“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (The Communist Manifesto, 14). Marx believes that all of history is based off the struggle of an oppressed class verses an oppressed class. There have been freemen and slaves, lords and serfs, and now the separation into bourgeoisie and proletariats. In this new modern industry, the bourgeoisie has become the oppressive class which leaves the proletariats as the oppressed class.

The bourgeoise itself is the product of multiple revolutions and a long course of development. The proletariat is the working class, and they work directly beneath the bourgeoise. They are the class of wage workers who worked in industrial production and survived off the bare minimum. Proletariats were viewed as a commodity be because their craftsmanship. Now they work at a machine and get paid less and less as the machines become more and more efficient. As the machines advance, those apart of the proletariat are forced into more and more monotonous and simple jobs. This class lives “only so long as they find work” (The Communist Manifesto, 18). The bourgeoise kept wages low to increase their profits. The exploitation of the proletariat is why Marx was not a fan of the bourgeoise.

According to Marx, the proletariat is a class due to the power they hold together. They are in his mind the most important class. The proletariat is special and essential because they are the only revolutionary class. Their movement is one for the larger majority, and in the interest of the majority. Their main job is to overthrow the bourgeoise. Marx believes all the proletarians should rise and unite to take power from the bourgeoise and sway the world to a more communist based state.

Marx believes that there are different stages of birth within the proletariat. It starts off with a struggle working under the bourgeoisie. Such as a frustration with how much they work and how little money they make. Due to their small wages, most workers were unable to afford the goods they made. So, they become angry with their little wages, and their exposure to all the fluctuations of the market. This struggle is then continued as individual laborers, and spreads to the workplace of the factories. As more and more workers become upset with their wages and livelihood it continues to spread. Then the proletarians direct their attack not against the bourgeoisie’s conditions of production but instead towards the instruments of production. Destruction of machinery and burning of buildings is how their anger is let out and how they feel they can make their voices heard.

The proletariats seek to restore the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages. The workers skills allowed them to be commodities. Now they have become appendages to a machine where they do the most simple and monotonous activities every day. They want fair wages or wages they would allow them to live rather than just barely survive. They want a reduce in machine work and reduction in the number of hours they work weekly. In terms of political interests, the proletariat essentially aims to create a class free society. They want to unite the whole of the proletariat and overthrow the bourgeoise. Once they take power form the capitalist class, they will aim to have a world free from class distinction.

With the development of industry, the proletariat begins to increase in number as well as in strength. The bourgeoise begin to reduce the wages they pay even more because they are in constant competition with other factories to make the most capital. Machines continue to improve which makes workers jobs even more dull with increasingly dropping wages. This causes issues between some members of the bourgeoise and proletariat. Workers respond by forming unions against the bourgeoisie to keep up the rate of wages.

Although it forming unions does not dismantle the system of oppression the proletariat is under, it does give them some hope. The real winning for the proletariat’s battle against the bourgeoisie is the expanding union of workers across the group. The unions help connect different workers to one another, It helps to centralize the numerous struggles of the individual workers into one national struggle between classes. With the proletariat working together they can compel legislative recognition of the interests of the workers. They take advantage of the struggles between the bourgeoisie themselves and pass the ten-hour bill. This limited workers ages 13-18 to only working ten hours a day five days a week.

Louis Auguste Blanqui was a French revolutionist who was the leader of the Société des Saison and advocated the proletarian movement. The secret society wanted to overthrow the capitalist and advocated a more class free society. They wanted to assist the proletariat in the overthrow of the bourgeoise because that would also further their own plan. Blanqui was in support of the proletariat movement but wanted it to go even further. He recognized the class struggle and saw the rich as aggressors and wanted to get rid of that. The proletariat revolution is at the core of Marx theory. He argues that the have nothing to lose “but their chains” (The Communist Manifesto).