Systemic Change In The Communist Manifesto By Karl Marx

Throughout history, democratic nations have rapidly turned into socialist, fascist, or even anarchist states. In a short period of time, mass movements espousing bold and radical ideas have swept through nations and changed the fabric of societies. Views of systemic change vary greatly between these ideologies. The role it plays can be revealing as to how the ideology works. In modern American society, the term “socialism” carries a lot of baggage. It has been used as a negative label and fears left over from the red scare still cloud people’s judgment of what the term actually represents. It’s often said that socialism leads to communism, or that socialism and communism are the same things. This simply isn’t true. The socialist account of history is that capitalism is unjust and leads to the downfall of great nations. Socialists envision a strong working class with democratic control over the production of goods. Socialists view the proletariat (the working class) as the bedrock or foundation of the economy. In the Communist Manifesto, Karl

The fathers of the ideology initially called for revolutionary change. Edward Bernstein highlights this tension in his preface to Evolutionary Socialism. He says, “No one has questioned the necessity for the working class to gain control of the government. The point at issue is between the theory of social cataclysm and the question whether with the given social development in Germany, and the present advanced state of its working classes in the towns in the country, a sudden catastrophe would be desirable in the interest of social democracy (Bernstein 141).” Bernstein makes the argument that a Marx and Engels overestimated the amount of time systemic change would take in their Communist Manifesto. If they did indeed overestimate, it is possible that a cataclysm or revolution is not necessary to achieve the results they