existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it
has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other
words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.
The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and
augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labour. Wage labour rests exclusively on competition
between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces
the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association.
The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which
the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above
all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.