The modern bourgeois society has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society. It has established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in the place of the old ones. All of history until now is the story of a series of class struggles. Each society has a characteristic economic structure. This structure breeds different classes, which are in conflict as they oppress or are oppressed by each other.

Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great camps. Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. The discovery of America opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The place of manufacture was taken by giant, Modern Industry, the place of the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

The bourgeoisie has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, illullic relations. 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. The bourgeoisie cannot exist without the constantly revolutionizing of the instruments of production. All old established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries. The worker is commodified, and seen almost as a machine. The worker only matters because of what he produces, and he does not have control over what he produces. One trait of the proletariat, is that they have nothing to lose.

Now and then the workers are victorious but only for a time. The real fruit of their battle lies in the ever expanding union of workers. The union helped with the communication between workers in different locations.

As the bourgeoisie developed, so did the proletariat, and it is the proletariat who will eventually destroy the bourgeoisie. It’s fall and the victory of the proletariat are inevitable.
The proletarians live only as long as they can find work, and they can find work only as long as their labor increases capital. They are a commodity, and are vulnerable as the market changes. The only class today that is really revolutionary is the proletariat. The other classes decay and eventually disappear. The proletariat is the essential product.

The Communist are distinguished from the other working class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front of the common interests of the entire proletariat. 2. They represent the proletariat as a whole.

The aim of the Communists is the "formation of the proletariat into a class, and overthrow the bourgeois, and conquest of political power by the proletariat." The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally but the abolition of bourgeois property. The theory of Communist can be summed up in one sentence: Abolition of private property.

Laborers do not acquire any property through their labor. The capital they produce will exploit them. Capital is not a personal but a social power. This property, controlled by the bourgeoisie, represents social not personal power. Changing it into common property does not abolish property as a right, but merely changes its character, by eliminating its class character. By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying. But is selling and buying disappear, free selling and buying disappears also.

In a Communist society labor will exist for the sake of the laborer, not for producing bourgeois controlled property. Marx "You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population." In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Communist say, precisely so; that is just what we intend.

Marx says the modern family is based on capital and private gain. Then he says, the Communists "plead guilty" to wanting to do away with present familial relations, in that they want to stop the exploitation of children by their parents. Similarly, they do not want to altogether abolish the education of children, but simply to free it from the control of the ruling class.

Communists are also criticized for their desire to abolish country and nationality. Marx replies that workingmen have no country; and we can't take from them what they don't have. National differences and antagonisms lose significance as industrialization increasingly standardizes life. "The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class."

The first step in the working class revolution is to make the proletariat the ruling class.When class distinctions have disappeared, public power will lose its political character. This is because political power is nothing more than "the organized power of one class for oppressing another." When the proletariat eliminate the old conditions for production, they will eliminate their own class supremacy. In place of old bourgeois society, we will have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

I find this part of the text very interesting. To me, it makes it sound like the communists had good intentions by making everyone equal and trying to eliminate the bourgeoisie. I agree everyone should have equal opportunity but at the same time I don’t see how the world would really work if someone was not in control. I believe most people feel more comfortable with being told what to do, it takes the pressure off. Maybe that is my opinion from living in this society. Nonetheless this is very fascinating that this was written so long ago and nothing has really seemed to change much.