Comparing Frankenstein And The Communist Manifesto

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Karl Marx and Frederick Engels’ The Communist Manifesto were both were writing that was both published in the eighteenth century. At a first glance, you wouldn’t think that these two books had shared similar ideologies, but in fact, they were both critical of certain aspects of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century culture. Being that Shelley and Marx were Romantic thinkers which did not reject science and reason the just felt like science gone too far. The novel Frankenstein did not reject science and reason, but rather use it as a cautionary tale towards science and the arrogance of scientist. Mary Shelley contains explicit depictions of marketplaces, wager urnings, workers, and forces of manufacturing.

These are all topics that Marx and Engel's tackle within the communist Manifesto.
Marx and Mary Shelley were romantic intellectuals.

Shelley through her novel attempted to bring forth imagination in contrast to reason. Within Frankenstein, you learn Victor Frankenstein was inclined toward the behavior and beliefs of the enlightenment, whereas Elizabeth was more of a romantic thinker. Victor’s parents did not support his fascination towards scientific reading but instead favored Elizabeth who in a way led a traditional life. The enlightenment was a practicing ideology around the time Shelley wrote Frankenstein. It is as if Mary wrote the character of Frankenstein with a projection of her own self at the time. Since she was considered a Romantic she followed the principles that did not support the extensive scientific research and adoption of reason. The enlightenment period was a social construction. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels critiqued the enlightenment philosophy of progress. They stated that the pass does not progress through gradual reform, but it is related to revolutions, actions, and decision through social forces within a society. They both critiqued at the view that the enlightenment could solely work through reason. Their critique of modernity was, in fact, a critique of reason. Marx wanted to prevail over modern society by rearranging the social and economic links within the

population.
It is seen through the Communist Manifesto on the alienation of labor and it is through Frankenstein that we see that idea of alienation shown through an economic and political standpoint.

Shelley’s novel represents the same economic perspective that Marx relays, the moment in this the dominant mode of production become the production of the commodities. The most important representation of alienation is through Victor Frankenstein, the monster who created, and how he is now perceived to the world. Frankenstein upon gazing at him is completely disgusted with what he created and will soon learn the error of his mistake. The monster could be used as an example of what Marx was referring to by alienated labor. Marx’s states in his work that production makes the worker both “deformed and Barbaric”. Mary Shelley took it to a more literal meaning because he is forced to forever be a plague to his society. Victor was as an Entrepreneur. A scientist who did the unthinkable and ventured outside of the box, but he did not know what he was creating. He did not think of the consequences that might befall on him or directly take responsibility for the reckless abandonment of the creature. In an allegorical sense, the creature can be then portrayed as the

worker.
Within the Communist Manifesto Marx argues that workers should be controlling the means of production and if the were to unite they would be able to triumph over the bourgeois class. In his writing, he talks about how the bourgeois control the proletariat because they are driven by their own self-means of capital gain. They oppress the working class and do not look to their needs, but instead of ways, they can continue to benefit. The only way that the worker class will succeed against the bourgeois is if they unite and band together as one. Many of these same ideas are depicted within Frankenstein. The character of Victor Frankenstein can be seen as an embodiment of the bourgeois:
“By birth, a Genevese, and my family is one of the most distinguished of that republic. My ancestors had been for many years counselors and syndics; and my father had filled several public situations with honour and reputation”(14 Shelley). Since Victor is the creator he would own the means of production and he created this monster for purely selfish reason in trying to reach his own internal greed. The creature represents the working class or the “Proletariat”. It is said in the novel that he is made from various different body parts and Marx’s wrote how the bourgeois class is made out of a conglomeration of different people who are enduring the same situation. One of the most important and powerful lines within the text is when the creature learns from Felix the truth of human society that Marx describes so prevalently:
“The strange system of human society was explained to me. I heard of the division of property, of immense wealth and squalid poverty; of rank, descent, and noble blood.
"The words induced me to turn towards myself. I learned that the possessions most esteemed by your fellow-creatures were high and unsullied descent united with riches. A man might be respected with only one of these advantages but, without either, he was considered, except in very rare instances, as a vagabond and a slave, doomed to waste his powers for the profits of the chosen few! And what was I?”
From the beginning, the monster is not accepted by Frankenstein and continually oppressed, just as the worker class was oppressed by their employers. The monster accepts that he is not wanted by his creator and for a period of time learns to provided for himself. The monster must settle for what little he can get. Learning the means of survival with no one to aid him, just as the working class is left on their own by a society who does not wish intervene.
Marx argued in the Communist Manifesto that the united, proletariat class could overcome the oppression of the bourgeois. Mary Shelley did not share this belief. She was trying to highlight the dangers that came from a “revolution” or an uprising against the bourgeoisie. She did not describe the monster like a villain and an antagonist in the story. When he was not met with the kindness we had wished the De Lacey family had bestowed on him he burned their cottage down. As well when he approached William to educate him, but William refused, overcome with fright, he strangled the boy. Then when he threatened Frankenstein to create another just like him, but a female so that he may no longer live out his days alone, Victor at first agreed then he refused because he did not want to create another monster, he was met with swift retribution and retaliation. This could have been symbolism showing that even if the proletariat were to band together they would not defeat the bourgeois.