Notes on Marx: Capital, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Principles of Communism, the Communist Manifesto.
A reading involving etymology and translation, as well as the connections between Marx, Engels and Hegel, Spinoza, Bergson and Deleuze.
Brief:
What follows is a condensation of concepts which can be found across the works of Marx, with particular elaboration on the core terms used in the Capital: Critique of the Political Economy - Use-Value, Exchange-Value, Surplus-Value - as well as on the notions which support these concepts, such as ‘labor-time’.
In particular, this last concept will be cross-examined alongside Deleuze's Bergsonism, and Bergson's concept of La Durée from Duration & Simultaneity.
The Values will be elaborated upon using key philosphical influences for Marx, in particular, Hegel and Spinoza. Highlighting their Monist Metaphysics and Dialectical/Absolute Materialist science which has been dealt with especially well by contemporary thinkers such as Deleuze (Spinoza: Practical Philosophy) and Žižek (Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism).
All of this will be continuously tied in with the larger framework of Marx's system and series of texts, which for the most part has been captured beautifully by both Marx and Engels in the famous political document: The Communist Manifesto.
What lacks here, but has been previously touched on in another work, Metaphysical Reification - is a thorough examination into Commodity Fetishism. This will be the next project following what will become a series of Notes on Marx aiming to both condense and summarise the Ouevre of Marx's works with etymological, translation-linguistic, and philosophical detail.
This will be done after our next works on Plato and other thinkers have been completed, we are currently involved in several individual and connected projects at once, all finding their lines of flight and paths of connectivity amongst each other.
The Grandeur de Marx is an unfinished project set out by Deleuze, with little information on the text itself but with plenty of Deleuze to work with, we aim to produce something that we hope can pay tribute proper to this lost future of a world which had this book finished and published. The weight of a proper examination of Marx in the style of a thinker such as Deleuze (in his latest point in life) will take a long time of dedication and work to produce.
I hope this makes a solid beginning (as opposed to a Grundrisse, “shaky ground”) to that journey towards unleashing the Virtual Marx haunting the plane of Deleuze's finishes and unfinished works, as well as igniting a deeply scientific, materialistic, metaphysical, and even theological production of the political philosophy of Marx to a standard that must be demanded of ‘theoretical marxists’ today.
In Marx's first book of his Capital ('Critique of the Political Economy') he begins his analysis on 'the Commodity or Good(s)' (Zur Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie - "Die Ware") where he introduces both Use Value (Gebrauchswerten) and Exchange Value, as well as the concept of Labour-Time (Arbeitszeit).
In the footnotes, Marx writes that these two, first terms can be traced back to Aristotle:
Aristotle, De Republica, L.I, C. “Of everything which we possess there are two uses:... one is the proper, and the other the improper or secondary use of it. For example, a shoe is used for wear, and is used for exchange; both are uses of the shoe. He who gives a shoe in exchange for money or food to him who wants one, does indeed use the shoe as a shoe, but this is not its proper or primary purpose, for a shoe is not made to be an object of barter. The same may be said of all possessions.... ”
In the actual text, Marx even says:
"Use-value as such, since it is independent of the determinate economic form, lies outside the sphere of investigation of political economy."
And in the footnotes:
That is why German compilers write con amore about use-values, calling them “goods". See for example the section on “goods” in I. Stein, System der Staatswissenschaft, Bd. 1. Useful information on “goods” may be found in “manuals dealing with merchandise.”
Here, we are seeing two different translations already for the term used to describe the actual heading or chapter to the opening of Capital itself.
Die Ware.
Which has been translated into both "The Commodity" - by which it is perhaps more famously known, such as the frequent reference to Marx's concept of 'Commodity Fetishism' which appears later in the text - or as "the Goods".
Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels - works, (Karl) Dietz Verlag, Berlin. Volume 13, 7th edition 1971, unchanged reprint of the 1st edition 1961, Berlin/GDR. pp. 15-48
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Written: 1859
Publisher: Progress Publishers, Moscow
First Published:1859
Translated: S.W. Ryazanskaya
On-Line Version: Marx.org 1993 (Preface, 1993), Marxists.org 1999
Transcribed: Tim Delaney, Zodiac;
Proofed: and corrected by Matthew Carmody 2009
One way which we could also translate this term is perhaps (arguably) more smoothly into the Ware(s). This means 'articles offered for sale'. You may recognise this from the phase often spoken by the Khajit traders in skyrim, "Kha'jit has wares if you have coin".
Old English waru ‘commodities’, of Germanic origin, perhaps the same word as Scots ware ‘cautiousness’, and having the primary sense ‘object of care’; related to ware.
Old English wær, from the Germanic base of ware.
This object of care, or Ware, comes from an old Germanic word of the same spelling for Aware. Which is a nounification or objectification or a verb or action. It is the action of being aware (Warren) recognising its object 'of awareness'. The thing one is aware of.
Both awareness and its object collapse into one here.
AWare is a Flatline, an encounter between both Awareness and its object.
This is how the philosopher Deleuze and his metaphysical and scientific influence Henri Bergson refers to the expression 'image', which in their usage refers to both the collections of signs or phenomena, as well as the perceptions of them. Both the thing-being-seen and the thing-seeing.
This dialectic of both object and subject is necessary to understanding the fundamental relationship of the commodity.
That is to say; what gives a commodity its existence or value is the recognition of this value. This will be something Marx derives from his influence Hegel, whom he "materialises" (or better yet, whom he critiques via the 'materialism' of Feuerbach) from his Phenomenologie des Geistes (Phenomenology of Spirit/Mind) in the same way self-consciousness emerges in the conflict between two conscious beings, in the form of a Master and Slave dialectic (Herrschaft und Knechtschaft)
In the Kojevian translation, the key to understanding this dialectic or conflict between conscious being in which self-consciousness emerges is through this term recognition (and just as importantly, but what will not be explored here, desire, which has already been done by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan).
Only by the very fact that two beings must recognise one another when they encounter, must accept or deny the other and their existence or being (Dasein or Sein) and be accepted or denied by the Other.
So, the Commodity, the Good (a far more philosophical term one can trace back to pre-Socratic philosophy, but most importantly in Plato) is the object of care, of awareness, which is conditional on its recognition - on its being recognised - by a subject. By a conscious being. Both the Object and the Subject.
This is why the entire chapter will focus on these two opening terms produced by Marx which we will now return to: Use Value and Exchange Value.
"The wealth of bourgeois society, at first sight, presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities, its unit being a single commodity. Every commodity, however, has a twofold aspect – use-value and exchange-value."
What Marx says directly after will explain a little further the exploration we have just done in both etymology and in dialectical analysis:
To begin with, a commodity, in the language of the English economists, is “any thing necessary, useful or pleasant in life,” an object of human wants, a means of existence in the widest sense of the term. Use-value as an aspect of the commodity coincides with the physical palpable existence of the commodity. Wheat, for example, is a distinct use-value differing from the use-values of cotton, glass, paper, etc. A use-value has value only in use, and is realized only in the process of consumption. One and the same use-value can be used in various ways. But the extent of its possible application is limited by its existence as an object with distinct properties. It is, moreover, determined not only qualitatively but also quantitatively. Different use-values have different measures appropriate to their physical characteristics; for example, a bushel of wheat, a quire of paper, a yard of linen."
" [...] It belongs in this sphere only when it is itself a determinate form. Use-value is the immediate physical entity in which a definite economic relationship – exchange-value – is expressed."
To follow on, Marx then elaborates on this second term, exchange value:
"Exchange-value seems at first to be a quantitative relation, the proportion in which use-values are exchanged for one another. In this relation they constitute equal exchangeable magnitudes. Thus one volume of Propertius and eight ounces of snuff may have the same exchange-value, despite the dissimilar use-values of snuff and elegies. Considered as exchange-value, one use-value is worth just as much as another, provided the two are available in the appropriate proportion. The exchange-value of a palace can be expressed in a definite number of tins of boot polish. London manufacturers of boot polish, on the other hand, have expressed the exchange-value of their numerous tins of polish in terms of palaces. Quite irrespective, therefore, of their natural form of existence, and without regard to the specific character of the needs they satisfy as use-values, commodities in definite quantities are congruent, they take one another’s place in the exchange process, are regarded as equivalents, and despite their motley appearance have a common denominator.
Use-values serve directly as means of existence. But, on the other hand, these means of existence are themselves the products of social activity, the result of expended human energy, materialized labour. As objectification of social labour, all commodities are crystallisations of the same substance. The specific character of this substance, i.e., of labour which is embodied in exchange-value, has now to be examined."
Here, we can briefly mention also the deeply Spinozan aspect of Marx's Dialectical Materialism, which influenced Hegel entirely, through this very final statement that "all commodities are crystallisations of the same substance. The specific character of this substance, i.e., of labour which is embodied in exchange-value, has now to be examined." -
The Spinozism of this particularly lies in the notion of a same substance by which all things are connected, this is called Monism. All is one or connected to/by the One. And this oneness/substance having different, "specific character" - an expression (Expressionism, Deleuze).
Spinoza in his Ethics demonstrated that this single substance (God or Nature, "Deus Sive Natura") can be split into two different categories: Thought and Extension (Attribute Dualism) which themselves can be further divided into smaller, more specific categories.
Such as Mode, Shape, Colour et cetera.
Deleuze, in his Spinoza: Practical Philosophy makes this very case for the materialism of Spinoza's Metaphysics. Today, Spinozan-Marxism is not only belonging to so-called Deleuzians, but to Marxists themselves, in the same way one would say Hegelian-Marxists.
There is much to learn from the connections which can be drawn by the texts of these thinkers in dualistic, parallel fashion. On how one influences the other, or allows for a different or perhaps more nuanced reading.
This is materialism as understood that all things are connected, or interdependent.
This is also the materialism of the Buddha (sometimes particularly spoken about by Marxist-Buddhists) in one his first teachings at the Deer Park Sermon (dhammacakkapavvatanna sutta) which is known as 'pratityasamutpada' or dependent origination.
Thich Nhat Hanh has often translated this into interbeing. But it is the basic teaching from the dhamma of the connectedness of all things.
"So this is, so that is too." - "if this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist".
The fundamental nature of causality and effectivity amongst all things which can be said to exist, all things are connected. The origination of one thing is always dependent on another.
Use-Value then is this Spinozan Substance, this Nature which "serve[s] directly as means of existence" but which takes various, different forms - in Spinozan terms, the affects which collide with the body (Marx uses the term consumption to describe this process) which bring Joy (Ethics, Spinoza). x
Exchange-value however is the
"quantitative relation, the proportion in which use-values are exchanged for one another [...]
Considered as exchange-value, one use-value is worth just as much as another, provided the two are available in the appropriate proportion. The exchange-value of a palace can be expressed in a definite number of tins of boot polish. London manufacturers of boot polish, on the other hand, have expressed the exchange-value of their numerous tins of polish in terms of palaces.
Quite irrespective, therefore, of their natural form of existence, and without regard to the specific character of the needs they satisfy as use-values, commodities in definite quantities are congruent, they take one another’s place in the exchange process, are regarded as equivalents, and despite their motley appearance have a common denominator.
The Spinozism of Marx here is that Exchange Value is simply the way in which different Use Values are made equivalent to one another. These values are garnered in the commodity through the process of labour.
If the commodity is say fruit, then its value comes not only from its usefulness or utility to serve a need, such as its ability to sustain life or produce pleasure in its consumer (regardless of the quality of consumption, the existence of use is conditional on the fact that it can indeed be consumed, the systems which measure the 'quality' of this consumption is something which we call economy) but from the labour which goes into the production of this fruit. Be it the labour of its seed being planted, soil being nourished, and growth being nurtured by water and sunlight. Or, its being plucked from the ground or picked from the vine, bush, or tree.
All of this is the labour(-time) which goes into the production and consumption of the fruit. Which is our example of the Ware here.
Labour Time then reciprocally, as Marx goes on to explain, gains its value from the commodity itself when exchanged amongst other commodities. When fruit is traded amongst fruit. Labour is traded for commodity.
This abstract plane of trade we call the 'Market' (or the plane of equivalence which we call Economy) and the ability to trade openly is called 'Free'.
The value of the product of labour ultimately gives the labour its value in return; when someone plucks bananas all-day from a tree, their labour is as valuable as the bananas plucked.
We know however this is not the case as represented by the system of Capital (Capitalism) or of the Political Economy by which the book by Marx is considered a critique of.
A worker is not given the value of their labour as defined by the value of the use of this labour in the commodity. But is granted by the Wage Market. Which is managed by the capitalist class to offer the lowest possible living wage possible to the workers, in order to maximise the profits garnered from selling commodities.
Capitalists can do this because they own the means of production. By creating a distinction between class: the Proletariat, the worker who must work to survive and owns no private property, and the Bourgeoisie, who owns private property or means of production and typically employs workers to produce a profit for himself.
In this way,
"On the basis of political economy itself, in its own words, we have shown that the worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities[.]" (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844).
This previous text by marks lays out this relationship between worker and capitalist more clearly:
"It goes without saying that the proletarian, i.e., the man who, being without capital and rent, lives purely by labor, and by a one-sided, abstract labor, is considered by political economy only as a worker. Political economy can therefore advance the proposition that the proletarian, the same as any horse, must get as much as will enable him to work. It does not consider him when he is not working, as a human being; but leaves such consideration to criminal law, to doctors, to religion, to the statistical tables, to politics and to the poor-house overseer.
The worker has to struggle not only for his physical means of subsistence; he has to struggle to get work, i.e., the possibility, the means, to perform his activity
The lowest and the only necessary wage rate is that providing for the subsistence of the worker for the duration of his work and as much more as is necessary for him to support a family and for the race of laborers not to die out. The ordinary wage, according to Smith, is the lowest compatible with common humanity, that is, with cattle-like existence.
The political economist tells us that everything is bought with labor and that capital is nothing but accumulated labor; but at the same time he tells us that the worker, far from being able to buy everything, must sell himself and his humanity."
–
The fact that we ‘forget’ (one must be concerned here with Ideology and Power more so than psychology) that the value of a commodity, such as an apple, is composed not only of its ability to nourish, nor its flavour (its qualities) but also of the labour which goes into it, and the fact that under capitalism this same labour is granted less reward or value than of its own product, that the worker who produced the apple is paid less then the value of the apple itself, Marx calls Commodity Fetishism.
We will delve further into Commodity Fetishism next time.
What we will say here for now however, is that within Capital, Marx specifically refers to the labour which goes into the Commodity, labour-time, 'Arbeitszeit', since all labour requires time. And is time - or more precisely - has Duration(s).
One could say the labour gone into the production of the apple, is the same as the time which has been placed into the apple.
Bergson across his oeuvre, but most importantly his Duration and Simultaneity, specifically refers to this time which is qualitative in nature, as 'Duration' (La Durée), Deleuze's Bergsonism will delve into both Marx and Bergson in further detail on this specific (as well as other) point(s).
So, ultimately, the value of labour which is decided amongst political economists in the form of the wage, is literally the assigned value of time based upon the nature (or essence) of the labour being performed in that time.
Typically, of every hour, or, across a year. Which today we recognise as hourly wage and annum/annual salary respectively.
However, this measured quality of the labour and its value within the time it is performed is not the full value garnered by the objects or commodities which had been produced in this process, but is an arbitrarily allocated value by the capitalist or bourgeoisie who pays their workers (and the systems surrounded them which concern minimum wage and the market) designed to be the "the lowest and the only necessary wage rate is that providing for the subsistence of the worker for the duration of his work and as much more as is necessary for him to support a family and for the race of laborers not to die out. The ordinary wage, according to Smith, is the lowest compatible with common humanity, that is, with cattle-like existence." (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts)
The reason for this is elaborated on much further in the Capital, in the section on 'The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value', let us quickly remind ourselves that this surplus value is what we call profit. It is the value remaining or leftover when the wage or costs is taken from the money created by sale. It is 'surplus' by the very nature that somehow the process of labour has created more value than the object of the labour, and of the labour itself. But it can be briefly summarised as this:
"As a capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one sole driving force, the drive to valorize itself, to create surplus-value, to make its constant part, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus labour.
Let us read this section from the Capital in detail.
"The worker needs to satisfy his intellectual and social requirements, and the extent and the number of these requirements is conditioned by the general level of civilization.
The length of the working day therefore fluctuates within boundaries both physical and social. But these limiting conditions ate of a very elastic nature, and allow a tremendous amount of latitude.
So we find working days of many different lengths, of 8, 10, 12, 14, 1 6 and 18 hours.
The capital has bought the labour-power at its daily value.
The use-value of the labour-power belongs to him throughout one working day. He has thus acquired the right to make the labourer work for him during one day. But, what is a working day? - At all events, it is less than a natural day. How much less? The capitalist has his own views of this point of no return, the necessary limit of the working day. As a capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one sole driving force, the drive to valorize itself, to create surplus-value, to make its constant part, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus labour. Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the worker works is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has bought from him. If the worker consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist.
The capitalist therefore takes his stand on the law of commodity exchange. Like all other buyers, he seeks to extract the maximum possible benefit from the use-value of his commodity. Suddenly, however, there arises the voice of the worker, which had previously been stifled in the sound and fury of the production process:
'The commodity I have sold you differs from the ordinary crowd of commodities in that its use creates value, a greater value than it costs. That is why you bought it. What appears on your side as the valorization of capital is on my side an excess expenditure of labour-power. You and I know on the market only one Iaw, that of the exchange of commodities. And the consumption of the commodity belongs not to the seller who parts with it, but to the buyer who acquires it. The use of my daily labour-power therefore belongs to you. But by means of the price you pay for it every day, I must be able to reproduce it every day, thus allowing myself to sell it again. Apart from natural deterioration through age etc., I must be able to work tomorrow with the same normal amount of strength, health and freshness as today. You are constantly preaching to me the gospel of "saving " and "abstinence ".
Very well! Like a sensible, thrifty owner of property I will husband my sole wealth, my labour-power, and abstain from wasting it foolishly. Every day I will spend, set in motion, transferring to labour only as much of it as is compatible with its normal duration and healthy development. By an unlimited extension of the working day, you may in one day use up a quantity of labour-power greater than I can restore in three. What you gain in labour, I lose in the substance of labour. Using my labour and despoiling it are quite different things. If the average length of time an average worker can live (while doing a reasonable amount of work) is 30 years, the value of my labour-power, which you pay me from day to day is 1/(365×30) or 1/10950 of its total value. But if you consume it in 10 years, you pay me daily 1/10950 instead of 1/3650 of its total value, i.e., only 1/3 of its daily value, and you rob me, therefore, every day of 2/3 of the value of my commodity.
You pay me for one day’s labour-power, whilst you use that of 3 days. That is against our contract and the law of exchanges. You therefore rob me every day of two-thirds of the value of my commodity. You pay me for one day's labour-power, while you use three days of it. That is against our contract and the law of commodity exchange. I therefore demand a working day of normal length, and I demand it without any appeal to your heart, for in money matters sentiment is out of place. You may be a model citizen, perhaps a member of the R.S.P.C.A., and you may be in the odour of sanctity as well; but the thing you represent when you come face to face with me has no heart in its breast. What seems to throb there is my own heartbeat. I demand a normal working day because, like every other seller, I demand the value of my commodity.'
What is said here by Marx?
Something quite simple.
Wages are the value given to time. The time of the labourer. A worker who makes £7 an hour is deemed to have their time worth indeed only £7 per hour. Their hours, whether it be 1 or 8, are marked and capped at £7 each.
Who decides this?
The capitalist. Who aims to create as much profit as possible, and treat the worker as a simple machine, who need only the money to live like cattle.
What should we demand today?
The full value of time. The full value of the day.
Why is it that the political economy is founded on the very notion that time can be valued, and furthermore, that it must be valued so low.
£7? A pittance. A single slice of steak would often go for £7. How can a whole hour of time for someone be worth only merely a simple slice of steak? The labourer who produced this steak would have had to produce more than tenfold this in the hour it took, and would have only received the wage to purchase himself only one. Only one of the several he had himself produced.
This is the fundamental problem which Marx foresaw and describes to us in detail across his works. That the value of time and of wage labour is managed by a class of barbaric, apathetic, narcissistic hoarders.
"Vampires"- who consume our flesh, energy and time for profit.
In the political documents written by Marx and Engels, the tasks at hand based on these premises are clearly drawn for us:
Friedrich Engels, Principles of Communism:
"— 1 —
What is Communism?
Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.
— 2 —
What is the proletariat?
The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor – hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition. The proletariat, or the class of proletarians, is, in a word, the working class of the 19th century.
[...]
— 13 —
What follows from these periodic commercial crises?
First:
That, though big industry in its earliest stage created free competition, it has now outgrown free competition;
that, for big industry, competition and generally the individualistic organization of production have become a fetter which it must and will shatter;
that, so long as big industry remains on its present footing, it can be maintained only at the cost of general chaos every seven years, each time threatening the whole of civilization and not only plunging the proletarians into misery but also ruining large sections of the bourgeoisie;
hence, either that big industry must itself be given up, which is an absolute impossibility, or that it makes unavoidably necessary an entirely new organization of society in which production is no longer directed by mutually competing individual industrialists but rather by the whole society operating according to a definite plan and taking account of the needs of all.
Second: That big industry, and the limitless expansion of production which it makes possible, bring within the range of feasibility a social order in which so much is produced that every member of society will be in a position to exercise and develop all his powers and faculties in complete freedom.
It thus appears that the very qualities of big industry which, in our present-day society, produce misery and crises are those which, in a different form of society, will abolish this misery and these catastrophic depressions.
We see with the greatest clarity:
(i) That all these evils are from now on to be ascribed solely to a social order which no longer corresponds to the requirements of the real situation; and
(ii) That it is possible, through a new social order, to do away with these evils altogether.
— 14 —
What will this new social order have to be like?
Above all, it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole – that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society.
It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with association.
Moreover, since the management of industry by individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods.
In fact, the abolition of private property is, doubtless, the shortest and most significant way to characterize the revolution in the whole social order which has been made necessary by the development of industry – and for this reason it is rightly advanced by communists as their main demand."
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
"Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of machinery, etc.
At this stage, the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie. But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating.
The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots. Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years. This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried.
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-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, 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.
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
("Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt euch!”)
“Workers of the World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!”
[This is a popularisation of the last three sentences, and is not found in any official translation. Since this English translation was approved by Engels, we have kept the original intact.]