system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 The Communist Manifesto and why it was so influential.
gpt
First, the Communist Manifesto was short.  Which means more people will read it and it can be used as a primer.

In terms of the message it makes excellent critiques of capitalism.  If you read it today, which i did last week, you'll be amazed at how much of what he said applies to us now.  The main problem is that Marx doesn't give very clear answers for addressing the faults.  His basic plan was that industrialized nations should move to socialism, and then after a period of adjustment move into communism.  I'll explain later why no communist country actually followed his plan.

One of Marx and Engels arguments was that prior to industrialization, we produced not much more than we used.  Obviously there was trade but for the most part the lack of machinery kept production levels low.  Then machines come along and our ability to produce greatly increased.  Adam Smith, the author of *Wealth of Nations* showed how division of labour increased production for manufacturers.  Now instead of one person making a product, you might have 10 who accomplish different portions of the task.  This made production go way up.

What Marx criticized was the effect of having such a surplus.  When you overproduce the price of the good decreases because the supply is so high.  This required two things, one to reduce the cost of manufacturing to keep up with competition who, through free market competition, lower prices.  The second was that you had to find new markets.  Given the world at the time of Smith who published in 1776, there were a lot of non-industrialized nations that you could introduce to your goods.  So the more markets that opened up the more needed to be produced.  Marx believed that workers standard of living decreased as people were moved into the cities to meet the demand for work.  This resulted, he believed, in the workers and consumers becoming less self sufficient.  Cheap goods require cheap labor. Instead of owning your own land or home, you lived in worker cities or rented in town.

On this note Marx was not a big fan of private land ownership (understatement, his summation of Communism was "The abolition of private property").  He argued that the land would be consolidated amongst the bourgeois and ultimately they would own the land/homes.  We can see this today.  Most people's homes are owned by the bank, not by the family.  If land was more communal you wouldn't having everyone paying rent to the same set of people who own the local land.    

Back to industrialization, this is the period of time where we find child labor, a lack of labor laws, unions, or anyone fighting for the workers themselves.  Marx divided the population into two classes.  The first was the bourgeois (boor-zhwa) who had the capital (the money, the assets, the means *to* produce).  These were the people who owned the companies or managed them.  They did not produce directly, but the received the most profit from the production.  The name basically means "in the walled city".  The second class was the proletariat.  These are the workers in the factories and on the farms.  Their standard of living is so low that they can only afford to survive.  The name means "those who produce offspring".  They had enough to survive and reproduce.

Now the proletariat the ones who are actually doing the work and producing the goods, yet they are treated the worst and receive little of the profits.  Marx argued for a society in which the workers ruled.  He argued for labor unions to protect themselves from increasingly poor conditions.  Before unions, if a something happened to a worker, there was no one to represent them.  People didn't want to lose their jobs defending them and there wasn't much point to it.  But if the workers band together and say, "Hey we aren't going to work unless you improve these conditions" well then the managers and owners would have to listen.  They can't do the work on their own, they require a large number of the proletariat.

The goal was for the workers to take advantage of their power, which was in production.  If they had to stop work completely, or strike, it cost the owners more in lost production than it cost the workers in lost wages.  Not that it was easy to go without work or that these people had savings but it was a way to be heard.  

All of this Marx said, was the result of industrialization.  He stated that we stopped producing to meet needs, and started producing to make profits for a small portion of the population.  He argued that the class struggle between the bourgeois and proletariat would continue to grow until a revolution occurs which will establish a state run by the workers.  As an example, we can see today that about 3% of the population owns ~40% of the wealth (in America).

Basically Marx said when you overproduce (in the search for profits under capitalism) supply is increased, demand is decreased, and the price decreases.  This is not good news for the worker as this cycle feeds back on itself, and ultimately the workers pay the price. 

To be continued in a sec.