Karl Marx and the “Communist Manifesto” Essay (Critical Writing)

Introduction

The Communist Manifesto, first published in February 1848, is probably the most read revolutionary tract in history. Despite this, in its early history its influence was quite modest and, indeed, for some decades in the latter half of the nineteenth century it appeared almost moribund. Nonetheless, it would become something of a bible or vade mecum for the socialist revolutionaries who eventually would have such a baleful influence on the great events of the early decades of the twentieth century.¹

The tract was authored by the German revolutionary theorist Karl Marx (1818-1883) and his life-long colleague Friedrich Engels (1820-1895).² Marx was the great prophet of modern socialism. In the Manifesto

He combined the ideas of many of his predecessors, both socialist and capitalist, with others of his own, to form an ambitious new system of thought. This system has become the basis of a powerful movement as the years have passed, despite the flaws in his thinking and the errors which history has demonstrated in his predictions. Marx was at once a philosopher, a historian, a sociologist, an economist, and an active controversialist in the struggles which characterized his life. He outlined a framework of the future course of events on which he based prescriptions for a strategy on the part of those who wished to change the nature of society. =

Background

The Communist Manifesto was written in the context of a revolutionary period in European history and long precedes Marx’ later ventures into economic theory.³ Published in early 1848 and translated into French shortly before the outbreak of the 1848 revolutions that convulsed Europe, Marx initially hoped that conditions were such that his revolutionary predictions might be on the verge of fruition. This was not to be. At the outset, the Manifesto was not conceived so much as an instrument of insurrection but rather as a scientific analysis of past events and a comparably scientific prediction of future conditions.

The revolutionary impact of science – in all of its manifestations–was an essentially new phenomenon,⁴ one related to the growth of cities and radical improvements in communications.⁵ For intellectuals in the mid-nineteenth century, science had an almost magical allure. Its certitude rested on the acceptance of universals. In the past universals were largely restricted to mathematics and philosophy.⁶ However, experiments in chemistry in the late eighteenth century, as well as developments in physics (notably electricity and physical chemistry) in the early nineteenth encouraged the belief that the sum of human existence could be explained incomparably precise terms.⁷

The Industrial Revolution was a radically and rapidly changing society. New technologies were coming out all the time, and many spoke of huge, sweeping changes to come. The idea of ‘social engineering’ became popular; people believed that armed with advancing technology and an enlightened world view, they would be able to tear down the rotten and dysfunctional society that thousands of years of human civilization had slowly constructed and replace it with a new, improved version. [Wong, 2001]

In historical terms, the thinking that underlies the Manifesto developed as Marx was engaged in debates with other socialists. (Despite his overt opposition to Proudhon, Marx was not above co-opting his ideas when the occasion presented itself.) Marx’ vehicle in the mid-1840s during these ideological conflicts was the Communist League, a minuscule portion of the German socialist movement. In intellectual terms, “the main theme in Marx’ life from 1845-48 was the struggle for power within the German socialist movement. [Rempel]” Perhaps, at least in some respects, the Manifesto was as much a weapon in the internal intellectual debates of socialist theoreticians as it was a call to arms.

The communist Manifesto

At its core, the Manifesto was a work of extreme optimism,⁸ one that foresaw the development of society that would be the culmination of history. It may be considered an adaptation of metaphysical certitude to what appears otherwise random behaviour.⁹

In brief form, the Manifesto presents nothing less than a unified theory of historical dynamics, with class struggle as the central motive and all manifestations of politics and culture, including art and literature, derived from the prevailing system of material production. This gives way to an almost exuberant characterization of capitalist productive achievement that still holds our attention as a completely recognizable portrait of the relentless drive of modern industry and trade. Set against capitalism’s wonders is the human cost of being subject to a system that drains personal incentive, wears out the body and mind, and results in profound alienation from the value of one’s productive activities [Brians, 1998].

Basic components of the communist Manifesto

There are a number of elements in the Manifesto that together describe Marx’ prediction and prescription for proletarian revolution.

Class struggle: Marx saw human history in terms of ongoing antagonism between different social groups. (“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another… [Manifesto, part 1]”) Over the course of history, one group (e.g., a priest-public servant class in hydraulic civilizations) would come to dominate another (e.g., independent small farmers). This ongoing struggle was the Hegelian dialectic applied to history. The latest development of this process was the rise of the industrial bourgeoisie. (It should be understood that by bourgeoisie Marx was referring strictly to the great industrial producers of his time and not necessarily to the inhabitants of towns—which of course is what the word means. A small shop owner would have been considered petit-bourgeois, and little better off than the ‘wage slave’ in a large cotton mill.) The class struggle between the workers and the bourgeoisie would eventually result in a Hegelian synthesis that would be a benign social order, or so Marx believed.

The necessary function of the bourgeoisie: Marx was a Hegelian and, in his application of Hegelian thought to history, could not philosophically accept the possibility of proletarian revolutionary development outside the lines of his own thought.¹⁰ The Manifesto describes the flowering of the bourgeoisie as essential to a final class struggle.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: It has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other—bourgeoisie and the proletariat… Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages. We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange [Manifesto, Part 1].

For Marx, what distinguished the bourgeoisie from previous ruling classes was its straightforward character. It did not rely on a code of chivalry nor did it depend on shared religious beliefs. Rather, “it has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation [Manifesto, Part 1]”.

Property is the basis of oppression: Marx believed that the concept of property–not just private property–was at the core of human oppression. In the past, philosophers and theologians had taught that something became property by being indelibly marked with the personality of an owner (whatever form that owner took and, for that matter, whatever form the property took). “The communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations… [Manifesto, Part 1]”¹¹

The timeless character of communist truth: The overriding precepts of past societies (religious, ethical, juridical), according to Marx, essentially exist to sustain the prevailing order. “But communism abolishes ‘eternal’ truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis…” In effect, the achievement of ‘communist’ truth will be coterminous with the end of the historical dialectic.

Marx’ revolutionary expectations

Marx was remarkably straightforward in his views. Unlike Proudhon and the conspiratorial revolutionaries, he argued that communists “labour everywhere for the union of the democratic parties of all countries [and that they] disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. [Manifesto, Part 4]” Marx’s attachment to these precepts did not survive the 1848 revolutions.

The work, which places so much importance on the connection between ideas and artefacts and their historical moment, has its own history. In June 1848, less than six months after the Manifesto‘s first publication, Marx advocated shelving the document and disbanding the Communist League, which had requested in late 1847 that Marx and Engels wrote the Manifesto. After the widespread and unsuccessful revolutionary activity across Europe earlier in the year, it was already clear to Marx that the immediacy of the program outlined in the Manifesto could not well serve the political and social conditions of the times. Over the next twenty years, the Manifesto was largely disregarded. In the 1870s, with Marx’s well-established prominence in the international socialist movement, the Manifesto came to be honoured more as a document of symbolic historic significance than as a viable plan of action. [Brians, 1998]

A final thought

It is perhaps ironic that the Manifesto should have been elevated to canonical status by Marxist revolutionaries. Even for its own time, its descriptions of industrial practice appear skewed, if not outright false. Perhaps the explanation lies in its fervent revolutionary language, its call to arms. Revolutionaries, more often than not, do not engage in their craft after extensive intellection. Rather, they more likely do so in the grip of emotion.

References

1. Appold, S. J., Reading Marx and Engels [lecture], National university of Singapore/Department of sociology, 2001
2. Brians, P., Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: the Communist Manifesto (1848), Readings about the world, Vol. 2, [University of Washington/Department of history], (New York: Harcourt Brace Custom Books, 1998)
3. Communist Manifesto [explanatory guide], Hartford Web Publishing, [no date]
4. Erikson, E., Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto, (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, Department of history, 1954)
5. Rempel, G., Marx and history [lecture], Western New England College/Department of history, [no date]
6. The adventures of the communist manifesto, Center for socialist history, [no date]
7. The communist manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selections for discussion, The great books foundation, 2003
8. Wong, M., Karl Marx’ Communist Manifesto, 2001

Footnotes

1. “The Manifesto did not achieve canonical status as the essential informing document of the world Communist revolution until the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia and the rise of Lenin. For the next 75 years, it was read as having complete contemporary significance. Treated for decades as a piece of writing imbedded in an era long past, the Manifesto became regarded as a perennial outline of political direction. Like sacred scripture, a body of orthodox interpretation grew up around it, carefully constructed to fit the changing world scene what was considered its universal propositions. [Brians, 1998]”
2. Marx was essentially a journalist, although one with respectable intellectual credentials. He was born to a German-Jewish family that had converted to Christianity. After study at German universities (then heavily influenced by Friedrich Hegel) and obtaining a doctorate in philosophy, he turned to journalism. (His pronounced democratic views were anathema to the Prussian state and precluded his appointment to the professoriate.) Friedrich Engels–his lifelong friend and patron–was the son of a Manchester (England) mill owner. Unlike Marx (who, despite living in England for 34 years, remained comfortable only in German through his entire life), Engels was a polyglot. While Marx appeared perpetually gloomy, Engels usually maintained a sunny disposition. And while Marx, of necessity, lived a life of austerity, receiving sums of money from Engels on a regular basis and writing as a stringer for the New York Herald Tribune, Engels lived the double life of prosperous mill owner-operator and social revolutionary dilettante. Historians are generally agreed that Engels was a better writer than Marx, although the latter was a deeper thinker. (Engel’s authored and published The condition of the working class in England in 1844, an accurate–indeed, riveting–portrayal of social conditions that prevailed among the working poor of that country in the early years of the industrial revolution.)
3. Following the failures of the 1848 revolutions in continental Europe, Marx settled in London and spent the next fifteen years isolated from politics and studying in the British Museum, while, at the same time, preparing his monumental study, Das Kapital (Capital), first published in 1864. He rose to revolutionary prominence after the Paris Commune was crushed in 1871, declaring, “its martyrs are enshrined forever in the great heart of the working class [quoted in Brians, 1998].”
4. Of course, the developers of human knowledge extend back millennia. But their impact was always initially limited to a coterie of followers and the actual dissemination of knowledge was a haphazard venture. Much of this began to change in the middle years of the fifteenth century. Paper had become a fairly cheap commodity and the invention of moveable type (1453) revolutionized printing. Interestingly, other than the Bible, the most popular early books were short “how-to” items, mostly of pamphlet size, oriented toward the mercantile class (e.g., Luca Pocciolo text on accounting, published in 1494).
5. The first railroads appeared in 1829. Newspapers, often little more than broadsheet diatribes, were prevalent. As industry expanded the demand for up-to-date business and market conditions generated an increase in the number of daily or semi-weekly newspapers.
6. And, arguably, astronomy. However, for most of its history astronomy was the captive of astrology and did not begin to emerge from that intellectual embrace until the seventeenth century, under the guidance of Herschel and Newton.
7. “This idea of social evolution Marx believed ‘scientific,’ since it was arrived at by a process of observation and deduction just as Darwin had arrived at the idea of biological evolution. It caused the Marxist doctrine to be called scientific socialism as opposed to the schemes of the utopians, reformers, or advocates of changing everything overnight by conspiratorial violence. [Rempel]” Shortly before the outbreak of revolutionary violence in 1848, Marx had already expressed firm opposition to the activities Proudhon and those other French anarchists who wished to employ random violence against the state.
8. “Marx and Engels ultimately [were] concerned with the advent of a world in which the conditions of life [would] be uniformly benign and in which human relations [would] be in some way improved. [Brians, 1998]”
9. This is a reflection of the Hegelian component in Marx’ thinking. Marx transferred Hegel’s ‘dialectic’ to the flow of history as an explanation of that development. History, for Marx, was thus not a series of random events but the stream of human experience reflecting conditions inherent in nature itself. [Rempel] (Accepting the legitimacy of Marxist thinking requires a certain leap of faith almost religious in nature. This may account for the almost religious devotion that Marxists so often bring to their political beliefs.)
10. This was certainly true at the time of his writing of the Manifesto. In later years, especially after the experience of the Paris Commune (1871), Marx showed signs of backing away from his erstwhile certitude.
11. Marx was at a disadvantage in this respect. When writing in 1847, he was dependent on the prevailing scholarship that accepted that property rights had been a major factor in all human societies since the dawn of human existence. In 1866 he amended this component of the Manifesto, to reflect newer scholarship pointing to the likely existence of primitive communist societies when men were organized in tribes, rather than more overtly political entities. He argued, however, that this did not undermine the essential truth of the Manifesto, if only because these primitive social organizations were obliterated through the process of dialectic.