Book Review: "The Communist Manifesto" by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

The Communist Manifesto (1848)
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)
418 pages

In the 20th century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ The Communist Manifesto achieved almost totemic status as the foundational treatise of the communist movement. But its fame – or for many notoriety – has extended far beyond the ranks of its readership. Aside from familiarity with a few particular phrases, such as its ominous opening line “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism,” for many the book remains more a symbol than a read text.

And, as a symbol, it has largely come to be defined by its connection to the Soviet system that grew out of the Russian revolution of 1917. Just as one can seemingly not question the sustainability of capitalism without being accused of preferring Soviet style communism (as though it’s the only alternative), the Manifesto as an expression of political and economic philosophy has become anchored to the totalitarian Soviet Union as representative of its inevitable outcome.

Wanting to move beyond both the view of the text as a symbol and its identification with the Soviet regime, I decided it was time to read it, and so gain an appreciation for Marx and Engels’s critique of the economic realities of mid-19th century Europe, and what specifically they proposed as an alternative.

As chance would have it, the bookstore I visited to find a copy of the book (shout out to Third Mind Books) had several editions. One that stood out was the Penguin Classics version: for a treatise I had understood to be perhaps a hundred pages with notes, I was surprised that this edition was over 400 pages long. The difference arises due to a roughly 300-page introduction by historian Gareth Stedman Jones, in which he describes the history of the collaborations and influences on Marx and Engels that culminated in the vision they brought to the Manifesto. While this prologue proved challenging at times, given I don’t have a background in philosophy, it nevertheless added critical background detail and context for understanding the Manifesto itself.

Stedman Jones opens by noting that a broad spectrum of present-day groups “appear to conclude that with the final overcoming of [the] challenge [to world capitalism by revolutionary socialism], the future progress of an unconstrained and fully globalized capitalism will proceed unimpeded.” (9) More trenchantly, he calls out “a certain strand of post-modernist writing … [by] French and American theorists who have concluded that because the class struggle over communism is over, history itself must have come to an end.” (10)

Such claims about the triumph of global capitalism based on the demise of the communist regimes of the 20th century demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding (or, perhaps, willful misrepresentation) of history. And, Stedman Jones argues 

the best answer to this kind of post-modernism is to draw attention to the now forgotten sequence of events which resulted in the construction of the grand historical narrative associated with Marx. An investigation into the construction of the Manifesto can explain how this still compelling vision of the world was first stitched together. (10) 

In his Introduction, he makes clear, in fact, that it is as a compelling vision of the world that the book remains of powerful interest, rather than for its prescriptions. (Note that, while not ignoring Engels, Stedman Jones focuses primarily on the evolution of and influences to Marx’s thinking.)

By detailing the philosophical developments and debates that roiled Europe over the course of the 1800’s, as the Enlightenment of the 1700’s precipitated a long period of revolution and reaction, he demonstrates the origins and evolution of the communist movement and ultimately the conceptual framework behind the Manifesto. His acknowledgement that recounting and examining this background “requires the telling of a rather lengthy and complicated story” (10) makes clear then why the Introduction is three times the length of the work itself.  (Pankaj Mishra, in Age of Anger, explores the still unfolding social and cultural implications of the shift from feudal societies based on deference afforded lords and clergy, to the freedom and individualism triggered by the Enlightenment.)

Describing the origins of communist thinking, Stedman Jones notes that “Marxian Socialism in Germany … emerged from debates … about what should replace Christianity,” rather than in concerns with “industrialization or the social and political aspirations of industrial workers.” (10-11) He traces the path Marx and Engels’ thinking took from this focus on replacing Christianity to reaching the point of writing religion out of the Manifesto, instead inventing a “socio-economic” origin for the communist movement, built on the “outlook of the ‘proletariat’.”  The challenge becomes, however, that if we today ignore the “quasi-religious origins” of the development of the communist movement, it makes it harder to make sense of the similarities of “the passions, intransigence and extremism of twentieth-century revolutions to the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.” (12-13)

Of numerous philosophers and their followers in the early to mid-1800’s championing the idea that Christianity had precipitated a social and economic crisis and looking to reverse this impact, one early influence on Marx to whom we are introduced is Ludwig Feuerbach. Feuerbach argued that 

the essentially ‘communal’ character of the human species was transformed by Christianity into the particular union of each individual with a personal external being, [making] religion … responsible for the individualism of modern society. (156) 

This engrained individualism paved the way for an economic system based on private property, as well as the modern state built to defend it. Rectifying this, Marx concluded, required recognizing that “religious freedom was by no means the same as freedom from religion;” understanding this, he felt, could lead people to shift back from being “egoistic individuals” to a “species being,” focused on the progress of all – a return to a communal outlook. (173)

For Marx however, the rise of private property did not represent a mistaken direction in humankind’s development; instead, according to Stedman Jones, Marx argued that “even if [progress for] ‘human life’ now required ‘the supersession of private property’, in the past it had required [the development of] ‘private property for its realization’.” (193)  Marx described pre-capitalist societies in which

the harmonization of resources and needs was effected by forces other than the market: by customary norms, by time-hallowed traditions and by political or religious institutions. In such societies, the institutions that regulated and organized production also tended to be responsible for the organization of all other aspects of life. These institutions regulated production to meet a pre-given and traditional set of needs. (272) 

Capitalism, then, represented a 

break[ing] free from this rigid and highly regulated framework …. It was [a] generalized freedom from the many forms of pre-capitalist institutional restraint that explained the enormous superiority of capitalism in forwarding human productive advance. For only capitalism had a built-in interest in the continuous expansion and proliferation of new needs. (272, my emphasis)

The productive advance that came with the rise of the bourgeoisie represented a step forward for humanity, Marx found, but only as a way point, not an end point. The new technologies and wealth creation that accompanied the development of the bourgeoisie could serve as a critical basis for the next step forward in the development of humankind: communism, a society in which the focus shifted back again to the common needs of humankind, as opposed to the selfish needs of individuals.

Marx’s goal, then, according to Stedman Jones, was to return to a concept of “use value” that had reigned in pre-capitalist societies, and so re-unite the economic with “other spheres of life.” (272) But now, with the benefit of the gains wrought by capitalism, Marx foresaw a world in which many, if not most, needs could be provided by the advanced productivity enabled by newly developed technologies.

In the opening section of the Manifesto, Marx provides an unsparing review of the consequences of the evolution from feudalism to the rise, hand-in-hand, of the modern bourgeoisie and modern modes of production and exchange – free market capitalism: “For exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, [the bourgeoisie] has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.” (326) And, to promulgate and protect this crass exploitation, it has created the necessary governing structures, with “the executive of the modern State … but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” (326)

What today is referred to as globalization, Marx characterizes as a system in which “the need of a constantly expanding market for its product chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.” (328) And he minces no words in observing how the bourgeoisie accomplished this, noting “the cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls … forces ‘the barbarians’ … to capitulate [and] creates a world after its own image.” (329)

For Marx, the bourgeoisie are those who own capital, own the means of production. The rest of the population, in order to support the insatiable growth of capital, become

the proletariat, the modern working class … a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital …. [They] are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. (332) 

The proletariat thus includes “small tradespeople, shopkeepers … the handicraftsmen and peasants … [whose] diminutive capital … is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists.” (334) And, eventually, expands to “every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe … convert[ing] the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers.” (326)

Marx notes, however, that by creating such a large working class who do not share in the benefits of capital ownership, the bourgeoisie creates its own eventual demise, as the proletariat will finally rise up against the exploitation of those who benefit from their work: “What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.” (341)

One could certainly question how, some 170 years later, this victory of the proletariat has failed to materialize. The historian Howard Zinn, in his ground-breaking work A People’s History of the United States, provides a hint at how the system has sustained itself, describing the elite as having learned in times of upheaval to give a little of what is demanded, just enough to pacify the restless rabble, and so hold onto power. He argues, too, that the elite learned how to co-opt support, as while the

poor could not be counted on a political allies of the government … there were more solid citizens … who might give steady support to the system … [including] a growing class of white-collar workers and professionals … who could be wooed enough and paid enough to consider themselves members of the bourgeois class, and to give support to that class in times of crises. (213-214, A People’s History of the United States)

In the second section of the Manifesto, Marx describes and defends the communist plans and program. These proposals include the well-known calls for “centralization” of credit, communication, transportation, and production, in “the hands of the State;” but also puts forth ideas now commonplace, such as “free education for all children in public schools [and] abolition of children’s factory labour.” (354-355) Although one can question the practicality of centralized economic control as a solution, Marx defends such approaches by calling forth the ramifications of the fundamental flaws of modern capitalism. And, while this communist prescription may not convince, the identification and description of the economic illness and it’s present-day consequences to our political and social stability surely does to anyone not blinded by their personal success in its current manifestation…

In fact, one can understand the draw of the Manifesto for those who read it. The identification of the success of modern capitalism in developing increasingly advanced means of economically beneficial production ring true with one’s experience and understanding of the past couple of centuries. But, so too do the many and fundamental flaws identified. The Manifesto, as Stedman Jones points out, has a “power” and a “rhetorical force” in calling out the failures of our present economic system that is undeniable for those willing to put aside their preconceived notions long enough to actually read it.

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Other notes and information:

More quotes from this book

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf