Question

Read the first chapter of The Communist Manifesto. How do Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels define the bourgeoisie? How do they criticize it? In what ways is their treatment of the bourgeoisie similar to Tolstoy’s in his novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich? To complete this task, you will need to make inferences from what you read, drawing reasonable conclusions or noting assumptions of the author, even when everything is not stated explicitly. To support your response, please provide textual evidence from the first chapter of The Communist Manifesto and the first four chapters of The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

Answer 1

According to Marx and Engels’s The Communist Manifesto, the bourgeoisie is the wealthy middle class of the modern industrial society. This class is characterized by their wealth and their ownership of the means of production. Their primary interest is gaining wealth so that they can enjoy a higher social status. Initially, entrepreneurs, merchants, and bankers made up the bourgeoisie. Later, tradesmen and white-collar workers became part of this class.

In their writing, Marx and Engels claim that the bourgeoisie changed all occupations into wage-earning opportunities. This class hasn’t even spared what were considered honorable occupations, such as being a doctor. According to The Communist Manifesto, the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the working class is based on self-interest. The bourgeoisie obsession with money has also seeped into family and other personal relationships, where people value money over their relations. For the bourgeoisie, relationships are meaningless and there is no room for sentimentality.

Leo Tolstoy’s protagonist, Ivan Ilyich, seems to echo this characterization. Ilyich is a member of the Court of Justice and behaves as a typical member of the bourgeoisie. In the first chapter of the novella, Ivan Ilyich’s so-called friends and colleagues hear about his death. Yet their first thoughts are about how his death would benefit them. This reaction clearly shows how relations between people in that class are based on self-interest. Even Ivan Ilyich’s “grieving” widow, Praskovya Fedorovna, is primarily concerned with the money that she can get from the government due to her husband’s death. Leo Tolstoy also portrays the bourgeoisie as being pretentious. For example, Peter Ivanovich expresses fake sympathy and compassion toward Praskovya Fedorovna at Ivan Ilyich’s funeral. At the same time, she herself fakes being sad. While he was alive, Ivan Ilyich himself put on a show about caring for and loving his family. In reality, all he wanted was to be away from them. He married Praskovya Fedorovna not because he loved her but because it was the right thing to do according to society. Bourgeois characters in Tolstoy’s novella give more importance to keeping up social appearances rather than to maintaining strong, healthy relationships with their family and friends.

Answer 2

The bourgeoisie according to the Communist Manifesto, has played a part of changing the relations of production. History has unveiled their role on different stages from feudalism and capitalism. It has helped rapid developments on the instruments of productions. Through time it had learned to adopt from situations, like struggles. It determines the more advantaged class and get to its favor.

Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilyich clearly shows the characteristics of a bourgeoisie who wanted a comfortable and beautiful life that he worked hard to have. It denies real life situation which should be dealt with. It was the bourgeoisie life, living with self-interest and not the real meaning of life.