them insufficient to answer the questions raised by industrialization and urbanization” (Hunt 703). The rich was getting richer at the expense of the workers and with the issues and concerns building “New ideologies such as liberalism and socialism offered competing answers to these questions and provided the platform for new political movements” (Hunt 703). The communist wanted the working class to rise, the division of different classes to go away as well as private property, so they wrote a manifesto, The Communist Manifesto (1848) a collaboration between Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels “laid out many of the central principles that would guide Marxist revolution in the future: they insisted that all history is shaped by class struggle” (Hunt 708).
In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx, with the help of Friedrich Engel, advocated for the violent overthrow of capitalism and the creation of a socialist society. According to Marx, “The history of hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (184). Notably, Marx and Engel were the main proponents of communism. Marx’s main argument was that the society is the product of class conflict that results in different social classes with opposing economic interests. Importantly, Marx believed that the society comprised the oppressor and the oppressed, and the two are in constant conflict with each other. The ensuing conflict results in the revolutionary reorganization of the society, or the ruin of the opposing classes. Therefore, Marx, like Kant, saw the institutions of a given society as influential in determining its future. However, Marx argued that traditional institutions were unsuitable for a free and just society that respected human dignity. For example, he saw the modern bourgeoisie society as a product of the “ruins of feudal society,” meaning that the modern society is yet to resolve class antagonisms (184). Indeed, he sees the modern-day social classes as the products of the serfs and burgesses of the middle ages. In this regard, he claimed that the modern social structures are the products of a sequence of revolutions in the systems of production, as well as exchange. However, modern social structures are yet to enhance equity in the society. Therefore, Marx advocated for a revolution that would change the existing social structures and prepare the society to adopt communism. Unlike Kant’s idea of freedom of speech, which is a mind influencing process, Marx seemed more violent by the stating that “let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution”
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels from “Communist League”, a radical workers group, was authorized to produce The Communist Manifesto on behalf of the group. Marx was the author of The Communist Manifesto with Engels as the assistant and editor. The Communist Manifesto was published on February 21, 1848. In the document Marx and Engels argue that struggles between classes and the exploitation between one classes of another, is the force behind historic development, “all history has been a history of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social development,” (Karl Marx). In addition, Marx and Engel’s The Communist Manifesto was greatly influential in the labor movement of the late nineteenth century.
Karl Marx and Fredrick Engel are considered as the most influential figure in the history for the work in preparation of the Communist Manifesto during the revolution period in Europe. The manifesto was an analysis of the emergence of the concept of capitalism and industrial development. The aim of advocating for a communist society was to overthrow capitalism, which was prevalent in Europe, and overthrow it and adopt a communist society. They were right in advocating for a Communist society, a way of assisting and empowering worker to take over enterprises and the reins of the government, which was apparently under the hands of few people who were the owners of the factors of production. Their work was to describe a new society on the basis of their industrial revolution and describe inequality relationship that was prevalent among different social classes .
Frederick Engels, one of the founders of "The Communist Manifesto," stated that "the middle-classes intend in reality nothing else but to enrich themselves by your labour while they can sell its produce, and abandon you to starvation as soon as they cannot make a profit by this indirect trade in human flesh."(107) Engels and Marx were playing to the workers feelings of being used by the bourgeoisie. The d...
According to the humanities based themes, autonomy and responsibility are defined as “the individual person has the ability to make choices; with those choices comes a responsibility for the consequences of those choices.” [i] This can be related to the Communist Manifesto, which was written by Karl Marx in the 1800’s. Even deeper though, it correlates the class struggles that were apparent in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Marx knew there was a division of classes; the bourgeoisie was the wealthy upper class and they proletariats were the lower working classes of Europe. This is where the theme of autonomy and responsibility steps in and plays a role in the changes that were made in society. The proletariats recognized that they were treated unfairly, which led them to the decision of stepping up and taking a stand. Through the Communist Manifesto, they took responsibility and attained the equality they felt they deserved.
Marx and Engels believe that the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the rise of the proletariat will ultimately happen because they view history as a process where one stage creates contradiction out of which a new class rises. Marx and Engels consider that the current contradiction is the class antagonism between two classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; therefore,the currently oppressed class, the proletariat, will eventually make a revolution against the ruling class, the bourgeoisie. However, their argument that the struggle is between two classes is weak. Evidence shows that there are still a large group of people, such as intellectuals and socialist groups, who are not among these two classes, so it is not guaranteed that the proletarian
Marxism is a method of analysis based around the concepts developed by the two German philosophers Karl Marx and Fredrich Engel, centered around the complexities of social-relations and a class-based society. Together, they collaborated their theories to produce such works as The German Ideology (1846) and The Communist Manifesto (1848), and developed the terms ‘’proletariat’ and ’bourgeois’ to describe the working-class and the wealthy, segmenting the difference between their respective social classes. As a result of the apparent differences, Marxism states that proletariats and bourgeoisie are in constant class struggle, working against each other to amount in a gain for themselves.
Marx and his coauthor, 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, in political institutions, in history itself, are driven by a process of 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 masters, serfs against landlords,
The Communist Manifesto is a work that has started a conversation. Before its publication, the poor conditions wage workers face every day at work was not discussed. The poor conditions these
The second section of The Communist Manifesto is the section in which Karl Marx attempts to offer rebuttals to popular criticisms of his theory of governance. These explanations are based upon the supposition that capitalists cannot make informed observations upon communism as they are unable to look past their capitalist upbringing and that capitalists only seek to exploit others. Though the logic behind these suppositions are flawed, Marx does make some valid points concerning the uprising of the proletariat.