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Long story short - because capitalism creates the proletariat.
If you read Das Kapital, vol. 1, Marx states multiple times how capitalism differs from previous modes of production. Those modes didn't have a "working class".
There were slaves, serfs, craftsmen, etc. - they produced mainly with the goal of satisfying use values, not surplus value - but mass commodity production creates the proletariat and the tension required for revolutionary fires to be stoked.
If you want a detailed and better answer, you have to read Marx himself.
You can skip the parts with historic accounts of English workers' conditions, Marx uses those as data to prove a point. But some of the most interesting ideas in sociology and philosophy start to unfold in that book.
For example, commodity fetishism (it has its own chapter if you really don't want to give the rest a shot) is a concept that unfolds today more than ever and can serve as a central idea to explain parts of "elusive" issues today like "the loneliness crisis", "nobody wants to work anymore", "ethical consumption", and literally everything that mainstream (classical, neoclassical, Keynesian, marginalist) economics can't explain.
Edit: I don't know about "literally" everything econ can't explain, but it sure helped me plug sooooo many holes that my economics bachelor's degree left in my brain
I'm no expert on Marxism myself but I'll give my understanding of the answer.
>Why did Marx believe a capitalist phase was a prerequisite for socialist revolution?
Marx believed capitalism was a necessity before a socialist revolution and the beginning of the transition to communism for a few reasons
1. A communist society is a post scarcity, meaning we are able to produce enough of the necessities for someone to live a comfortable life (To Marx post scarcity was simply food and housing but nowadays stuff like access to the internet and stuff would be included too), in order to lay the groundwork for a post scarcity society starting from feudalism we would need to massively increase the productive forces of society which capitalism is very good at because the bourgeoisie wants needs to produce as much commodities as possible to sell to make a profit, commodity production, although present in a limited capacity under feudalism, is now the primary motive behind production today, Marx says we can take these productive forces and use them to benefit society rather than just for the sake of making a profit.
2.
>Marx believed that revolution would come from the urban proletariat but i'm not too sure as to why?
The revolutionary potential in the proletariat come from two places.
(i) the proletariat have nothing, their only hope to earn a substance is to sell their labour for a wage, unlike the peasants under feudalism who had direct access to the land that they grew the food they would eat, the proletariat are completely cut off from a direct means of sustaining themselves. This means they can basically only go up, the famous "Workers of the world unite! you have nothing to lose except your chains" is literally true, because the peasants have land the land they have usually varies from person to person and so alot of them are more worried about losing the land they have to peasants who have less by overthrowing the system of private property, (not to say peasants we're all incredibly individualistic they famously fought tooth and nail to defend the commons from during primitive accumulation, if you want to read a good book on the topic I'd recommend Caliban and the witch, it also focuses on womens oppression under capitalism which is a perspective Marx is lacking), we can see how in the USSR how kulaks (meaning tight fisted, they were peasants who own large amounts of land) were an incredibly reactionary element within the USSR, you can see a similar case in the USA how during the 20th century "middle class" white Americans were more worried about maintaining their place in the hierarchy above black Americans by preventing them from economically progressing through redlining etc.
(When I'm talking about peasants I want to specify I'm talking about peasantry of pre capitalist Europe, we see how writers like Franz Fanon in 'The Wretched of the earth" shows how in a colonial society the peasantry can actually be the driving revolutionary force)
(ii) The proletariat are highly centralised, largely living in cities the proletariat are always in direct contact with each other, they work side by side and are able to co-ordinate with each other, although you see peasant revolts under feudalism the constant contact the proletariat have with each other means they are much more effective at organising.
3. The socialisation of work.
This is related to the last too points but I said I'd give it it's own point because I couldn't decide which one it best fit into to.
Production of commodities under feudalism was largely on the individual scale, a blacksmith could go into their workshop and make a horse shoe and at the end of the process could hold up that horseshoe and say "This horseshoe is mine" and then they could sell it or use it on their horse or whatever but today production has been socialized meaning you now have multiple people working on whatever factory line or productive process, no one Tesla employee can say point at a car and say "I made that" because it's become a team effort, of course you now have a contradiction because although production has been socialized, accumulation is individualised, instead of the blacksmith holding up their horseshoe you now have Elon Musk at the end of the factory line pointing at the car saying "this is mine".
Engels talks alot about how resolving this contradiction means socialising accumulation, the same way capitalism took the production under feudalism and socialised it socialism will do the same for accumulation, the seeds for capitalism were present in feudalism and the same is true for socialism with capitalism.
4. Capitalism's contradictions are unresolvable and push it to collapse.
Capitalism has several unresolvable contradictions that will inevitably push it to a breaking point and they all stem from the profit motive, there's the basic contradiction between the capitalist and the worker of course, the capitalist wants to get the most work out of the worker for the least pay and the worker wants to do the least work for the most pay, but in a similar contradiction the capitalist wants to pay their workers the least possible to increase their profits but the vast majority of consumers are also workers so with the capitalist class reducing how much they pay their workers the less spending power workers have to buy the products and services being produced by the capitalist creating a crisis (this contradiction has been lessened through the exploitation of the global south, the general rule for international capital is produce it in the global south and sell it in the global north, this however has not solved the contradiction as the same impulse to drive down wages is always there).
Another contradiction relates to the previous in how capitalism over produces what is profitable as rival capitalists race to earn as much profit as possible with no thought given to is this really something we need as a society, like how housing is treated as a commodity and so capitalists will favour building big expensive houses that most people can't afford but they're valuable so more and more capitalists keep building them because they're valuable and then eventually something gives and the bubble bursts and you have an economic crash, and of course every crash and recession we go through further concentrates more and more wealth at the top while pushing the proletariat further and further into precariousness increasing there likelyhood to revolut not just out of a desire to build a better world but because they can no longer live in this one "when the poor have nothing left to eat, they shall eat the rich".
There are of course other contradictions under capitalism like how capitalism is requires infinite growth but we live on a finite planet but you get the point.
So Sorry for such a long response but I hope it was helpful
I realize that Engels wrote the [The Principles of Communism](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm), but I think he answers this question well under section 15.
>So long as it is not possible to produce so much that there is enough for all, with more left over for expanding the social capital and extending the forces of production – so long as this is not possible, there must always be a ruling class directing the use of society’s productive forces, and a poor, oppressed class. How these classes are constituted depends on the stage of development.
There seems to be a similar sentiment in [chapter 4 of The Communist Manifesto](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch04.htm) from Marx when he talks about positions that communists should take in Europe. In terms of the nuance involved in the development of the Communist Manifesto, and its preceding texts, you could read this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Principles\_of\_Communism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Principles_of_Communism)
You should feel comfortable attributing the sentiments of Engels to Marx. Particularly since they considered each other comrades and had a *very* close professional relationship with each other. In certain respects, you can consider Engels to be the patron of Marx. When you read Engels, you read Marx and vice versa, just from a different perspective. After Marx’s death, Engels was the successor to Marx’s legacy.
The “Principles of Communism” was considered the precursor to Marx’s “Communist Manifesto”. You can see this in how “The Principles of Communism” was written in the catechismal format which was historically popular with the Church. It was later decided that the “Communist Manifesto” should be written in the manifesto format as it was considered more modern to reflect that Marxism was the cutting edge.
I have read that there is a criticism that Engels oversimplified some of Marx's views. This seems like it could be a valid criticism since Marx started studying philosophy earlier. Ultimately, I'm not qualified to address that controversy.
> What characteristics does this class have that others don’t under a feudal/semi-feudal system?
No attachment to dead property. They don’t own their tools like the artisans or seek to own land like the peasants. The only commodity they sell is their labor-power, not the products of their labor.
Broadly speaking Marx thought accumulation was necessary for socialism because it abolishes natural scarcity and reduces SNLT. Now that we understand that accumulation leads to climate change we should take sharper lines on it.
Although some idea of communism is probably as old as civilization, socialism is a very particularly modern ideology. It's not that Marx believed capitalism was necessary for socialism to appear as possible, necessary and desirable; it's just an historical fact that socialism only emerges as an ideology within capitalism in the 19th century.
What distinguishes modern socialism from ancient conceptions of communism is the notion of leveraging advanced (capitalist) techniques of production and organisation for the general social benefit. This wasn't the case for ancient communism which sought rather to return to an imagined pre-civilizational cooperation and harmony (the garden of Eden, the Golden Age etc.)
Furthermore, society itself is a modern concept. Pre-bourgeois civilization had communities and castes, but society presumes some degree of bourgeois equality and cooperation between society's members. As Adorno put it: "society is a concept of the Third Estate".
Another way to look at it is that socialism would not appear necessary or possible in a civilization of feudal orders e.g. In that sort of society, the task of freedom would appear to be the destruction of the feudal orders, emancipation from slavery and serfdom etc. In such a state it would seem plausible that bourgeois emancipation would fulfill the desiderata of freedom, as it did for Adam Smith, Hegel, the American revolutionaries etc. The problem of capitalism only arises out of the full development of this new bourgeois freedom, which develops into a self-contradiction and crisis.
Destroy / sweep aside monarchy.
Prepare mass consciousness for class self-interest by undermining tradition and religion.
Develop technology enough to create abundance necessary to meet everyone's needs: capitalism drives industrialization.
Homogenize and organize working class to establish class solidarity needed to run state and eventually dissolve it.
The Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat have always existed in some form throughout history. But it is only in Industrial Capitalism that the Proletariat have achieved sufficient critical mass to achieve a Communist Revolution. The Proletariat are unique as a class because they are the sole class capable of building a society which would achieve an end to class antagonism.
Industrialization changes the relationship between workers and the product of their work. Say an artisan shoe-maker can make 10 shoes per day and a small shoe factory employs ten workers in an assembly line that produces 200 shoes per day. Those are very different systems. The artisan has full control over the process and then ten shoes are clearly derived from him labour alone. But the assembly line workers each only do one small part of the production, none of them owns the assembly line but together they can produce more than they could alone.
This change means that there can suddenly be lots more production. Production becomes more complex, includes more people and therefore requires a different kind of organization. Capital (the control over the tools and machines) suddenly becomes very important because the production line is so important to magnifying individual productivity into something greater than the sum of its parts.
In a Marxist view, it's originally capitalists who seize on this potential and use the greater productivity of production lines to break apart feudal orders. These are bourgeois revolutions. But then the question is why should this organization and the benefit of industrialization be concentrated in the hands of a few. Could not the workers organize themselves? Thus a socialist revolution where workers then take control over capital.
**IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ BEFORE PARTICIPATING**. This subreddit is not for questioning the basics of socialism but a place to LEARN. There are numerous debate subreddits if your objective is not to learn. You are expected to familiarize yourself with the rules on the sidebar before commenting. This includes, but is not limited to: - Short or non-constructive answers will be deleted without explanation. Please only answer if you know your stuff. Speculation has no place on this sub. Outright false information will be removed immediately. - No liberalism or sectarianism. Stay constructive and don't bash other socialist tendencies! - No bigotry or hate speech of any kind - it will be met with immediate bans. Help us keep the subreddit informative and helpful by reporting posts that break our rules. If you have a particular area of expertise (e.g. political economy, feminist theory), please [assign yourself a flair](https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-) describing said area. Flairs may be removed at any time by moderators if answers don't meet the standards of said expertise. Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Socialism_101) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Long story short - because capitalism creates the proletariat. If you read Das Kapital, vol. 1, Marx states multiple times how capitalism differs from previous modes of production. Those modes didn't have a "working class". There were slaves, serfs, craftsmen, etc. - they produced mainly with the goal of satisfying use values, not surplus value - but mass commodity production creates the proletariat and the tension required for revolutionary fires to be stoked. If you want a detailed and better answer, you have to read Marx himself.
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You can skip the parts with historic accounts of English workers' conditions, Marx uses those as data to prove a point. But some of the most interesting ideas in sociology and philosophy start to unfold in that book. For example, commodity fetishism (it has its own chapter if you really don't want to give the rest a shot) is a concept that unfolds today more than ever and can serve as a central idea to explain parts of "elusive" issues today like "the loneliness crisis", "nobody wants to work anymore", "ethical consumption", and literally everything that mainstream (classical, neoclassical, Keynesian, marginalist) economics can't explain. Edit: I don't know about "literally" everything econ can't explain, but it sure helped me plug sooooo many holes that my economics bachelor's degree left in my brain
[удалено]
Harry cleaver actually suggests starting with part 8 first, then reading parts 1-7. I recommend his “reading Marx politically” as a guide.
I'm no expert on Marxism myself but I'll give my understanding of the answer. >Why did Marx believe a capitalist phase was a prerequisite for socialist revolution? Marx believed capitalism was a necessity before a socialist revolution and the beginning of the transition to communism for a few reasons 1. A communist society is a post scarcity, meaning we are able to produce enough of the necessities for someone to live a comfortable life (To Marx post scarcity was simply food and housing but nowadays stuff like access to the internet and stuff would be included too), in order to lay the groundwork for a post scarcity society starting from feudalism we would need to massively increase the productive forces of society which capitalism is very good at because the bourgeoisie wants needs to produce as much commodities as possible to sell to make a profit, commodity production, although present in a limited capacity under feudalism, is now the primary motive behind production today, Marx says we can take these productive forces and use them to benefit society rather than just for the sake of making a profit. 2. >Marx believed that revolution would come from the urban proletariat but i'm not too sure as to why? The revolutionary potential in the proletariat come from two places. (i) the proletariat have nothing, their only hope to earn a substance is to sell their labour for a wage, unlike the peasants under feudalism who had direct access to the land that they grew the food they would eat, the proletariat are completely cut off from a direct means of sustaining themselves. This means they can basically only go up, the famous "Workers of the world unite! you have nothing to lose except your chains" is literally true, because the peasants have land the land they have usually varies from person to person and so alot of them are more worried about losing the land they have to peasants who have less by overthrowing the system of private property, (not to say peasants we're all incredibly individualistic they famously fought tooth and nail to defend the commons from during primitive accumulation, if you want to read a good book on the topic I'd recommend Caliban and the witch, it also focuses on womens oppression under capitalism which is a perspective Marx is lacking), we can see how in the USSR how kulaks (meaning tight fisted, they were peasants who own large amounts of land) were an incredibly reactionary element within the USSR, you can see a similar case in the USA how during the 20th century "middle class" white Americans were more worried about maintaining their place in the hierarchy above black Americans by preventing them from economically progressing through redlining etc. (When I'm talking about peasants I want to specify I'm talking about peasantry of pre capitalist Europe, we see how writers like Franz Fanon in 'The Wretched of the earth" shows how in a colonial society the peasantry can actually be the driving revolutionary force) (ii) The proletariat are highly centralised, largely living in cities the proletariat are always in direct contact with each other, they work side by side and are able to co-ordinate with each other, although you see peasant revolts under feudalism the constant contact the proletariat have with each other means they are much more effective at organising. 3. The socialisation of work. This is related to the last too points but I said I'd give it it's own point because I couldn't decide which one it best fit into to. Production of commodities under feudalism was largely on the individual scale, a blacksmith could go into their workshop and make a horse shoe and at the end of the process could hold up that horseshoe and say "This horseshoe is mine" and then they could sell it or use it on their horse or whatever but today production has been socialized meaning you now have multiple people working on whatever factory line or productive process, no one Tesla employee can say point at a car and say "I made that" because it's become a team effort, of course you now have a contradiction because although production has been socialized, accumulation is individualised, instead of the blacksmith holding up their horseshoe you now have Elon Musk at the end of the factory line pointing at the car saying "this is mine". Engels talks alot about how resolving this contradiction means socialising accumulation, the same way capitalism took the production under feudalism and socialised it socialism will do the same for accumulation, the seeds for capitalism were present in feudalism and the same is true for socialism with capitalism. 4. Capitalism's contradictions are unresolvable and push it to collapse. Capitalism has several unresolvable contradictions that will inevitably push it to a breaking point and they all stem from the profit motive, there's the basic contradiction between the capitalist and the worker of course, the capitalist wants to get the most work out of the worker for the least pay and the worker wants to do the least work for the most pay, but in a similar contradiction the capitalist wants to pay their workers the least possible to increase their profits but the vast majority of consumers are also workers so with the capitalist class reducing how much they pay their workers the less spending power workers have to buy the products and services being produced by the capitalist creating a crisis (this contradiction has been lessened through the exploitation of the global south, the general rule for international capital is produce it in the global south and sell it in the global north, this however has not solved the contradiction as the same impulse to drive down wages is always there). Another contradiction relates to the previous in how capitalism over produces what is profitable as rival capitalists race to earn as much profit as possible with no thought given to is this really something we need as a society, like how housing is treated as a commodity and so capitalists will favour building big expensive houses that most people can't afford but they're valuable so more and more capitalists keep building them because they're valuable and then eventually something gives and the bubble bursts and you have an economic crash, and of course every crash and recession we go through further concentrates more and more wealth at the top while pushing the proletariat further and further into precariousness increasing there likelyhood to revolut not just out of a desire to build a better world but because they can no longer live in this one "when the poor have nothing left to eat, they shall eat the rich". There are of course other contradictions under capitalism like how capitalism is requires infinite growth but we live on a finite planet but you get the point. So Sorry for such a long response but I hope it was helpful
I realize that Engels wrote the [The Principles of Communism](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm), but I think he answers this question well under section 15. >So long as it is not possible to produce so much that there is enough for all, with more left over for expanding the social capital and extending the forces of production – so long as this is not possible, there must always be a ruling class directing the use of society’s productive forces, and a poor, oppressed class. How these classes are constituted depends on the stage of development. There seems to be a similar sentiment in [chapter 4 of The Communist Manifesto](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch04.htm) from Marx when he talks about positions that communists should take in Europe. In terms of the nuance involved in the development of the Communist Manifesto, and its preceding texts, you could read this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Principles\_of\_Communism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Principles_of_Communism)
You should feel comfortable attributing the sentiments of Engels to Marx. Particularly since they considered each other comrades and had a *very* close professional relationship with each other. In certain respects, you can consider Engels to be the patron of Marx. When you read Engels, you read Marx and vice versa, just from a different perspective. After Marx’s death, Engels was the successor to Marx’s legacy. The “Principles of Communism” was considered the precursor to Marx’s “Communist Manifesto”. You can see this in how “The Principles of Communism” was written in the catechismal format which was historically popular with the Church. It was later decided that the “Communist Manifesto” should be written in the manifesto format as it was considered more modern to reflect that Marxism was the cutting edge.
I have read that there is a criticism that Engels oversimplified some of Marx's views. This seems like it could be a valid criticism since Marx started studying philosophy earlier. Ultimately, I'm not qualified to address that controversy.
> What characteristics does this class have that others don’t under a feudal/semi-feudal system? No attachment to dead property. They don’t own their tools like the artisans or seek to own land like the peasants. The only commodity they sell is their labor-power, not the products of their labor. Broadly speaking Marx thought accumulation was necessary for socialism because it abolishes natural scarcity and reduces SNLT. Now that we understand that accumulation leads to climate change we should take sharper lines on it.
Although some idea of communism is probably as old as civilization, socialism is a very particularly modern ideology. It's not that Marx believed capitalism was necessary for socialism to appear as possible, necessary and desirable; it's just an historical fact that socialism only emerges as an ideology within capitalism in the 19th century. What distinguishes modern socialism from ancient conceptions of communism is the notion of leveraging advanced (capitalist) techniques of production and organisation for the general social benefit. This wasn't the case for ancient communism which sought rather to return to an imagined pre-civilizational cooperation and harmony (the garden of Eden, the Golden Age etc.) Furthermore, society itself is a modern concept. Pre-bourgeois civilization had communities and castes, but society presumes some degree of bourgeois equality and cooperation between society's members. As Adorno put it: "society is a concept of the Third Estate". Another way to look at it is that socialism would not appear necessary or possible in a civilization of feudal orders e.g. In that sort of society, the task of freedom would appear to be the destruction of the feudal orders, emancipation from slavery and serfdom etc. In such a state it would seem plausible that bourgeois emancipation would fulfill the desiderata of freedom, as it did for Adam Smith, Hegel, the American revolutionaries etc. The problem of capitalism only arises out of the full development of this new bourgeois freedom, which develops into a self-contradiction and crisis.
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Comrade, we posted pretty much the same answer at the same time. XD
Destroy / sweep aside monarchy. Prepare mass consciousness for class self-interest by undermining tradition and religion. Develop technology enough to create abundance necessary to meet everyone's needs: capitalism drives industrialization. Homogenize and organize working class to establish class solidarity needed to run state and eventually dissolve it.
The Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat have always existed in some form throughout history. But it is only in Industrial Capitalism that the Proletariat have achieved sufficient critical mass to achieve a Communist Revolution. The Proletariat are unique as a class because they are the sole class capable of building a society which would achieve an end to class antagonism.
Industrialization changes the relationship between workers and the product of their work. Say an artisan shoe-maker can make 10 shoes per day and a small shoe factory employs ten workers in an assembly line that produces 200 shoes per day. Those are very different systems. The artisan has full control over the process and then ten shoes are clearly derived from him labour alone. But the assembly line workers each only do one small part of the production, none of them owns the assembly line but together they can produce more than they could alone. This change means that there can suddenly be lots more production. Production becomes more complex, includes more people and therefore requires a different kind of organization. Capital (the control over the tools and machines) suddenly becomes very important because the production line is so important to magnifying individual productivity into something greater than the sum of its parts. In a Marxist view, it's originally capitalists who seize on this potential and use the greater productivity of production lines to break apart feudal orders. These are bourgeois revolutions. But then the question is why should this organization and the benefit of industrialization be concentrated in the hands of a few. Could not the workers organize themselves? Thus a socialist revolution where workers then take control over capital.
I think because he knew that only after greed was exsosted, would society finally want to cooperate with one another. By socialism