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orangecreamsicleyt · 4 years

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The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.

The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.

Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place of the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

Modern industry has established the world-market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its time, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.

We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the mediaeval commune; here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany), there taxable "third estate" of the monarchy (as in France), afterwards, in the period of manufacture proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, corner-stone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world-market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.

The bourgeoisie, 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 fervour, 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 and indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. 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.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff. The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground—what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?

We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.

Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted to it, and by the economical and political sway of the bourgeois class.

A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society. In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand inforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons—the modern working class—the proletarians.

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed—a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of the machinery, etc.

Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. 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 over-looker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.

The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.

No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.

The lower strata of the middle class—the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants—all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by the new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.

The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.

At this stage the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie. Thus the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.

But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations (Trades Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there the contest breaks out into riots.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.

This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus the ten-hours' bill in England was carried.

Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for its help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own instruments of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling classes are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the process of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

The "dangerous class," the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family-relations; modern industrial labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand, sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.

Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

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homosexualisopod · 4 years

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Manifesto of the Communist Party

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact:

I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.

II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.

To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.

Chapter I. Bourgeois and Proletarians(1)

[German Original]

The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master(3) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.

The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.

Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturer no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.

We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune(4): here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.

The bourgeoisie, 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 fervour, 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. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. 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.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff.

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?

Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class.

A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians.

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of machinery, etc.

Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. 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 overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.

No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.

The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.

The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operative of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.

At this stage, the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.

But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.

This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried.

Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.

The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.

Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

Chapter 2: Proletarians and Communists

1. By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour.

By proletariat, the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live. [Engels, 1888 English edition]

2. That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organisation existing previous to recorded history, all but unknown. Since then, August von Haxthausen (1792-1866) discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Georg Ludwig von Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and, by and by, village communities were found to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this primitive communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Lewis Henry Morgan's (1818-1881) crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of the primeval communities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, second edition, Stuttgart, 1886. [Engels, 1888 English Edition and 1890 German Edition (with the last sentence omitted)]

3. Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a master within, not a head of a guild. [Engels, 1888 English Edition]

4. This was the name given their urban communities by the townsmen of Italy and France, after they had purchased or conquered their initial rights of self-government from their feudal lords. [Engels, 1890 German edition]

“Commune” was the name taken in France by the nascent towns even before they had conquered from their feudal lords and masters local self-government and political rights as the “Third Estate.” Generally speaking, for the economical development of the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country, for its political development, France.

#communist manifesto

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woman-loving · 4 years

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(Early feminist and socialist efforts in Japan: excerpt from A History of Japan, 2nd ed., by Conrad Totman, 2005)

On the surface of the land, meanwhile, the burgeoning textile industry was heavily staffed by the teenage daughters of hard-pressed rural families, the girls commonly being lured to mill work by recruiters who misrepresented both wage arrangements and workplace conditions. One angry young silk worker wrote in 1888:

“Silk thread manufacturers, using contracts as a shield, treat us abominably. They think we are like slaves, like dirt. We think the silk-thread bosses are vipers, are our bitter enemies.”[8]

As factory lighting was installed during the eighties, thread mills became notorious for their long hours and use of child labor. One elderly woman, recalling her years as a girl in the silk mills during the nineties, wrote:

“In the lamplit factory we worked from morning darkness to about ten o'clock at night. By the time we had finished work we could hardly stand on our feet.”

Unsurprisingly the workers protested occasionally and absconded frequently, the majority breaking contract and fleeing their jobs within six months of recruitment. They did so, moreover, despite "barbed wire, high walls, guarantee deposits, and company regulations," and despite the hardship that doing so might cause their families, whose ability to repay debts often depended on daughterly income.[9]

ACTIVIST WOMEN

In Japan, as elsewhere, industrialization generated pollution, gave rise to urban labor problems, complicated rural life, and in due course radically diminished village influence on society at large. At the same time, however, it was broadening the general public's intellectual vistas, creating new career alternatives, and to an unprecedented degree institutionalizing the separation of household and work place. These trends affected women as well as men, and as a result questions about their roles and rights began to acquire greater visibility than in the past, foreshadowing an even more heightened presence in later years.

When architects of the Meiji state undertook to define social and political roles in the years around 1890, it will be recalled, they utilized principles and practices of both indigenous and alien provenance to forge a centralized, paternalistic regime that would, they hoped, build a rich and strong Japan, a "modern" society, a Great Power. How best to situate women in this new order was a question that evoked much comment. Some men and women advocated expanded roles for women, especially during the 1870s when everything seemed in flux. Kishida Toshiko, the daughter of an established Kyoto merchant, was well versed in progressive European thought, and she became one of the day's most eloquent proponents of women's rights. She spoke widely and effectively on behalf of education and opportunity for women, declaring in 1883, at age twenty:

“Equality, independence, respect, and a monogamous relationship are the hallmarks of relationships between men and women in a civilized society.”[19]

A handful of men echoed this view, but as national affairs stabilized during the later 1880s, a counter-argument came to prevail, one that reflected the growing separateness of home and work place and that was grounded in both foreign and domestic precedents. It defined woman's proper role as that of responsible operative of the household, dedicated homemaker, "good wife; wise mother" (ryōsai kenbo).

In 1899, when the Education Ministry was prodding prefectural authorities to establish more high schools for women, a Ministry official explained the government's reasoning this way:

“Since the family is the root of the nation, it is the vocation of women who become housewives to be good wives and wise mothers, and girls' high schools are necessary to provide appropriate education enabling girls from middle- and upper-middle-class families to carry out this vocation.”

Viewing the proper role of women in these terms, Meiji leaders encouraged them to pursue appropriate education. They also argued, however, that women should be excluded from politics lest such involvement endanger their morals, conduce to social disorder, and compromise their role as wife and mother. Accordingly Article 5 of the Police Security Regulations of 1890, reaffirmed in 1900, barred women from joining political organizations, participating in political meetings, voting, or standing for office.

This official posture failed to satisfy the growing number of women who wished to pursue other careers or expand their range of life choices.[20] Nor did it address social issues that affected women in general, notably concubinage, prostitution, and male drunkenness, but also harsh conditions of the working poor, such as those in the textile mills. Indeed, the situation of the working poor seems to have been as far beyond the mental horizon of the Meiji elite as of elites elsewhere. Worst of all, perhaps, were the lives of the earlier-mentioned women coal miners. Recalled one observer:

“The life of the female coal-miner was appalling. Returning black and grimy from a day's work in the pits with their husbands, they immediately had to start preparing meals. In those days there were no nursery facilities, so infants were placed in the care of others. Mothers returned from the mines to nurse their babies. Men would return from their work to bathe and sit back and relax, displaying their tattoos and drinking sake. This was the accepted behaviour of these lowly people, and no man would be found helping with what were designated as women's tasks. If a woman so much as protested, she would be beaten.”[21]

Precisely because mining was a dirty and dangerous occupation, however, mine operators had to pay wages that substantially exceeded those of surface jobs as a way to attract and retain workers. For women as well as men, the lure of better pay sufficed. Indeed, a few years later, when government reformers enacted legislation to prohibit women from working in the pits for reasons of public health, some women severely resented their exclusion from jobs that paid much better than what they could earn above ground.[22]

These women miners generally were mature and married. Younger, single rural girls commonly took jobs in the textile mills and as domestic servants, while poor urban women and girls held a wide range of jobs: as "lowgrade factory workers, used paper and junk collectors, . .. peddlers, papermakers, . . . fishmongers, and vegetable-sellers," working as day laborers, and engaging in "cart-pushing and itinerant tea-picking.”23

These working poor were nearly as invisible to activist women as they were to male leaders. Even among the women of privilege, moreover, differing needs, priorities, and interests led to the pursuit of differing agendas. In consequence it was exceedingly difficult for activists to form a united front and promote a shared program for change in women's circumstances.

One of those who confronted most thoughtfully the dilemma of a fragmented female populace was Fukuda Hideko of Okayama samurai ancestry. An admirer of Kishida, she spent some years as radical political activist and prison inmate before settling down to a life devoted to teaching and feminist socialist activism. In 1907 Fukuda established a magazine, Sekai Fujin (Women of the World), as a vehicle of feminist-socialist thought and information. In the editorial that launched her new venture, she declared,

“as far as women are concerned, virtually everything is coercive and oppressive, making it imperative that we women rise up and forcefully develop our own social movement.”[24]

Recognizing with particular clarity the social basis of the divisions that prevented women from developing a united front, she frequently pointed out that women labored under both gender and class discrimination. For that reason, she argued in another essay the same year, women should support socialism:

“While socialism prevents the exploitation of workers by the capitalist class, it also stops the arrogance of the male class against women. It gets rid of the rich and poor classes, and removes sexual discrimination.”[25]

In hopes of appealing to the broadest spectrum of women, Fukuda chose as a major goal of Sekai Fujin the repeal of the above-noted Article 5. But even that focus failed to elicit a unified women's movement. Harassed by authorities and unsympathetic to the sorts of paternalistic governmental measures that many less fortunate women welcomed, Fukuda was unable to build a broad movement. A few years later the women's movement drifted into desuetude in the wake of a plot to assassinate the emperor (noted below), in which the young and angry journalist-turned-anarchist Kanno Suga became deeply involved at the price of her life.

Not all women activists were so firmly opposed to the established order. For some the new influences sweeping across Meiji Japan seemed to offer rich opportunity, even as wife and mother. That view was evident in the journal Jogaku zasshi (Women's Education Magazine), which appeared in 526 issues during 1885-1904, until it failed financially.[26]

A number of women founded girls' schools where they instructed students in values and subjects that could accommodate the "good wife; wise mother" vision even while promoting a broader sense of women's possibilities (see figure 14.1). Most famously, in 1901 Tsuda Ume founded the Women's English School (Joshi Eigaku Juku), which grew into today's Tsuda Women's University. She urged her students not only to be ladylike but also to pursue practical schooling in marketable skills. As she observed in a speech of 1915, "Economic independence is the one thing that can save a woman from an unsuitable or distasteful marriage urged on her by relatives."[27] Educators such as she gave encouragement to the growing number of young women who pursued the study of medicine, training them to be licensed as nurses and after 1912 as doctors. And even larger numbers were trained as school teachers, especially for women's schools.

Among noted women of the day, the one who enjoyed the most success was Okumura Ioko, daughter of a Buddhist priest in Kyushu. An energetic participant in Restoration politics, she became a firm supporter of Meiji continental expansion, traveled about Northeast Asia, and in 1901 established the Patriotic Women's Society. Its main functions were to assist troops departing for war, aid those families of soldiers that were experiencing hardship, and console the bereaved. Because Okumura's organization so clearly contributed to government policy, she quickly won the backing of leaders and her organization grew with striking rapidity, counting 465,000 members by 1905 and a million or more by World War I, with branches in villages throughout the realm.

[...]

SOCIALIST INTELLECTUALS

One factor that spurred officials and pundits to counsel lowered expectations for the young, to favor movements such as Okumura' s Patriotic Women's Society, and to attempt to outflank or suppress the efforts of feminists, labor unionists, and other critics of the newly established Meiji order was their awareness of the growing attention intellectuals were giving to social problems and tensions of the day. During the 1890s some observers began to think about society's problems in terms of the recently articulated Marxist and other socialist analyses that they encountered through study abroad and the discussion of imported texts. In 1901 a group in Tokyo formed the Social Democratic Party, declaring as their goal:

“to abolish the gap between rich and poor and secure a victory for pacificism in the world by means of genuine socialism and democracy.”[31]

The newly formed government of Prime Minister Katsura Tarō responded to the group's manifesto by promptly seizing all copies of the document and ordering the party disbanded. The Minister of the Interior, who ordered the party's dissolution, explained the issue this way:

“Other countries all have their hands full with the socialist party and are doing their best to suppress it. We in Japan must likewise devote all our efforts to suppressing it.”[32]

That response notwithstanding, the handful of intellectuals who comprised this initial socialist movement continued their peaceful proselytizing over the next several years, and in early 1906 the government allowed them to form a new political party. During 1906-7, however, after wartime boom and patriotic zeal had given way to industrial slump and political anger, the country was racked by strikes and labor disputes involving both mine and surface workers. That turmoil, together with socialist editorializing (and especially socialist criticism of government action in suppressing the labor protest at Ashio), led to the new party's disbandment. By then Kōtoku Shūsui, a journalist, socialist party participant, and critic of the Ashio mine operation, was also denouncing the harsh government policy in Korea. He called for more radical revolutionary action at home, even as he and others were having run-ins with the police. Moreover, some of his associates were mounting a rhetorical attack on the imperial institution itself.

These developments led government leaders to see the socialists as a dangerous threat to their new constitutional order. Employing much the same "preventive" logic as in 1901, Prime Minister Katsura argued in 1908:

“Although socialists at the moment are said to constitute little more than a thin thread of smoke, if we overlook this thread of smoke, it will someday develop the force of a wildfire, and then it would be too late for anything but regrets.”[33]

Therefore, he argued, their meetings and publications must be controlled and their growth stymied. The government cracked down, using tight surveillence, jailings, suppression of the socialist press, and severe constraints on speakers.

Nevertheless, underground socialist activity continued. In the spring of 1910 authorities discovered a plot to mount a bomb attack against the emperor, presumably as part of an attempt at violent revolution that was inspired by recent anarchist actions in Russia. Viewed by the government and press as an utterly heinous crime - and as an opportunity to squelch socialism - that incident led to the arrest, trial, and eventual conviction and execution of Kōtoku, along with Kanno and ten others, on the charge of high treason.34

The government took other steps, as well, to forestall dissident activity. It moved to consolidate its control of Korea by replacing the existing Korean administration with a Japanese governor-generalship. At home it established a special police force, the Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu (Tokkō or Special Higher Police), to watch for "dangerous thought." And, as noted above, it gave formal approval to the creation of a locally-based, nationwide army reserve system. That reserve, its leaders hoped, would assure that the army's ideals of imperial loyalism, durable social order, and diligent national service came to pervade community life, thereby eliminating the threats of sedition, selfishness, and sloth.

The government employed carrots as well as sticks, most notably the aforementioned Factory Act of 1911. With those acts of repression and concession the socialist movement became inactive, not reviving until the Russian Revolution brought it a new surge of hope.

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #japan #general history #feminist history #socialist history #asian history

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deniscollins · 5 years

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Finland Is a Capitalist Paradise

Finland’s capitalist growth and dynamism have been helped, not hurt, by the nation’s commitment to providing generous and universal public services that support basic human well-being, which have buffered and absorbed the risks and dislocations caused by capitalist innovation. In Finland, paying higher taxes is a convenient way for capitalists to outsource to the government the work of keeping workers healthy and educated. This liberates businesses to focus on what they do best: business. It’s convenient for everyone else, too. All Finnish residents, including manual laborers, legal immigrants, well-paid managers and wealthy families, benefit hugely from the same Finnish single-payer health care system and world-class public schools. Should the U.S. adopt the Finland’s version of capitalism: (1) Yes, (2) No?

Two years ago we were living in a pleasant neighborhood in Brooklyn. We were experienced professionals, enjoying a privileged life. We’d just had a baby. She was our first, and much wanted. We were United States citizens and our future as a family should have seemed bright. But we felt deeply insecure and anxious.

Our income was trickling in unreliably from temporary gigs as independent contractors. Our access to health insurance was a constant source of anxiety, as we scrambled year after year among private employer plans, exorbitant plans for freelancers, and complicated and expensive Obamacare plans. With a child, we’d soon face overwhelming day-care costs. Never mind the bankruptcy-sized bills for education ahead, whether for housing in a good public-school district or for private-school tuition. And then there’d be college. In other words, we suffered from the same stressors that are swamping more and more of Americans, even the relatively privileged.

As we contemplated all this, one of us, Anu, was offered a job back in her hometown: Helsinki, Finland.

Finland, of course, is one of those Nordic countries that we hear some Americans, including President Trump, describe as unsustainable and oppressive — “socialist nanny states.” As we considered settling there, we canvassed Trevor’s family — he was raised in Arlington, Va. — and our American friends. They didn’t seem to think we’d be moving to a Soviet-style autocracy. In fact, many of them encouraged us to go. Even a venture capitalist we knew in Silicon Valley who has three children sounded envious: “I’d move to Finland in a heartbeat.”

So we went.

We’ve now been living in Finland for more than a year. The difference between our lives here and in the States has been tremendous, but perhaps not in the way many Americans might imagine. What we’ve experienced is an increase in personal freedom. Our lives are just much more manageable. To be sure, our days are still full of challenges — raising a child, helping elderly parents, juggling the demands of daily logistics and work.

But in Finland, we are automatically covered, no matter what, by taxpayer-funded universal health care that equals the United States’ in quality (despite the misleading claims you hear to the contrary), all without piles of confusing paperwork or haggling over huge bills. Our child attends a fabulous, highly professional and ethnically diverse public day-care center that amazes us with its enrichment activities and professionalism. The price? About $300 a month — the maximum for public day care, because in Finland day-care fees are subsidized for all families.

And if we stay here, our daughter will be able to attend one of the world’s best K-12 education systems at no cost to us, regardless of the neighborhood we live in. College would also be tuition free. If we have another child, we will automatically get paid parental leave, funded largely through taxes, for nearly a year, which can be shared between parents. Annual paid vacations here of four, five or even six weeks are also the norm.

Compared with our life in the United States, this is fantastic. Nevertheless, to many people in America, the Finnish system may still conjure impressions of dysfunction and authoritarianism. Yet Finnish citizens report extraordinarily high levels of life satisfaction; the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranked them highest in the world, followed by Norwegians, Danes, Swiss and Icelanders. This year, the World Happiness Report also announced Finland to be the happiest country on earth, for the second year in a row.

But surely, many in the United States will conclude, Finnish citizens and businesses must be paying a steep price in lost freedoms, opportunity and wealth. Yes, Finland faces its own economic challenges, and Finns are notorious complainers whenever anything goes wrong. But under its current system, Finland has become one of the world’s wealthiest societies, and like the other Nordic countries, it is home to many hugely successful global companies.

In fact, a recent report by the chairman of market and investment strategy for J.P. Morgan Asset Management came to a surprising conclusion: The Nordic region is not only “just as business-friendly as the U.S.” but also better on key free-market indexes, including greater protection of private property, less impact on competition from government controls and more openness to trade and capital flows. According to the World Bank, doing business in Denmark and Norway is actually easier overall than it is in the United States.

Finland also has high levels of economic mobility across generations. A 2018 World Bank report revealed that children in Finland have a much better chance of escaping the economic class of their parents and pursuing their own success than do children in the United States.

Finally, and perhaps most shockingly, the nonpartisan watchdog group Freedom House has determined that citizens of Finland actually enjoy higher levels of personal and political freedom, and more secure political rights, than citizens of the United States.

What to make of all this? For starters, politicians in the United States might want to think twice about calling the Nordics “socialist.” From our perch, the term seems to have more currency on the other side of the Atlantic than it does here.

In the United States, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are often demonized as dangerous radicals. In Finland, many of their policy ideas would seem normal — and not particularly socialist.

When Mr. Sanders ran for president in 2016, what surprised our Finnish friends was that the United States, a country with so much wealth and successful capitalist enterprise, had not already set up some sort of universal public health care program and access to tuition-free college. Such programs tend to be seen by Nordic people as the bare basics required for any business-friendly nation to compete in the 21st century.

Even more peculiar is that in Finland, you don’t really see the kind of socialist movement that has been gaining popularity in some of the more radical fringes of the left in America, especially around goals such as curtailing free markets and even nationalizing the means of production. The irony is that if you championed socialism like this in Finland, you’d get few takers.

So what could explain this — the weird fact that actual socialism seems so much more popular in the capitalist United States than in supposedly socialist Finland?

A socialist revolution was attempted once in Finland. But that was more than a hundred years ago. Finland was in the process of industrializing when the Russian empire collapsed and Finland gained independence. Finnish urban and rural workers and tenant farmers, fed up with their miserable working conditions, rose up in rebellion. The response from Finland’s capitalists, conservative landowners and members of the middle and upper class was swift and violent. Civil war broke out and mass murder followed. After months of fighting, the capitalists and conservatives crushed the socialist uprising. More than 35,000 people lay dead. Traumatized and impoverished, Finns spent decades trying to recover and rebuild.

So what became of socialism in Finland after that? According to a prominent Finnish political historian, Pauli Kettunen of the University of Helsinki, after the civil war Finnish employers promoted the ideal of “an independent freeholder farmer and his individual will to work” and successfully used this idea of heroic individualism to weaken worker unions. Although socialists returned to playing a role in Finnish politics, during the first half of the 20th century, Finland prevented socialism from becoming a revolutionary force — and did so in a way that sounds downright American.

Finland fell into another bloody conflict as it fought off, at great cost, the Communist Soviet Union next door during World War II. After the war, worker unions gained strength, bringing back socialist sympathies as the country entered a more industrial and international era. This is when Finnish history took an unexpected turn.

Finnish employers had become painfully aware of the threats socialism continued to pose to capitalism. They also found themselves under increasing pressure from politicians representing the needs of workers. Wanting to avoid further conflicts, and to protect their private property and new industries, Finnish capitalists changed tactics. Instead of exploiting workers and trying to keep them down, after World War II, Finland’s capitalists cooperated with government to map out long-term strategies and discussed these plans with unions to get workers onboard.

More astonishingly, Finnish capitalists also realized that it would be in their own long-term interests to accept steep progressive tax hikes. The taxes would help pay for new government programs to keep workers healthy and productive — and this would build a more beneficial labor market. These programs became the universal taxpayer-funded services of Finland today, including public health care, public day care and education, paid parental leaves, unemployment insurance and the like.

If these moves by Finnish capitalists sound hard to imagine, it’s because people in the United States have been peddled a myth that universal government programs like these can’t coexist with profitable private-sector businesses and robust economic growth. As if to reinforce the impossibility of such synergies, last fall the Trump administration released a peculiar report arguing that “socialism” had negatively affected Nordic living standards.

However, a 2006 study by the Finnish researchers Markus Jantti, Juho Saari and Juhana Vartiainen demonstrates the opposite. First, throughout the 20th century Finland remained — and remains to this day — a country and an economy committed to markets, private businesses and capitalism.

Even more intriguing, these scholars demonstrate that Finland’s capitalist growth and dynamism have been helped, not hurt, by the nation’s commitment to providing generous and universal public services that support basic human well-being. These services have buffered and absorbed the risks and dislocations caused by capitalist innovation.

With Finland’s stable foundation for growth and disruption, its small but dynamic free-market economy has punched far above its weight. Some of the country’s most notable businesses have included the world’s largest mobile phone company, one of the world’s largest elevator manufacturers and two of the world’s most successful mobile gaming companies. Visit Finland today and it’s obvious that the much-heralded quality of life is taking place within a bustling economy of upscale shopping malls, fancy cars and internationally competitive private companies.

The other Nordic countries have been practicing this form of capitalism even longer than Finland, with even more success. As early as the 1930s, according to Pauli Kettunen, employers across the Nordic region watched the disaster of the Great Depression unfold. For enough of them the lesson was clear: The smart choice was to compromise and pursue the Nordic approach to capitalism.

The Nordic countries are all different from one another, and all have their faults, foibles, unique histories and civic disagreements. Contentious battles between strong unions and employers help keep the system in balance. Often it gets messy: Just this week, the Finnish prime minister resigned amid a labor dispute.

But the Nordic nations as a whole, including a majority of their business elites, have arrived at a simple formula: Capitalism works better if employees get paid decent wages and are supported by high-quality, democratically accountable public services that enable everyone to live healthy, dignified lives and to enjoy real equality of opportunity for themselves and their children. For us, that has meant an increase in our personal freedoms and our political rights — not the other way around.

Yes, this requires capitalists and corporations to pay fairer wages and more taxes than their American counterparts currently do. Nordic citizens generally pay more taxes, too. And yes, this might sound scandalous in the United States, where business leaders and economists perpetually warn that tax increases would slow growth and reduce incentives to invest.

Here’s the funny thing, though: Over the past 50 years, if you had invested in a basket of Nordic equities, you would have earned a higher annual real return than the American stock market during the same half-century, according to global equities data published by Credit Suisse.

Nordic capitalists are not dumb. They know that they will still earn very handsome financial returns even after paying their taxes. They keep enough of their profits to live in luxury, wield influence and acquire social status. There are several dozen Nordic billionaires. Nordic citizens are not dumb, either. If you’re a member of the robust middle class in Finland, you generally get a better overall deal for your combined taxes and personal expenditures, as well as higher-quality outcomes, than your American counterparts — and with far less hassle.

Why would the wealthy in Nordic countries go along with this? Some Nordic capitalists actually believe in equality of opportunity and recognize the value of a society that invests in all of its people. But there is a more prosaic reason, too: Paying taxes is a convenient way for capitalists to outsource to the government the work of keeping workers healthy and educated.

While companies in the United States struggle to administer health plans and to find workers who are sufficiently educated, Nordic societies have demanded that their governments provide high-quality public services for all citizens. This liberates businesses to focus on what they do best: business. It’s convenient for everyone else, too. All Finnish residents, including manual laborers, legal immigrants, well-paid managers and wealthy families, benefit hugely from the same Finnish single-payer health care system and world-class public schools.

There’s a big lesson here: When capitalists perceive government as a logistical ally rather than an ideological foe and when all citizens have a stake in high-quality public institutions, it’s amazing how well government can get things done.

Ultimately, when we mislabel what goes on in Nordic nations as socialism, we blind ourselves to what the Nordic region really is: a laboratory where capitalists invest in long-term stability and human flourishing while maintaining healthy profits.

Capitalists in the United States have taken a different path. They’ve slashed taxes, weakened government, crushed unions and privatized essential services in the pursuit of excess profits. All of this leaves workers painfully vulnerable to capitalism’s dynamic disruptions. Even well-positioned Americans now struggle under debilitating pressures, and a majority inhabit a treacherous Wild West where poverty, homelessness, medical bankruptcy, addiction and incarceration can be just a bit of bad luck away. Americans are told that this is freedom and that it is the most heroic way to live. It’s the same message Finns were fed a century ago.

But is this approach the most effective or even the most profitable way for capitalists in the United States to do business? It should come as no surprise that resentment and fear have become rampant in the United States, and that President Trump got elected on a promise to turn the clock backward on globalization. Nor is it surprising that American workers are fighting back; the number of workers involved in strikes last year in the United States was the highest since the 1980s, and this year’s General Motors strike was the company’s longest in nearly 50 years. Nor should it surprise anyone that fully half of the rising generation of Americans, aged 18 to 29, according to Gallup polling, have a positive view of socialism.

The prospect of a future full of socialists seems finally to be getting the attention of some American business leaders. For years the venture capitalist Nick Hanauer has been warning his “fellow zillionaires” that “the pitchforks are coming for us.” Warren Buffett has been calling for higher taxes on the rich, and this year the hedge-fund billionaire Ray Dalio admitted that “capitalism basically is not working for the majority of people.” Peter Georgescu, chairman emeritus of Young & Rubicam, has put it perhaps most succinctly: He sees capitalism “slowly committing suicide.”In recent months such concerns have spread throughout the capitalist establishment. The Financial Times rocked its business-friendly readership with a high-profile series admitting that capitalism has indeed become “rigged” and that it desperately needs a “reset,” to restore truly free markets and bring back real opportunity. Leading captains of finance and industry in the United States rocked the business world, too, with a joint declaration from the Business Roundtable that they will now prioritize not only profits but also “employees, customers, shareholders and the communities.” They are calling this “stakeholder capitalism.”

If these titans of industry are serious about finding a more sustainable approach, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. They can simply consult their Nordic counterparts. If they do, they might realize that the success of Nordic capitalism is not due to businesses doing more to help communities. In a way, it’s the opposite: Nordic capitalists do less. What Nordic businesses do is focus on business — including good-faith negotiations with their unions — while letting citizens vote for politicians who use government to deliver a set of robust universal public services.

This, in fact, may be closer to what a majority of people in the United States actually want, at least according to a poll released by the Pew Research Center this year. Respondents said that the American government should spend more on health care and education, for example, to improve the quality of life for future generations.

But the poll also revealed that Americans feel deeply pessimistic about the nation’s future and fear that worse political conflict is coming. Some military analysts and historians agree and put the odds of a civil war breaking out in the United States frighteningly high.

Right now might be an opportune moment for American capitalists to pause and ask themselves what kind of long-term cost-benefit calculation makes the most sense. Business leaders focused on the long game could do a lot worse than starting with a fact-finding trip to Finland.

Here in Helsinki, our family is facing our second Nordic winter and the notorious darkness it brings. Our Finnish friends keep asking how we handled the first one and whether we can survive another. Our answer is always the same. As we push our 2-year-old daughter in her stroller through the dismal, icy streets to her wonderful, affordable day-care center or to our friendly, professional and completely free pediatric health center, before heading to work in an innovative economy where a vast majority of people have a decent quality of life, the winter doesn’t matter one bit. It can actually make you happy.

#Finland

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prorevenge · 6 years

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You want to deal only with a manager? You got it! A tale of yield management.

Warning: This is a very long story.

Once upon a time, when most people listened to terrestrial radio stations, I was the advertising sales manager for a group of radio stations in a US city. It was a fairly high-level, high-paying job that put me in charge of millions of dollars in revenue.

One of my two main duties was managing a group of advertising account managers. The account manager’s job is to sell radio commercials. Their only pay is commission on what they sell. There is no salary. While to most, this doesn’t sound like a good deal, in reality, my account managers usually made upper-middle-class income if they worked hard.

My other main duty was to manage inventory and prices for radio commercials. The pricing strategy for radio stations is called yield management. In theory, the price for radio commercials varies based on a number of factors like percent of product already sold, anticipated future demand, overall size of the buy, and the timing of the buy in relation to when the ads run.

It is similar to how prices for airlines tickets and hotel rooms vary.

Some examples of how this works:

If there are already a lot of commercials sold in the week, then prices to place an ad are higher.

If the overall size of the ad buy is high, then the spot price can go down (like a volume discount)

If someone is trying to buy ads to air soon, like tomorrow or next week, the price is higher.

While I used tools that help measure the factors that I mentioned above to set prices, ultimately, as the sales manager, I had total discretion on how much to charge.

Each radio commercial actually had two prices. The higher is called the rate card price. This is the official, semi-public price that actually appeared on a piece of a paper called a rate card.

The lower nonpublic price, or the floor price, is the lowest price for which an account manager could actually sell it, without getting special permission from me (which I never gave). The account manager has the flexibility to work within that range for pricing.

Keep in mind that both the rate card price and the floor price vary over time due to the factors that I describe above.

While my salespeople were paid on commission for what they sold, I was paid a small percentage of all revenue. In this scenario, losing one client could mean a 5% to 10% reduction in income for an account manager; however, for me, losing a client was barely noticeable. I would rather lose a bad client if it meant that I could fill the space with good (better paying clients).

At this point, the exposition ends and the story begins.

One day, around 10 AM, while I was sitting at my desk, contemplating exactly which condiments I was going to have on my lunchtime deli sandwich, I get an email. The sender is a fellow that I am going to refer to as GPDW, which is short for Gold Plated Dick Wad.

GPDW was the owner of a business that recently began advertising on one of my radio stations. The business catered to a lower income group of consumers and was somewhere between payday lender and pawn shop on the Poor-People-Exploitation-Meter. I hated taking this kind of client, but my bosses wouldn’t let me reject it.

GPDW had been running commercials on one of my radio stations for a few months. The account manager that worked with him was a good, young salesperson that we will call Monica.

I liked Monica. She was inexperienced but hardworking and honest.

Monica had negotiated a great deal for GPDW. The rates were at the exact floor rate at the time the deal was done; the lowest rates that I would accept.

She had advised him to advertise on the station that best fit his target audience. In fact, the station completely dominated in the particular demographic that he coveted. The second ranked station had less than a quarter of the listeners. And, she gave it to him for the lowest possible price.

So, back to GPDW’s email to me. His curt message went something like this:

I am sick of dealing with your little girl. I want a manager to handle my business from now on. Cancel my advertising schedule immediately and bring your ass down to see me if you want me to buy anything from you again.

I immediately called Monica to my office. When she walked in her eyes were red. It was clear that she had been crying.

She told me that GPDW had cussed her out in his office. He was asking for a lower rate, well below the floor. She tried to explain why we couldn’t do that. He cut her off, screaming at her to GET THE FUCK OUT OF HIS OFFICE.

On the drive back from that meeting she had to stop because she was crying too hard to drive safely.

What an asshole.

After commiserating with Monica and doing my best to give her a pep talk, I did what the client asked: I cancelled all of his radio commercials.

At that point, I would have been happy to never deal with him again. Unfortunately, my bosses would not have liked that.

I put on my most professional face, shoved a rate card in my folder, and drove down to see GPDW.

He worked out of a shitty space in a old strip mall. His office was just barely big enough to contain his desk and a couple of chairs.

This meeting was the first time that I met GPDW. He was short, young and reminded me of a car salesman.

I smiled, shook his hand and told him that we were honoring his request. I, the manager, would now be his only point-of-contact at the company. As an important client, he would get managerial level service from me. No more dealing with “young girls.”

He told me that he wanted better rates. A salesperson from the #2 radio station had called on him and presented rates that were half the price of what he was paying us.

I acknowledged this and explained to him that the difference in price was due to the listenership levels. With us, he was advertising to four times more people. His original deal with Monica was actually much better than what he was being offered by the #2 station.

Of course, the salesperson from the #2 station didn’t tell him that. Monica tried to tell him but he screamed at her to GET THE FUCK OUT OF HIS OFFICE.

Once he understood, he said, “Alright, just let the existing advertising schedule continue.”

I responded, “What existing advertising schedule?”

“The one we have been running the past few months. Just keep it going.”

“You instructed me to cancel that schedule in your email. I cancelled it as per your request.”

“Okay, then just rebook it,” he said.

This was the moment that I was waiting for.

“Sure thing. Demand on our station has increased significantly since the first booking a few months ago. Here are our most updated rates.”

I pulled out the rate card from my folder and handed it over. The prices on this rate card were double what he was paying before. The reasons the rate was so much higher are, firstly, it was the rate card rate (the highest) and I had already filled the ad spaces that he had vacated with higher rate spots from other advertisers. Yield management dictated that we raise prices.

His face got red. He yelled, “WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT?!”

“This is our most recent rate card. This is rate that you will need to pay to be on my station.”

I continued, “You asked for managerial level service and this is it. Monica is an account manager. Her motivation is to get a deal done so that she can earn a commission. She made you the lowest possible deal in order to get your business. I, on the other hand, am a manager. I have other considerations and am less inclined to cut you a deal.”

He went slack jawed as I stood up.

“It was nice to meet you. Contact me when you want to buy some commercials.”

—

After I left, GPDW immediately called Monica. She let the call go to voicemail. He begged her to call him back. "We can work this out."

A few days later he got my boss on the phone. My boss told him that I was the ultimate arbiter of rates and he is not willing to interfere with my process. I knew that my boss would do this because I was really good at my job (and my boss was awesome).

A few weeks later GPDW emailed me an advertising order using the updated rates. I let Monica technically keep the account internally so that she earned the commission, which was significantly higher than before. But, she never had to talk to him again.

Eventually, GPDW’s business closed and I heard that he moved away.

(source) (story by radioburner9988)

#prorevenge #by radioburner9988 #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #revenge story #pro #revenge

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strawberry-slippers · 3 years

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The Ethics of Thrifting

I’m going to be exploring the topic of thrift shopping and the ethics involved. The main points I’m going to cover include the increase of prices at thrift stores, whether thrifting is a privilege for those from middle- and high-income classes, the ethics of reselling, overconsumption in the fashion industry, and the normalization of thrifting. I will also go over how those in the middle and upper class can thrift consciously.

1. Increased Prices

There is currently a stigma among those who shop second-hand that the increase in demand of thrifting causes a scarcity in products, which directly lead to increased prices. This argument is a valid concern, but ultimately incorrect as there is absolutely no scarcity in goods being donated and sold in thrift stores, especially big corporations such as Value Village and Goodwill. Thrift stores are only able to sell 20% of the clothing that is donated, and the rest is sent to landfills or sold to third world countries. The scarcity of donations is not the cause for the rise in prices, but things that could be affecting this include inflation and corporate greed.

Small increases and markups in price are inevitable as inflation occurs. Rent goes up, as does the minimum wage, so the prices of goods rise with it. However, this does not explain the sudden increase of prices at thrift stores rising by 5 times the amount it should be, or even being priced higher than the item brand new with a stock tag on it. This is caused by corporate greed and capitalism.

As second-hand shopping rises in popularity, more and more people are coming to thrift stores looking for unique and trendy pieces at such low prices compared to retail stores. Corporations pick up on these trends and inflate the prices of attractive items to something that the low-income community may not have paid at a thrift store, but the new market of thrift shoppers are willing to and do pay for. Although thrift shopping is a huge trend, it is not the consumers’ fault that the prices are rising, but the corporations that control this market.

2. Taking from the Poor

Another argument that arises surrounding the ethics of thrift shopping states that the middle and upper-class shoppers who thrift for enjoyment are taking away all the good products at thrift stores where low-income families have no other options but to shop at. This argument is combatted again with the same argument as the concern for the rise in pricing: there is absolutely no shortage of supply, and even the clothes that aren’t sold are in good condition. However, as privileged shoppers, it is important to be conscious when shopping second-hand. I will go over this in more detail later but shopping consciously includes avoiding sections where demand is high, such as plus size and winter coats, or shopping at a higher price point such as at consignment and vintage stores.

3. Reselling

There is a huge debate in the concern of ethics on reselling thrifted clothing. Resellers are those who shop at thrift stores, purchasing mass amounts of clothing, all for the sole purpose of reselling them for a profit. Apart from the concerns mentioned in the previous points, there are new concerns that these resellers bring to the table.

These resellers hunt for the best products at mass amounts for affordable prices, then flip them for at least triple the price they paid. They can do this successfully, however, because there are consumers that are willing to purchase these flipped items at the inflated price. Resellers are known for exploiting these types of consumers by hiking prices up higher than they are worth brand new, just because they are marketed as “vintage” and know someone will still buy it. The ethics behind the amount of profit gained off this is very questionable, as they bring a greedier, “business-focused” mindset to the thrifting community.

Although there are many bad seeds that reinforce this, there is an ethical way to go about reselling, and a more genuine business practice within it. Resellers are actually creating more accessibility for vintage items by putting the items found locally on platforms where anyone can access it, which is beneficial to those who may live in areas that don’t have any local thrift stores. Also, by putting these pieces up on apps that serve international shipping such as Depop or Poshmark, they are making these used clothes available to everyone. Resellers can curate the more desirable items and market it to consumers of higher income who are able to pay the price point, which draws those people to spend less time in thrift stores themselves, providing more options for second-hand shopping. This also leads to reselling being a full-time occupation.

Resellers put a lot of work into this market, more than simply shopping and selling. They take the time to visit all the thrift stores in their area, search through racks of clothing to find the best items for their market, then even take the time to clean, fix, or refurbish these items. After all this added effort and time they deservingly add to the purchased price, or else they would be working at a loss. Reselling has gained a lot of traction and has become a $33 billion dollar industry by 2021. For the working class, operating a small business through reselling is a great way to make an income with a flexible work schedule.

4. Normalizing Second-hand

A reason that resellers also choose to do what they do is because they want to normalize second-hand clothing and reduce the stigma against it. When I was young, I was embarrassed to accept hand-me-downs and was taught that thrift stores are unclean, and lots of people have voiced that they used to feel ashamed for having to shop at thrift stores. As of recent, however, thrifting has become very popular, mostly due to the wealthier people that made it “cool”, and the stigma is almost erased. This is a great benefit for the environment as it encourages people to consume consciously and give old clothes new life, which is ultimately a more sustainable practice than purchasing new products that are marketed as being sustainably sourced or produced. Also, rather than putting their money into fast fashion, the money often goes to a better cause because many thrift stores give their profits to charities and organizations that help those in need.

5. Overconsumption

Shopping at thrift stores could be the key to solving the issue of disposable fashion. It is reducing the amount of textile waste added to landfills every day and encouraging people to use their clothes further into its life cycle. However, overconsumption (as always) can be the downfall of this solution. If consumers thrift for the sake of purchasing more clothes to add to their wardrobe rather than out of necessity or to actually wear the clothes they buy, the excess of clothes in their own closets will eventually be disposed or donated again, resulting in an endless cycle. “Thrift Haul” videos on YouTube contribute to this overconsumption as it just promotes the need to buy an excessive amount of clothing that one couldn’t possibly wear in one lifetime.

This and all other issues mentioned can be easily avoided if consumers make sure to thrift consciously.

6. How to Thrift Consciously

This leads me to my final point: how to thrift consciously.

It only takes a few steps to be mindful when shopping second-hand as a more privileged consumer. Personally, my family is considered the working class, however I am aware that I am more privileged than others and keep this in mind when I do my shopping.

1. First, avoid sections with a scare supply and high demand if you don’t need it. This includes plus-size, as the options are always limited but there is a great portion of consumers who need it; also, winter coats, which are a necessity for the lower class who can’t afford good quality and warm clothing; another section to be considerate of is professional wear such as office clothes or uniforms; children’s wear is also a section with less available supply.

2. Second, avoid shopping at thrift stores in lower income neighborhoods where most consumers have a high need but supply at the stores is limited. If your budget allows it, shop at consignment and vintage stores instead. They provide a wide variety of second-hand clothing that is just as sustainable as shopping at thrift stores, but at a price point that is affordable to a higher tax bracket.

3. The most important thing to consider, only buy what you need and will wear. Purchase things that you love and will get a good use out of, instead of contributing to the overconsumption that leads back to the waste that the fashion industry produces.

In conclusion, there should be nothing to stop you from shopping at thrift stores, in fact I encourage it! It’s just important to be mindful of how you shop, whether it’s retail or second-hand. Thanks for listening, and happy thrifting!

#global economy #thrifting #ethics #fashion design

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faceache111 · 4 years

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MANIFESTO OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY

[From the English edition of 1888, edited by Friedrich Engels]

A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism.

All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to

exorcise this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot,

French Radicals and German police-spies.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact.

I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powers to be itself a Power.

To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London, and sketched the following Manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.

I. BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS