History of economic thought wrote in "The Communist Manifesto", From the first page of "Das Kapital": Marx uses the word "commodity" in an extensive metaphysical discussion of the nature of material wealth, how the objects of wealth are perceived and how they can be used. A commodity contrasts to objects of the natural world. When people mix their labor with an object it becomes a "commodity". In the natural world there are trees, diamonds, iron ore and people. In the economic world they become chairs, rings, factories and workers. However, says Marx, commodities have a dual nature, a dual value. He distinguishes the use
The Communist Manifesto of the spectre of communism with a manifesto of the party itself". The first section of the "Manifesto", "Bourgeois and Proletarians", elucidates the materialist conception of history, that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". Societies have always taken the form of an oppressed majority exploited under the yoke of an oppressive minority. In capitalism, the industrial working class, or "proletariat", engage in class struggle against the owners of the means of production, the "bourgeoisie". As before, this struggle will end in a revolution that restructures society, or the "common ruin of the contending