State
and Revolution, Part 5b
The Communist
Manifesto is constantly re-published
Bourgeois, Proletarians and Communists
The Communist Manifesto is
a classic by any standards. It is never out of print and it is stocked in
ordinary bookshops all over the world, selling steadily year after year.
The work was started in mid-1847 in England by Frederick
Engels and Karl Marx when Marx was 29 and Engels 27, and was published in
January or February of 1848, just in time for the outbreak of revolutions all
over Europe.
All of the Communist Manifesto is memorable, but especially
the first two parts (“Bourgeois and Proletarians”,
and “Proletarians and Communists”)
given in the downloadable file, linked below. The third part is called “Socialist and Communist
Literature” and the fourth part of one page is called “Position of the Communists in
Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties”. A fifth part that
was not included is the catechism- or FAQ-style document called “The Principles of Communism”
drafted by Frederick Engels.
Bourgeois and
Proletarians
The new masters, the formerly slave-owning but now
capitalist bourgeoisie, also known as burghers or burgesses, were a class that
had grown up in the towns under the rule of rural-based feudalism (“traditional
leadership”). Marx and Engels were convinced that the bourgeoisie were
themselves sooner or later going to be overthrown by the working proletariat,
the class of free citizens owning nothing but their Labour-Power, that the
bourgeoisie had brought into existence by employing them. The bourgeoisie had
taken over from the feudal lords by revolution. They would themselves be
toppled by revolution, said Marx and Engels.
Commissioned to write the Manifesto by the Communist League,
Marx and Engels struggled to meet the agreed deadline, but came through with a
magnificent text published just prior to the February, 1848 events in Paris.
These events brought the proletariat as actors on to the stage of history to an
extent that had never been seen before, thoroughly vindicating Engels and Marx.
Short as it is, the Manifesto is so rich and so compressed
as to be saturated with meaning, and practically impossible to summarise. Here
are some of the most extraordinary sentences of the first section of the
Manifesto:
The history of all hitherto existing society
is the history of class struggles.
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.
The executive of the modern state is but a
committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their
train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all
new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.
All that is solid melts into air, all that
is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his
real condition of life and his relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market
for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe.
It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.
Proletarians and
Communists
The second part of the Communist Manifesto contains
statements about the Communist Party, about the family, about religion, and
frank statements about the bourgeoisie.
The second part shows, among other things, the centrality of
the relations of production that create and sustain the effect known as
capital, which then in turn defines everything else in bourgeois society.
“Proletarians and Communists” also looks forward to the way
that society can be changed, and thus serves to remind us that Marx’s work is
always intentional, and is never merely empirical, descriptive or
disinterested.
“The average price of wage labour is the
minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence which is
absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer,” wrote
Marx and Engels.
“But does wage labour create any property
for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property
which exploits wage labour, and which cannot increase except upon conditions of
begetting a new supply of wage labour for fresh exploitation.”
They finish the section with this unforgettable, classic
vision:
“…a vast association of the whole
nation… in which the free development of each is the condition for the free
development of all.”
- The above is to introduce the original reading-text: Bourgeois and Proletarians; Proletarians and Communists,
Communist Manifesto, Marx/Engels, 1848.
