The Communist Manifesto, The German Ideology And The 1844 Manuscript

Marx would believe civil disobedience is sometimes acceptable, albeit misguided, and not as effective as revolution. Marx never explicitly touches on the topic of civil disobedience, so instead his viewpoint will be inferred from the texts: The Communist Manifesto, The German Ideology, and The 1844 Manuscripts. These texts discuss Marx’s analysis of competing classes and the distribution of labour and wealth, with a common theme being the power of what Marx calls “the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands” (Marx, 1848). Marx highlights the function of the revolutionary class historically through the bourgeoise, and presents proletariats as the modern revolutionary class. Marx’s encouragement of the working class

From these texts, Marx’s response to the statement “civil obedience is never acceptable” would be that sometimes, civil disobedience is acceptable because civil disobedience is a form of uprising that brings change. This essay uses The Stanford Encyclopedia’s definition of civil disobedience, defined as a “conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies” (Candice and Brownlee, 2024). Someone practices civil disobedience when they intentionally breach a law they oppose, doing so in a non-violent manner; though non-violent does not mean the act may not cause harm to others (Candice and Brownlee, 2024). Additionally, an act of civil disobedience is deliberately law-breaking to communicate an idea, typically to some form of government, through a symbolic action (Candice and Brownlee, 2024). An act of civil disobedience is public, in the sense that the act is pre-planned, the perpetrator’s identity is known, responsibility for the act is claimed by the perpetrator, or the act is openly committed (Candice and Brownlee, 2024). Discussing Marx’s views of civil disobedience is difficult because Marx never touches on the concept in his