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In 1847 Karl Marx & Frederick Engels were commissioned by the League Of The Communists, a small group of German socialists to write a manifesto and in February 1848 the "Manifesto Of The Communist Party" was published in London (in German). Despite its title, there was no Communist Party. The current title "The Communist Manifesto" was only adopted in 1872.
Publication occurred a few weeks prior to the European revolutions of 1848 and its initial impact was exclusively in Germany. The first edition was reprinted three times in a few months and was serialised in newspapers. However, with the failure of the 1848 revolutions the document, along with the group who initially published it, fell out of sight. Until 1868 only two translations (in Swedish and English) were published.
With the launch of the International Working Men’s Association (the First International) in the 1860s and the emergence of new political parties in Germany at the same time, interest in the ideas and publications of earlier groups was re-awoken. The SPD leadership were tried for treason in Germany in 1872. Bizarrely, the prosecution read the text of the manifesto into the court record. This meant that it could be legally published in Germany for the first time. The 1872 edition is the one on which all subsequent ones have been based. Nine editions in six languages followed on quickly.
Prior to 1917, there were several hundred editions in thirty languages, including Japanese and Chinese. However the manifesto’s main influence was still across Europe. The largest number of editions was in Russian (70). There were another 35 in other languages of the Tsarist empire. 55 editions were published in German; 34 in English. These numbers don’t reflect the importance afforded to the manifesto in particular and theory in general, in different countries. The SDP in Germany had hundreds of thousands of members but only published the manifesto in print-runs of 2-3000. Their own program (the Erfurt program) was printed in an edition of 120,000. This compares with the 70 pre-revolutionary Russian editions, mostly published by illegal organisations with memberships of only a few thousand.
The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 changed the world. The ideas of the Communist Manifesto became inextricably linked with political events. In 1932 a cheap edition was published in English. A political classic at last had mass circulation.
What is in the Communist Manifesto? It is written in four sections, beginning with "Bourgeois And Proletarians" an analysis of the development of capitalism. This is clearly a class analysis containing the famous sentence – The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. It explains the development of capitalism out of feudalism and clearly describes the progressive role of the bourgeoisie. There is a discussion of the commoditisation of all forms of labour, the destruction of the family, expansion of the market and the revolutionising of production as capitalism spreads throughout the world. The economic and political centralisation consequent upon the development of capitalism is described, as are the contradictions between the productive forces and the conditions of production. The concept of capitalism as a system of crisis is clearly raised and the primary cause of such crises put down to overproduction. The development of the proletariat is described and its special role as the gravedigger of capitalism. The proletariat must destroy capitalism to assert its own interests.
The second section – "Proletarians And Communists" discusses the relationship between the communists and the working classes. The argument is based around a number of principles: the communists should not organise a separate party opposed to other working class parties; communists have not interests separate from those of the proletariat; communists have no sectarian principles. Communists are distinguished by being internationalist and non-sectional. It is clear from the argument put forward that communism is seen as one strand within the working class movement.
Communists are in favour of the abolition of property, the family, countries, nationality and religion. A series of measures are proposed to begin wresting power from the bourgeoisie. These include nationalisation of the banks, transport and communications; expansion of public ownership of industry; free education. Marx and Engels stress however that different measures will be relevant at different times in different countries.
The third section – "Socialist And Communist Literature" – is largely a review of other groups, counterposing (largely) petty-bourgeois socialism to working class communism. These groups are chastised as romantic, backward looking, abstract and utopian. Only the Chartists in England and the Reformistes in France escape the sharp-end of Marx and Engels tongues.
The Manifesto ends with the section "The Position Of Communists In Relation To The Various Existing Opposition Parties". This attempts to answer the question, what do Communists do? They get involved in immediate struggles for immediate demands. They ally with other working-class parties against the bourgeoisie, or with the bourgeoisie against the monarchy and feudalism. But they always work to instil into the working class the intrinsic antagonism between bourgeois and proletarian. They support every revolutionary movement against the existing order; always raise the question of property; are unswervingly internationalist in outlook; and never conceal their aims and views.
Reading the Manifesto today it has to be remembered that it was written in and for a particular situation. This is reflected in the language, form and content. It represents an immature stage in the development of Marxist thought, but nonetheless is a major statement of the fundamentals of the ideas of Marx and Engels. Throughout their lives they were happy to see the Manifesto re-published without significant amendment, despite the fact their ideas developed markedly over the years.
It was written prior to the greatest nineteenth century expansion of capitalism, but foresaw many of the developments which were at best only germinating in 1848. Arguably many of the points that appear as statements – the globalisation of capitalism; destruction of the family – have only become true in recent years.
What makes the Manifesto relevant to socialists today is its insistence that capitalism is not (cannot be) permanent. The description of the historical tendencies of capitalism, greatly expanded in later works is key to this. Above all, the existence of the proletariat as the one revolutionary class. Marx and Engels are often criticised for being deterministic. The Manifesto, with its clear argument that political action is important to the outcome of class struggle does not fall into this trap.
If you’ve not got a copy, buy one. If you’ve got one and not read it for thirty years, get it down from the shelf and dust it off. If nothing else it’s a good read – but it’s much more than that, it’s a call to action!
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