The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of
class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, 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, plebeians, 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.
From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers
of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of
the bourgeoisie were developed.
The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up
fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and
Chinese markets, the colonization of America, trade with the
colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities
generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse
never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in
the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.
The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production
was monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer suffices for the
growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its
place. The guild-masters were pushed aside by the manufacturing
middle class; division of labor between the different corporate
guilds vanished in the face of division of labor in each single
workshop.
Meantime, the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising.
Even manufacturers no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and
machinery revolutionized industrial production. The place of
manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of
the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders
of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
Modern industry has established the world market, for which the
discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an
immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by
land. This development has, in turn, reacted on the extension of
industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation,
railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie
developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background
every class handed down from the Middle Ages.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the
product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions
in the modes of production and of exchange.
Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied
by a corresponding political advance in that class. An oppressed
class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and
self-governing association of medieval commune: here independent
urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable "third
estate" of the monarchy (as in France); afterward, in the period of
manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the
absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in
fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general — the
bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry
and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern
representative state, exclusive political sway. The executive of
the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs
of the whole bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary
part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an
end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has
pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to
his "natural superiors", and has left no other nexus between man
and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It
has drowned out the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour,
of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy
water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth
into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible
chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom
— Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious
and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless,
direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation
hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has
converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man
of science, into its paid wage laborers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental
veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money
relation.
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the
brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so
much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful
indolence. It has been the first to show what man's activity can
bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian
pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted
expeditions that put in the shade all former exoduses of nations
and crusades.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing
the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of
production, and with them the whole relations of society.
Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was,
on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier
industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production,
uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting
uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all
earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of
ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all
new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that
is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is
at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of
life and his relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products
chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It
must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections
everywhere.