The Communist Manifesto · Theme
Critique of Capitalism
How The Communist Manifesto develops Critique of Capitalism.
A thorough critique of the capitalist system, highlighting its creation of commercial crises, exploitation of workers, reduction of human relations to cash payments, and its tendency to concentrate wealth and power in few hands.
Where it surfaces
- I: Bourgeois and Proletarians
The chapter critiques capitalism for reducing all human relations to naked self-interest and cash payment, and for creating conditions that lead to its own downfall.
- II: Proletarians and Communists
Exposes how wage-labor reduces workers to mere instruments for capital accumulation, and how bourgeois freedom and individuality are illusory.
- III: Socialist and Communist Literature
The chapter critiques capitalist society through the lens of various socialist schools, exposing contradictions such as the concentration of capital, overproduction, crises, and the misery of the proletariat.
- Feudal Socialism
Feudal Socialism is critiqued for its hypocritical criticism of capitalism, as its proponents secretly benefit from bourgeois industry.
- Petty-Bourgeois Socialism
Petty-bourgeois socialism dissects the contradictions of modern production, including the disastrous effects of machinery, concentration of capital, overproduction, crises, and inequality.
- 2: Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism
The chapter critiques bourgeois socialism as a reformist attempt to preserve capitalism by addressing only surface-level grievances.
- Endnotes
Defines the bourgeoisie as modern capitalists and employers of wage-labor, and the proletariat as wage-laborers selling their labor-power.