About the Book:
The Communist Manifesto was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848. Welcomed by the uprising controversial viewpoints and whether or not the publication was planned to coincide with first revolutions in France and the Great War, we can only imagine. With the flowing Marxist theories and propagandas, the communist manifesto became the most influential works of political theory ever written and will always be. It served as the inspiration for revolutions in Russia, Cuba and China & among others, making Marxism one of the fundamental political ideologies of the 20th century.
The Manifesto is divided into four sections but the overall aim of the book is an attempt to explain the ideologies and goals of the Communist party. Their belief that human relations have always been defined by class struggle and that the capitalist system is unsustainable in the long term is thoroughly explained and how relationships between these classes highly predict the future social events of a country. These predictions by Karl Marx were generally about never-ending competition between these classes for power concluding with ruling classes above others. This is Marx’s explanation for the move from feudalism to capitalism at the hands of the bourgeoisie (middle classes). This is also how Marx views the progression from capitalism to socialism and from socialism to communism. Marx and Engels believe that Communism is inevitable, that eventually the proletariat (working class) will seize power straight from the hands of the bourgeoisie.
The first section of the manifesto is based on the Communists theories of history and of the relationship between the bourgeois and the proletariat in a capitalist society. How the classes struggled and the ruling classes came to power and that how the inter-dependent society that we live in, is based on production and demand but as long as bourgeoisie needs it.
Section two then goes on to discuss the relationship between the Communists and the proletarians. Marx points out that the Communists do not see other working class parties as opposition rather they wish to help these other parties in clearly understanding the line of March, the conditions and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement. “Capital, is therefore not a personal, it is a social power. Upon defining the role of the proletariat in society Marx states that the Communist party wish to do away with “the miserable character under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.”
The third section of the Manifesto outlines and evaluates the three divisions of Communist writings. These are reactionary socialism, conservative socialism and critical-utopian socialism and communism. Marx argues that each of these divisions fail because each of the fail to realize critical communist values.
The final section of the manifesto confronts the Communist party’s feelings towards the opposing parties that exist in society. Concluding with communist party’s foremost aim of proletarian revolution and they’re ready to work with other opposition parties just for the sake of it. Marx and other communists believe that history goes through stages of social change and that by arming the proletariat in one particular stage (capitalism) it will ensure the overthrow of the bourgeoisie at the hands of the proletariat thus reigning in a new era of socialism and eventually communism.
Book Review (opinions or views solely belongs to blog owners and are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual.):
No philosopher’s reputation has dropped in my lifetime as dramatically as that of Karl Marx. As late as the 1970s, it was still fashionable to claim an ideology deriving from Marx. Ambitious young politicians like Robert Owen, Charles Fourier called themselves socialists and even Marxists as comfortably as they later called themselves New Labour.
In the Modern-era of typically media houses, Marxist thinking is starting to re-emerge out of the ice. What Marx taught was a real threat to the status quo, and he was attacked, ridiculed and denigrated but the later was quite dense but failed to move us. Whatever the virtues of the manifesto, it is, in one respect anyway, incontestably wrong. The proletariat have not risen up and destroyed capitalism, and they look less likely to do it today than they did in 1848, when at least there were revolutions going on all over Europe.
But what the above statement fails to define is the explanation that the British Communist theoretician Rajani Palme Dutt fell back gave in his old age: that the revolution should have happened first in Germany, not Russia, a nation that possessed none of the Marxist criteria for a Communist revolution. In Russia, “historical conditions put success beyond reach,” says Hobsbawm (British historian).
All in all The Communist Manifesto is extremely clear.
Comments