Summary: The Communist Manifesto

At the time when Marx and Engels were writing this Manifesto, various communist parties across Europe were emerging as significant political forces, alarming both rulers and the Pope: A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism. ¹.

Through this work, Marx and Engels sought to define the origins and aims of this burgeoning political movement.

The foundation of communism is encapsulated in this famous phrase:

The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles ².

This process silently drives the historical events shaping a civilisation, regardless of time or place. For instance, in ancient Rome, it was the conflict between patricians and plebeians; in the Middle Ages, between serfs and lords; and today, between bourgeois and proletarians.

The bourgeois are those who own the means of production—factories, machines, and so on—and lease them to the proletarians. The proletarians, in turn, do not own these means of production but operate them, ultimately returning a significant portion of the value of their labour to the bourgeoisie.

The class struggle was not abolished by the French Revolution of 1789 or by the dismantling of feudal privileges—those held by the nobility and clergy over the Third Estate. Rather, the revolution merely elevated the bourgeois class to power: It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones ³.

Historically, the bourgeois are the descendants of serfs who settled in towns (bourgs) and gradually accumulated wealth through crafts or trade.

The rise of the bourgeoisie as a class, which eventually supplanted the nobility, was driven by the opening of new markets, such as the discovery of lands like America, the development of systems of exchange, and the growth of industry.

The expansion of new markets created demands that the feudal or corporate modes of industry could no longer satisfy. This transition led to the adoption of new modes of production, such as factories, which themselves eventually became inadequate. With the advent of the steam engine, large-scale modern industry emerged to meet these demands, resulting in the creation of a world market that dramatically accelerated the development of trade, navigation, and communication routes ⁴.

The bourgeoisie is therefore the product of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and exchange. In their hands, political power becomes nothing more than a committee tasked with managing the common affairs of the entire bourgeois class ⁵.

It would be wrong to oppose revolutionaries and the bourgeoisie. In fact, the bourgeoisie has played an eminently revolutionary role ⁶ in history by overthrowing the feudal power that originated in the Middle Ages. It replaced all the feudal values that had prevailed for centuries with new ones:

It drowned the sacred thrills of religious ecstasy, of chivalric enthusiasm [...] in the icy waters of selfish calculation ⁷.

Even freedom has taken on a new meaning: From the countless liberties so dearly won [...], it has substituted the single, ruthless freedom of commerce ⁸.

The many achievements of the bourgeois class—such as the development of the means of exchange and transport—are undeniably impressive. It was the first to demonstrate the full potential of human ingenuity.

Above all, what makes the bourgeoisie revolutionary in essence is its embrace of change and perpetual innovation as its modus operandi:It cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and therefore the relations of production. ⁹ By contrast, the feudal nobility was defined by stability and the absence of evolution, which allowed it to endure throughout the Middle Ages.

¹ Manifeste du parti communiste, Librio, Paris, 2002, trad. L. Lafargue, p.1
² p.26
³ p.27
⁴ p.28
⁵ p.29
⁶ ibid.
⁷ ibid.
⁸ ibid.
⁹ p.30