Class Struggle Between Proletariat and Bourgeoisie

by Karl Marx

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the capitalists today, the proletariat alone is revolutionary.

• 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 is made up the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant.

• These fight against the capitalists and are conservative or even reactionary, not revolutionary.

In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped.

The proletarian:

• does not have property
• his relation to his wife and children are very different from the capitalist family relations
• can only be a master of the productive forces of society by abolishing all other modes of appropriation

The struggle of the proletariat with the capitalists is at first a national struggle.

• The proletariat of each country must first settle matters with its own capitalists.
• This is similar to a civil war

The power of the capitalist class lies in the formation and augmentation of capital.

• The condition for capital is wage-labour.
• Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers.

The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation of the power of the capitalists.

The capitalists therefore produces its own grave-diggers.

• Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.