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this, for the most part sums it up from a critics point of view. what he wanted others to take from it has been widely debated. therein lies the mystery that has kept it alive through the years.
i felt like i had to read it several times over and i still came away confused. i honestly think he was on coke.
| quote: | It is worth noting that this is essentially a marketing document. When Marx wrote about a unified proletariat, seething with bitterness toward the bourgeosie, fully recognizing that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles"-- he was not writing what was true at the time. He was writing what he wanted to create. There was no Communist Party in 1848; Marx was trying to found one, so he wrote a "manifesto" and claimed that it had been drawn up by an elite group of Communists meeting in London. Actually, he himself dashed off the Manifesto in a matter of weeks.
The Communist Manifesto was further used for marketing by Lenin in 1917. The Russian proletariat did not read the Manifesto and rise up as Marx always imagined -- most lower class Russians in 1917 were illiterate! Lenin wanted to stage a revolution, so he cast about for propaganda, and conveniently found Marx's manifesto. He interpreted it for the Russian people, turning it into political rhetoric.
Knowing that takes some of the steam out of this document. But anyway, what is Marx saying? He is reacting against the rise of the Industrial Age, which is causing factories to spring up in areas that used to be dominated by family farms. People are working hard at fairly repetitive tasks, with less time to spend with family. Increasingly, they do not directly benefit from their work, but rather exchange their labor for a monetary wage. Marx suspects that society is bifurcating into those who own capital (the bourgeosie) and those who must "sell themselves" to fuel industrial production (the proletariat). The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Marx's vision is that the proletariat will rise up against their bosses and engage in a final revolution that will end all revolutions. Class boundaries, which Marx believes are the cause of all strife, will be dissolved. Harmony will be established through a central State that ensures fairness for all by disallowing the ownership of private capital. (Note that he doesn't quite say private property, although that's what we all think of today). |
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