Introduction
Things change over time, but one phenomenon that will remain etched in the mind of people of many nations is the Communist Manifesto. It is a manifesto that persisted in the world for a long time without rivalry. It was unrivaled because not because it was so beneficial, but its popularity was pegged on the fact that the world at its time was full of brutality (Marx et al, 2002). Hence, between the 1970s and 1980s, millions of people in the Cuba Soviet Union, China, and the Eastern part of Europe were governed by communist rule (Marx et al, 2002).
Many other people in the world mostly in Asia, Latin America, and Eastern European countries such as Italy, Portugal, Greece, and France embraced communism in the face of the struggles and revolutions at that time. However, communism was not an icing on the cake in Western Europe. The countries in this region rejected it as being authoritarian (Marx et al, 2002). Looked at from a neutral point of view, the perceptions of people about the Communist Manifesto were diverse. The Soviet Union had used the system in the 1930s to find a solution to mass unemployment, at the same manifesto was considered to be a panacea to economic empowerment. Yet it was perceived as the cause of the “Cold War” that boiled in the 1980s.
Main body
A critical appraisal of the “communist” definition indicates a grim picture of how the system of leadership could have been corrupted to exploit the common man. According to Marx et al (2002), a communist is a person who has the advantage of clearly comprehending the lines of march, the prevailing situation, and the ultimate results of an action. This is in line with what the ideas of the proponents of the system were.
However, the English version of communism depicts it as a vast association of a nation in its entirety (Marx et al, 2002). Further, Marx et al (2002) were of the opinion that the shortcoming of the system is when the public power loses its character. In such an arrangement, there is a tendency to have the opinion that the development of one individual is a benchmark for the development of another, which eventually leads to laxity among some individuals. The endpoint is suffering to the people who are not ready to be “assets of development” to others.
Dostoyevsky’s (1965) story, Notes from Underground is a depiction of a suffering person in Petersburg, Russia (formerly the Soviet Union). The man in the story is forty old and has been unemployed for twenty years, though he once served in the government (Dostoyevsky 1965). The story is characteristic of the trends in communist leadership. One can surmise that such leaderships are associated with corruption and denial of other rights to citizens. This is highlighted clearly in the story: the man could be suffering because he failed to take bribes when he was working in the government. Not only is corruption a problem, but other problems such as unemployment and insecurity are also rife. The story depicts the man living in a shanty and having on an old dirty countrywoman as a servant (Dostoyevsky 1965).
There is a clear depiction of low education or illiteracy in this context. An interesting comment from the man is that people find enjoyment in their own degradation and that they should not do anything to shake off laziness. Quite a contrast to the Communist Manifesto in which “the development of one person should lead to the development of another.” How can development arise if people do not work?
The Communist Manifesto was based on the opinion that Karl Marx had discovered the law of development of human history. Thus those who opined with the connotation (Marxists) such as Bismarck and Engel in the German empire held the opinion that the manifesto was a document that they did not have a right to alter (Marx et al, 2002).
The Marxian thought was that society pits one generation against another and that in life there are usually two classes of people. As an example, at an economic level, the rich have a propensity to oppress the poor, while at the social level young generations have actions that do not please the old. In this context, Marx thought that there was an end to the process. The point was that at a particular time one major class would eliminate all other classes so that all people become equal (Marx et al, 2002). This point is reflected in Dostoyevsky (1965) where a man living in the low class is gradually being eliminated due to unemployment, poverty, and ailment among other problems.
Marx and Engel, the architects of the Communist manifesto could have had bright ideas on their assumption that when everyone became equal there would be no case of class. As a result, they thought, there would be no instances of warfare due to money, and that legal frameworks such as states and governments would be irrelevant in the world. However, the point they missed is that they did not elucidate which class would harmonize all the others by eliminating them. For instance, laborers would obviously not want to be eliminated but would want to rise and take managerial positions.
Furthermore, the Communist Manifesto did not foresee the advent of intensive use of machines in production, a situation that has largely instigated the segregation of people into classes. As the man in Dostoyevsky (1965) opines, science has succeeded in analyzing man, and freedom of will is nothing else. From this perspective, one can judge that machines, which are products of science, have dominated labor and denied man (especially the uneducated) a source of income.
While employment is hard to come by due to the aspect of class among people, those who are in employment usually tend to segregate the unemployed. Dostoyevsky (1965) illustrates how people in employment (especially in the public sector) work just for the sake of getting paid. They work only because they are employed and do not think of the clients whom they serve.
The Communist Manifesto’s perspective was that man could understand himself and organize himself in a truly human manner according to the demands of nature(Marx et al, 2002). However, this is not the point in Dostoyevsky (1965): The poor man is unable to get even basic services such as consulting a doctor. The mentality is that the poor man “has refused to see the doctor,” but the real situation is that he cannot afford the exorbitant cost. The point is that in reality, people organize themselves in a manner that suits them not really being mindful of what others are doing or how they are suffering. As Dostoyevsky (1965) cries out, people tend to be individuals with real individual bodies and blood, and this causes some people to stay “underground. ”
Conclusion
The Communist Manifesto was not a bad idea at least at the time of its birth. But it failed to address the individualistic nature of humanity. In the present time, it is obvious that there is no one phenomenon that will harmonize humankind in terms of class. Class is pervasive. No wonder some of the proponents of communism such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia are hitherto moribund.
References
Dostoyevsky, Dostoevsky Fyodor. Notes From Underground. Moscow: Plain Label Books, 1965.
Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, Samuel Moore, and Gareth Stedman Jones. The Communist Manifesto. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002.