Proletarians and Communists Since the beginning of time man has done what was necessary to do for one reason only. The reason to improve himself. You could say he went to work because he needed to feed his family, but that's also bettering himself. If he let his family die he would be sad and it wouldn't do him any good. Marx is telling how man's greed for power and money has become rampant. In many ways the bourgeoisie is like McDonald's. It started as a restaurant. When they started making money in a city and had the means to expand, they did so. When that restaurant did well they built more and more until now you can't drive 5 minutes in any direction without finding one. Marx says that the bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production. This is very similar to how McDonald's adds 5 new items to the menu every week. They keep adding new items so there must be a reason why someone will try them. Marx says that the bourgeoisie gave a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. I translate this to the fact that you can go to any McDonald's and get a Big Mac because they're all basically the same. The proletarians are the average people who consume the products created by the bourgeoisie. When the bourgeoisie creates the products that the proletarians create, it can control the proletarians not only through what they buy when they go shopping, but also through what they consider valuable. By limiting the number of something produced or using certain goods to create it, the value of an item can increase and the bourgeoisie will use it to assert power over the proletarians. There are many differences between the proletarians of then and the working class of today. Then only the rich could go to school, so only the already rich could earn money there. Now, with the help of the government and scholarships, anyone can get an education and possibly make decisions that would make them the owner of a company like McDonald's. The proletarians worked for what the bourgeoisie chose to pay them and under the conditions they wanted.