The Classics, Beginnings, Part 2a
The Communist Manifesto is constantly
re-published
Bourgeois,
Proletarians and Communists
The Communist Manifesto is
a classic by any standards. It is never out of print and is stocked in ordinary
bookshops all over the world, selling steadily year after year.
The work
was started in mid-1847 in England by Frederick Engels and Karl Marx when Marx
was 29 and Engels 27, and was published in January or February of 1848, just in
time for the outbreak of revolutions all over Europe.
All of the
Communist Manifesto is memorable, but especially the first two parts (“Bourgeois and Proletarians”,
and “Proletarians and Communists”)
given in the downloadable file, linked below. The third part is called “Socialist and Communist
Literature” and the fourth part of one page is called “Position of the Communists in
Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties”. A fifth part that
was drafted but not included is the catechism- or FAQ-style document called “The Principles of Communism”
drafted by Frederick Engels.
Bourgeois and Proletarians
The new
masters, the formerly slave-owning but now capitalist bourgeoisie, also known
as burghers or burgesses, were a class that had grown up in the towns under the
rule of rural-based feudalism. Marx and Engels were convinced that the
bourgeoisie were themselves sooner or later going to be overthrown by the
working proletariat, the class of free citizens owning nothing but their
Labour-Power that the bourgeoisie had brought into existence by employing them.
The bourgeoisie had taken over from the feudal lords by revolution. They would
themselves be toppled by revolution, said Marx and Engels.
Commissioned
to write the Manifesto by the Communist League, Marx and Engels struggled to
meet the agreed deadline, but came through with a magnificent text published
just prior to the February, 1848 events in Paris. These events brought the
proletariat as actors on to the stage of history to an extent that had never
been seen before, thoroughly vindicating Engels and Marx.
Short as it
is, the Manifesto is so rich and so compressed as to be saturated with meaning,
and practically impossible to summarise. Here are some of the most
extraordinary sentences of the first section of the Manifesto:
The history of all hitherto existing society is
the history of class struggles.
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 proletariat.
The executive of the modern state is but a
committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their
train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all
new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.
All that is solid melts into air, all that is
holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his
real condition of life and his relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for
its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It
must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.
Proletarians and Communists
The second
part of the Communist Manifesto contains statements about the Communist Party,
about the family, about religion, and frank statements about the bourgeoisie.
The second
part shows, among other things, the centrality of the relations of production
that create and sustain the effect known as capital, which then in turn defines
everything else in bourgeois society.
“Proletarians
and Communists” also looks forward to the way that society can be changed, and
thus serves to remind us that Marx’s work is always intentional, and is never
merely empirical, descriptive or disinterested.
“The average price of wage labour is the
minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence which is
absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer,” wrote Marx and Engels.
“But does wage labour create any property for
the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which
exploits wage labour, and which cannot increase except upon conditions of
begetting a new supply of wage labour for fresh exploitation.”
They finish
the section with this unforgettable, classic vision:
“…a vast association of the whole nation… in which the free development
of each is the condition for the free development of all.”
Please download and read this text:
Further
reading:
The Poverty of
Philosophy, Karl Marx, 1847, excerpts (4083 words)
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