READ AND DISCUSS:

The introductory preamble ¹³

These opening lines of the Communist Manifesto still sound as fresh and relevant today as they did when Marx and Engels published them in 1848. But, instead of just the rich and powerful of Europe fearing a mass movement rising from underneath them, now the same is true the world over. Once again, those who criticise the obscene gulf between rich and poor are labelled as ‘communists’ – or perhaps now ‘socialists’. That includes critics of right-wing governments who actually aren’t genuine Marxists at all, often just figures seeking little more than a kinder form of capitalism!

Just as in the time of the young Marx and Engels, genuine socialists, those who genuinely want to replace the anarchy of global capitalism with a planned socialist world, need to explain “openly, in the face of the whole world” exactly what kind of change they are really struggling for, and why.

1. What experiences have you had of the label ‘communist’ or ‘socialist’ being used as a term of abuse, even against politicians who just want to reform capitalism? What opportunities can those attacks provide to really explain what Marx and Engels stood for?

The first five paragraphs of Chapter One: ‘Bourgeois and Proletarians ¹⁴ ’

In the first two paragraphs, Marx and Engels explain that the driving force of modern human history has been the struggle between different classes. Sometimes a new rising class would push aside the previous ruling class in a revolutionary change, at other times the struggle would simply exhaust and ruin both sides.

In the next three paragraphs, they go on to explain that, before the rise of capitalism - such as under the ‘feudal’ societies of the Middle Ages - there was often a ‘complicated arrangement’ of different classes and ranks in society. But the class struggle under capitalism has increasingly polarised society into a struggle between just two main classes – the capitalist class and the working class.

If you want to read more about the development of human history briefly sketched out above, there are some useful lessons to study in the separate ‘Introduction to Marxism’ course ¹⁵ on the Marxist Education Portal.

For example, Lesson Nine on ‘Classless Societies’ explains how in early hunter-gatherer societies “everyone was involved in providing the necessities of life – food, shelter, etc – because otherwise the group would not survive. There was no social or economic basis for an elite to form and to develop systematic exploitation of the labour of others, as happened later in class society”.

Lesson Eleven on ‘Slavery and Feudalism’ explains how “slave-based Roman society … eventually collapsed under its own internal contradictions. The slave mode of production meant that in order to maintain its wealth and privileges the ruling slave-owning class was compelled, not to revolutionise production techniques in order to increase productivity, but to fight constant wars to conquer new territories and obtain ever more slaves to exploit to death. … Neither was it in the interest of the slaves to improve production. Although there were slave revolts against their exploitation … their social position meant that neither they, nor any other class (freemen, peasants etc) were able to wage a successful struggle to transform society. The result was the disintegration of slave society. ... Initially, economic production and the cultural level of society was massively thrown back”.

It adds that “feudalism was the economic system of production that eventually superseded slavery. It was based on the labour of serfs, peasants who produced food on small plots of land and who were forced to give a certain proportion of their produce to the feudal lord who owned or controlled that land. … The landowning aristocracy was the ruling class under feudalism. … In England, the feudal system had already begun to reach the limits of its development in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. … It would require the revolutionary change brought about by the English civil wars of 1642-1651 to replace the feudal ruling class with a capitalist ruling class”.  [This victory of the new rising class of capitalists over the old feudal aristocracy is discussed in more detail in the next lesson].

Reading this information alongside the introductory paragraphs from the Manifesto:

2. What examples of contending classes can you give, thinking about a range of different periods of human history? (and, if you use the words ‘Bourgeoisie’ and ‘Proletariat’, how would you explain those terms in everyday language today?)

3. What two possible outcomes do Marx and Engels give as a result of such a struggle between contending classes? Can you give examples of class struggles that have led to each of these two results?