Book Report on "Karl Marx Communist Manifesto"

Book Report 5 pages (1671 words) Sources: 2

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argue for the empowerment of workers in the Communist Manifesto. The historical context in which Marx and Engels wrote was one in which labor was devalued and the owners of the means of production had become the new oppressive ruling classes. Noticing that the bourgeoisie had replaced the old aristocracy to exploit the masses, Marx and Engels argue in favor of a revolution that would overthrow capitalism. The impact of the Communist Manifesto on labor politics and foreign policy cannot be underestimated. The Communist Manifesto was indeed a visionary text still relevant in the 21st century.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were members of a "revolutionary secret society" comprised of "expatriate artisan radicals," note the editors of the newly released "modern edition" of the classic Communist Manifesto. The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels would become the "policy document" of the aforesaid underground organization known at the time as the League of the Just (Bund der Gerechten). Later, the League of the Just renamed itself the League of the Communists, which was duly dedicated to "the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the ending of the old society which rests on class contradiction and the establishment of a new society without classes or private property," (Hobsbawn 1998 p. 3). Published in 1848, the Communist Manifesto can easily be considered "by far the most influential single piece of political writing since the French Revolutionary Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen," (Hobsbawn 1998 p. 4).

The significance of the timing of the publication cannot be underestimated. Viewed within its historical and cultural context, the Communist Manifesto represents the culmination of anti-establishment sentiments that had long been brewing and which in fact underwrote the revolutions in France and the United States. However, by the time Marx and Engels collaborated on their groundbreaking treatise, the Industrial Revolution had also come into full swing. The tyranny of kings, and now, the tyranny of property owners, was the downfall of the poor. Marx's writings have therefore garnered mass support and appeal among citizens who sought to reclaim their democratic rights via the collective ownership of the means of production.

Even when it was first published, the Communist Manifesto raised a ruckus. Marx became known as a "dangerous leader of international subversion, feared by governments," (Hobsbawn, 1998 p. 6). One hundred and fifty years later, Karl Marx remains a controversial figure. The re-released editions of the Communist Manifesto testify to the continued relevance of the text. Marx's ideas have a bearing on political theory and philosophy; on gender studies; on labor policy; and on the foreign policies of nations that disavow the relevance of communism at all. Hobshawn (1998) notes in the introduction to the modern edition of the Communist Manifesto: "In some ways we can even see the force of the Manifesto's predictions" in ways First World nations have systematically exploited Third World ones. In other words, Marx and Engels summarized the impact of capitalism and globalization even before the extent of globalization became fully realized.

Marx's brand of communism came to be known as Marxism, so powerful were the treatises explicated in the Manifesto. Marxist and Communist doctrines explored in the nineteenth century Manifesto remained relevant in the twentieth and even now, in the twenty-first centuries. The authors of the Manifesto seemed to presage a world in which capitalism had encroached on the rights and freedoms of human beings -- those very same rights and freedoms that had been won during the bloody French and American Revolutions. The Revolution to which Marx and Engels refer -- a communist one -- was to be as radical and transformative in nature. "Marx and Engels," claims Hobshawn (2008), "did not describe the world as it had already been transformed by capitalism in 1848; they predicted how it was logically destined to be transformed by it," (p. 17). The predictions, moreover, have largely come true. Any casual understanding of the repercussions of the Industrial Revolution and the subsequent labor movements it necessarily spurned can see how Marxism changed the ways modern societies operate. Marxist theory is the underpinning of worker solidarity movements and the demand for worker rights worldwide.

As Hobsbawn (1998) notes, "the Manifesto still has plenty to say to the world," (p. 11). One of the problems with the terms communism and Marxism is that what has passed for either one of these "isms" barely resembles the underlying vision of Marx himself. The Communist Manifesto no more argues for a totalitarian state than for a capitalist one. Hobsbawn (1998) asserts, "the 'Communist Party' whose Manifesto our text claimed to be had nothing to do with the parties of modern democratic politics, or the 'vanguard parties' of Leninist Communism, let alone the state parties of the Soviet and Chinese type," (p. 12). In fact, Marx and Engels do not even advocate for the creation of any organization or political party at all (Hobshawn 1998).

There are several key ways the Communist Manifesto remains relevant to life and politics in the 21st century. Those ways include the obvious issues related to workers' rights and organizational culture. The Communist Manifesto also pertains to less obvious issues such as gender politics. After all, domestic labor and childrearing duties have been undervalued -- and female labor is therefore exploited throughout the world. The notion of exploitation and social control that form the crux of Marx's argument has distinct parallels in the patriarchal world in which we live. In short, the Communist Manifesto can be interpreted as a treatise against exploitation of any type. Combined with the "biblical force" with which the Manifesto is written, the impact of the book is compelling as philosophy, as literature, and as history (Hobshawn 1998, p. 15).

What is most ironic about revisiting the Manifesto in the 21st century is the way communism has morphed from the ideology espoused by Marx and Engels to the one that characterizes the government of China. China is largely believed to be a communist nation, when in fact it is not. The totalitarian government of China in no way resembles the utopic vision championed by the German authors who penned the Communist Manifesto. The owners of the means of production do exploit their laborers, and labor is devalued to a degree that makes any American factory seem empowering by degree. Similarly, at the heart of the Manifesto is the concept of alienation. Workers on an assembly line are so utterly disconnected from the creative power of their work that their spirit is being killed. This brand of communism has been sold, bought, and rebranded. It is this soulless, very un-Marxist, distortion of communism that led to countless wars and foreign interventions committed on the part of the United States.

The Cold War and subsequent American interventionism in so-called communist nations like Cuba, Vietnam, and nations throughout Central and South America shows that fear of Marxism has made as much of an impact on the world as Marxism itself. Taken in sum, it is hard to say whether Marxism has had a net positive or negative impact.

The backlash against industrialization and a heartless corporate culture that has taken sway throughout much of the developed world at least owes a modicum of gratitude to Marx and Engels. A renewed interest in growing local economies, eating local foods, and supporting small businesses over the Wal*Marts of the world might not go by the name of communism but in fact shares its very spirit. The Manifesto warned of the exploitation of the poor for cheap labor in order to drive down production costs and funnel money to the owners of the corporation and the politicians that support them. The popular culture denigration of the Chinese, and to be fair, universal, exploitation of labor in… READ MORE

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