The Communist Manifesto: The Bourgeois and The Proletarians

Marx started the Manifesto with a description of the never-ending struggle between classes of the society. The rise of the Bourgeois and the Proletarians was no different from the class antagonism in history. The new classes that were developed was nothing more than a simplified form of the old ways of oppression.

The Bourgeois
All throughout the reading, the idea to keep in mind is communism. Communism, as defined in dictionary.com, is a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party. The bourgeoisie is that single and self-perpetuating political party.
In the Rise of Industrial Revolution, the trade system pushed for a feudal system that is monopolized. The guild masters were replaced by the manufacturing middle class and the division of labor between different guilds was replaced with division of labor in a workshop. From the series of revolutions in production and exchange, the modern bourgeoisie was born and from each step was always accompanied with a political change.
Among all these political change, the bourgeoisie has played the most revolutionary part. They were the exploiters. They exploited not just the land, the environment, materials and resources, and most of all, they exploited people. They have needs that cannot be satisfied and knows no limitation because they were never given one in the first place. It was as if they own the world, wanting to conquer everything. They can buy everything and everyone. To be more precise, their money can buy everything and everyone.
And then the epidemic of over-production came about. It was a crisis that the bourgeoisie has no control over. Their solution is either a "destruction of a mass of productive forces, or by the conquest of new markets, or by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones." We can easily relate this with outsourcing. As soon as laborers organized unions and protested for higher wages, manufacturing companies responded by outsourcing jobs and sometimes the whole company to other places where labor and resources are cheap. This solution worked out so well and we can see that it is slowly working its way up to labors that we never thought can be outsourced such as those in the medical field.

The Proletarians
Marx described the proletariats as the "people that the bourgeoisie has called upon to wield weapons for them, which is also what will kill them." To the bourgeois, they were referred to as commodity. They are a possession, belonging, merchandise. Yet they are important to their survival.
The topic in the reading that I found interesting was the alienation in proletarians. Alienation emerged during the Industrial revolution because men became nothing more than an "appendage of the machine". They are an attachment, a supplement, an accessory. There was no connection between the producer and the product. As these continues on, the repulsion of the nature of one's job grows. The working class were not only are they enslaved by the bourgeoisie and the over-looker, even the machines are superior of them. Yes, we have reached the point where gender no longer matter in the labor industry. Everyone is now equal as instruments of labour.
In my work experience in the hospital, alienation is probably something that is not very common. Most of the time, the problem is that workers are too involved in their work, in which case, alienation is not from their work but from their own self. They become too involve with their work that their work starts to define who they are. There is a lost of personal life. I'm sure that this is something that is common to anyone that is passionate about their work. I guess is to find balance. Or maybe just finding that something that you can passionate about so that working will never feels like work.