The Communist Manifesto | Page 5

idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the
motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and has
left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked
self-interest, than callous "cash payment." It has drowned the most
heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, 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 and feasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single,
unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation,
veiled by religious and political illusions, naked, shameless, direct,
brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto
honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the
physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its
paid wage labourers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and
has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal
display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists so much
admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It
has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has
accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman
aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put
in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the
instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and
with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old
modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first
condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant
revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social
conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the

bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations,
with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are
swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can
ossify. 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.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the
bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle
everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given
a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every
country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under
the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All
old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily
being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose
introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations,
by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw
material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are
consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place
of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find
new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands
and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and
self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal
inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual
production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become
common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness
become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national
and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of
production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication,
draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap
prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters
down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely
obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on

pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it
compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e.,
to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after
its own image.
The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It
has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population
as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of
the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the
country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and
semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of
peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.
The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered
state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It
has agglomerated production,