Epilogue: Contradictions Between Irreconciliable Manifestos

There is little wonder why prolific writing of both Karl Marx and Frederick Engels is still as relevant today as it was nearly 200 years ago when The Communist Manifesto was first penned. The Manifesto is at once theoretical and practical; liberating and terrifying; articulate and yet accessible – and continues to ring true in the 21st century when, though “all ‘men’ are created equal”, social structures and laws perpetuate inequality and truncate freedom in both mind and body of the working poor and arguably anyone who is not laboring for love, but merely to survive. The Manifesto is a work written for both the Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie, the distinctive classes of which were ‘called into being’ as soon as the Manifesto was distributed in 1848. Of course, the social relations that Marx identified did exist, as did communism as an ideology, but it was the Manifesto that gave us a view of both history and the modern world that is based on “the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes.” When considering that, historically, class systems all over the world have been justified by religious doctrine, the idea that oppressed classes are ‘unnecessary’ and that class or status is not determined by a supernatural blueprint, is both deconstructive and liberating. The Manifesto painfully strips the reader of the grand illusion that has served as a justification for misfortune and replaces it with a provocative call to action written clearly at the end of the final chapter: “Working men of all countries, unite”. The new mantra emphasizes that our place in the world is not fixed or determined by the mystical; we are free beings in the most absolute sense of the word, and those mythical shackles that have chained you to the machine, do not exist.

Peace, Land, and Bread, 2023

The Manifesto comes to life whenever the class struggle intensifies or wherever rapid shifts in political consciousness occur, like in the radical transformation we’re undergoing in the U.S., where the fog of anti-communism is lifting—that’s why Red Books Day has, every year, expanded and flourished. Prompted by this opportunity to revisit the text afresh, this short article doesn’t summarize the content as a whole but rather contextualizes some of the Manifesto’s main principles within some of the later works of Marxism and the Marxist movement more generally, providing clarity and correcting some common misinterpretations of the work that oftentimes falsely justify premature dismissals of Marxism, socialism, and communism. In conclusion, I place the key tasks we inherit from the Manifesto and how later developments in the radical Black and communist theory are absolutely pivotal to pursuing this project today in that they help us understand the links between anti-communism and white supremacy and aid our project in uniting all working and oppressed people for the common liberation of the many.

The Communist Manifesto, 2018

The Communist Manifesto is arguably the most consequential political pamphlet ever written. Its words have inspired millions of men and women to rail and rise against the capitalist mode of production and build a different world. At the zenith of world socialism in the 1980s, governments inspired by the pamphlet’s ideas reached across Eurasia and Asia, with satellites in Africa and the Americas, organizing more than a billion people under some form of Marxist-inspired government. Many countries outside the state-socialist sphere have also found the argument persuasive, as the success of social democratic movements throughout the capitalist world attest to. But the pamphlet is more than a call for social justice and a different politics. Its arguments assume a scientific account of the history of capitalism and forecast globalization. Its predictive power testifies to its conceptual adequacy and theoretical cogency. Indeed, The Manifesto lays bare the engine of societal development in such a compelling way that academic disciplines – anthropology, geography, history, political science, sociology, even psychology – have incorporated elements of its approach in their work.

To re-read the Communist Manifesto today is to engage in a strange and paradoxical encounter in time and space. There are some passages which seem so prophetic that they could have been written just a few years ago and others that are clearly dated, if not antiquated or plain wrong. The language of the Communist Manifesto is certainly not that of the media-hungry politician of today's audio-visual age nor is it that of today's ‘value-neutral’ social scientist. But who can deny the vivid imagery of the Communist Manifesto or the power of its arguments? Another text by Marx, the 1859 Preface to a ‘Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’, which is more theoretical than political, has also significantly influenced the interpretation of Marx’s intellectual project, historical materialism, and Marxism more generally. This chapter considers both texts and asks, among other things, whether they offer useful guidelines for the transition from capitalism to socialism or, conversely, from state socialism to capitalism.

Communist manifesto is one of the most influential political pamphlets in the history of the world which has been commissioned by the communist league and written by one of the major communist theorist Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848. The book contains Marx and Engels' theories about the nature of society and politics, that in their own words, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" (Engels, 1848). The genre of this publication is history, sociology and philosophy.

Kasarinlan Philippine Journal of Third World Studies, 2009

2013

An analysis and critique of the well known Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto, and a discussion of its applicability today on corporatist democratic America, and the possibility of this serving as a blueprint toward post-democratic/post-capitalist America. Instructor: E. H. Dority Institution: Eastern Michigan University

Socioloski pregled

Drawing from the cognitional theory of Bernard Lonergan and from anticolonial movements, the paper maintains that universal understanding of social dynamics is approached through personal encounter with social movements of the dominated. Moreover, the paper sustains that Marx implicitly followed this method of cross-horizon encounter, thereby forging a significant advance in understanding. The paper points to the marginalization of Marx's insights in Western universities and to the oversights of Western Marxism, stressing the significance of revolutionary political subjects that have emerged in the Third World. To overcome its limitations, Western Marxists ought to engage in sustained personal encounter with popular Third World revolutionary movements.