Communism: The Manifesto Of The Communist Party

Though the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries is often lauded for its role in exponentially increasing the productive capacity of the West, it created unprecedented hardships for laborers in England, France, and Germany. In the midst of this turmoil and on the eve of the Revolution of 1848 in Germany, German philosopher, economist, and political revolutionary Karl Marx collaborated with Friedrich Engels at the request of the Communist League to compose a manifesto on its behalf. The Manifesto of the Communist Party reflects an attempt to explain the goals of Communism, as well as the theory underlying this movement. It argues that class struggles, or the exploitation of one class by another, are the motivating force behind

Marx describes it: “The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority” (482). Such an uprising by the majority will see “the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air” (482). Tracing the proletariat’s development through first a veiled civil war up into all-out revolution, Marx further supports his point by stating that the relationship between the bourgeois and the proletariat is inherently flawed. He posits that though prior eras of history have been similarly based on oppression, they have guaranteed conditions under which the oppressed class can continue its “slavish existence”. As examples of this, “The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois” (482). In the case of the modern wage-laborer, however, this is not the case as the increasing use of machinery and division of labor continually makes his work more menial and insignificant. Since the bourgeois is the class of capitalists and owner of means of production, the worker is only paid as much as his labor is valued. This value is decreasing endlessly, thrusting the proletariat into “pauperism”,

By the nature of being proletarians, they have no power or privileges they must defend. Rather, to help themselves they must destroy the entire system. Because of this, when they have their revolution, they will destroy the entire system of class exploitation, including all private property. This is the crux of the argument for a revolution of modes of production, and not merely a reform, because in revolutionizing, the old modes will be destroyed entirely, and because of the unique nature of the proletariat, the conditions for class antagonisms and indeed classes themselves will also be destroyed. Marx declares that even if, for the cause of revolution, the proletariat must first organize itself as a class, then wrest the title of ruling class from the bourgeois, the removal of the old conditions of production will itself abolish the proletariat supremacy as a class. This then leads to, in place of classes, an “association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” (491). Thus, the stage of history that Marx is describing is the last stage in the cycle of class