The little book that changed the world

Vanguard April 2011 p. 4
Duncan B.

February marked the one hundred and sixty-third anniversary of the publication of The Communist Manifesto. In November 1847, the Communist League, a secret association of workers in Germany, commissioned Karl Marx and Frederick Engels to draw up for publication a theoretical and practical programme for a new party of the working class.

The Communist Manifesto appeared in February 1848, the year revolutionary storms spread across Europe. Since then, this work has inspired millions of revolutionaries who have struggled for socialism in many countries. The success of revolutions in Russia, China, Cuba and other countries can, in part, be traced to this remarkable little book. Lenin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro were amongst those inspired by it.

In his preface to the 1883 edition, Engels summed up the basic thought running through the Communist Manifesto. He wrote; “economic production and the structure of society of every historical epoch necessarily arising therefrom constitute the foundation for the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently (ever since the dissolution of the primeval communal ownership of land) all history has been a history of class struggles, of struggles between dominated and dominating classes at various stages of development; that this struggle, however, has now reached a stage where the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie), without at the same time for ever freeing the whole of society from exploitation, oppression and class struggles.”

Note here that the term proletariat is used for working class and bourgeoisie for capitalist class.

The Communist Manifesto begins with a succinct outline of class society and class struggle written from the perspective of historical materialism (see Marxism Today in Vanguard Feb 2011).

The class struggle
Since the breakdown of primitive communal societies, the history of all existing society has been the history of class struggles: “Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild master 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 ended either in a revolutionary reconstruction of society at large, or the common ruin of the contending classes.”

Modern capitalist society has not done away with class antagonisms. Instead, it has established new classes, new conditions of exploitation and oppression and new forms of struggle. Capitalist society has simplified class antagonisms. Two major classes face one another, the capitalist class and the working class. The capitalist class owns the means of production and employs wage labour. The working class does not own the means of production and must sell its labour power and bring into existence commodities for the capitalist class to maintain its position.

As the Manifesto states: “Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry; the proletariat is the special and essential product.” As for other groups in society; “the bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured 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-labourers.”

Manifesto is not a dogma
Following the analysis of class struggles and capitalist society, The Communist Manifesto lists some practical measures, which could be taken by the working class, when it becomes the ruling class and is able to “use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.”

While taking note of these words, it is also true that in the years since, a considerable amount of experience has been accumulated, which has, in the first place, enriched what is contained in the Manifesto.

There is a deeper understanding of the need to pass through stages in the transition from capitalism to socialism and that these stages differ from place to place. There is a deeper understanding of the concept of the united front, where the working class allies to itself other sections of society to bring about revolutionary change.

Such new developments are natural. Nothing remains static. Knowledge must be enriched by practice. If such an enrichment does not occur over time, knowledge will be transformed into its opposite – dogma. This is not what The Communist Manifesto was ever intended to be. The little book laid down some general principles. These have been verified by history, not withstanding certain difference in their application, depending on the particular conditions of each country and time in its history.

Learning from experience
In the years after the publication of the work, the working class gained considerable revolutionary experience in the February revolutions of 1848, the Paris Commune in 1871 ( where it learned lessons that could not been anticipated earlier).

During the Paris Commune, for example, the working class learned from the first time that it held political power, that they cannot simply lay hold of the ready made capitalist state. It had to be destroyed and a new kind of state put in its place. Further experience was gained thought the Twentieth Century. More experience is being gained in the Twenty First century.

The Manifesto also states: “The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare their ends can only be attained by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.”

Of course, it would be silly to interpret these words as suggesting that every single communist should shout their position from the rooftops. Certain things must be concealed from the class enemy, care must be taken that communists work with others in a way that does not isolate them. But these words do mean that the organisation of communists, the Communist Party, must put forward a principled, clear cut, far-sighted position. It must never compromise itself to the ideology and lies peddled by the capitalist class.

It is fitting to finish with the final words of The Communist Manifesto.

“Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Let the ruling class tremble. Working men of all countries unite!”