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... y constant, the existence of the social relationship of the oppressor and the oppressed. In earlier forms of society, there were many gradations between those who benefitted most from the social structure and those who suffered because of it. However, with the epoch of bourgeois society, a tremendous change is occurring: everything is being simplified. Marx claims that society is breaking up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeois and Proletariat. (Cmp 3) Along with the development of the two classes, capitalism is destroying all other relations of society. As capitalism grows it gains power and political sway, thus law and government become synonymous with the bourgeois.
In order to exist as capitalism it must expand into new territory; new transportation and communication routes drag all societies into civilization under capitalism: nationality dissolves. All formerly baseless relations dissolve as well, It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties... And has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous cash payment... It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. (Cmp 5) The illusions that once enabled man to live, even a happy life, while being exploited are shattered; it is now clear that exploitation exists, All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. (Cmp 6) In Adam Smiths, The Wealth of Nations, wealth is never exhausted, thus capitalism can continue indefinitely playing itself out.
Wealth constantly begets itself, becoming more and more efficient, producing better products, saving time and energy, and generating more and more wealth. Smith claims the result of this economic system, combined with good government, will be universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people. Marx contends that this is not the result; that because the system demands that the wages of worker are calculated not by the value of the product he produces, but by the minimum the worker needs and the relation of workers needed and workers available competing for jobs, the quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the laborer in bare existence as a laborer. (Cmp 19) As the feudal relations of property became too small to support growing bourgeois, the bourgeois will be overtaken by the same forces, the ever growing productive forces become too big and powerful for the small bourgeois. The bourgeois are forced to further and further expanding markets and harsher exploitation in order to continue to exist. Because developments of technology increase, the cost of production decreases, and as the work continues to get more and more machine like and repulsive, the cost of production comes ever closer to simple subsistence.
Pauperism grows rapidly. Soon it becomes clear that the oppressor cannot even ensure the existence of his slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. (CMp 15) Capitalism kills itself. It is, by definition, the formation and augmentation of capital and the condition for capital is wage labor. Wage labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. (Cmp 15) Thus, not only does the system lead to the death of its own slaves, but it also leads to the rise of communism. The workers, who once were in competition with each other, band together and revolt, taking over and establishing, necessarily, a communist regime. But there is a jump here.
Why and for what do they revolt? What is to ensure that they are ideologically communist? Marx claims that the nature of the work is defeating; the worker is separated from his product and his work is meaningless to him except that it allows him to survive. He becomes a poverty stricken machine.
It is true that labor produces marvels for the rich, but it produces privation for the worker. It produces palaces, but hovels for the worker. It produces beauty, but deformity for the worker. It replaces labor with machines, but it casts some of the workers back in barbarous forms of labor and turns others into machines. It produces intelligence, but it produces idiocy and cretinism for the worker. Already a commodity in the eyes of society, how does he see himself?
He has no property, no savings for when he cannot labor, his wife and children are reduced to mere wage earners, he no longer puts faith in religion, national character, law, morality, etc. Because he sees them as bourgeois interests. What is left for him besides his animal pleasures? Could this not be defeating? Where does his new found strength come from and why is it essentially communal? Marx answers that this development is necessary one.
As capitalism grows, the proletariat grows. The middle class, the petty bourgeois is gradually subsumed into the proletariat; some of the bourgeois, taken over by other bourgeois or coming to the realization of history become part of the proletariat and, the proletariat not only increase in number; it becomes concentrated is greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels its strength more. The various interests and conditions become more equalized... Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations against the bourgeois. (Cmp 11 - 12) The union continues to expand and the power increases. Soon, bourgeois competition between its own members leads the bourgeois to educate the workers. Because they have been stripped of nationality, the proletariat must see itself as a nation.
A nation collectively united against bourgeois interests. The defining interest of the bourgeois is the voracious accumulation of private property. Property, under exploitive society is based on the antagonism of capitol and wage labor... To be a capitalist is to have not only a purely personal but a social status in production. (CMp 19) Capitol is a collective product...
When, therefore, capitol is converted into common property... It looses its class character. (19) thus the product loses its power to subjugate laborers and further class antagonisms no longer exist. The proletariat in power, therefore must recognize this and will establish product as common property. But questions still remain. Marx claims that the idea of property under capitalism is wrong because it is only in existence for a tenth of the population; law, morality, family, culture, nationality, etc. Dissolve for the proletariat.
But what of them? Have we shown that they are all forms of oppression? Are they meaningless simply because they were abused? Are they to be abandoned because they were stolen from the majority at one time? When a new consciousness arises what form does it take? What art does it produce?
It seems that all that is left is an economic machine. Be it a smooth and good one, it is still merely economics. A man can now contribute happily to society, but what does society go toward? What guides it?
And what will shape the individual? What laws does he obey? What beauty does he seek? What does he believe in?
How would such a society react to the release of the prisoner in Matthew? It seems they would still be incensed as the first crowd, perhaps even more so as community is so glorified. In Bach's work, following the insurrection of the chorus of Crucify him! are some of the loveliest pieces of music ever written. The tenderest of arias, they are the lone voices of individuals, expressing heartbreak. The listener hears the human being and is comforted.
A community can provide protection, inclusion, and perhaps even freedom from loneliness, but when the community is grievously wrong, where will we find those lone voices of right? Bibliography: Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engles, "The Communist Manifesto" Oxford World Classics 1992 60 pp.
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