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, callous 'cash payment.' It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedomFree Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored 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 laborers.The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.
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About Karl Marx
Karl Marx was a 19th-century German philosopher and socialist theorist. Karl Marx was a German philosopher, social and political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto, and his three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1894), a critique of classical political economy which employs his theory of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism, in the culmination of his life's work. Read more on Wikipedia →