they are fettered, and no sooner do they overcome these fetters than
they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger
the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois
society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how
does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by
enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other,
by the conquest of new markets and by the more thorough exploitation
of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more
extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means
whereby crises are prevented.

  The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the
ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

  But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death
to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to
wield those weapons- the modern working class, the proletarians.

  In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in
the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class,
developed- a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find
work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases
capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a
commodity like every other article of commerce, and are consequently
exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the
fluctuations of the market.

  Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to 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 his 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 increase of the work exacted in a given time, or by increased speed
of the machinery, etc.

  Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal
master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses
of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers.
As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command
of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they
slaves of the bourgeois class and of the bourgeois state; they are
daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overseer, and,
above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The
more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the
more petty, the more hateful, and the more embittering it is.

  The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual
labour- in other words, the more modern industry develops- the more is
the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age
and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working
class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use,
according to their age and sex.

  No sooner has the labourer received his wages in cash, for the
moment escaping exploitation by the manufacturer, than he is set
upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie- the landlord, the
shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.

  The lower strata of the middle class- the small tradespeople,
shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and
peasants- all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly
because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on
which modern industry is carried on and is swamped in the
competition with the large capitalists, partly because their
specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of
production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of
the population.

  The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its
birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest
is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a
factory, then by the operatives of one trade, in one locality, against
the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their
attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but
against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy
imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash machinery to
pieces, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the
vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.

  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, still able to do so for a time. 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 bourgeoisie.
Thus the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the
bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the
bourgeoisie.