The majority of people are members of the Proletariat.

For example, if laborers build tables for a bourgeois company, the company will sell the tables for far more than what it paid for the materials and labor. These wages are minimal and aren’t equal to the value of the work laborers produce. The Proletariat is made up of people who sell their labor for wages. None of this is sustainable, and the social conditions the Bourgeoisie have created will lead to their downfall. This class can only maintain its existence by constantly improving production and growing the market, which they do by taking advantage of laborers, finding new markets, and more thoroughly exploiting old markets. The Bourgeoisie employ laborers and own private property and businesses such as factories.

By the time the manifesto was written, however, the multi-class system had narrowed into two main classes-the Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie. Each conflict ended in either change to the social system or ruin for both classes involved in the struggle. For example, serfs struggled against lords. Anyone who wanted to grow or buy food had to serve the lords.Īccording to Marx, all of human history is based in class struggles between oppressors and the oppressed. The lords owned the agricultural land that produced food. For example, in the Middle Ages, in order of least to most powerful, there were serfs, apprentices, journeymen, guild-masters, vassals, and lords. The class that controlled the economy-which, in the earliest times, was mainly the food supply-was the most powerful class. In early human history, there were many different hierarchical classes. This summary is of the 1888 English translation. It was translated into many languages and printed in many editions over the years. Its goal was to explain the beliefs of the Communists and the program of the Communist League. It was commissioned by the “Communist League,” a worker’s party, and written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party, better known as The Communist Manifesto, was originally published in German in 1848. 1-Page Summary 1-Page Book Summary of The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx