SY210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: The Communist Manifesto, Social Inequality, Constant Capital
Document Summary
Although it is a sta(cid:396)ti(cid:374)g poi(cid:374)t, al(cid:449)a(cid:455)s (cid:272)o(cid:374)(cid:272)lude that we(cid:271)e(cid:396)"s app(cid:396)oa(cid:272)h is better than. Acknowledges that nature of classes has changed over time. But: since mid-1700s, industrialization and growth in world trade have caused a simplification: number of important classes reduce to two. Proletariat people who do not control the means of production and who must sell their labor (to bourgeoisie) to survive. Other classes may exist but are less important and are being merged with proletariat. First major change is this simplification but it is not the only change. Amount of wealth concentrated in hands of bourgeoisie: controls more wealth than any others in human history. Size of proletariat: never before has there been a subordinate class this large. Predicted rise of proletarian political power (cid:862)no(cid:449) a(cid:374)d the(cid:374) the (cid:449)o(cid:396)ke(cid:396)s a(cid:396)e (cid:448)i(cid:272)to(cid:396)ious, (cid:271)ut o(cid:374)l(cid:455) fo(cid:396) a ti(cid:373)e. the (cid:396)eal f(cid:396)uit of thei(cid:396) (cid:271)attle lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers.
