Marx and Engels argued that societies have often been divided between groups with different levels of wealth and power. In industrial society, they focused on two important classes:
The bourgeoisie: The owners of factories, machinery, and other resources used to produce goods.
The proletariat: Workers who earn wages by selling their ability to work.
The authors argued that industrial capitalism created new forms of conflict between these classes. Factory owners wanted businesses to earn profits and compete successfully. Workers wanted wages, security, and better conditions. Although both groups depended on the economy, their interests could conflict.
Marx and Engels also argued that workers could recognize their shared interests and organize together. Rather than facing employers individually, workers could act collectively to challenge existing economic relationships.
Their argument was not simply that some factory owners were cruel. They believed that conflict grew out of the way the economic system was organized, especially the difference between owning productive resources and working for wages.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848)
Excerpt 1 — Class conflict
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
“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.”
Excerpt 2 — Workers and wages
“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 laborers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as
their labour increases capital.”
Source note: From Chapter I, “Bourgeois and Proletarians,” in the 1888 English translation edited by Friedrich Engels. Spelling and punctuation
follow that edition. Marx and Engels were writing an argument about society, not a neutral report; evaluate their claims using evidence.
Document Analysis
1. In your own words, what does Marx mean by “class struggles”?
2. Who are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat? How are their economic positions different?
3. According to the excerpt, why does Marx believe industrial capitalism creates new forms of conflict?
4. Connect to Adam Smith: How can markets coordinate production without guaranteeing equal bargaining power or fair
working conditions?
5. Connect to the Wobblies: Why might workers organize together instead of negotiating with employers one at a time?
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