READ AND DISCUSS:

The ruling ideas of an age are the ideas of its ruling class

This section of the Manifesto starts with a reference to a fundamental tenet of materialist philosophy - and Marxism - that ‘conditions determine consciousness’. In other words, you need to look to the economy and people’s conditions of life to explain how people are thinking and acting - rather than the other way around. This is discussed in more detail in the separate ‘Introduction to Marxism’ course, particularly the lesson entitled ‘Marxism versus Idealism.’

But the Manifesto stresses that this isn’t only true about individuals, but about society as a whole. A change in the economic foundation of society also leads to an accompanying change in the predominant political, religious, artistic and philosophical ideas of the new society as well, challenging, then replacing, the predominant ideology of the previous age.

1. Why does the Manifesto suggest that a change to a socialist society might bring about “the most radical rupture with traditional ideas”?

Building a classless society

The very last paragraphs of this chapter also refer to another important idea arising from a Marxist understanding of history and human development. Marxism explains that a fully developed socialist society – a ‘communist’ one - will allow humanity to return to the classless hunter-gatherer societies that existed for much of early human history, but now at a much higher level.

Again, this is discussed further in the separate ‘Introduction to Marxism’ course which explains the following: “Class-based rule is only needed when a minority of people rule over the majority. Under socialism, the overwhelming majority in society will be democratically debating and agreeing how society will be run. This will allow the collective and truly democratic running of society to reappear for the first time since hunter-gatherer society. But it would be on a far higher material basis: instead of living at subsistence level, society would be based on productive forces that are capable of providing more than enough for every person’s needs, and much more besides – giving everyone access to leisure facilities, education at any age, and every other possible means of developing their talents and interests”.

2. How does the quote above help illustrate the Manifesto’s description of a classless society enabling “the free development of all”?

The Manifesto also points to a future where eventually “class distinctions have disappeared, and … the public power [i.e.’ the State’, as discussed in Lesson Four] will lose its political character”.

In other writings, Marx and Engels wrote that the state will ‘wither away’. Lenin summarised the process in his ‘State and Revolution ³⁰’ as follows: “During the transition from capitalism to communism suppression is still necessary, but it is now the suppression of the exploiting minority by the exploited majority. … Lastly, only communism [when the resistance of the capitalists has disappeared, when there are no classes] makes the state absolutely unnecessary, for there is nobody to be suppressed –“nobody” in the sense of a class, of a systematic struggle against a definite section of the population.

We are not utopians, and do not in the least deny the possibility and inevitability of excesses on the part of individual persons, or the need to stop such excesses. In the first place, however, no special machine, no special apparatus of suppression, is needed for this: this will be done by the armed people themselves, as simply and as readily as any crowd of civilized people, even in modern society, interferes to put a stop to a scuffle or to prevent a woman from being assaulted. And, secondly, we know that the fundamental social cause of excesses, which consist in the violation of the rules of social intercourse, is the exploitation of the people, their want and their poverty. With the removal of this chief cause, excesses will inevitably begin to “wither away". We do not know how quickly and in what succession, but we do know they will wither away. With their withering away the state will also wither away”.

3. Using the passages above, can you explain why, in a fully communist classless society, “the public power will lose its political character” i.e. the state ‘withers away’.