Communist Manifesto Marx Has Been

Communist Manifesto

Marx has been called the last of the great Jewish prophets, and it is easy to see why. For his epic depictions of the feats of the bourgeoisie in the first section of the Manifesto seem to describe the workings of today's "global economy" much better than they describe the Europe of his own day (Brooke, 1998).

It is true that a century and a half later "the social order" has come to resemble a few of his predictions (though others not at all) but this hardly marks him as a co-discoverer of social science, unless we admit that all social science is mumbo-jumbo.

Karl Marx taught that the world was divided into two powerful classes, the "proletariat" (working class) and the "bourgeoisie" (wealthy ruling class). Marxism sees the proletariat and bourgeoisie as directly waging an ongoing competition, in that capitalists exploit workers and workers try to resist exploitation.(This is the foundational principle behind modern U.S. organized labor). Marx's scientific socialism combined his economics and philosophy -- including his theory of value and the concept of alienation -- to demonstrate that throughout the course of human history, a profound struggle has developed between the "haves" and the "have-nots" (omegaletter.com, 2005).

Marx claimed he had discovered the laws of history, laws that expose the contradictions of capitalism and the necessity of the class struggle. The more advanced the capitalist economy becomes, Marx argued, the greater these contradictions and conflicts. The more capitalism creates wealth, the more it sows the seeds of its own destruction.

Ultimately, Marx believed, the proletariat would realize that it has the collective power to overthrow the few remaining capitalists and, with them, the whole system (omegaletter.com, 2005).

Marx and Engels describe our modern industrial society as one of class conflict between the wealthy and the working class. They say that the production capability of capitalism is going to cease to be harmonious with the exploitive relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The working class will revolt but it will be a different kind of revolution. Other revolutions simply meant more property to the ruling class. But members of the proletariat can't appropriate property. So when they obtain control through the revolt, they will do away with all private ownership of property, and the classes will disappear.

The authors go on to say that capitalism is inherently unstable and that this development (above) is unavoidable. In all this one can only say they were wrong.

In the 150 years since the Communist Manifesto was published, the declaration has proved to be empty. Many of its prophecies have been disproven by actual history. There are many reasons that this may be the case. It could be simply that some of the beliefs based around communist thought, including the labor theory of value were wrong.

The difficulty with Marx' and Engel's ideas imbedded in the manifesto could be that they were mistaken about which class would ultimately include all the others. They assumed that the proletariat would, in the end, assume the means of production and thus destroy the capitalism. They did not understand that production would become less costly as time wore on due to efficiencies in production. Workers would become entrepreneurs in free, not communist societies. The invention of computers, and the easy access to the tools of a service industry would make small business a driving force (Mattson, 2005).

In his book The Vital Center, Arthur Schlesinger believed this "mistaken analysis" was "responsible for the failure of" Marx's prophecies and the triumph of "bureaucratic collectivism" in the Soviet Union. Crucially, it neglected the possibility of liberal reform." The capitalist state has clearly not been just the executive committee of the business community" (Mattson, 2005).

Besides erring politically, Marx erred sociologically. The standard narrative of postwar history depicts left-wing writers recognizing that Marx's bipolarized view of class -- bourgeois vs. proletariat -- and his belief in imminent capitalist crisis failed to explain America's newfound economic abundance. Workers weren't suffering from being impoverished, the arguments went, they were buying televisions and automobiles and refrigerators (Mattson, 2005).