Some readers of the Communist Manifesto feel that Marx is praising bourgeois society. For example, some readers feel that when Marx observes how
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 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 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.
he means for us to applaud the fact that no other nexus remains between man and man than naked self-interest and callous “cash payment”; or that he means for us to celebrate free trade.
Some readers of the Communist Manifesto also feel that Marx feels that we should celebrate how “the bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country.” Or that we should celebrate the 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.”
And so some readers have suggested that it is a good thing that capitalism has made of the specific, individual, and distinct labors of non-capitalist workers a single, homogeneous, undifferentiated mass of labour.
Since history and numbers are on our side, all that now is required is for us to sweep away the bourgeois anachronism and constitute one, single, homogeneous, undifferentiated society.
However, some readers have suggested that Marx, who was himself an academic, intellectual, member of the educated bourgeoisie, held nothing but contempt for the actual conditions and affections of workers and wanted nothing more than for them to abolish themselves — abolish the working class and abolish the class relations that created the working class.
In one direction lies a working class society; in the other direction lies a classless society. On one side stands full employment, but perhaps few social benefits; on the other side stands social benefits, but perhaps not full employment.
On which side does Marx fall?