The reason I wanted to read The Communist Manifesto now is that I don't remember reading it in school and this current financial mess, called the Great Recession, seems at its core the result of greed gone wild, underpinned with our system of capitalism which seems to have in it the very incentives to bring on this excessive greed. So, I was hoping this book would give me some meaningful thoughts with which to further have clues to the way things might play out during this financial mess including the political ramifications. And, from what I do know about Marx, I suspect what happened here is something he had thought out, in a general way, many years before. The Manifesto and the book's foreword cover things like......
1. 1847, Marx and Engels joined the League of the Just (renamed the Communist Party) with its object to overthrow the bourgeoisie with rule by the proletariat and a new society without classes or private property.
2. 1871, Civil war in France - Marx defended it and it then gave him notoriety as a dangerous leader of international subversion and feared by governments.
3. Over the next 40 years the Manifesto conquered the world and carried forward a rise of new (socialist) labor parties. None were called Communist until the Russian Bolsheviks. Mostly in central Europe to Russia. Small in SW Europe.
4. When a major state (Russia) represented Marxist ideology, the Manifesto became a text in political science and still remains so.
5. It was written for a particular time in history
6. Marx and Engel's Communist Party was not an organization - more of a historical document.
7. Two things which gave the Manifesto its force - a) the vision that capitalism was not permanent/stable, b) The revolutionary potential of a capitalist economy.
8. We live in a world where this transformation has largely taken place.
9. Capitalism can't provide a livelihood for most of the working class.
10. There will always be the oppressors (capitalists - bourgeoisie) versus the workers
11 The Bourgeoisie has stripped all occupations down to paid workers.
12. The need for constantly expanding market for its products means ultimately global.- effecting even a world literature, cheap prices - will make all nations bourgeoisie.Eventually overproduction leading to barbarism because of too much civilization. The proletariat/workers become mere appendages and lose all character. Brings more collisions between societies and trade unions will flourish. The worker groups get bigger and more powerful through education provided by the bourgeoisie. Other classes except the proletariat will decay.
13. Wage labor rests on the competition between laborers. Communists flourish independently of national borders.
14.Communism abolishes bourgeoisie property, no big deal since 90% of private property belongs to the bourgeoisie. Small peasant property is destroyed daily by industry. Average wage of laborers is the minimum wage, just for subsistence. Education is rescued from the influence of the ruling class. Since family is a bourgeoisie thing affirmed by property, family is destroyed - children are transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labor. Working men will have no country. Communism's desire is to abolish countries and nationality. National differences and antagonisms will vanish. External truths like freedom and justice will be common to all states. But, communism will abolish eternal truths like religion and morality - a new basis. Communism will raise the working class to the ruling class.
15. Specifically, communism will:
a) Abolish property in land and application of all rents to public purposes.
b) Abolish inheritance.
c) Confiscate property of emigrants and rebels.
d) Have a national bank.
e) Centralization of communication and transportation by the state.
f) Factories and instruments of production to be owned by the state.
g) Combine agriculture and manufacturing so there will be no distinction between town and country.
h) Free education.
So, I would say the Communist Manifesto, though really just applied to a time in history and times have surely changed quite a bit since then, but I would also say what it was concerned about also shouldn't be ignored when trying to understand the current economic stress we are in. Our capitalism, though obviously very successful especially in many respects, does show strain in the following areas, as Marx could have likely anticipated like a) the gap between the well-off and the poor and even middle-class has dangerously widened such that our political divisions reflect that and has turned more heated and split, making compromise among our politicians very difficult - hard to govern the country efficiently. b) He warned that the bourgeoisie (today's well-off) has been unable to effect the tools to elevate everyone enough, judging by our failing infrastructure, healthcare costs the highest in the world, etc. c) He anticipated the global impact, ever searching for the least cost workers, such that our manufacturing workers are left without jobs. We can even see this global force in our illegal immigration problems - workers from Mexico, etc coming here, somehow even breaking down our borders - something Marx apparently could see. I did leave off some other things in how the Manifesto was relevant now, in this short paragraph, but from the points, above, it can be seen there are others.
In conclusion, I give the book 5 out of 5 stars. It is a short enough book and just its impact has been monumental in history, it is worthwhile to keep in mind as one tries to figure out what might come next from this Great Recession.
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