International Socialists

In 1847, two young men, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, exiled from Germany as dangerous subversives, got together with some like-minded rebels in London. "A spectre is haunting Europe," they wrote, "the spectre of communism."

 

The Communist Manifesto was written just before the 1848 revolutions swept across Europe - and it shows. The Manifesto is filled with the fire and passion of revolution. It is a call to arms, an agitational pamphlet which succinctly argues the case for socialism. Nonetheless, the Communist Manifesto remains one of the best introductions to revolutionary socialist ideas you can read. It begins with the essence of historical materialism: that the history of human society is one of struggle between classes, that revolution is the motor that has driven human progress.

 

The Manifesto's argument is at odds with conventional views of history as a smooth evolutionary development, helped on by the achievements of a few extraordinary individuals. Such accounts make history appear as an external force, proceeding according to some god-given plan. Marx and Engels put the actions of human beings, organised into classes, at the centre of history. This is revolutionary because it means that ordinary people aren't just passive bystanders: their ideas and actions matter. They can make history.

 

The Manifesto discusses the revolutionary role of the bourgeoisie, the capitalist class. The rising bourgeoisie had to smash the old, restrictive feudal society in order to unleash new productive forces that could massively increase society's wealth. Revolution was necessary because the social relations and rigidly hierarchical institutions of feudalism - absolute monarchy, serfdom and so on - were holding back the full development of capitalist industry and trade. Kings were beheaded, and rule by hereditary aristocrats was replaced by the rule (in theory at least) of elected parliaments. Feudal kingdoms became nation states.

 

Marx and Engels lay bare the workings of capitalist exploitation, and explain how the capitalists maintain their rule and why the system continually goes into crisis. They savagely attack a system in which stupendous wealth is locked in the hands of a tiny minority, and call for the abolition of private property.

 

With its dynamic new methods of production, capitalism created the basis for a society in which everyone's basic needs could be satisfied. Nevertheless, they weren't. Instead, the history of capitalism is punctuated with cyclical crises of "overproduction," where millions are thrown out of work while goods are stockpiled and rot because they can't be sold for a profit.

Such crises are frequently "solved" by wars which, by destroying large chunks of capital (factories, machines and so on), lay the basis for restoring profit rates. Then the whole boom-bust cycle starts again.

 

But capitalism also created the proletariat, or working class, a class whose interests are fundamentally opposed to those of the bourgeoisie. There is no common interest between capitalists and workers, just as there was none between lords and peasants, or slaves and slave-owners.

 

Unlike peasants and slaves, workers are "free." Because they do not own or control the means of creating wealth, they can only exist by selling their labour power to a capitalist. Industrialisation meant that workers increasingly came to be seen as mere appendages to machines (which are themselves the product of earlier labour). It is only the labour of workers which creates new wealth, yet their wages represent only a fraction of the wealth they produce. The remainder - surplus value - is appropriated by the capitalists.

 

Marx and Engels graphically illustrate the horrific impact of capitalist exploitation on workers' lives: impoverishment, unemployment, the destruction of the working class family and so on. But the great strength of the Manifesto is that, for Marx and Engels, workers are not simply victims. For, although capitalism depends on competition between workers, it undermines this competition by bringing large numbers together in the workplaces, where they have to cooperate to do their jobs.

 

Out of this develops a collective class consciousness that leads workers to unite against their common enemy. At the most basic level, workers form unions to fight for better conditions and wages and prevent themselves being undercut by others. Ultimately, this "association" can lead workers to move from the defensive to challenge the bourgeoisie for power. The first step in this process is to "win the battle of democracy" - that is, for workers to win political power as a necessary precondition for economic transformation.

 

In order to do this, workers need to build class unity across national barriers - hence the call with which the Manifesto concludes: "Workers of all countries, unite!" For a 150-year-old document, the Manifesto has worn remarkably well. Naturally, some of the immediate concrete detail is out of date. But the fundamental critique of capitalism and the argument for workers' revolution to bring about socialism are spot on.

 

There is much more in the Manifesto than we have space to discuss here. At around forty pages, it is an easy to read introduction to the basic ideas of Marxism: so why not go and read a copy!