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Karl Marx, Friedrich EngelsThe Communist Manifesto
Nonfiction | Reference/Text Book | Adult | Published in 1848A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Economics as the Source of Class Struggle
Perhaps his most influential contribution to sociopolitical theory, Marx argued that society’s laws, aesthetics, and even morality spring directly from its economic relationships. That is, the organization of a society’s economic system directly determines the sorts of ideals the society values. This way of conceptualizing history, arguing that historical events are the result of material, economic forces rather than competing ideologies, is called “historical materialism.”
Marx’s examination of how economic classes interact with each other establishes the theme of class struggle, which recurs throughout the Manifesto. Marx asserts that the more powerful economic class, usually the minority, always oppresses the weaker class; all conflict arises from class struggle caused by inequal economic conditions. He rejects the tendency to consider class character as separate from economic factors like, for example, property ownership. Class character and economics are inextricably connected, and all conflict stems in some way from the tendency of the powerful class to deny the oppressed opportunities to flourish. Only when property is redistributed and shared by all members, as in the socialist system, can class character be removed.
In Marx’s view, the most powerful economic class is a society’s most powerful class. Economic dominance leads directly to other types of influence. Political power, for example, always resides with the most powerful economic class because this class controls the means of production. In Marx’s time, this most powerful class was the bourgeoisie. As the property owners and hoarders of the capital generated by the working class, the bourgeoisie literally had the power to bend the state itself to protect its interests.
Predetermination and Free Will
Many of Marx’s theories have a strong theoretical basis in the ideas of other prominent thinkers of his time like the English naturalist Charles Darwin and the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Darwin’s Origin of the Species introduced the theory of evolution. This work impressed Marx with its conclusion that nature does not operate randomly and that logic and reason can be used to divine natural law. Marx wondered if Darwin’s method could be applied to the social sciences, i.e. the study of history. Marx’s hunch was supported by the philosophy of Hegel, who had previously concluded that the progress of history is predetermined; to Hegel, a predictable pattern can be traced to the progression of history. Hegel was an idealist; for him, the finite world, including historical events, was shaped by the infinite force and potential of the human mind.
Marx, on the other hand, was a materialist. He believed that the material conditions of a society shape the way its people think and behave. His findings, laid out in the Manifesto, suggest that each human society progresses through specific stages of development, much in the same way a human being grows from infant to child to adolescent to adult. The five distinct epochs Marx identifies are tribalism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and socialism. Each stage contains a single flaw which will lead to its downfall and its replacement by the next, improved stage of society. The only system without a flaw, predictably, is the final one: socialism. The logical destiny of each society, he argues, is to become socialist. Because a primary tenet of socialism is the elimination of social classes, socialism represents the final, utopic “end” of history, because by eliminating class, it eliminates class struggle. This end existence is communist society, in which class does not exist.
For Marx, like Hegel, history moves in a straight, upward line; progression from each stage to the next is not only expected, but inevitable. This progression presents interesting problems for believers in free will. If people must work full-time hours to keep themselves alive by earning the minimum wage required to secure food and shelter, their agency is compromised. Realistically, Marx argues, social relations and economic situations are powerful factors in shaping the options anyone has in life.
The Pitfalls of Capitalism
Marx’s attitude towards capitalism is complex as evidenced by sections of the Manifesto that contain begrudging praise of bourgeois capitalist accomplishments alongside criticism. For example, industrialization and technological innovations have made goods more widely available and more affordable, and globalization expands markets and erodes borders between countries, which enables unprecedented mobility and transportation.
Despite the many advancements, Marx argues that capitalism is doomed to fail because it is fundamentally exploitative; that is, it cannot exist without the unjust treatment of the majority of the population. When working as intended, capitalism helps the rich get richer while the poor stay poor. To Marx, though the capitalists—the owners of the means of production—do not work, they reap the rewards which should rightfully be shared with the people who perform the labor, the proletariat.
For Marx, capitalism is especially insidious because it offers the illusion of freedom. Workers are led to believe that their ability to choose their employers makes the capitalist system preferable to older systems like feudalism, in which people were physically forced to work by aristocratic masters. Marx concedes that capitalism is an improvement to feudalism as the next step in the progressive nature of history, but he also notes that similar mechanisms of exploitation are still at work. The voluntary nature of work in a capitalist society is not genuine; a worker must submit themselves to exploitation by a capitalist employer or face starvation.
Luckily, Marx believes, capitalism’s greatest weakness is built into the system. Its relentless oppression of the working class will result the unification of the working classes and a violent revolt which will dismantle the system from within. For Marx, socialism will inevitably triumph over capitalism, moving society forward into a classless human system in which exploitation is impossible while also maintaining the technological and industrial advances of the capitalist period. This utopic final phase is communism.
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