Communist Manifesto Analysis

[Richard Wilson]

This is my analysis of the Communist Manifesto.

"A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies."

This is indeed true, the Roman Pope was also a supporter of the German Nazi and Adolf Hitler in the later period, because something the fundamentalists never inform you of, is that the bible says that 3/4 of Jews must disappear within a relatively short period of time before the events that spark the 2nd coming occur, basically, the fundamentalists are waiting for a Holocaust, after Hitler, that thought it to be the Soviet Union that would kill the Jews, never happened, so now they support the Israeli state. The leaders of the religious movement, if you can call it that, have been very reactionary since the start though, and most without biblical justification. The Pope did indeed support the Tsars and other evils around the world, this is the same church remember, that sold you forgiveness. For more information on the Church and how it is reactionary, Socialism & The Church by Rosa Luxembourg, is a wonderful piece of work that goes indepth, I would recommend everyone to read this, if you haven't already. (http://www.newyouth.com/archives/classics/luxembourg/rosaluxemburgsocialismandthechurches.html)

"I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.

II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of communism with a manifesto of the party itself."

This is true, our paper has a perfect name Socialist "Appeal", people will generally be attracted by ideas that are based on a sound foundation and which make sense, and which are based on postconventional thought. Communism which is based on dialectical materialism, is just that, so naturally, it would attract the masses and in particular, the intelligent masses.

"The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master(3) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes."

This is true as well, history is one of struggle between various classes , between the owning and ruling class and the working class, between those that reap the benefits of labor and those that through their labor, make it all possible. In the first,  there were slave owners, slaves and the other class which consisted of the freemen. In Rome for example, most of the workforce consisted of those enslaved as prisioners of war, during Rome's expansionary period, the slaveowners also were the business owners, and owned the plantations and were wealthy. Than, there were the free people, that didn't have work, but thought, they had the politicians on their side. The politicians would tax the wealth of the slave owners and distribute those to the mass of the population to keep them under control. However, they were members of the oppressed, but they did have rights and they did have wealth, however limited it was. Each of the above stages, was replaced by a new system, from slavery to feudalism for example and each time that change occured, it was pushed by revolution, violent movement by the progressive elements. Each new qualitive improvement was caused by revolution - the same is true for the establishment of Socialism.

"The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones."

Indeed, and capitalism, has more problems inherent in the system than the former. During slave society, slave owners generally provided the slave with adequate amount of food and medical attention, because the slave was of value, the slave was an investment much the same as a machine is to a capitalist. During the period of feudalism, the serf retained a portion of his produce, which he could use for his own consumption, so most serfs wouldn't be found starving. With capitalism, as Adam Smith notes in Wealth of Nations (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch08.htm), when the supply of unemployed labor rises, the wage level can sink below the level sufficient to sustain the life of the worker's family and the excess will die off. Luckily, today, the most advanced nations such as can be found in the United States and Western Europe, have food aid programs that provide food to the poor, but all one need to do is travel to Africa, or Asia, or even Argentina which produces enough food to feed 4x its own population, and one will find children dieing from starvation. It took a form of political revolution during the Great Depression, in the United States and Western Europe, for us to win even the most basic of rights, to food, to unionize, to a minimum wage, to unemployment benefits, and even than, ever since, it has been a fight to defend those. Also, the inherent crisis of capitalism, the "business cycle" as the capitalists refer to as, means, that as long as there is capitalism, such injustices as starvation will remain.

"Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — bourgeoisie and proletariat."

This is also true, as Lenin proves in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch01.htm). Another inherent problem with capitalism is that wealth tends to, over time, "trickle up" for lack of better wording. "Megamergers", "vertical and horizontal consolidation", "hostile takeovers",  are all examples of how ownership over the economy, winds up in fewer and fewer hands. From 1940-1960, we experienced a downward trend in such activity, anti-trust laws in North America and Western Europe, protectionist trade and investment policies by those States, temporarily, placed those forces at work, under control. Since than the opposite has been happening. The "big businesses" of the industrialized capitalist countries, have gained a larger share of total world corporate profit, revenue and production. Free trade has brought to Mexico, Argentina, China, not prosperity but the opposite. While millions of new jobs have been created by American-based companies, the domestic industries of those same countries, are dieing out. This is not an arguement against free trade, free trade in itself is positive, simply put though, free trade leads to more megamergers, consolidations and hostile takeovers. One need to look at the number of each of those during the 70's - to the 90's and see how the activity has increased with each passing decade. Another interesting point to make, is the activity generally (the late 90's being an exception) occurs just after periods of economic downturn when the smaller produces are up for sale at the lowest prices. The internet is a fine example, after the bubble burst in late 2000, buying activity by the likes of Yahoo and others has been peaking. Check out the global 500, to see how much of our economic activity, they contribute:  http://www.fortune.com/fortune/global500

"The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer suffices for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed aside by the manufacturing middle class; division of labor between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labor in each single workshop."

Capitalism prevailed partially because of the movement of wealth into fewer and fewer hands. The closed, inefficient guilds, were replaced by enormous factories that could manufacture goods for a fraction of the price. The more competitive the producer, the more sucessful the producer. Consumers will, of course, given two choices, both having the same use-value, but with different exchange-values, will choose the one at the lowest price.

The discovery of the New World and the East-Indian and Chinese markets hastened the pace of capitalist developement because they provided a market for the excess production, preventing over supply, and because those markets supplied Britain with raw material, that Britain no longer had to produce for herself, and by doing so, freeing up labor for the capitalists.

"Even manufacturers no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionized industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois."

Industry moved from labor intensive to reliace on machinery because of the competition among the manufacturers to out-sell the other and gain market share.

[Richard Wilson]

"Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance in that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association of medieval commune(4): here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable "third estate" of the monarchy (as in France); afterward, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general — the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative state, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."

Throughout history, changes in economic systems, ment changes in political systems, and that was a requirement, because the state has always been a dictatorship of the oppressing class, the feudal nobility represented feudal interests, so for capitalism to prevail, the feudal nobility had to be replaced by governments favorable to capitalism.

"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors", and has left no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former exoduses of nations and crusades."

The bourgeoisie, has fought for the freedom of exchange, of goods and services both within the nation and around the world. They have purged society of feudalism, creating conditions fully favorable for capitalist society. In the early stages, of this period that Marx lived, women became the servants of man, the family became one of money relations. Since men are physically stronger than women, and work was labor-intensive, the oppurtunity for women was limited, and as time moved, women lost more and more rights and men gained power over women. Since the 1920's, that has changed, as there has been a move in the United States from physical labor to mental labor, from reliance on physical ability, to reliance on how one can work a machine. That being the case, equality is slowly becoming reality. This to, took, in some cases, even violent, revolution by women, by capitalists, by others, because the population as a whole, had taken on the attitude that resulted from the previous periods.

"A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past, the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that, by their periodical return, put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand, by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented."

Since there are no longer uncharted lands to conquer and exploit, over production is a threat to the economies of the world and lead to the destruction of the productive forces as was the case during the Great Depression, as is the case once again. Science and productivity alone, while powerful forces, aren't enough to provide sufficient improvement in standard of living, to convince the masses that the status quo is preferable and should continue. World annual GDP growth has slowed with each passing decade, the 90's, in the United States, which was "booming", grew at just half the rate as it did from 1950-1970.