Erek Slater

Notes on the Communist Manifesto (5-minute presentation to graduate class reading Marx’s
“Capital” at University of Chicago, Professor Moishe Postone)

(page numbers from, “The Marx-Engels Reader,” Second Edition, Edited by Robert C. Tucker)\

-thank professor for allowing me and others to participate in this class.

-told that Marx wrote “Capital” with the expectation that workers would read it. Well, I am a
worker willing to do the hard work of making my way through it with you. Thank you.

-a tradition in other reading groups I have participated in: the presenter brings a healthy snack.
Since it is Halloween, I brought candies from a local chocolate factory.

-OK…now to the historical significance of the most important modern document…in 5 minutes!

Historical moment of the writing of the Manifesto

Commissioned in London by the newly formed Communist League in 1847, an underground

group of intellectuals. Marx was 29, Engels was 27.

Written at a time when the age and size of the known world was much younger and smaller than
today. Written before the revolution in understanding of human origins with the publication of
Darwin’s work in 1859. Yet as Marx put it in 1860, The origin of Species “is the book that
contains the natural-history foundation of our view point.”

The writers grew up within the Hegelian Revolution in philosophy in early 1800s that followed
the French Revolution. Now declaring their theory scientific, rather than utopian, they outlined
their new historical materialist method in the manifesto:

“The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that
have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.

“They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class
struggle, from an historical movement going on under our very eyes.” [p. 484]

What were the “actual relations” in 1847? The principal historical example the writers could
draw conclusions from was the free-competition of England in the beginning of the 19th century:
in the period of the advance –not our current decay- of the Capitalist epoch of history. “The
bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.” [p. 475] “The bourgeoisie,
during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal
productive forces than have all preceding generations together.” [p. 477]

Yet the social eruptions of the 1840s made more clear and open the contradiction described in
the Manifesto: the new, more powerful forms of production (social labor) shackled by the now
outmoded form of social rule (bourgeois property relations). The Manifesto was written months
before the European Revolutions of 1848. The document was explicitly a 10-point action
program written in anticipation of a period of world-wide social revolution and the transition
from the historical epoch of capitalism to socialism. The writers looked to “united action, of the
leading civilized countries at least [as] … one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the
proletariat.” [p. 488] However, the writers overestimated the international coordination of
workers.

“The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a
bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European
civilization and with a much more developed proletariat than that of England was in the
seventeenth, and France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in
Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.” [p.500]

Yet, there was practically no international organization during the revolutions of 1848. The
bourgeois revolution in Germany did not become the world-wide proletarian revolution led by
“the united action of the leading civilized countries.” This “first condition” has not been met to
this day.

Questions

“The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties:
formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of
political power by the proletariat….” [p, 484]

What do the authors mean by “formation of the proletariat into a class?” Literally because of the
newness of wage-labor in 1847, or do they mean the consciousness of the modern working class
that we are a class? Or do they mean our confidence in our ability to lead ourselves to “conquer
political power” and become the ruling class that will lead Humanity out of class-society
altogether?

“All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of

minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious independent movement of the
immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority…” [p. 482]

Does the Manifesto argue that the working class needs to do what the bourgeoisie did? The
proletarian movement, as outlined in the Manifesto, is historically a slave revolt: the “immense
majority” becoming our own masters. Yet, there is no historical president for this on a world
scale. The bourgeois revolution -which the scientific socialists looked to for evidence of how the
proletarian revolution would unfold- was not a successful slave revolt. While the revolution from
feudal to capitalist social relations utterly changed every-day life, politically it resolved in one
small ruling elite being pushed aside by another. How and why will the proletarian revolution be
different?

What does the manifesto mean when it calls the proletarian movement “self-conscious?” Does
the Manifesto speak to the critical question in our period of decaying capitalism: the role of
conscious reaction versus “self-conscious independent” revolutionary action? Does the text
imply that this revolution will not occur “naturally,” that it must be conscious?

The basic question: Is this document still modern? Does it still speak to the problems we face
today? Are we still tasked with its call to action, or has it faded into history?

Present relevance of the text:

Last week, two members of the US president’s cabinet and the head of the Democratic Party here
in Chicago gave a press conference about the brutal murder of an Afro-American student near a
high school 60 blocks south of here. These national officials admitted that this violence was
likely to continue. They said this wasn’t simply a regional or racial problem, that it was systemic.
They offered a paltry half-million dollars for after-school programs in a year when they handed
trillions to the largest institutions of finance capital. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said,
"It's easy to point fingers. Let's get to the root of the problem.'' Yes, let’s get to the root of the
problem, starting with you. What does the Manifesto simply say?

“The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the
whole bourgeoisie.” [p. 475]

We are in the most intense economic and social crisis of the capitalist epoch of history since the
1930s world depression. While the world’s economic think-tanks and periodicals admit they
have no answers, the Manifesto speaks in some sections as if it were written today. Listen to it:

“…Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a
society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the
sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up
by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of
the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the
property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is
enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the
entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly... In these crises, there breaks
out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of
over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it
appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of
subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much
civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The
productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the
conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these
conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring
disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The
conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how
does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of
productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough
exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more
destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.” [p. 478]

164 years later, the ruling classes are still forced by the logic of their system “back into a
momentary state of barbarism.” How do they propose to “get over these crises? On the one hand
by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new
markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones.” At this very moment,
simultaneous wars are waged in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan while new wars in Iran or
elsewhere threaten Humanity with a third world war…Millions are thrown out of work when
billions need the products of their labor…Food, housing, and industrial products are deliberately
destroyed, hoarded or simply not produced, not because they are not needed, but “because there
is…too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive
forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of
bourgeois property;” i.e. production stops when profit for a small owning class is no longer
expected to be made….As is now becoming clear, the surface of the planet is made less able to
sustain life by environmental degradation caused by “means of production and of exchange [that
the sorcerers of modern-day capital] are no longer able to control”.…

Re-reading the Communist Manifesto today reminds us that the working classes still face the
historic task outlined in this document.

“In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more
or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out
into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for
the sway of the proletariat.” [p. 483]

[p.490] “…The first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the
position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.

“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the
bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the
proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as
possible.” [p.490]