MarxEstranged

The Manifesto of Class Struggle Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848)

Group 1

Paragraph 1-9 Tina Jiang

Karl Marx states that every existing society is the “history of class struggles” and that the “oppressor and oppressed always stood in constant opposition to one another.”(pg34) Through the era of the Rome Empire, Middle Ages and now the modern bourgeois society, Marx illustrates that there is always conflict and oppression in each of the progressing era.

We can tie this in our modern society where socially, there is the constant conflict between the lower half of the social ladder and the upper. The privileged, a small amount of people with high social status, have more options than people of the lower and middle social ladder. For instance, they have higher chances of entering and finishing prestige universities, having better career opportunities and eventually lead to the ability to control the economy and politics. The privileged uses their power to make rules that benefits only them and oppresses the population that is from other social status. An example would be that the higher the position in a work place is, the higher the education that is required. However as stated before, the privileged have a higher chance of receiving better education, because of the high tuition that only a certain amount of population can afford, this requirement is set up in order to keep each of the social rank in place.

Marx also describes how the demand for manufacture paved path for the rise of modern bourgeois. Because the demands for production were gradually increasing, companies with the newest machinery and a well divided labour within the company benefited the most and thus, the birth of modern bourgeois. Nowadays, big global companies such as Nike have branches all around the world; from high end stores to factories, the division of labour is very clear. With the best machinery and cheap labour that minimized the cost of production, while having elites from the society to take charge of the management, Nike is able to stand firmly in the global market.

Comment from Rita(Qiao) Li: Even though the theories made by Marx has emerged long time ago, it can still be practically applied to things happening in our current life. I strongly agree with that part mentioned above: the privileged uses their power to make rules that benefits only them and oppresses the population that is from other social statuses. As our society is surrounded by consumerism atmosphere, more and more well-operated corporations are using their financial power or even drawing power from the political side. This case can be seen everywhere especially in China. Moreover, I think this is not the right way the social system should be operated and it indeed exploits workers from all their aspects of life.

Paragraph 10-16 Curtis Seufert

Marx elaborates on the transition to capitalism from eras prior, such as that of feudalism and the Roman Empire.

After noting the long-standing existence of the class divide, in its many forms, he states that "modern industry", as a result of the industrial revolution, has led to the what is now termed the 'globalist' form of free market capitalism, encompassing the global market, the spread of ideas and goods, etc.

The 'bourgeois', as he defines them, is the current result of a long line of changes in the 'contract' between owning class and working class, i.e. 'revolutions', such as the shift from feudalism to the free market, with the industrial revolution being a critical part of this change.

He says that with each change in the economic relationship between the owning and working classes, more political power goes to the ruling class. While certainly critiquing the concept of the class divide itself, he argues that with each subsequent system, fewer and fewer restrictions and conditions are placed on the ruling class.

"For exploitation [that is] veiled by religious and political illusions, [the class divide now constitutes] naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation."

While he describes the relationship between owning and working class as perpetually "exploitative", he notes that, currently, it's not even disguised as "God's Will", or political necessity.

The current iteration of the class divide, neoliberal capitalism, indeed continues to celebrate maximizing profit, countering the rights of laborers to fair wages, let alone wages correlating to their added value, etc.

Paragraph 17-20 Marielle Mortimer

With regards to money relations, consumerism, and production, Marx explains how the bourgeoisie cannot survive without the constant need to revolutionize societies modes of production. He goes on to clarify how through the need to revolutionize the means of production, the relations of production get altered and in the process so does the whole of societies relations. The need to constantly expand the economic market to satisfy human needs relates to the consumerist society we live in today; how we want more than we need. Marx was able to foretell how the economic market would take shape, and the results are what can be seen at present. Economic expansion has grown so large that many market transactions are done globally—hence the modern term Globalization. Marx also declares that what also comes with greater international production also comes greater intellectual production. With intellectual production he claims that narrow-mindedness and national bias would be mitigated. Presently, Marx’s predictions of a “world literature” are true to an extent, as the constant interactions between states makes it harder for certain national-biases to solely exist in our world today.

Comment: It's interesting to assess the extent to which March could predict our future relationship to commodities, ourselves and the market. In most regards, Marx captures the essence of what it means to exist in a capitalist society, however, I think his theorizing would expand massively had he known that the world market, a global elite and and a pacified consumer class would emerge in the 20th/21st centuries. The project of culture building taken up by the bourgeoisie, a class that has narrowed and increased it's wealth enormously in the previous two centuries, has in a sense concealed class consciousness with the advent of consumer capitalism. The massively pervasive consumer market has enabled a culture fascinated with material objects to stand in as substance for the lives of the working class. Consumption modifies, distorts, and manages desire. The working class is most easily managed when given 'choice' under consumer capitalism (ie. coke or pepsi). As consumerism operates as one of the distractive strategies to diminish, quiet or distill the power of the working class, power concentrates further as consumers become incarcerated by their endless stream of insatiable desires produced by consumer capitalism. (ALEXIS)

Paragraph 21-25 Yi Lin Huang

As Marx writes in the time period where major European countries colonised many parts of the world, he describes the globalisation phenomenon in the past 100 years as an economic exploitation by Western bourgeoisie civilisations over Eastern proletariat nations. Less economically developed countries were forced to “adopt the bourgeois mode of production.” (36). In relation to the present day, countries with current global economic power exercise their authorities over weaker nations through neocolonialism. For example, China’s investment in the African continent (Robertson & Benabdallah, 2016). Although this juxtaposes an assumption Marx makes that the “East (will depend) on the West.”, his original argument that more economically developed countries rule over weaker nations still prevails.

Paragraph 26-29 Emily Posthumus

Marx’s discussion on the bourgeoisie’s methods of maintaining their place in the social hierarchy through the free market (Lemert, p. 36) exemplified how class structure is associated with capitalism.

The existing class structure is threatened by the possibility of collapse within the economy as property relations are the significant indicator of class status. The bourgeoisie, or upper class, risk their material prestige if they lose control of their source of wealth which was derived from the capitalist framework.

To avert financial disaster, the bourgeoisie attempt to aggressively expand their market rather than mitigate the problems that initially arose. Although the bourgeoisie may protect their own interests through such measures, the increased means of production also leads to further exploitation of wage-labourers.

The Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 was an example of the conflict that stems from these class tensions, and was fundamentally a protest against the unequal wealth distribution between the working class and the top earning 1% of people in the United States.

Paragraph 30-34 Ivan Xiao

In these last four paragraphs, Marx establishes the relationship between that of the proletariats and their lives within a bourgeois state. This idea is comparable to the reoccurring social issue of war. The quote “War is young men dying and old men talking” (Troy, 2004) can be directly applied to the parasitic relationship that Marx establishes between the two classes. In this instance the young men (proletariats) essentially give up their lives for the benefits of the old men (bourgeois), while receiving none of the rewards that their sacrifices produce. Further more, those young men (proletariats) who do survive do not come back to the same riches that the old men (bourgeois) have reaped, but instead find themselves facing further challenges. These challenges consist of such things as, a lack of jobs, homelessness, mental and physical issues or as Marx puts it,“the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shop-keeper, the pawnbroker,etc.” (pg.37).

DIANA - Comment: I believe similar situations can be applied to our recent society - There was a recent news on child labour in Pakistan, where children are forced to perform domestic work, bonded labour in brick kilns. It's been said that Provincial Government have not established a minimum working age nor have the necessary resources to prohibit child labour. Especially, encountering brutal experience at such a young age, these children have high risks of developing mental and physical issues.