“We have proceeded from the premises of political economy. We have accepted its language and its laws…On the basis of political economy itself, in its own words, we have shown that the worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities.” (Marx-Engels Reader, p. 70) How does Marx’s criticism of capitalism develop out of capitalism itself?

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” Marx observes in the beginning of his Manifesto of the Communist Party. In using the chronicles of class struggles throughout history, Marx establishes that the development of society has been shaped not just by the ideas of the ruling class, but also by the economic conditions that favour the ideologies of the ruling class. He also makes a critical statement in that the new social order will not arrive swiftly and rapidly unless it is coerced, for this is the only way that the appropriate economic conditions for Communism are provided. It is instigated by a forced act dependent on the unity of the workers. Furthermore, Marx strengthens his claim implicitly by underpinning the fact that the present class struggle will be resolved distinctively. He establishes that in this particular class struggle between the working class and the capitalists, the revolution is the anti-thesis and resolution of past historical and periodical conflicts or struggles. Communism is heralded by a radically different class-struggle revolution compared to pre-existing ones. The evidences are shown through an examination of the internal flaws of the present capitalist society.

Before defining broadly the implications of brewing class antagonisms, Marx examines the relationship between the ruling class and the oppressed class through social relations. In the capitalist society, the social relation between the capitalists and the workers is wage-labour. In defining the function of wage-labour, Marx is able to examine how this social relation is the cause of class antagonism, until it is torn asunder upon the arrival of a revolution. Through the wage-labour relation, the worker is enslaved for the sake of production, and alienates himself from his labour. This estrangement of labour (as an expression of the division of labour) is “labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of self-sacrifice, of mortification” . As an immediate consequence, labour becomes a means of subsistence. Political economy, on the other hand, “conceals the estrangement by not considering the direct relationship between the worker and production” . Thus, without a complete understanding of the manifestation of the wage-labour, it is difficult to grasp the process of alienation from labour as a means of subjugation of one class to another. By examining this relation through a dialectic argument, Marx further reiterates that it is the worker who affirms his inferior position to the capitalist (the bourgeoisie) since he is working for an external person. By surrendering his humanistic identity, he now owes his existence to production.

So long as the worker assumes this role in the capitalist society, the relationship between the workers and the bourgeoisies is maintained. Yet this social relation is lacking in acknowledgement of one class, and to reciprocate the fruits of capitalism to the wider public. Regarding this outcome, Marx imbues with it his moral critique of capitalism’s hierarchal structure, in its condition to estrange man from man. In his metaphorical analysis of the vulgarity of this relationship, embellished by bourgeois ideas of intellectual capital, Marx observes that labour, therefore, is “the real soul of production; yet to labour it [the political economy] gives nothing, and to private property everything” . This contradiction only serves to highlight the perversion of the relationship between the labourer and the capitalist. Moreover, it is contingent on the fact that the labourer “sinks to the level of a commodity” , thereby negating his existence as a human being. His labour as activity becomes his sole means of life, as well as the sole means of his subsistence.

While wage-labour defined the class relation between the ruling and the oppressed class, class antagonism is aggravated through the perpetuation of the ruling ideas. Drawing back to his reference to history as more than a development of class antagonisms, which “assumed different forms at different epochs” , Marx further notes that within the old society, new elements have been formed, and which cannot be accommodated except through “dissolution of the old conditions of existence” . The bourgeoisies necessarily established free competition, the economic conditions which favoured their supremacy. Bourgeoisie ideals dominated the society as long as they were the ruling class of that epoch, and that the bourgeoisie mode of production is maintained. Ironically though, Marx also observed that through its exploitation of the free market, as well as the pursuit of the accumulation of capital, the bourgeoisies have produced their own “grave diggers” . As the worker becomes poorer the more he produces, he is forced to receive the full burden of this relentless accumulation of capital, exemplified through the metaphor, “the forest of uplifted arms demanding work becomes ever thicker, while the arms themselves become ever thinner” . As the process continually escalates, the worker’s condition worsens, which is eventually compounded by the introduction of machineries. The development of productivity in the capitalist society has other implications: “as labour becomes more unsatisfying, more repulsive, competition increases and wages decrease. In the last resort he [the worker] competes with himself, with himself as a member of the working class” .

Thus, the bourgeoisie created the growing class of proletariats who would at the appropriate time, and upon a collective consciousness of themselves as a class themselves be in a position of power to withdraw the labour that the bourgeoisie depends so much on. The internal flaws of capitalism necessitate self-destruction, as it has led to a social relation, which even under the best conditions can never be reconciled with the worker’s interest, but only aggravated. In doing so, the bourgeoisies also created an alienated force that do not share the same concept of private property, as well as the principles of private, capital gain on which their class is founded. Marx identified that the bourgeoisie class will vanish as soon as their complement (the proletariats) vanish. Ironically, once the process of the accumulation of capital becomes self-perpetuated by both workers and capitalists, the bourgeoisies are no longer capable of being in power: “competition seeks to rob capital of the golden fruits of this power” . The bourgeoisies become incompetent with regards to maintaining their wealth (accumulated labour). At this advanced stage of the growing anti-sentiments towards the capitalists, wage labour assumes an independent form, which “rests exclusively on competition between labourers” . Hence, the bourgeoisies have also transferred wage labour as their leverage onto their imminent opponents.

This class antagonism is resolved when it is possible to overthrow pre-existing economic conditions. It is this essential detail that Marx vigilantly addresses in the Manifesto of the Communist Party. To the proletariats, he highlights the necessary action required to bring them to the position of the ruling class: to “remain within the bounds of existing society, but cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie” . Marx believed this was possible because of his insightful observation: "the bourgeoisies have simplified the class antagonisms” by creating a class that exhibits almost the exact opposite of what they (as the ruling class) themselves stood for. It was a matter of time before the proletariats, strengthened by a growing common interest, would seize the opportunity. Identifying the opportunity is critical, for Marx has also shown that in the past, attempts to revolt failed on two conditions: either because communal interest did not align with general interest, or because the economic conditions have not been produced. In its infancy stage, the oppressed class has yet to form “any historical initiative or independent political movement” . The primary reason is that class antagonism develops with the pace of the development of the industry.

Marx hints that the rise of the proletariats is inherently different than all previous historical successful revolutions because the oppressed proletariats must grasp the circumstances of society (and opportunity) through consciousness. It is by the conscious acknowledgement of themselves as the majority that they will seize the moment to stage a revolution. He further elaborates that consciousness comes to the contradiction that ‘division of labour’ implies that there is a division of material and mental labour, and that for the oppressed class to be ostracised from the latter is to deny them the position “to emancipate itself from the world and to proceed to the formation of “pure” theory” . The oppressed class have no means of overthrowing the ruling class except by abandoning the notion of private property. Thus, the proletariats are necessarily revolting in a new way, through breaking the bond (instilled by an alienation of labour) that is created from a ‘manipulated’ or restricted consciousness. This is because the capitalist has induced the worker to surrender his humanist identity, so that he has no relation to himself or to his labour product– he is manipulated to believe that he owes his existence to labour activity.

The proletariats will, unlike the bourgeoisies establish the supremacy of power through the abolishment of existing economic conditions (the critical condition is abolishing the bourgeois mode of production). They are for the interest of the immense public, of which they themselves are a part. The proletariat class was the product of the bourgeoisies; their ideas were the offspring of bourgeois concepts of production. Just as Marx noted, “in bourgeois society, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past” , the proletariat’s revolution consist of disinheriting private property and disinheriting notions of “public prostitution” from the existing society. This necessarily follows since if they were to follow historical examples of uprising classes, the labourers could never emerge as the ruling class: “the modern labourer, instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class” . Unlike previous historical movements, Communism is a call for political reform for the interest of the immense majority.

The rise of communism for Marx is significant because not only does it abandon the notion of private property (which has undergone class transformation from one class to another until the present capitalist society) but is also a total abolition of class distinction. Vulgar communism is the brute act of imposing the ideals, thereby removing any last vestiges of the bourgeois conception of class, profession, and private property. The disappearance of class culture is synonymous with the disappearance of all culture related to the bourgeoisies. Furthermore, this entails eliminating the means of production and exchange that the bourgeoisies have built up and inherited from feudal society. As such, Communism represents a fundamental annihilation of vestiges of the past; where the bourgeoisies have put “an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations” of the feudal society, Communism has banished all existing class relations completely. However, he does not question whether Communism will necessarily provide fodder for the next brewing class antagonism, since Communism ideology is not only based on restoring consciousness, “the complete return of man to himself as a social being” but also founded on the absence of class distinction.