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Political Ideas: Marx and Engels, the Communist Manifesto

The nature of capitalism and its crises

  • 3 things to know
  • A2 Unit 2

Overview

Capitalism as the Manifesto presents it, claim that the relations of production become fetters and manifesto's account of the price of labour.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

Describe capitalism as the Manifesto presents it.

Key term

Why must capitalism constantly revolutionise the instruments of production?

Key term

Explain the claim that the relations of production become fetters.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Describe capitalism as the Manifesto presents it.

    Model answer

    Capitalism is a system in which the means of production are privately owned, goods are produced for exchange on a market, and the labour of the propertyless is bought as a commodity. Competition compels every owner to expand and to revolutionise production continually.

  2. 2

    Why must capitalism constantly revolutionise the instruments of production?

    Model answer

    Marx and Engels argue that the bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising production, since any firm that stands still is undercut by one that does not. Uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions follows from that competitive pressure.

  3. 3

    How does the Manifesto explain commercial crises?

    Model answer

    Marx and Engels argue that periodic crises put the existence of bourgeois property on trial by producing an epidemic of over-production. Society finds itself suddenly with too much civilisation, too much industry and too much commerce for its own arrangements to absorb.

  4. 4

    Why do the authors describe crises of over-production as an absurdity in earlier eyes?

    Model answer

    Marx and Engels observe that earlier epochs would have found it absurd for a society to be impoverished by having produced too much. The paradox arises because goods are produced for profitable sale rather than for use.

  5. 5

    How does the bourgeoisie overcome a crisis, according to the Manifesto?

    Model answer

    Marx and Engels argue that crises are overcome by the enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces, by the conquest of new markets and by the more thorough exploitation of old ones. The remedies pave the way for more extensive and more destructive crises and reduce the means of preventing them.

  6. 6

    Explain the claim that the relations of production become fetters.

    Model answer

    Marx and Engels argue that private ownership eventually restricts the productive powers it once released, since production cannot expand without generating gluts and unemployment. The system's own property relations are therefore the barrier to further development.

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