Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels February 1848

Bourgeois & Proletarians:class struggle

• Class struggle shapes history, as it always has• Although all previous historical periods featured social divisions

between ruling and subordinate orders, the capitalist mode of production simplifies class divisions into "two hostile camps": • a ruling class that owns the means of production (bourgeoisie) • a subordinate class (proletariat) that lacks the means of production

and the ability to sustain itself without selling its labor power to the ruling class

• Simplified class divisions sharpen class consciousness

Bourgeois & Proletarians:economics and politics

• As the bourgeoisie advanced economically, it also advanced politically

• "The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” (55)• Government represents the interests of the ruling class,

regardless of its claims to act in the general interest• To simplify: economic relations politics

secularization, globalization, urbanization

• Capitalism promotes secularization and materialism:• All previous social bonds – to family, religion, nation, tradition,

etc. – are replaced by the “cold cash nexus"• Capitalism promotes globalization: • "The need of a constantly expanding market for its products

chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe."• Capitalism promotes urbanization:• Forces people to leave rural areas and look for work as wage

laborers in cities • "The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the

towns."

Crisis

• Due to its inherent contradictions, capitalism is prone to periodic crises, each one more threatening to the system than the last

• There develops an "epidemic of over-production," a glut of commodities that no one buys

Over-production of oranges, Hapolis, Brazil

Bourgeois & Proletarians:proletarianization

• Workers who must sell their labor in the market become just another commodity

• As the use of machines and the division of labor intensifies, work loses all individual character and charm for the worker• “He becomes an appendage of the machine…”

• The industrial factory comes to be organized more and more despotically, in an almost military fashion

• The lower strata of the middle class sink gradually into the proletariat, due to relative lack of investment capital and

de-skilling (deterioration of specialized skills)

Stencil graffiti expresses themes found in Marx’s writings

Capital Karl Marx1867

Capitalism is a system of commodity production

• In a capitalist system, producers do not simply produce for their own needs, or only for the needs of individuals with whom they are in personal contact – capitalism involves a nation-wide, or international exchange-market

Commodities

• Commodity: “A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another”

• All commodities have the common quality of being products of labor

• All commodities have a two-fold character: a use value and an exchange value

Use value and exchange value

• The utility of a thing is its use-value• an object can have use value whether or not it is a commodity, but to

be a commodity it must also have exchange value • Use value is realized only in process of consumption• Use values, which occur in all societies, are determined by their

physical properties in relation to human needs – clothing keeps one warm, bricks provide shelter

• Exchange value refers to the value a product has when offered in exchange for other products in market transactions• exchange value presupposes "a definite economic relation," and only

has meaning in reference to commodities, or the equivalent in money

Capitalism and the Fetishism of Commodities

• Fetishism is the belief that natural objects have supernatural powers, or that something created by people has power over people

• As labor increasingly becomes an abstraction in the capitalist system of production, we come to forget the human social relations behind the products of labor, even though the products were created by people

Commodity fetishism

• To producers “the relations connecting the labor of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are, material relations between persons and social relations between things”

• “It is value, rather, that converts every product into a social hieroglyphic…it is just as much a social product as language”