A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism.
It has agglomerated production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank.
The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place of the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless and indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade
The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.
Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production.
It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.