The communist manifesto

The communist manifesto was written in 1848 by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Its aim was to bring the proletariats of all nations together in order to overthrow the bourgeois and create a completely class-less and equal society not ruled by money:

A spectre is haunting Europe- the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Czar, French Radicals and German police-spies. Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power?

Two things result from this fact.

1.      Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power

2.       It is high time that communists should openly, in the face of the world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of communism with a manifesto of the party itself.

To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London, and sketched the following manifesto, to be published.

Bourgeois and Proletarians

The history of all existing societies is essentially only a history made up of class struggles. Modern Bourgeois Society has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society. The manufacturing system has replaced corporate guilds, the industrial middle class by giant industry and machinery. The state is now a committee for managing affairs of the bourgeoisie. The division of labour and cash has made physician, lawyer, priest, poet and scientist into wage labourers. Even family, is reduced to mere money relations. The country has been subjected to enormous cities. Commercial crises, even over-production, break out.

There is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry. The bourgeoisie have forged weapons that bring death to itself. Proletarians must sell themselves as a commodity; they have been made an appendage of the machine, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. The workers begin to form unions, riots break out. Occasionally, the workers are victorious, but their real success is in making themselves into a proletarian revolutionary class.

Proletarians and Communists

Communists have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. Just as the French revolution abolished feudal property, Communism may be summed up: Abolition of private property, heavy progressive taxes, abolition of inheritance, and centralisation in the state of all: banking, communication and transport, factories and instruments of production. Equal liability of all to labour, establishment of industrial armies, free education and abolition of child labour.

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

Working men of all countries unite!

In my opinion this work is the manifesto of a party that challenged the existence of capitalist social relations and their underlying class base. It intended to move an entire class to revolutionary action against capitalism. This manifesto was Karl Marx’s solution to the tension created through the class systems in capitalist society. It was an idea that he believed would inevitably happen anyway and this manifesto had the intention to make people aware of how the world could be a better place. In reality it just does not work.

Although the ideas in this sound like a more equal way to run society, aiming towards communism essentially means war against capitalism, and ultimately a system which does not work. This can be seen all over Eastern Europe. When it was forced upon certain countries it ultimately led to a dictatorship in which the working class citizens were exploited. For example Joseph Stalin, who used the problems with communism (lack of money and social unrest)as a means to support his own agenda for making the soviet union strong and rich (for those in power), essentially enslaved his citizens by either imprisoning them or even executing them as they had no say in how the country was run and no influence on the government whatsoever. The government were entirely in control.

Marx and Engels ability to demonise Capitalism into something which has imprisoned society and caused large amounts of conflict is very convincing; however this manifesto is not the solution to the tensions in our societies.

Overall, Communism is a political thought based on sharing of efforts and sharing of resources. Although today, no self-sustaining country has used the ideal communist policy and had it work. As long as the advantages of capitalism remain to be the dominant economic system in the world, citizens and countries will choose it over communism because it is known to work. There seems to be no room for this political ideology in this age as consumerism and private entrepreneurship are seen as the way forward.