这是宣言的第一章，讲述了资产阶级和无产阶级。

马克思认为，所有现存社会的历史都是阶级斗争的历史，如，自由人和奴隶之间的斗争，权贵和平民的斗争，地主和农奴的斗争，总之，是压迫者和被压迫者的斗争。这些斗争的结果，有的导致革命并重建了社会，有的是玉石俱焚。资产阶级的社会萌生于封建社会的崩塌毁灭，但，并没有摆脱阶级斗争，而是形成了资产阶级和无产阶级的对立。

从中世纪起，出现了资产阶级的原始元素。发现美洲大陆让这资产阶级崛起。东印度市场和中国市场以及美洲的殖民导致货物交换的增加，从而形成了商贸、航海和工业，也产生了动摇封建社会的革命因素。

我认为马克思说得很有道理，美国的独立战争就是因为经济上的问题而引发的，从而使美国摆脱了英国封建社会的管束。

工业的封建系统被与世隔绝的领导层所垄断，不能满足日益增长中的市场的需求。蒸汽机和机器产生工业生产的革命，产生了现代工业和现代资产阶级。现代工业带动资本的增加以及生产和交易的革命性的发展。这些发展的每一步都伴随着资产阶级在政治上的进步。从历史的角度上讲，资产阶级扮演着革命的角色，每到之处，都结束封建、权贵的关系，无意中建立起自由，即，贸易自由。为了这自由的商业开发，可以蒙上任何宗教和政治外衣进行欺骗，可以是赤裸、无羞耻，也可以是野蛮的开发。资产阶级把医生、律师、牧师、诗人、科学家都变成领工资的劳工，对生产的工具进行不断的更新，否则，就不能生存。

资产阶级用廉价的商品作糖衣炮弹攻破了中国的壁垒，以此让那些仇恨洋人的野蛮人（中国人）屈服，让所有的国家都采用资产阶级的生产方式。

资产阶级建造了众多的城市，使得整个国家依存于城市；野蛮依附于文明；东方依附于西方。

我们看到，资产阶级赖以为基础的生产和交易的手段产生于封建社会，当封建社会不再适合生产力发展的需要的时候，封建社会就必须要土崩瓦解了，从此进入由资产阶级统治的一个自由竞争的社会，并有相应的立法。

资本的发展，无产阶级伴随壮大。小商贩们、店主、退休的生意人、手工艺者、农民因为无足够的资本开办工厂而沦为无产阶级，甚至，破产的资本家也成为了无产阶级的一员。总之，无产阶级的成分来自于人口的各个阶层。

无产阶级从出现的开始就同资产阶级进行斗争，原先是个别劳工，然后是某工厂的工人们，对抗着雇佣他们的资产阶级。他们的对抗不是直接针对资产阶级，而是对抗生产工具，将机器捣毁和炸掉工厂，企图回到中世纪的工人状态。

随着工业的发展，无产阶级壮大，导致劳工间出现竞争，工资下降。为维保自身利益，劳工们形成联盟，维护工资数额。无产阶级形成一个阶级，最后成为一政党，利用资产阶级之间的分歧矛盾进行立法，保护工人的利益，如，在英国建立了10小时工作制。随着发展，同外国资本竞争激烈，资本家求助于无产阶级，于是，统治阶层向无产阶级的利益倾斜。

在对抗资产阶级的所有阶级中，无产阶级是真正地革命的阶级。那些下中等阶级（等同于贫下中农）、小的制造商、店主、手艺人、农民虽然也对抗资产阶级，但是，那是为了自身不被灭亡，因此，不是革命的，而是保守的，而且是反动的，他们企图要历史的车轮倒转。如果这些人革命，那么这些人一定要先成为无产阶级。

无产阶级没有财产，对资本的屈从让他们都失去了每个民族的痕迹。

总结一下，在这个篇章里，马克思阐明了资产阶级和无产阶级的起源和关系，指出了知识分子是工人阶级的一部分，并指出农民阶级的反动性捍卫资产阶级的进步性。资产阶级产生于封建的时代，最后由于资本的发展，封建的体系被打破，形成包罗万象的自由，包括可以无任何廉耻的自由，这正是目前西方各国嘴脸的写照。

原文【I.  BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS

The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history

of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf,

guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed,

stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an

uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time

ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at

large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a

complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a

manifold gradation of social rank.  In ancient Rome we have

patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages,

feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices,

serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate

gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins

of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms.  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 bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive

feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a

whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps,

into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie

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 rounding of the Cape, opened up

fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and

Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with

the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in

commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to

industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the

revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid

development.

The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production

was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the

growing wants of the new markets.  The manufacturing system took

its place.  The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the

manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the

different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of

labour in each single workshop.

Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising.

Even manufacture no longer sufficed.  Thereupon, steam and

machinery revolutionised industrial production.  The place of

manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place of

the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the

leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

Modern industry has established the world-market, for which the

discovery of America paved the way.  This market has given an

immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication

by land.  This development has, in its time, reacted on the

extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce,

navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the

bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the

background  every class handed down from the Middle Ages.

We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the

product of a long course of development, of a series of

revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied

by a corresponding political advance of that class.  An

oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an

armed and self-governing association in the mediaeval commune;

here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany),

there taxable "third estate" of the monarchy (as in France),

afterwards, in the  period of manufacture proper, serving either

the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise

against the nobility, and, in fact, corner-stone of the great

monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the

establishment of Modern Industry and of the world-market,

conquered for itself, in the modern representative State,

exclusive political sway.  The executive of the modern State is

but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole

bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary

part.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an

end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations.  It has

pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to

his "natural superiors," and has left remaining no other nexus

between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash

payment."  It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of

religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine

sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation.  It

has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of

the numberless and indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that

single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade.  In one word, for

exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, naked,

shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation

hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe.  It has

converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the

man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental

veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money

relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the

brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists

so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful

indolence.  It has been the first to show what man's activity can

bring about.  It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian

pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has

conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses

of nations and crusades

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising

the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of

production, and with them the whole relations of society.

Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form,

was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all

earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of

production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions,

everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois

epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations,

with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and

opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated

before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all

that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face

with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his

relations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products

chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It

must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions

everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market

given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in

every country.  To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has

drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on

which it stood.  All old-established national industries have

been destroyed or are daily being destroyed.  They are dislodged

by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death

question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer

work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the

remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only

at home, but in every quarter of the globe.  In place of the old

wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new

wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant

lands and climes.  In place of the old local and national

seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every

direction, universal inter-dependence of nations.  And as in

material, so also in intellectual production.  The intellectual

creations of individual nations become common property.  National

one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more

impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures,

there arises a world literature.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of

production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication,

draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation.

The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with

which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the

barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to

capitulate.  It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to

adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to

introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to

become bourgeois themselves.  In one word, it creates a world

after its own image.

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the

towns.  It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the

urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued

a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural

life.  Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so

it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on

the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois,

the East on the West.

The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the

scattered state of the population, of the means of production,

and of property.  It has agglomerated production, and has

concentrated property in a few hands.  The necessary consequence

of this was political centralisation.  Independent, or but

loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws,

governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into

one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national

class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff.  The

bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has

created more massive and more colossal productive forces than

have all preceding generations together.  Subjection of Nature's

forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry

and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs,

clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of

rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground—what

earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive

forces slumbered in the lap of social labour

We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose

foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in

feudal society.  At a certain stage in the development of these

means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which

feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of

agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal

relations of property became no longer compatible with the

already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters.

They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.

Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a

social and political constitution adapted to it, and by the

economical and political sway of the bourgeois class.

A similar movement is going on before our own eyes.  Modern

bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange

and of property, a 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 nether world whom he

has called up by his spells.  For many a decade past the history

of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of

modern productive forces against modern conditions of production,

against the property 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 periodical return put

on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the

entire bourgeois society.  In these crises a great part not only

of the existing products, but also of the previously created

productive forces, are periodically destroyed.  In these crises

there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would

have seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of over-production.

Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary

barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of

devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence;

industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why?  Because

there is too much civilisation, 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 conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they

have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are

fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, 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 inforced 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

piece-meal, 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

organised 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 over-looker, 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 becomes

developed, 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 is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer,

so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, 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, 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 the 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 to pieces machinery, 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 yet, for a time, able to do so.  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.

But with the development of industry the proletariat not only

increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses,

its strength grows, and it feels that strength more.  The various

interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the

proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as

machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly

everywhere reduces wages to the same low level.  The growing

competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial

crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating.  The

unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing,

makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions

between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and

more the character of collisions between two classes.  Thereupon

the workers begin to form combinations (Trades Unions) against

the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of

wages; they found permanent associations in order to make

provision beforehand for these occasional revolts.  Here and

there the contest breaks out into riots.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time.

The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate

result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers.  This

union is helped on by the improved means of communication that

are created by modern industry and that place the workers of

different localities in contact with one another.  It was just

this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local

struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle

between classes.  But every class struggle is a political

struggle.  And that union, to attain which the burghers of the

Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries,

the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few

years.

This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and

consequently into a political party, is continually being upset

again by the competition between the workers themselves.  But it

ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier.  It compels

legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers,

by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie

itself.  Thus the ten-hours' bill in England was carried.

Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society

further, in many ways, the course of development of the

proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant

battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those

portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become

antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the

bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles it sees

itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for its

help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The

bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its

own instruments of political and general education, in other

words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting

the bourgeoisie.

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling

classes are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the

proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of

existence.  These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements

of enlightenment and progress.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive

hour, the process of dissolution going on within the ruling

class, in fact within the whole range of society, assumes such a

violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling

class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the

class that holds the future in its hands.  Just as, therefore, at

an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the

bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the

proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois

ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of

comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie

today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.

The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of

Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential

product. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the

shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the

bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions

of the middle class.  They are therefore not revolutionary, but

conservative.  Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try

to roll back the wheel of history.  If by chance they are

revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impending

transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their

present, but their future interests, they desert their own

standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

The "dangerous class," the social scum, that passively rotting

mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may,

here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian

revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more

for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at

large are already virtually swamped.  The proletarian is without

property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer

anything in common with the bourgeois family-relations; modern

industrial labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in

England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him

of every trace of national character.  Law, morality, religion,

are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in

ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand, sought to

fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at

large to their conditions of appropriation.  The proletarians

cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except

by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and

thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation.  They

have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission

is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of,

individual property.

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities,

or in the interests of minorities.  The proletarian movement is

the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority,

in the interests of the immense majority.  The proletariat, the

lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise

itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official

society being sprung into the air.

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the

proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle.

The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all

settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

In depicting the most general phases of the development of the

proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging

within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks

out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the

bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.

Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have

already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed

classes.  But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions

must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its

slavish existence.  The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised

himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty

bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to

develop into a bourgeois.  The modern laborer, on the contrary,

instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and

deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class.  He

becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than

population and wealth.  And here it becomes evident, that the

bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in

society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society

as an over-riding law.  It is unfit to rule because it is

incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his

slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a

state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him.

Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other

words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of

the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of

capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour.  Wage-labour

rests exclusively on competition between the laborers.  The

advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie,

replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition,

by their revolutionary combination, due to association.  The

development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its

feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and

appropriates products.  What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces,

above all, is its own grave-diggers.  Its fall and the victory of

the proletariat are equally inevitable】