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e or less expensive

the manufacturer sh, than he is set the landlord, the

all tradespeople, handicraftsmen roletariat, partly for the scale on in the competispecialized skill

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of development.
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tariat are more and more equalized, in proportio literates all distinctions of labor, and nearly everyw to the same low level. The growing competition a and the resulting commercial crises, make the wa ever more fluctuating. The unceasing improven ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelih precarious; the collisions between individual w vidual bourgeois take more and more the cha between two classes. Thereupon the workers b binations (trade unions) against the bourgeois; in order to keep up the rate of wages; they four ciations in order to make provision beforehand f revolts. Here and there the contest breaks out i

Now and then the workers are victorious, bu The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the im in the ever expanding union of the workers. Th on by the improved means of communication th modern industry and that place the workers of di contact with one another. It was just this conta to centralize the numerous local struggles, all of t into one national struggle between classes. But e is a political struggle. And that union, to attain of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achi

This organization of the proletarians into a quently into a political party, is continually bei the competition between the workers themselves. up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels tion of particular interests of the workers, by ta the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus t in England was carried.

Altogether, collisions between the classes of the in many ways, the course of development of the bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant ba the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of tl whose interests have become antagonistic to the p

1 Passed by Parliament in 1847 and effective the fo

progress.

, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, s of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact, whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glarter that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the ent over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bours over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of cois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level ending theoretically the historical movements as a whole. all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie e proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The es decay and finally disappear in the face of modern indusroletariat is its special and essential product.

ver middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, , the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie to extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay - are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of f by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in eir impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus I their present, but their future interests; they desert standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat. langerous class," the social scum, that passively rotting wn off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and wept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a of reactionary intrigue.

conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large

tify their already acquired status by subjecting society at la their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot ne masters of the productive forces of society except by abol their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also ev er previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of t n to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previ urities for, and insurances of, individual property. All previous historical movements were movements of min , or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movemen self-conscious, independent movement of the immense major he interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lov tum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself hout the whole superincumbent strata of official society be ng into the air.

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the p iat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. etariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle mat its own bourgeoisie.

n depicting the most general phases of the development of etariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war raging wit Eng society up to the point where that war breaks out into o ution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie 1 oundation for the sway of the proletariat.

1. Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed clas In order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assu under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. n the period of serfdom raised himself to membership in une, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal sm, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern labo e contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry, si

ential condition for the existence and for the sway of is class is the formation and augmentation of capital; on for capital is wage labor. Wage labor rests exclumpetition between the laborers. The advance of indusinvoluntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the the laborers due to competition by their involuntary à due to association. The development of modern indusre, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which sie produces and appropriates products. What the bourefore produces, above all, are its own gravediggers. Its victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

commerce in time of war. The Declaration, to which t xed their signatures at this time, was subsequently accep forty countries unrepresented at the Congress of Pa s becoming a recognized statute of international law. y important power to withhold its consent was the Uni tes, which refused to sign unless enemy property (exc traband of war) was also exempted from capture at United States, however, has strictly conformed with articles of the Declaration ever since their promulgation.

DECLARATION OF PARIS, 1856

The plenipotentiaries who signed the Treaty of Paris of the [arch, 1856, assembled in conference, considering,

'hat maritime law, in time of war, has long been the subjec orable disputes;

hat the uncertainty of the law and of the duties in such a ma rise to differences of opinion between neutrals and belligere may occasion serious difficulties and even conflicts; hat it is consequently advantageous to establish a uniform on so important a point;

hat the plenipotentiaries assembled in Congress at Paris Detter respond to the intentions by which their governm nimated than by seeking to introduce into international fixed principles in this respect;

he above-mentioned plenipotentiaries, being duly authori ed to concert among themselves as to the means of attai Edward Hertslet, The Map of Europe by Treaty, vol. ii, pp. 1282-1283. 375-1891.

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