The Communist Manifesto

Rating:
Summary: Poison
Review: It's hard to review a book like this objectively. How are you supposed to rate it? In terms of historical significance? It would certainly rate high if that was the standard. I'm going to review it in terms of value as a political philosophy.

The most significant principle in Marxism is the belief that the bourgeois (a small minority of capital owners) "exploit" the proletariat (the majority of people who make money from wages paid from the bourgeois) and if left to their own devices will drive wages down lower and lower until the proletariat are at a bare subsistence level. This idea has come to be accepted by the majority of people throughout the world including most people in the United States. The commonly used phrase "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer" summarizes the Marxist view of free market Capitalism.

"Liberal" politicians in the United States will routinely campaign for legislation that takes away from the wealthy and gives to the less wealthy. The justification for such an obvious violation of property rights is the Marxian Exploitation Theory. The wealthy are portrayed as exploiting the poor and as pushing their standard of living lower and lower. It is only the government that can stop this so-called "race to the bottom". This confiscation and redistribution is viewed by most people as "practical" and "necessary".

The only problem is that the Marxian Exploitation Theory is incorrect. Anyone who has ever run a business knows that you need good people to help you run it. You are competing with other businesses in finding people to work for you. This is referred to as the labor market. If you don't offer enough money to a potential employee he will work for someone else who is willing to offer more and vice versa. This is why wages go higher in relation to the demand for labor. The more businesses competing for labor the higher the wages. How can we get the demand for labor to go up and consequently raise wages? We can do it by preventing the government from confiscating large portions of the profits of businesses and individuals, a big part of which would have gone towards business investment.

If the Marxian Exploitation Theory were correct all wage earners would be making less and less until they were all paid minimum wage. But only a small percentage of wage earners actually make minimum wage in the U.S. and despite the fact that there has been a free market system (at least more free than other countries) the standard of living for typical wage earners is the best in the world.

Rating:
Summary: A classic
Review: This short text is the manifesto of a revolution. The concepts of communism have often been distorted in public media, but reading this book will remind the reader of what "it" was originally all about. Whether one agrees with Marx's principles or not, they are certainly food for thought; economic disparity is still as visible at it was in his time, if not more so.

Rating:
Summary: Don't bother
Review: It's free on the net. Period.

p.s. Same principle also applies to the essays and treatises on the Communist Manifesto.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Insight into a Deeply Flawed Vision of Utopia
Review: It's always good to challenge your own personal ideologies by confronting opposite viewpoints. Many people tend to shy away from views that differ from their own, perhaps out of fear of succumbing or simple arrogance resulting from ignorance (i.e. "I don't care about anything else, my beliefs are correct, and that's that"). But when it comes to belief, loyalty, or opinion, the challenge lies not in blindly accepting a given position but in arriving at a carefully thought-out state of mind resulting from long internal struggle. This "struggle to believe" is prevalent in religion, but when it comes to our political and social way of life, many Americans (in particular, I think) tend not to question the virtues or vices of capitalism. I rate this book fairly high not because I find the ideology contained herein credible, but because every modern American should know at least something about Marx's philosophy. The Manifesto is not mere history, but a radical vision of Utopia that, even after the complete failure of Communism, remains a relevant and thought-provoking literary work.

In The Manifesto, Marx fuses philosophy, politics, economics, and the idea of class struggle to argue his case for Communism. The actual Manifesto is only about 50 pages long and in this Signet version we are presented with an extremely helpful introduction of about the same length by Martin Malia. Marx's basic point is deeply rooted in history. Over the past 1000 years we (as in mid-nineteenth century Europe) have evolved socioeconomically from a feudal system (monarchy) into "bourgeois capitalism" where the upper-middle class (bourgeois) essentially controls society through the utilization of the proletariat (lower working class) as a means of generating capital from wage labor. In a feudal system, the lower classes are controlled by a few elite through the dogma of inherent class superiority derived largely from religious convention. In a bourgeois system, however, the proletariat is harnessed by the relentless and dehumanizing pursuit for increasingly efficient and widespread technology in industry. Thus, the liberation of the population from a feudal system (historically embodied in the French Revolution of 1789-93) did not, in fact, produce equality among individuals so much as it produced equality according to the law. Marx's basic tenet is, then, that equality must be economically forced on the whole of society (via revolution) by the proletariat itself (precisely because the proletariat is the most socioeconomically dehumanized class). But, in the grand historical scheme of things which Marx claims to have grasped, the feudal and bourgeois systems are not useless nor unnecessary. On the contrary, they are vital. Communism is only the next, most radical, step in the evolution of society; the proletariat must harness the industrial superstructure of the bourgeois and free it from democracy. This requires the complete centralization of all government, the abolition of private property and inheritance, an exclusive governmental monopoly on credit, state control of all communications and transport, equal distribution of work via "industrial armies" of labor, homogeneous distribution of population, and free education in public schools.

But there is one ingredient necessary for Communism that never existed historically in the context of capitalism (and, in retrospect, the absence of which proved Marxism's undoing): the proletariat revolution. Marx insisted that such a revolution on the part of the lower classes was the only way that progress could be made toward his vision. He thus scorned the other social doctrines of his day that argued for less radical procedures. But the revolution never happened. The only way Lenin could see Marxism as useful was to artificially catalyze the socially immature Russia into revolution through the use of hired revolutionaries. And Marx wouldn't have disapproved; he himself claimed to have the benefit of foreseeing the natural evolution of society into the superior structure of Communism, and thus believed that Communism was what the people wanted, even if they didn't know it. The question is then begged, was Marx trying to fix what wasn't broken?

There are several questions which the modern reader asks and for which Marx gives (sometimes convincing) answers. For example, doesn't Communism eliminate freedom? Marx would say that it eliminates personal freedom, but that true freedom is the freedom from the socioeconomic inequality of the past. Doesn't it abolish all sense of national identity? Marx's answer: the proletariat has no sense of national identity (just as it has no freedom). Doesn't it do away with culture and the family unit? Marx: yes, it does away with bourgeois culture and bourgeois family, but the proletariat have no culture and sell their family members as prostitutes. And even the bourgeois family, in its current form, is reduced to a system of monetary value. In essence, every objection made is a bourgeois objection and not a proletariat one. But there is one glaring problem that Marx blatantly side-steps: the problem of incentive. He gives a brief reply about an analogy to the bourgeois, but it is far from convincing, and even appears to be downright wrong. There is also one other major problem I notice. Marx claims that political power is really power to control the lower classes. But I can't see this as being correct (at least not in modern day America). Maybe the reason why Marx's revolution never occurred is because no one else thought it correct either.

In the end, one of Marx's critical mistake was that he thought too much of himself. It was permissible for him to believe that a revolution was necessary for change. But he crosses the line when he puts himself above the proletariat and claims to know better than they when it comes to socioeconomic evolution. In other words, Marx knows what is good for everyone, and if everyone else doesn?t agree then it's because they are "rural idiots" and must be forced into forcing a Communism regime. This simply won't work because Marx's notion of socialism becomes a contradiction. The Communist idea of "government of the people" becomes exactly what Marx explicitly states that it isn't: the mere philosophy of an "enlightened" few.

Rating:
Summary: The Littl'st Marxist
Review: The Communist Manifesto finds Kind Uncle Karl and his longtime companion Joseph taking a whimsical tour of Industrial Revolution England. There, with the help of a few pieces of disposable furniture, and Joseph's deep pockets, Uncle Karl is able to follow his dream and declare Revolution.

Uncle Karl and Joseph manage to evade the sinister Boo-shwa Conspiracy, as they look for their proletariat friends (including the lovable "Che" and the wise-cracking "Vladmir"). Together, they must overcome the odds, unite a people, and find a way to feed Uncle Karl's starving children.

Read the book that made olive-drab fatigues popular! Be a hit at your next college pot-party. And don't forget to pick up Das Kapital - Uncle Karl's magnum opus, in which he proves that while there may be limited means of economic production in the world, there's no limit on German words!

Rating:
Summary: blah
Review: this book is no more than a rhetorical and oddly enough long-winded work (despite its actual length). marx has an obviously inflated ego that allows him to be a rich man grabbing at any cause he can feebly grasp on to. but he is no less pretensious than a high school kid who wants to feel special by leeching on to the misery of others. which makes him no better than those whom he condemns for the exploitation of the poor. this is a terrible book that, it seems to me, will only convert more and more people to libertarian pints-of-view.

Rating:
Summary: Crucial piece of history
Review: Everyone should read this, if for no other reason, because of the historical impact it has had. It's a great reference and obviously one of the definitive pieces of communist literature. It's a well thought out argument for the need for communism. Marx criticized other socialist ideas of the time as being too idealistic while failing to realize what a perfect environment would be neccessary for communism to exist in the pure sense of the word. Despite this it has an important place in history and is an idea worth knowing, understanding, and pondering.

Rating:
Summary: another typical Communist Text..
Review: full of nice words and idealistic feelings, but as the theory is put to practice, it immediately falls apart. Especially wherever there's a segment of the population where people are making modest to wealthy amounts of money; even in Russia during the revolution there were, but they had to surrender EVERYTHING to the Communists. such circumstances made progressives all over the world like Rand, Luxembourg, Goldman et. al. cringe. The significance of the Manifesto is, however, similar to an secular Bible of modern times, much like the US constitution and Declaration of Independence. The constitution, though, is much easier to read and comprehend, for it is a straightforward work of politics; the Communist Manifesto on the other hand is basically a scientifically, beautifully written handbook of big government tyranny.

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Review: The origins of private property and the subsequent capitalization of the world, leveraging on that property along with the cruel effects of industrial reveution is what made Engels and Marx write this manifesto. And it is worth a serious reading. Most of the points the authors stress are as relevant today as they were 150 years back. The mundane lives of the working class people, their strugle to make ends meet while the upper class with their means to capital enjoy life was disturbing to the angry Marx and he proposed a complete overhaul of that system. The book begins with understanding how once upon a time all land belonged to all people but later on a few got hands on the property to control many. The few versus many, the us versus them resounds throughout the book. The authors (in strong language) talk about the perils of capitalism, stressing on the delitirious effects of evil corporations (Without seeing FightClub :) that had turned most of the citizens of the world, slaves to the capital controlling masters. The puppets of these masters lack the means of production. And Marx hits the capitalists by attacking that the common man can never get the control over production, hence his life depends of the vagaries of busines cycles and his master. A good point, but the solution given is not very practical. While revolution might not feed the hunger, entrepreneurship will and this is what is ignored totally by Engels and Marx. The authors are more concerned about the distribution of wealth, than creation of new wealth. Wealth cannot be created by spilling blood or regime changes. It has to be created in the old fasioned way of hard work...etc! The manifesto is a copy every man interested in economics should have. It gives deep insights into philosophy, history, economics and psychology. Its a great reading and a powerfull one at the same time, a little flawed? Well, history has shown that.

Rating:
Summary: Marx's Best Work
Review: Much easier to read than Capital, The Communist Manifesto should be read by everyone. It goes into Marx's thoughts about revolution and provides a good look at the times Marx lived in.