Manifesto of the Communist Party

Part 1

One of the arguments in Marx’s manifesto is that the bourgeoisie (defined as “capitalists and owners of social production and employers of wage labor”), has “converted” society’s esteemed professionals, namely: physicians, lawyers, priests, poets and scientists into its “paid wage” labor force: a “mode of production.” Furthermore, no member of society is impervious to the “production” and “exchange” dyad. Additionally, economic greed exploits the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie exploits the labor force (the proletariat), and the labor force exploits the bourgeoisie. Consequently, society will continue to operate within a cycle of agitation, alienation, and exploitation.

Part II

One of Marx’s many enticing arguments in Part II is: “in bourgeois society, living labor is but a means to increase accumulated labor. In communist society, accumulated labor is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the laborer.” The communist party’s objective is to act solely on the behalf of the laborer, giving voice to the proletariat. And transform the laborer to an “independent, an individual,” no longer subjugated to and by labor.

Edith