Manifesto Of The Communist Party

Manifesto of the Communist Party

Political Ideologies

The basic thought running through the manifesto is that all history has been a history of class struggles between the exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at different stages of social evolution. (Slavery, Feudalism, Capitalism, Socialism, Communism). This struggle, however, is believed to have reached a stage where the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer liberate itself from the bourgeoisie. This thought belongs to Marx and Marx only as we've learned.

Communism is haunting Europe. Two things result from this:

Communism is already declared by all European powers to be itself a power.

It is time that Communists openly, publish their views, their aims, and their tendencies.

This manifesto was sketched by communists of various nationalities that assembled in London, and published it in English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish.

Bourgeois and Proletarians

The oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another. Each time this fight ended either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

Now, class oppositions are simplified. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great aggressive (hostile) camps, into two great classes directly facing each other- the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

The first elements of the bourgeoisie developed during the middle ages. The discovery of America then opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie.

The modern bourgeoisie is itself the outcome of a long course development of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and exchange.

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance in that class. "It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor (passion), of chivalrous (medieval knightly system) enthusiasm, of philistine (person who is hostile) sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation." So it also reduced the family relation into a mere money relation.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must settle everywhere, make connections everywhere. In place of the old wants, we find new wants; therefore a universal inter-dependence of nations occurs.

The bourgeoisie compels all nations to adopt the bourgeoisie mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst i.e. to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. It also made barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones. (The peasants on the bourgeois, the East on the West).

The bourgeoisie concentrated property in a few hands, therefore one of the consequences of this was political centralization.

The means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society.

Modern bourgeois society, that has raised/compelled such gigantic means of production, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world that he called up his spells. (We discussed the Mickey Mouse example in class).

Then there is the epidemic of over-production, society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism, industry and commerce seem to be destroyed, due to too much civilization, too much industry, too much commerce.