Workmen's advocate., 1890-06-14

BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS. (a)
languages

BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS. (a) The history of all hitherto existing society (b) is the history of class strug- gles.
 Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master (c) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant oppo, stion to one another, carried on an un- interrupted, now hidden, now open fight, that each time ended, either in revolutionary re-constitutlon of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
 In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere complicated arrangement of society into various orders, manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have pa. tricians, knights, plebeiars, slaves; in the middle ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs;
  ordinate gradations.
 The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal so- ciety, has not done away with class an- tagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
 Our epoch, the epoch of the bour- geoisie, possesses, however, this dis tinctive feature; it has simplitied the class antagonisms. Society as whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bour- geoisie and Proletariat.
 From the serfs of the middle ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.
 The discovery of America, the round ing of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East Indian and Chinese markets, the coloni- zation of America, trade with the colo
 
 change and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to in- dustry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary ele- ment in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.
 The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production was monop- olized by close guilds, now no longer sutficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing sys- tenn took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manu- featuring middle class; division of labor between the different corporate guilds ta) By bourgeoisie is meant the class of | modern Capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor l By proletariat. the class of modern wage-labor- CTS who, having no means of production of their own are reduced 10 selling their labor power in orde to live.
 tb) I hat is, all WRITTEN history. In 1sf7, the pre-hist " of society, the social organization i existing previous to recorded history. was all but unknown. Since then, HaxthauSen dis covered common ownership of land in Russia, Maurer proved 1t to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in his tory, and by and by village commun ties were found to be, or to have been the primitive form | of society everywhere from India to Ireland. | The inner organization of this primitive Com munstic society was laid bare, in its typical i form, by Morgans cruwning discovery of the true nature of the sENs and its relation to the TRIBE With the dissolution of these primeval communities society begins to be differentiated l into Separat and finally antagonisfic classes. 1 have attempted to retrace this process of dis i solution i'll; Der Ursprung der Famle deS l Private genthums und des staats,H 2nd edit, 1 Stuttgart lss6
 | te) Guildmaster, that is full member of a 1 guild, master within, not a head of guild.