The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto, one of the world's most influential political pieces was first published on February 21, 1848. Commissioned by the communist league and written by communist theorist Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto set out the leagues program and purpose. The widespread inequity in the distribution of valuable resources created a political, social, and economic climate perfect for the introduction of Marx and Engels' Manifesto. The work suggested a counter-hegemonic course of action. Marx and Engels were deeply moved by the disparity in the living conditions between two classes of people, the "bourgeois" and "proletariat." They argued that the far smaller bourgeois class held a position of power--a hegemonic control--over the far larger proletariat class. The Manifesto attempted to re-dress that disparity by invoking a proletarian revolution to overthrow capitalism and, eventually, bring about a classless society. In the United States, employment workers in the nineteenth century were feeling increasingly insecure about their jobs, and the unemployed expected little help from the federal government. This resulted in fifteen million unemployed Americans, which, in turn, opened the gateway to widespread unrest among the working class (wikipedia.com). Although, Marx and Engels believed that the principles of the Communist Manifesto could not apply to American society, some Americans seized the ideology. It was "the perfect storm" and the ideology easily gained momentum starting with the labor-unions, moving past the motives to overthrow the ruling upper class, end inequality in gender and finally make general and social improvements. Thus the communist manifesto played a great role in American society by setting a precedent in the nineteenth century.

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Marx believed that every age attained the rivalry between two classes of society beginning with masters against slaves, down to the bourgeoisie against the working class. One class always exploited the other because their interests were completely opposed. As the lower class gained power, a new class would rise that would eventually include the old upper class. This kind of controversial process would create a merchant class and a working class from the struggle between peasants and nobles. However, Marx felt that there was an end to this process. At some point in history, the working class would eliminate all the remaining classes. If there was only one class, there would no longer be a class struggle. Similarly, the causes of a class conflict - distribution of resources such as money, land, and control over the means of production - would be shared equally. It is made clear in the Communist Manifesto that there must be a winner and a loser regardless of the endeavor. Marx asserts that the root of the problems of society before and during his time was in the battle between the oppressors and the oppressed. Within the Manifesto, Marx provides a thorough critique of the conflict of European social classes and advocates for communism.

The Communist Manifesto begins with the Marxian view that history is a class struggle. Marx and Engles' Manifesto sought to educate the mass of workers by revealing the time conditions of their lives. In the first section, "Bourgeois and Proletarians," Marx and Engles argue that the class struggle under capitalism is between those who own the means of production - the ruling class or bourgeoisie - and those who labor for a wage - the working class or proletariat. After educating the working class of their conditions, Marx and Engles wanted a plan of action for instituting change. In addition to the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the laborers in the first section, the second section of the Communist Manifesto, "Proletarians and Communists," outlines the relationship of communists to the rest of the working class. This section also includes the outline of a set of short-term demands, including, among others, the abolition of land ownership and the right to inheritance, a progressive income tax, universal education and the expansion of the means of production owned by the state. Marx

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and Engeles believed that the implementation of these policies would be a sign to bring forth a classless society. Marx and Engels also assert, "The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer. They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes" (Marx 50). Marx and Engels did not only intend to make clear to the world the political positions and views of Communists but to also describe the causes and directions of historical change through the view of Communists. The third section goes further than the second in both the attempt to re-educate and defining possible allies in thought and action, to enact historical change. "Socialist and Communist Literature," differentiates communism from other socialist doctrines common at the time the Manifesto was written. The concluding section, "Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties," briefly discusses the communist position on struggles in specific countries in the mid-nineteenth century. The counter-hegemonic approach of the Communist Manifesto is indisputably one of the world's most influential political documents, despite the character of this influence being a matter of controversy. The Los Angeles Times, introducing a discussion on the Manifesto in 1998, wrote that the Manifesto is "arguably the most important work of nonfiction written in the nineteenth century." For much of the nineteenth century, The Communist Manifesto was accepted as a doctrine by those living under Communist rule as well as by those caught up in the keenness of revolutionary political activity. Others considered it a piece of propaganda.

In the end, the Manifesto is really an extended set of answers to questions about Communism resulting from the socioeconomic status of society. Over the next twenty years, the Manifesto was largely disregarded. In the 1870s, with Marx's prominence in the international socialist movement, the Manifesto came to be honored more as a document of symbolic historic significance than as a possible plan of action. By then, the violent, insistent call to revolution in the Manifesto had been outdated by the

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move to accommodate different class interests within and through existing political

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