The Communist Manifesto Reissue Edition

In both The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, Karl Marx sets out the basics of his grand plan to replace by force what he saw as an enervated and ready to collapse capitalistic economic system to be replaced by a classless society that was communist. In the former book, he and co-writer Friedrich Engels focus on outlining the nature of the communist state which both envisioned as the final product of the inevitable march of time while the latter is a technical exploration of the role that labor and money play in bringing about the birth of a permanent communist state. Those who praise The Communist Manifesto as the desired blueprint upon which all world governments will change from their present form to communism almost certainly do so since they are already converted to Marx's cause or at the least foresee melding a significant part of Marxism to their respective nation-states' government. Those who oppose it fall into two broad categories: (1) Those who have personally lived through the rise (and frequent fall) of socialist states like the former Soviet Union and have no desire to see Marx resurrected as the guiding light elsewhere. (2) Those who know little about the historical genesis that is the milieu of the mid 19th century Europe that collectively formed the political, economic, and historical symbiosis against which the despairing and destitute workers had to contend. As for the first group--those that are predisposed to accept Marx either in part or in entirety--they most often drift left of center and truly believe in the inherent superiority of the Nanny State that cares for its citizens, believing that they will be happy with their lot as the recipients of various enforced entitlements. As for the second group--those with first hand life as citizens of socialist states--they, in turn, have suffered lengthily and massively during their enforced stay in those states. Though they were probably forced to study communist ideology and history in school, what they learned in school about the historical Karl Marx had about as much to do with their real-life experiences as subjects as does Obamacare have with the United States Constitution. In short, the reality does not square with the theory. When Marx and Engels first published their manifesto in London in 1847, they were only too well aware of the disastrous plight of the typical factory worker who had to toil under the most appalling of conditions. Marx and Engels were primarily motivated by a desire to better the conditions under which workers had to create products. There was no way for them to make surface changes so their only option was to replace by force the current capitalist system with a socialist one in which the workers would own the means of production. It seems incredibly naïve for us today to truly believe that such a massive makeover could actually take place regardless of what Marx proclaimed as the inevitable dialectic of history. His simplistic reduction of all phases of industrialism to the bourgeois and proletarian points of view does not take into account any aspect but the most superficial of his theory. Still, that is exactly what Marx and Engels took for granted. How could they know that just seventy years later, first Lenin, then Stalin, would rule using Marx as both source and symbol of their own perverted power? The answer is that they could not. Thus, today as we look over the laughably simplistic theories of The Communist Manifesto, we ought to recognize that somewhere buried deep is the recognition that workers must not be seen as disposable commodities. That Marx and Engels were wrong about nearly everything else does not mean that they were wrong about this.

but, as always, I’ll never be convinced that those inducing the proletariat to throw off their chains aren’t planning to replace those same chains with either lighter ones or prettier ones. or maybe just “other” ones.

Marx and Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1848 at the request of the Communist League, a secret association of workers driven underground by political oppression aimed at preventing concerted revolutionary activity against bourgeois regimes throughout Europe. The Manifesto was written to provide a theoretical foundation and a practical program for the advancement of international communism and eventual elimination of bourgeois domination of property-less wage laborers.The title of the document, simple and purely descriptive though it is, is commonly regarded as inflammatory, arousing derision, disdain, and virulent hostility among many, including those whom it was written to benefit. Nevertheless, there is much in the Manifesto, especially in the first chapter, that with the aid of hindsight could have been written by a contemporary neo-conservative intellectual, someone like Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell.Specifically, Marx and Engels begin with a tribute to the unparalleled productive capacity of the capitalist organization of production. They freely laud the technological innovations fostered by capitalists' pursuit of surplus value, a process that has dramatically transformed the forces of production and the social relations of production. The result has been rapidly expanding output of industrial and agricultural goods of all kinds.In accomplishing this, capital has extended its markets beyond national borders, creating a world market and a world economy. Raw materials from Latin America, Africa, and Asia are routinely used to manufacture finished goods in England, Germany, and other European countries. The same manufactured goods may then be sold in the very places that supplied the raw materials.All this, Marx and Engels observe, requires concentration of vast numbers of people in swollen industrial cities. Small manufacturers and family farms are swallowed up by larger enterprises with which they have neither the capital nor productive capacity to compete. Marx and Engels find it particularly noteworthy that men like Thomas Jefferson had envisioned America as a land of independent yeoman farmers with small land holdings, but the concentration of agriculture was rendering this vision obsolete.As we get farther into this brief document, Daniel Bell, the other neo-conservatives, and people generally may take angry exception to its tone and substance.Concentration of resources in capital-intensive enterprises, Marx and Engels argue, reduces the vast majority of people to the degraded status of wage labor, workers who own nothing but their labor power. It is in the interests of the bourgeoisie -- of capital -- to pay workers as little as possible, increasing surplus value by buying labor power for no more than its natural price, the amount needed to survive and reproduce.The culture of workers is nothing more than a brutalizing culture of production, lacking in scope and richness due to the pitifully small part that each worker plays in the overall production process. Families of working people are men, women, and children who labor for the natural price and have little time, energy or emotional sustenance to offer each other, having been wrung dry by capital's conditions of employment.The more productive the worker, the more he or she strengthens the hand of capital. However, capital's immense productive power and its success in keeping wage rates abysmally low are not an unmixed blessing for the bourgeoisie. Periodic over-production crises wreck havoc with national and international markets, undercutting profits and threatening the commanding position of capital. As a timely example, the U.S. economy is currently approximating an over-production crisis: unemployment is high, wages are low and falling, capital has roughly two and a half trillion dollars to invest, but in the absence of demand the bourgeoisie has become risk averse, and money is not being invested in productive endeavors.The long-term solution to all this, for Marx and Engels, is elimination of bourgeois property and the property relations that capitalism has created. This is not to say that private property must altogether disappear, but private property as capital, as that which creates a two-class system of exploitation of labor by the bourgeoisie, certainly must cease to exist.Marx and Engels were entirely too sanguine about the eventual joining together of members of the working class to present a united front in their conflict with capital. They realized that there were ethnic, racial, religious, national, linguistic, occupational, and other barriers that would be difficult to overcome, but I doubt they expected the workers of the world to be as fractionated as is currently the case. If Marx and Engels were alive today, they might take the view that things would have to get much worse for labor before a revolution becames possible.If you're not inclined to read the Manifesto, just read the introductory remarks by Vladimir Posner, once a member of the Communist Party of the USSR. Posner spent much of his childhood and adolescence in the West, and his insights into the appeal of communist ideals and the failure of the USSR to develop communism as Marx and Engels sketchily envisioned it are extremely interesting. Posner is no apologist for anything, just an honest and intelligent journalist whose idealism is genuine but far from boundless or excessive.

Ok

L'analisi della soluzione politica individuata allora confrontata con quanto è successo durante il periodo del potere comunista è molto illuminante.Lo consiglierei almeno a tutti coloro che si interessano di politica.

Very good, no frills edition of the text. What more could you want?

Bonne service. Bonne qualité de livre. Authentique. Bonne lecture et surtout beaucoup moins chère que le manifeste capitaliste (ironie?). Voilà ;-)

Para quien quiera saber un poco más sobre el manifiesto, es un buen libro, aunque esté de acuerdo o no.