The Communist Manifesto — Vocabulary
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
(Auto-generated)

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms.†190 more

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power?†51 more

To every villainous meanness of this model man it gave a hidden, higher, Socialistic interpretation, the exact contrary of its real character.†43 more

The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of Communism.†19 more

And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.†7 more

The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.†8 more

In all these battles it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for its help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena.†7 more

The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class.†7 more

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together.†3 more

Where is the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?†5 more

At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie.†5 more

The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating.†2 more

United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.†4 more

If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so.†1 more

I. BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.†85 more

Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes.†18 more

The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite in bare existence as a labourer.6 more

In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.†4 more

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the process of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands.†3 more

At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries.†1 more