But, this pamphlet had other, more limited, and specific objectives. Its purpose was to explain to workers the true nature of wages, and their relation to capital. That was important, in 1849, because it was at a time when the industrial proletariat had been in alliance with the industrial bourgeois against the landed aristocracy, and its allies within the commercial bourgeoisie, and financial oligarchy, signified by the Repeal of the Corn Laws, in Britain, and the revolutions of 1848, across Europe.
In these revolutions, the particular interests of the industrial proletariat had been highlighted, and was set out by Marx, in his 1850 Address to the Executive of the Communist League, in which he sets out the concept of permanent revolution, and the need to build the independence and self-determination of the working-class.
“From various quarters we have been reproached with not having presented the economic relations which constitute the material foundation of the present class struggles and national struggles. We have designedly touched upon these relations only where they directly forced themselves to the front in political conflicts.
The point was, above all, to trace the class struggle in current history and to prove empirically, by means of the historical material, already at hand, and which is being created daily, that with the subjugation of the working class, that February and March, had wrought, its opponents were simultaneously defeated” (p 17)
In other words, the revolutions had confronted those old feudal ruling classes, and their political regimes. Already, on the basis of the capitalist production, the working-class had grown in size and social significance, making it a decisive force, in those revolutions, though, as they concluded later, only in Britain was it developed enough to have carried through to a socialist revolution. Everywhere that the bourgeoisie and democratic petty-bourgeoisie either thought it had achieved its aims, or else became fearful of the advancing proletariat, they sought to bring the revolution to a halt, and the result was that, having done so, it was thrown back, and the counter-revolution triumphed.
And, the implication was international, as Marx also sets out the basis of the requirement for international socialist revolution, even to achieve the limited goal of national independence.
“that the victory of the "honest republic" in France was at the same time the downfall of the nations that had responded to the February Revolution by heroic wars of independence; finally that, Europe with the defeat of the revolutionary workers, had relapsed into its old double slavery, the Anglo-Russian slavery.” (p 17)
Britain imposed its commercial hegemony across Europe, whilst Tsarist Russia continued to act as the bulwark of reaction, obstructing the development of Europe, as it held millions in bondage, much as Britain did across the globe, in its colonial Empire.
“The June struggle in Paris, the fall of Vienna, the tragicomedy of Berlin's November 1848, the desperate exertions of Poland, Italy, and Hungary, the starving of Ireland into submission – these were the chief factors which characterised the European class struggle between bourgeoisie and working class and by means of which we proved that every revolutionary upheaval, however remote from the class struggle its goal may appear to be, must fail until the revolutionary working class is victorious; – that every social reform must remain a Utopia until the proletarian revolution and the feudalistic counter-revolution measure swords in a world war.” (p 17-18)
This, as Marx describes, is not the world wars we have seen, in WWI and II, which were simply wars between capitalist nation states, much as seen, in embryo, again, now, with the NATO/Ukraine-Russia war, and sabre rattling in the Pacific and Middle-East, but a global class war, waged by the workers of all nations, on one side, against the ruling classes on the other. As Lenin put it, later, in opposing the bourgeois demand for national self-determination, our goal is rather the self-determination of the working-class, not nations. In the age of imperialism, the former is subsumed in the latter, via Permanent Revolution.
And, in fact, the conditions and events Marx describes have continued to recur, up to the present day. Britain sought to preserve its imperial dominance by, continually, interfering in European affairs, to prevent the development of a strong European state. It did so in WWI and II, for that purpose, and its role, in the EU, culminating in Brexit, was a continuation of it, as Britain acted as an outpost of US imperialism. But, the limitations of bourgeois nationalism have also constrained the more rapid development of a United States of Europe, required to counter the US imperialism, a project which will, probably, only transpire on the basis of a successful socialist revolution in Europe.
“Now, after our readers have seen the class struggle develop in colossal political forms in 1848, the time has come to deal more closely with the economic relations themselves on which the existence of the bourgeoisie and its class rule, as well as the slavery of the workers, are founded.
We shall present in three large sections 1) the relation of wage-labour to capital, the slavery of the worker, the domination of the capitalist; 2) the inevitable destruction of the middle bourgeois classes and the so-called peasant estate under the present system; 3) the commercial subjugation and exploitation of the bourgeois classes of the various European nations by the despot of the world market – England.” (p 18)
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