Workmen's advocate., 1890-06-21
MANIFESTO
 OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY
BY KARL MARX & FREDERICK ENGELS,
AUTHORIZED ENGLISH EDITION, EDITED AND ANNOTATED BY FREDERICK ENGELs.
(Cont

fore our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, Of exchange, and of property, society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the neither world whom he has called up by his spells. For many decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern con- ditions of production, against the prop erty relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodi- cal return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the bourgeois society. In these crises a great part not only of the existing pro- ducts, but also of the previously created productive forces, is periodically de- stroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurd ity-the epidemic of overproduction. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; 1t appears as if famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the SUD- ply of every means of subsistence; in- dustry and commerce seem to be de- stroyed; and why? because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the con- ditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary they have become too power- full for these conditions by which they are fettered, and so soon as they over- come these letters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, en- danger the existence of bourgeois prop erty. The conditions of bourgeois so. ciety 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 destruc- ton of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new mar kets, and by the more thorough exploi- tation of the old ones That is to say. by paving the way for more extensive and more dest1uc crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.
 The weapons with which the bour- geoisie 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 weap. ons-the modern working class-the proletarians.
 In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i G.. capital is developed, in the same pro- portion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed; a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital. These laborers, who must sell themselves plecemeal, are commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are con- sequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.
 Owing to the extensive use of machin. cry and to division of labor, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an ap- bondage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is re- quired of him. Hence, the cost of pro- duction of a workman is restricted almost entirely to the means of -sub sistence that he requires for his main tenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity. and therefore also of labor, is equal to It's 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 labor in- creases, in the same proportion the bur- den of toll 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 ma- chinery, etc.
 Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal mas ter into the great factory of the in- dustriai capitalist. Masses of laborers. crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the in- dustrial army they are placed under the command of perfect hierarchy of off cers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State, they are daily and