The Communist Manifesto · Chapter
Petty-Bourgeois Socialism explained
This chapter examines the emergence of petty-bourgeois socialism as a critique of the bourgeoisie from the perspective of the declining intermediate classes—the medieval burgesses and small peasant proprietors.
What happens
This chapter examines the emergence of petty-bourgeois socialism as a critique of the bourgeoisie from the perspective of the declining intermediate classes—the medieval burgesses and small peasant proprietors. It highlights the contradictions of modern production exposed by this school, led by Sismondi, and its reactionary, utopian aims to restore or preserve old property relations and means of production, ultimately ending in despair.
Themes in this chapter
Class Struggle
The chapter describes the petty bourgeoisie as a class fluctuating between the proletariat and bourgeoisie, constantly being hurled into the proletariat by competition and modern industry.
Critique of Capitalism
Petty-bourgeois socialism dissects the contradictions of modern production, including the disastrous effects of machinery, concentration of capital, overproduction, crises, and inequality.
Characters to notice
- the Communists
The Communists are implicitly contrasted with the petty-bourgeois socialists, as the chapter critiques the latter's reactionary and utopian aims.
- Socialism
Petty-bourgeois socialism is presented as a distinct form of socialism that sides with the proletariat but uses the standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois.
Key passages
“In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more than half of the population, it was natural that writers who sided with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, should use in their criticism of the bourgeois regime, the standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intermediate classes should take up the cudgels for the working class.”
In France, where peasants were the majority, writers supporting the proletariat naturally adopted the viewpoint of peasants and the petty bourgeoisie to critique the bourgeoisie and advocate for workers.
Explains the origin of petty-bourgeois socialism as a critique from the perspective of intermediate classes.
“In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange, within the framework of the old property relations that have been and were bound to be exploded by those means.”
Petty-bourgeois socialism aims either to bring back old production methods and property relations, or to restrict modern production within outdated property frameworks that were destined to collapse.
Highlights the reactionary and utopian nature of petty-bourgeois socialism.