simply, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him...Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overseer, and above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself (17). Marx draws a picture of how the majority of the population is in an oppressed situation of slavery. The lot of the proletariat is not to be envied.From here, Marx moves on to describe the oppressor, the bourgeois. He is quite eloquent in his portrayal of this class.The bourgeois, 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 fervor, 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. (12)Here Marx is speaking of how the bourgeoisie controlled society takes every aspect of society and puts them in terms of an exchange value. They reduce all that is noble and admirable about humanity to monetary matters, all in the name of capitalism. Again, "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind (13). Marx uses very strong language in these passages, saying that the bourgeois ‘profanes the holy’, and ‘drowns the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor.’ The bourgeois removes the humanity from society, creating a system in which anything a...
