The Communist Manifesto Competition Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Section.Paragraph)

Quote #1

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. (Section1.18)

That each business has to compete against other businesses means that to stay profitable, each one has to become more efficient by inventing new ways to produce. This in turn changes all of society, since people are constantly laboring to produce, or they're exploiting others to make them produce. When the ways people produce change, so does society. For example, workers under capitalism must always strive to become more efficient. How does this drive for efficiency change people in their personal lives and in their relationships with their employers? How might work change if there weren't a constant push for efficiency?

Quote #2

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere. (Section 1.19)

In competition with other capitalists, each capitalist must always provide a new product to tantalize the consumer with, in order to make more profit and stay in business. This pushes the bourgeoisie to expand across the planet to find or create more customers and to acquire more labor and raw materials. But what is the shiny new thing you want, and where is it made? What are the conditions there like? See child mining in Africa, for example.

Quote #3

[The proletariat is] a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. (Section1.30)

Workers have to sell their labor as a commodity. If the total supply of available labor increases, the cost of hiring any single person goes down. That's why keeping the unemployment rate high is in the interest of the bourgeoisie, unless there is so much unemployment that no one can buy their products, or the poor decide to remove the rich from power.