READ AND DISCUSS:

Every class struggle is a political struggle

The Manifesto explains how trade union struggle then grows into a political struggle. As workers organise as a class, so they see the need to build political parties that represent them. That organisation can be strong enough to make gains, to force capitalism to concede reforms, especially when the bosses are split.

Marx and Engels recognise that there will be steps back, as well as forward. Certainly, as things stand today, with former workers’ parties having become openly pro-capitalist ones the world over, working class consciousness is being held back by the current lack of mass workers’ parties. But the Manifesto is optimistic that the workers’ movement will recover from inevitable setbacks to ‘rise up again, stronger, mightier’.

1. The Manifesto suggests that, as the failings of capitalism to bring society forward becomes glaringly obvious, even sections of the ‘bourgeois ideologists’ split away to support the revolutionary movement. What do you think of this suggestion?

The revolutionary role of the proletariat

The Manifesto is crystal clear in its insistence that its “the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class”. It explains that the working class differs from revolutionary classes that have previously risen to power in human history. It doesn’t aim to become just another new ruling class that grabs hold of society’s resources for the benefit of its small number, at the expense of everyone else. Instead, it is the “movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority”.

2. In what ways does the Manifesto contrast the revolutionary role of the working-class compared to classes who have come to power in earlier human history?

Capitalism creates its own “gravediggers”

While recognising that capitalism needs to be defeated globally, the Manifesto stresses that each country’s proletariat needs to organise to defeat its own capitalist class in the first instance.

And the Manifesto ends with a bold revolutionary conclusion. By expanding industry and production, for its own benefit, the capitalist class brings together the working class in the workplace, who, to defend themselves against capitalist exploitation, then collectively organise themselves in trade unions and workers’ parties. In doing so, the capitalists become the “involuntary promoter” of the mighty force that has the power and collective strength to overthrow them – the working class.

In short, it has created its own ‘gravediggers’ – the class that, once sufficiently organised, can push aside the capitalist class and the capitalist system that is now holding back the development of humankind. So, any genuinely revolutionary party must base itself on the working class, because of the leading role this class must play. And in turn, to play its necessary role, the working class needs a revolutionary party.

3. Looking back on this first chapter of the Communist Manifesto, why is organising amongst the working class such a key task for any genuine revolutionary socialist?