The Fundamentals of Communism - Part Two - The Formation of the Bourgeoisie

anarchyhasnogods (68)in #economics • 7 years ago (edited)

Communism has been the target of the largest smear campaign in history. I am here to set it right.

The Communist Manifesto was written in 1948, and it is often considered one of the most influential books in history. This sadly does not mean most people who have read it understood it. Communism is a stateless classless society, but all anybody reads is American and Soviet propaganda. That is why I am here to explain it carefully and fully to the best of my ability.

I urge you to read this and give it thought before you comment on it.

source

“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.”

As we all know the United States was a big boost for the world economy. The revolution in the United States gave hope for freedom and caused many revolutions across the world. This is when the world turned from feudalism to capitalism.

“The feudal system of industry, in 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 manufacturer 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 the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.”

With the industrial revolution massive factories were created. These factories did many steps in the manufacturing process at once, which sped everything up considerably. This destroyed the prior monopoly held by guilds. The middle class became those who held manufacturing jobs and created products. (Today that is no longer true.) These factories were the birthplace of the modern bourgeoisie. They do nothing in the factories but somehow get the majority of the profits.

“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 turn, 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.”

Before the industrial revolution everything the community needed was made within that community or those nearby it. Thanks to the industrial revolution humanity was able to mass produce objects and distribute them worldwide. The increase in the size of the markers allowed the upper classes to control bigger and bigger businesses. The ones that managed to come out on top grew in power and resources and began to dominate the world. Now the wealthiest 0.1% own more than the bottom 90% combined. [1]

“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 medieval commune(4): here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone 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, the owners of the factories, grew in numbers and power. Eventually they took over the economies and politics of all nations. Before, monarchy chose the feudal lords, now the bourgeoisie choose the monarchy. The state is controlled by money and the bourgeoisie control the money. The dollar itself is owned by a private company, there is no escape. [2]