Laissez-faire and The Communist Manifesto

• Laissez-faire is an economic policy where industry owners set working conditions without interference, favoring a free market unregulated by the government.
• The term laissez-faire is French for "let people do as they please."
• Adam Smith defended the idea of a free economy in his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations, stating that economic liberty guarantees economic progress.
• Smith's arguments rested on the three natural laws of economics: the law of self-interest, the law of competition, and the law of supply and demand.
  • The law of self-interest says that people work for their own good.
  • The law of competition says that competition forces people to make a better product.
  • The law of supply and demand says that enough goods would be produced at the lowest possible price to meet demand in a market economy.

The Communist Manifesto

• According to Marx, the history of society "is the history of class struggles."
• Throughout history one economic class always oppressed another, but eventually, the downtrodden class rose up, overthrew its masters, and created an entirely new society.
• Industrial capitalists using private property to make profits made up the oppressive class of his time.
• Marx called this class the bourgeoisie, which used its wealth and control to exploit the industrial working class.
• Marx named the industrial working class the proletariat.
• Workers' wages fell far short of the price of the products they made.
• Marx called the profit "surplus value" and thought that it exploited the workers and alienated the worker from the results of his labor, forcing him to become "enslaved by the machine."
• Marx said that capitalists had alienated the worker from the results of his labor, forcing him to become "enslaved by the machine."
• This exploitation would soon bring about a new class struggle that would end with the "violent overthrow" of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat.
• Communists best understood the class struggle and would unify the proletariat, lead it in the revolution, and take control of the government.
• During the "socialist phase" of the revolution, the new proletarian government would confiscate all capitalist private property and operate these enterprises for the benefit of the workers.
• When the proletariat finally controlled economic production, all classes would disappear, class struggles would end, and there would no longer be a need for a government. This is the "communist phase,"
• Marx expected that the proletarian revolution would soon occur in Germany or England and then take place worldwide.
• He ended the Communist Manifesto with: “Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of the world unite!”