Question

[sickle]

Hello,

I started reading The Communist Manifesto today, not in my mother tongue, and stumbled on this sentence:

From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns.

Can anybody explain to me what is being said here? I really don't understand
Thanks:)

[Aurora]

"From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed."

Burghers were people who lived in towns i believe who were given a charter by the monarch which gave them certain rights such as the right to trade or establish guilds so here they're being referred to as small merchants and from this early trade arose the bourgeoisie.
I'm not quite sure of the process which turned some serfs into burghers perhaps through being freed or developing their home industry over agriculture.

If i was to put it in a wider context, Marx and Engels are developing the idea that within a given society the elements of its overthrow are developed, so feudal society gives rise to trade and the bourgeoisie who in turn overthrow feudalism and create bourgeois society which develops the proletariat which is capable of overthrowing bourgeois society.

Hope that helps

[sickle]

Thank you! that really helps

If someone has time, I also don't understand this:

the bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe.

Especially not the word 'halo' in this context

[citizen of industry]

"Halo" like atop an angel's head - what makes it good. Here he is speaking of craft trades. For example a watch maker - someone who is able to hand craft all the materials and gears to produce a watch, pretty cool - and looked up to like an angel. But today watches are mass produced by machines and operators, stripped of the "halo." There is no watch trade, just an electronic company mass producing them using cheap labor.

[piet11111]

"Halo" like atop an angel's head - what makes it good. Here he is speaking of craft trades. For example a watch maker - someone who is able to hand craft all the materials and gears to produce a watch, pretty cool - and looked up to like an angel. But today watches are mass produced by machines and operators, stripped of the "halo." There is no watch trade, just an electronic company mass producing them using cheap labor.

The above

Its the end of the traditional guild manufacturing and turned into mass production by unskilled labor (unskilled in the sense that it no longer requires you to know every step of the production process but that a worker only does 1 small step before handing the product over to the next worker)

[sickle]

Many thanks!