Bourgeois and Proletarians

And so let's dive right back into the text.

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 the 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 workers 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 piecemeal, 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 labor the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character and consequently all charm for the workmen 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 also of labor 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 labor increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by increase of the work enacted 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 laborers crowded into factories are organized 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 the slaves of the bourgeois class and of the bourgeois state, they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, 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 or strength implied in manual labor, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labor 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 labor, more or less expensive to use according to their age and sex.