Bourgeois and Proletarians:

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and
journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one
another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each
time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the
common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement
of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we
have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals,
guild- masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again,
subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society, has
not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new
conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature:
It has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting
up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other- bourgeoisie and proletariat. . . .

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..

The bourgeoisie has played a most revolutionary role in history.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal,
patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that
bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left no other bond between man and
man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.” It has drowned the most
heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine
sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. 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.