Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Political philodphy of karl marx
Communist manifesto summary essay
Communist manifesto summary essay
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto is too long to be a concise declaration of principles and too short to be a book. It is comprised of about 17,000 words including various introductions by Friedrich Engels.
It is arranged, basically, in four sections. The first section introduces the Marxian idea of history as a class struggle. It juxtaposes the conditions and development of various strata of society, "freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf...in a word, oppressor and oppressed." It hypothesizes how the development of each of these in history gave rise to the next step in an inevitable historical process culminating ultimately in the rise of one working class.
Marx and Engels put forward the notion that the working class is exploited by the bourgeoisie. Positing a labor theory of value where the value of goods and services is based strictly on the amount of labor that is put into them, The Manifesto, says that all the surplus that goes to the capitalist as profits is in reality the "property" of the working class who created that wealth.
The second section of the Communist Manifesto addresses the nature of the new working class which he calls the proletariate. He reviews its implications for the advancement of society, including the abolition of property and family. This section also stresses a kind of Utopia that can only be brought about by violence and conflict with the working class wresting power from the bourgeoisie (the owners of the means of production). This conflict is projected also to bring about the end of nation-states and, ultimately, all forms of government, resulting in a worker's paradise.
Parts 3 and 4 of the Communist Manifesto are more arcane and relate more with the politics of the age and geographic region in which the document was written (1848). Section 3 discusses the various forms of socialism, feudal socialism, petty-bourgeios socialism, and "true" socialism. Part 4 goes on to show how these various groups inter-relate.
The document ends with a stirring cry, "Working men of all countries, unite!"
As one would expect, the Communist Manifesto is a declaration of the intentions of a communist organization. Yet it has proved to be much more than this. It has also served as a brief and concise explanation of the ideas that form the foundation of communist and...
... middle of paper ...
...d to be only one or two large brewers, now micro-breweries have become the rage. Where only a few networks dominated the airwaves now hundred of channels proliferate. The internet has opened publishing up to any person who has a few dollars to rent a server. The cost for entry into many, though not all, markets has become comparatively cheap. In essence Marx was wrong not because there was no class struggle. There was indeed class struggle throughout most of history. He was wrong because he could not see that the dialectic process would work to elevate the working class to the entrepreneur class and not pull all of society down to the lowest common denominator.
We are still in the throws of this process. Eventually the efficiencies brought about by the capitalist system, if allowed to operate in a free environment, will provide a high standard of living for most of the world.
The Communist Manifesto still finds favor among many political groups and its tenets and ideas are worthy of study because there are economic and historical truths embedded within it. It has also proved to be the foundation of one of the most prominent economic and political movements of the 20th Century.
In The Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the two German philosophers saw history as the struggle between the working class and the Bourgeois, or middle class (textbook 708). The Communist Manifesto was written in 1848, during the peak of the Industrial Revolution, a time when the Bourgeois made huge profits in manufacturing at the expense of the working class. According to Marx and Engels, the fruits of the Industrial Revolution created a new class of the oppressed modern working class, the Proletariat, which had never before existed because it was neither like serfdom or slave hood in that it was dependent on the Bourgeois to hire them for wage labor. This was the class the two philosophers envisioned would set off a revolution that would overthrow capitalism to end the perpetual class struggle and create a fair society known as Communism.
Both the Communist Manifesto and the United States Constitution share some common ideas. They are documents that strive for ideas that in opposition to one another. The Communist Manifesto and The Constitution of the United States both include what the relationship between an individual and society should be about. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto. Marx and Engels talked about in the Communist Manifesto what they thought to be the way to solve the problems in the world during that time. Those problems dealt with society, but mainly the poor. They thought that people during those times were too dependent on money and how much of it they made. They wrote the manifesto in hopes to change society. The form of government they used to do this was by way of the Communist Party. "The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country"[i] Within the Communist Party everyone is equal, and all property belongs to the state.
Marx sees history as a struggle between classes: “Oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes” (Marx and Engles 14).
In Marx’s opinion, the cause of poverty has always been due to the struggle between social classes, with one class keeping its power by suppressing the other classes. He claims the opposing forces of the Industrial Age are the bourgeois and the proletarians. Marx describes the bourgeois as a middle class drunk on power. The bourgeois are the controllers of industrialization, the owners of the factories that abuse their workers and strip all human dignity away from them for pennies. Industry, Marx says, has made the proletariat working class only a tool for increasing the wealth of the bourgeoisie. Because the aim of the bourgeoisie is to increase their trade and wealth, it is necessary to exploit the worker to maximize profit. This, according to Marx, is why the labor of the proletariat continued to steadily increase while the wages of the proletariat continued to steadily decrease.
The Communist Manifesto made the oppressed people aware of their status and called them to unite. It did this by outlining the history of classes and class struggle. The Communist Manifesto stated that society and history are shaped by class struggles and that two classes were present in 1848, the bourgeois and the proletariat. The document goes on to state that the bourgeois had created capitalism and were oppressing the proletariat.[1] Marx defines the proletariat as “an appendage of the machine”. [2] He recognized how the proletariats were being exploited and he brought it to the attention of the public. Not only does the Communist Manifesto point out that the proletariats were being exploited, it went a step further and called the proletariats to action. He called the working class the revolutionary class and told them that they had the power to fight the bourgeois.[3] The Communist Manifesto forced the Proletariats to recognize their exploitation. As a result the attitude of the proletariat was changed. Proof that the proletariats attitudes were changed comes from the widespread uprising of revolutions in Europe that followed the publication of the Communist Manifesto.
Karl Marx 's writing of ‘The Communist Manifesto’ in 1848 has been documented by a vast number of academics as one of the most influential pieces of political texts written in the modern era. Its ideologically driven ideas formed the solid foundation of the Communist movement throughout the 20th century, offering a greater alternative for those who were rapidly becoming disillusioned and frustrated with the growing wealth and social divisions created by capitalism. A feeling not just felt in by a couple of individuals in one society, but a feeling that was spreading throughout various societies worldwide. As Toma highlights in his work, Marx felt that ‘capitalism would produce a crisis-ridden, polarized society destined to be taken over by
The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848, a period of political turmoil in Europe. Its meaning in today’s capitalistic world is a very controversial issue. Some people, such as the American government, consider socialism taboo and thus disregard the manifesto. They believe that capitalism, and the world itself, has changed greatly from the one Marx was describing in the Manifesto and, therefore, that Marx’s ideas cannot be used to comprehend today’s economy. Others find that the Manifesto highlights issues that are still problematic today. Marx’s predicative notions in the Communist Manifesto are the key to understanding modern day capitalism.
Works Cited Page Marx, Karl. “The Communist Manifesto.” A World of Ideas. Ed. Lee Jacobus. Boston: Bedford Books, 1998. 209-32.
Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels is their attempt to explain the goal of communism. They explained that class struggling or when one class exploits another is a result that is motivated by historical development. Their solution to all the exploitation and class struggle is communism. Where, the proletariats rise up against the bourgeoisies. Relationship in each class is defined by their source of production. Nevertheless, they end up not being compatible with the force of production they being placed with. Then, this end up with a revolution that will occur at this point and a new class appears and becomes the ruling class. Class conflicts in the society were characterized between the proletariat and bourgeoisie.
Bender, Frederic L. Karl Marx: The Communist Manifesto. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ed. 1988.
This manifesto was written to give voices to the proletariat (wage worker) class working under the bourgeoisie (capitalist middle class). Marx and Engels’ stated “Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist
Manifesto of the Communist Party. New York: International, 1948. Marxist Internet Archive - "The Marxist Archive" 2000. The. Web. The Web.
The second section of The Communist Manifesto is the section in which Karl Marx attempts to offer rebuttals to popular criticisms of his theory of governance. These explanations are based upon the supposition that capitalists cannot make informed observations upon communism as they are unable to look past their capitalist upbringing and that capitalists only seek to exploit others. Though the logic behind these suppositions are flawed, Marx does make some valid points concerning the uprising of the proletariat.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. 1st Signic Classic print. ed. New York, NY: Signic Classic, 1998.
According to Marx class is determined by property associations not by revenue or status. It is determined by allocation and utilization, which represent the production and power relations of class. Marx’s differentiate one class from another rooted on two criteria: possession of the means of production and control of the labor power of others. The major class groups are the capitalist also known as bourgeoisie and the workers or proletariat. The capitalist own the means of production and purchase the labor power of others. Proletariat is the laboring lower class. They are the ones who sell their own labor power. Class conflict to possess power over the means of production is the powerful force behind social growth.