Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: The Communist Manifesto

[sparkchaser]

I finally got around to reading this last night ("light" bedtime reading). Yes, they had some good and interesting ideas but didn't take human nature into the equation. Interesting reading nonetheless.

The Kindle version is interesting because you can see the highlights from other readers. Very cool feature.

 

[Hugh]

I took umbrage at his assertion that there is an adversarial relationship between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, (myslef being a lifelong proletariat). I appreciate the risks taken by capitalists and am happy to work for them for a fair wage. Rather than eliminate capitalists they should be regulated by government, and in the case of financiers, heavily regulated.

I prefer to look at socialism in practice rather than Marx's ideology. In practice, socialism has been dominated by brutal dictators. They either don't allow elections, or they don't allow opposing political parties. I know that's a generalization, but it's accurate none the less.

In the battle for China between Chiang Kai-Chek and Mao Tse Tung, Chiang had the backing of the bankers and Mao had the backing of the peasants. Of course Mao won, but at what cost? Over a million Chinese starved to death under his communist leadership.

Marx was a polarizing philosopher. Capitalism doesn't have to be a battle between oppresors and oppressed. It can be a cooperation between labor and management. Even his wording, lords and serfs, is polarizing. Regulation, not communism, is the answer.

 

[sparkchaser]

Capitalism doesn't have to be a battle between oppresors and oppressed. It can be a cooperation between labor and management. Even his wording, lords and serfs, is polarizing. Regulation, not communism, is the answer.

I agree.

 

[Blindsided]

I prefer to look at socialism in practice rather than Marx's ideology. In practice, socialism has been dominated by brutal dictators. They either don't allow elections, or they don't allow opposing political parties. I know that's a generalization, but it's accurate none the less.
.

If a society is ran by "brutal dictators", it sounds like an Authoritarian or Totalitarian society as opposed to a socialist one. They could pretend they were socialists, but that doesn't mean that they are.

I think the only true socialist type societies are probably those religious cult societies.

I think it's hard to say a true Marx socialist society has ever existed honestly.

 

[Blindsided]

P.s.
What is the difference between labor and management and lords and serfs? Regulation seems bad. It makes it harder for new businessmen to compete, because of all the hoops they have to jump through. like acquiring licenses, certain rules they have to follow, ect.. Regulations seem like they are made by the rich to keep the poor from doing well, so they can monopolize business.

 

[SFG75]

The biggest fault to me in his theory, is that the dictatorship of the proletariat would first occur in industrialized nations. In fact, communist principles took hold fast and firm in backwards agricultural nations first, and withered in industrial nations such as the U.S. and Great Britain. By Marx's line of reasoning, the U.S. should have developed faster towards communism than Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, or North Yemen when it existed.

 

[triggrhaapi]

Interesting theory that does not account for the innate corruption of man. That sounds like the biggest blunder of all time. That's like building a bridge that doesn't account for gravity or building an airplane that doesn't account for air. I mean I can go and say that dolphins would swim faster if the ocean was made of red bull, but thankfully that's not the case. Sure it's a fascinating story, but it's no basis for a water park. Get what I'm saying?

It's obvious that trying to use that as a basis for government was a giant trollfest. Distribute a social philosophy that turns everyone into a giant angry pussy and then when they kill everyone off, **** all of them all of the time all at once. Now I don't know if Marx was trolling or if he was just naive, but the practical application is just so amazingly absurd that I cannot take anyone who admires it seriously. I pat them on the head and say, "aw, aren't you so CUTE!"

I much prefer the way our government is set up. It's based on the idea that "these guys are all assholes, I better keep them on a leash and run the carrots in circles."

 

[sparkchaser]

Interesting theory that does not account for the innate corruption of man. That sounds like the biggest blunder of all time.

This is the same problem with Capitalism and Libertarianism.

 

[beer good]

The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an inverse relation to historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of these systems were, in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive historical development of the proletariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and that consistently, to deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dream of experimental realisation of their social Utopias, of founding isolated "phalansteres," of establishing "Home Colonies," of setting up a "Little Icaria"--duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem--and to realise all these castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois. By degrees they sink into the category of the reactionary conservative Socialists depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic pedantry, and by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social science.

Ahem.

The edition of The Communist Manifesto I just read (well, listened to as an audiobook) has a bunch of collected prefaces and postscripts by Marx and, especially, Engels, written decades later, which all say basically the same thing: "OK, so times have changed and society has moved forward or backwards and the following chapters are now either outdated or irrelevant... But the basic message still holds true!" And with the above quote, I'm really curious to hear what Marx and Engels would have made of, say, Lenin or Castro or anyone else who tried to implement their ideas on a permanent scale. I've come across Marxists who still try to argue as if Marx and Engels were holy writ, and it's nice to see that they themselves realised that the theory had to be adapted to fit reality.

That said, I still think Marx is one of the most important (if not always the most reliable) political philosophers, and a lot of the problems they identify in this still holds up - if not within western societies, then in their relationship to other parts of the world. We may think we got around "Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form", for instance, without the revolution they suggest, but the question is if we didn't just export it instead? Anyone who wants to make sense of political and economical development since the mid-19th century, right up until the present day, really needs to read up om their marxism. But analysis of problems is one thing, solutions are quite another, and 150 years later I'd really like to hear what they would have to say about the fact that a lot of the countries where the proletariat are worst off are ones that actually had revolutions.

A necessary book. But as any good marxist will tell you, no thesis is complete without its antithesis.

 

[Leonardo Noto]

Yeah, it was a bad social model.

Yes, The Communist Manifesto was a poor theory/social model. However, it still is one of the most important publications ever. At the time it was written, employing little kids to work in mine shafts and paying people in tokens that could only be spent at the company store were common. The importance of the manifesto wasn't in overthrowing capitalism; the importance of Marx's work was that it spearheaded the socialist movement that led to a more humane form of capitalism.

leonardonoto.com | Physician, Paratrooper, Boxer/Grappler Turned Grumpy Old Writer!