The United States Constitution Compared to the Communist Manifesto

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The United States Constitution Compared to the Communist Manifesto

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.

The Constitution of the United States on the other hand was written to restrict the amount of power the government could have. It allows people to have property unlike the Communist Manifesto. Within the Constitution, it is stipulated that the people have control over how much power the government has. According to the first amendment in the Constitution, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grieva...

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...heir own liberty and freedom. The idea of what liberty and freedom are is discussed quite differently within the two documents. The constitution calls for democracy, where an individual can have the right to choose what they want their role in society to be. The manifesto helps to explain communism, in which the government decides for each person what his or her role in society is.

Notes

[i] “The Communist Manifesto”

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/treatise/communist_manifesto/mantwo.htm

[ii] The United States Constitution”

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.billofrights.html#amendmenti

[iii] “The Communist Manifesto”

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/treatise/communist_manifesto/manone.htm

[iv] “The Communist Manifesto”

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/treatise/communist_manifesto/mantwo.htm

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