Inequality and Distribution of Wealth Theme Analysis

Marx and Engels see society dominated by the capitalist class—the bourgeoisie—as fundamentally unequal. To them, it is patently unfair that those at the top of society have so much more power and wealth than those at the bottom—especially given that the proletariat greatly outnumbers the bourgeoisie. That power and money give the bourgeoisie disproportionate control over society’s laws, social authorities, and media, allowing it to accumulate ever greater wealth and resources—in other words, the unequal distribution of wealth goes hand in hand with societal inequality. What’s more, because capitalists seek to maximize their profits, it would be contradictory for them to increase the proletariat’s share. In fact, say Marx and Engels, it is in the capitalist class’ interest to maximize inequality; by giving members of the proletariat only the bare minimum required for their survival and continuing labor, the bourgeoisie prevents the working class from accumulating any wealth of its own, making it impossible in turn for workers to acquire any genuine power or proper say in society. Addressing inequality fueled by wealth distribution, then, is one of the main motivations behind the manifesto.

Capitalism, in the authors’ view, amounts to exploitation. The bourgeoisie own what Marx and Engels call the “means of production.” In essence, this can be thought of everything—apart from the people—required to create things to sell. The means of production includes materials, facilities, and machinery needed to make sellable products. However, the means of production only become productive because of the work put in by the proletariat. The manifesto, then, argues that it’s the proletariat’s work and this work alone that generates wealth in society; the bourgeoisie effectively steal this profit from its rightful recipients, the proletariat. An example from Marx and Engel’s time would be workers using the machines in a factory to produce goods for the bourgeoisie to sell; a more contemporary example might be computers in an office used for services work. Because the bourgeoisie wants to increase its wealth and power, it would never pay the proletariat enough to own the means of production for itself. Furthermore, because the members of the bourgeoisie are in direct competition with one another, workers’ wages are kept at the optimum level to maximize profit.

Of course, inequality is not just about how much money people have relative to one another. It also hugely affects education, living standards, and general quality of life. The reason Marx and Engels are so preoccupied with economic inequality is that it skews the power structure of society, placing control in the hands of a wealthy few and disenfranchising the masses. They see the modern government as fundamentally controlled by the bourgeoisie, giving them power over law, politics, and enforcement of order. As the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, the bourgeoisie’s influence and control over society increase too. The bourgeoisie, then, moves to create a more centralized society that further favors profit-making: “Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation,” the authors write, “with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff.” It’s not the centralization of power that Marx and Engels object to—in fact, they see centralization as necessary to the proletariat’s revolution—but the way in this particular form of centralization fundamentally entrenches the unequal power dynamic by ensuring all the wealth filters up to the bourgeoisie ruling class.

Inequality, then, breeds inequality, becoming only further entrenched as the structure of society is increasingly made to favor the conditions that allow the bourgeoisie to increase their share of wealth. While others have argued that the bourgeoisie-proletariat relationship is a kind of mutually agreed upon contract, Marx and Engels maintain that members of the proletariat have no choice in accepting these conditions—they either accept the bourgeoisie’s demands or face impoverishment. That’s why the manifesto argues that the proletariat has to summon its collective power and overthrow the bourgeoisie; the capitalist class will never willingly make concessions to the proletariat in order to address inequality, and it therefore falls to the proletariat itself to take action through revolution.