🚀 go-pugleaf

If Britain and all other countries, including the USA, wish
to preserve,as I do, "free enterprise" and "competition"
with the associated individual freedoms and democratic
republican forms of government, they must understand the
very trenchant criticisms made by Karl Marx in his book,
"The Communist Manifesto", in which which clearly denounced
"free trade" in the very strongest terms.By understanding
these communist criticisms of "free trade" and "monopoly
capitalism", the faults in the same which communist theory
presents can be eliminated such that the benefits of
capitalism, competition, and free enterprise without the
faults of "monopoly  capitalism" and "free trade" which
Marxist theory holds are very oppressive and which will lead
to authoritarian forms of government.
The appropriate quote from the "Communist Manifesto" is
delineated below.
I am an American citizen, a Libertarian, and a member of the
new "Veterans Party."
 LIBRARY OF THE FUTURE (R) 4th Edition  Ver. 5.0
Communist Manifesto                     Marx, Karl/Engels,
Fri 
Scr    8:  64 
---------------------------------------------------------
-                                                                           
                                                          
  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 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
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.                                                        
  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 reactionaries 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 migrations of nations and
crusades.             
  The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly
revolutionizing           
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 revolutionizing 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
in 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 connections
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 reactionaries 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
civilized            
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
production 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 nations, even the most barbarian, into civilization. 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
civilization         
into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In a
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
civilized           
ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East
on the          
West.                                                                       
  More and more the bourgeoisie keeps doing away with the
scattered         
state of the population, of the means of production, and
of                 
property. It has agglomerated population, centralized means
of              
production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
The               
necessary consequence of this was political
centralization.                 
Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with
separate              
interests, laws, governments and systems of taxation, became
lumped         
together into one nation, with one government, one code of
laws, one        
national class interest, one frontier and one customs
tariff.               
  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. Subjection of nature's
forces to            
man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry
and                    
agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric
telegraphs, clearing      
of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers,
whole          
populations conjured out of the ground- what earlier century
had            
even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in
the lap        
of social
labour?                                                           
  We see, then, that the means of production and of exchange
which          
served as the foundation for the growth of the bourgeoisie
were             
generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the
development          
of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions
under          
which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal
organization        
of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in a word, the
feudal            
relations of property became no longer compatible with the
already          
developed productive forces; they became so many fetters.
They had          
to be burst asunder; they were burst
asunder.                               
  Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by
a social        
and political constitution adapted to it, and by the
economic and           
political sway of the bourgeois
class.                                      
  A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern
bourgeois      
society with its relations of production, of exchange and of
property,      
a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of
production and        
of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to
control the      
powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his
spells. For         
many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is
but the          
history of the revolt of modern productive forces against
modern            
conditions of production, against the property relations
that are           
the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of
its rule.        
It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their
periodical      
return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on
trial,          
each time more threateningly. In these crises a great part
not only of      
the existing products, but also of the previously created
productive        
forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises there
breaks out        
an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed
an               
absurdity- the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly
finds          
itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it
appears as          
if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the
supply          
of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to
be             
destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilization,
too much        
means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce.
The             
productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend
to further      
the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on
the             
contrary, they have become too powerful for these
conditions, by which      
they are fettered, and no sooner do they overcome these
fetters than        
they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society,
endanger           
the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of
bourgeois            
society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by
them. And how      
does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand
by              
enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the
other,          
by the conquest of new markets and by the more thorough
exploitation        
of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for
more                 
extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing
the means         
whereby crises are
prevented.                                               
  The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to
the            
ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie
itself.                       
  But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that
bring death      
to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are
to             
wield those weapons- the modern working class, the
proletarians.            
  In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is
developed, in         
the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working
class,           
developed- a class of labourers, who live only so long as
they find         
work, and who find work only so long as their labour
increases              
capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves
piecemeal, are a         
commodity like every other article of commerce, and are
consequently        
exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all
the                  
fluctuations of the
market.                                                 
  Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of
labour,        
the work of the proletarians has lost all individual
character, and,        
consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an
appendage of         
the machine, and it is only the most simple, most
monotonous, and most      
easily acquired knack that is required of him. Hence, the
cost of           
production of a workman is restricted almost entirely to the
means          
of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance and for
the             
propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and
therefore        
also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In
proportion,          
therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the
wage             
decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery
and              
division of labour increases, in the same proportion the
burden of          
toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working
hours,          
by increase of the work exacted in a given time, or by
increased speed      
of the machinery,
etc.                                                      
  Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the
patriarchal      
master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
Masses          
of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organized like
soldiers.        
As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the
command        
of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only
are they         
slaves of the bourgeois class and of the bourgeois state;
they are          
daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overseer,
and,             
above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself.
The            
more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and
aim, the        
more petty, the more hateful, and the more embittering it
is.               
  The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in
manual             
labour- in other words, the more modern industry develops-
the more is      
the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences
of age           
and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for
the working      
class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive
to use,        
according to their age and
sex.                                             
  No sooner has the labourer received his wages in cash, for
the            
moment escaping exploitation by the manufacturer, than he is
set            
upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie- the landlord,
the            
shopkeeper, the pawnbroker,
etc.                                            
  The lower strata of the middle class- the small
tradespeople,             
shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the
handicraftsmen and        
peasants- all these sink gradually into the proletariat,
partly             
because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the
scale on          
which modern industry is carried on and is swamped in
the                   
competition with the large capitalists, partly because
their                
specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods
of                   
production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all
classes of           
the
population.                                                             
  The proletariat goes through various stages of
development. With its      
birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the
contest        
is carried on by individual labourers, then by the
workpeople of a          
factory, then by the operatives of one trade, in one
locality, against      
the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They
direct their      
attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production,
but             
against the instruments of production themselves; they
destroy              
imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash
machinery to      
pieces, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by
force the        
vanished status of the workman of the Middle
Ages.                          
  At this stage the labourers still form an incoherent
mass                 
scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their
mutual             
competition. 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, still able to do so for a time. 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.            
Thus the whole historical movement is concentrated in the
hands of the      
bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for
the                 
bourgeoisie.                                                                
  But with the development of industry the proletariat not
only             
increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater
masses, its         
strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The
various                
interests, and conditions of life within the ranks of
the                   
proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion as
machinery         
obliterates all distinctions of labour and nearly everywhere
reduces        
wages to the same low level. ------------------
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright World Library
Inc. 1991-1999


J