The Manifesto of the Communist Party Essay

     Marx describes the problem in great detail in the first chapter. He feels there is a problem between the bourgeoisie and the proletarians. The bourgeoisie were the oppressed class before the French Revolution and he argues that they are now the oppressors. The proletarians are the new working class, which works in the large factory and industries. He says that through mass industry they have sacrificed everything from the old way of religion, employment, to a man’s self worth and replaced it with monetary value. He is mad that the people of ole that use to be upper class such as skills man, trades people, & shopkeepers, are now slipping into the proletarians or working class. He

Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels' Communist Manifesto is one of the world's most influential pieces of political literature. The manifesto was created for the purpose of outlining the aims and goals of the "The Communist League". The Communist League was made up of radical proletariats who were fed up with the bourgeoisie social order and sought to overthrow them. The manifesto is known to have been written by Marx and assisted and edited by Engel therefore the many ideas and theories expressed by this work are known as Marxism. Marxism has many poignant views on changing society and its class structure, and what needs to be done to achieve these changes. The Marxism theories do fall

“to a mere money relation,” (Marx and Engels [1848] 2013:35]. Marx, saw the tear down of the old as the only way for the bourgeoisie to survive. Periodically, a crisis occurred where productive forces threatened their conditions and bourgeoisie would have to bring in new productive forces and destroy the old. Marx believed that these changes to technology and productive capacity were the main influence on how society and the economy were organized. The bourgeoisie had to push for the modern world to quickly and continually develop to protect capitalists’ monopolies. However, constant development caused continual disturbances of social conditions by breaking down stable aspects of human life. Capitalist used their power to push the world to advance so that they could prosper with no concerns to the possible effects on the economy, which would have been most detrimental to the proletariat. For Marx, this showed that capitalists’ self-interest pushed economic progress, which led to societal progress but also risked crisis. Capitalism not only affected society through the creation and separation of social classes but also in influencing societal progress and social relations.

The Communist Manifesto, originally drafted as, “Manifesto of the Communist Party”, is a pamphlet written by Karl Marx, that in essence reflects an attempt to explain the goals and objectives of Communism, while also explaining the concrete theories about the nature of society in relation to the political ideology. The Communist Manifesto breaks down the relationship of socio-economic classes and specifically identifies the friction between those classes. Karl Marx essentially presents a well analyzed understanding of class struggles and the issues concerning capitalism, the means and modes of production and how those means affect the classes as a whole.

The production of the mass quantities, however, required a mass proletariat. They became the backbone of the economy. Workers in the factories toiled long hours at minimum wages to satisfy the growing needs and demands of the markets. The poor conditions and the inequality in the distribution of goods, however, prompted the proletariat to begin to demand a fair share of the results. It became clear that the bourgeoisie had, “stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It had converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers”. 4 Workers were relegated to the bottom of the social pyramid.

A major part of profit from business concentrated in the hands of business managers, administrators or upper bourgeoisie. (Marx, p.59; Reich, p.1) Unequal distribution of capital identifies new property relations created with an emergence of bourgeois society. (Marx, p.71) Private property relations leads to indignation of proletariat, lower class who live from hand to mouth compared with upper bourgeoisie. It strengthens antagonism between these two distinct classes and hastens the accomplishment of Revolution by proletariat against bourgeoisie. (Marx, p.58, 144) Sporadic circumstances of clashes between bourgeois and proletarian raise into class clashes, strong antagonism. Consequently, workers from different countries found various associations in order to protect their rights (Marx, p.44) Therefore, gradually proletariat all over the world unite and as their interests differ from bourgeoisie’s, proletariat will attempt to overthrow an oppressive class (Marx, p.58) Strengthening of proletariat is a product of property relations of the bourgeois society which may lead to total disruption of bourgeois production relations eventually.

The Manifesto of the Communist party is a book written in 1847, by a group of radical workers part the “Communist League.” Including the radical workers, the group comprised of Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. They met in London to write a manifesto on their behalf, which would be famously known as the Communist Manifesto. Marx was the principle author, while Engels was mainly focused on editing and assisting. The Communist Manifesto was originally published in London in 1848. The book is one of the most widely read and most influential documents of modern socialism. It is also known to be the systematic statement of the philosophy that has come to be known as Marxism. Marxism itself is known as the main philosophy around Communism and has been adopted by some systems of government and society throughout history.

Marx's ideas on labor value are very much alive for many organizations working for social change. In addition, it is apparent that the gap between the rich and poor is widening on a consistent basis. According to Marx, the course of human history takes a very specific form which is class struggle. The engine of change in history is class opposition. Historical epochs are defined by the relationship between different classes at different points in time. It is this model that Marx fleshes out in his account of feudalism's passing in favor of bourgeois capitalism and his prognostication of bourgeois capitalism's passing in favor of proletarian rule. These changes are not the reliant results of random social, economic, and political events; each follows the other in predictable succession. Marx responds to a lot of criticism from an imagined bourgeois interlocutor. He considers the charge that by wishing to abolish private property, the communist is destroying the "ground work of all personal freedom, activity, and independence". Marx responds by saying that wage labor does not properly create any property for the laborer. It only creates capital, a property which works only to augment the exploitation of the worker. This property, this capital, is based on class antagonism. Having linked private property to class hostility, Marx

Throughout The Communist Manifesto, Marx expresses the political, economic and social turmoil that were present in their society. During this time period, agriculture production was the main occupation. This resulted in a class struggle between the landowners and the serfs who labored the land. A new, manufacturing class emerged from this conflict called the bourgeoisie. Bourgeoisie changed the focus from agriculture to industrialization and commerce. Having “less dexterity and strength [that] is required in manual labor, [helps] modern industry develop” and prosper throughout society (Marx 131). This more proficient way to produce commodities helped the bourgeoisie control global and domestic trade. They eventually reached a point where they were inhibited by the feudal government and could not progress at the original rate they were going. Resulting from this, the French Revolution occurred and the bourgeoisie demolished the aristocracy that was originally present during this primitive time. Unfortunately, this did not resolve the primary

Marx describes the rise of the bourgeois by saying "the place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place of the industrial middle class, by the industrial millionaire, the

     The communist Manifesto is the author’s way of interpreting the goals of Communism, as well as the theory underlying this movement. Two major points of the manifesto explain how class relationships are defined by an era’s means of production. Also, the manifesto incorporates how class struggles, or exploitation of one class by another, are motivating force behind all historical developments. If those two points are not followed then a revolution occurs and a new class emerges as the ruling one. This outcome represents the ‘march of history’ which is driven by economic variables. The Manifesto argues that this development is inevitable, and the capitalism is inherently unstable. Elimination of social

When examining the roots of our disputes, observing the dynamics between social factions is pivotal. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx asserts, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”(Perry 195) His oversimplification is insignificant when you are looking at preceding revolutions. Historians seem to voice a recurring theme to these uprisings: conflict stemming from the ongoing struggles of the oppressed and the oppressor. On the eve of the French Revolution, (page 583) tensions were growing steadily between the first and second estate, consisting of the nobles and clergymen, and the third estate, which consisted for the rest of the population. Tensions arose because the aristocracy and the nobles had privileges the merchants and peasants did not. Among these include

“A specter is haunting Europe -the specter of Communism,” Karl Marx proclaims. This phantom maybe the resolution to rid a country of greed and exploitation. Karl Marx in the collaboration with Frederich Engels elucidates his concern of capitalism and his yearn for a communistic society in the book, The Communist Manifesto. In this book he explains his idea of true communism. True communism is a social order in which all citizens are equal. In communism equality means that society is classless, moneyless, and stateless. Citizens will no longer be able to own property, inherit money, and capitalize on their inferior. In his book Marx illustrates the essence of communism by explicating the relationship between the antagonistic groups, addressing the objections leveled at communism, and explaining the relationship between the proletariat and the communist. Marx utilizes a variety of argumentative appeals to persuade readers that communism is the solution to the wretched lives of the majority. As Marx goes about expressing his assertion, he commits fallacies that may hinder his credibility and the effectiveness of his claim. By the end of his book Marx declares men, women, and children of the impoverished community need to come together to overthrow capitalism and become a socialist society of communism because communism is the answer, communism is the future.

The Communist Manifesto is profoundly marked by the history of class struggle and social inequality throughout history. In fact Marx suggests that history is in essence merely a timeline of class struggle, unchanging apart from the alteration in mode of production. The document is the story of the conflict between the Proletariat and the Bourgeois, the oppressed and the oppressor, the haves and the have nots, etc? However, this is not a new idea and Marx is really not all that radical. In his Politics, Aristotle wrote, ?Those who have too much of the goods of fortune, strength, wealth, friends and the like, are neither willing nor able to submit to authority?On the other hand,

In the chapter, “Manifesto of the Communist Party” in The Marx-Engels Reader book, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had broken up the topic of the Communist Party up to four parts: 1. “Bourgeois and Proletarians”, 2. “Proletarians and Communists”, 3. “Socialist and Communist Literature”, and 4. “Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties.” In this essay, I’ll be focusing on the first two parts of the “Manifesto” since there are so much information to cover within three to four pages. To begin I would like to summarize, “Bourgeois and Proletarians” was about the vicious cycle of the proletariats having to constantly fight the socioeconomic classes above them considering that they are always exploited, yet they have no norms (“appropriation”) of their own to secure or embrace. “Proletarians and Communists” was where Marx and Engels define what Communism is, how it relates to the Proletarians, and how Communism works (or would work). History can be trace back to the class/political struggles; the oppressed fighting against their oppressors; the “subordinate gradations”. Subordinate gradation was defined as a social rank, where the highest power is at the top and the weakest is at the bottom. However, when old subordinate gradation falls another one would rise, that was the cycle. Marx and Engels went on to make a statement that the current class antagonisms are between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The proletariat is defined as the