Communist Manifesto Though Perhaps Not

Communist Manifesto

Though perhaps not as rigorous or in-depth as some of his longer works, Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto (written in conjunction with Frederick Engels) was nonetheless a crucial contribution to the study of rhetoric and ideology not only for the way in which it succinctly broke down capitalism into its previously undisclosed, constituent parts, but for the way in which it set the bar for any number of disparate manifestos to follow. Because of this lasting influence, the Communist Manifesto remains relevant to this day, even after the fall of so many Communist regimes, and examining the manifesto with an eye towards both its novel critical work and its lasting influence on other manifestos and subsequent considerations of history will reveal just how important a contribution Marx and Engels' text has been to the critical study of rhetoric and ideology.

The Communist Manifesto performs two distinct but not unrelated tasks, and considering this dual work will help to reveal why the manifesto has left such an important mark on the history of ideology. Firstly, the manifesto serves to simplify and condense the theory of human history proposed by Marx in his other texts; namely, the idea that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" between "freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman," and, "in a word, oppressor and oppressed" (Marx & Engels 89). While the proposal of a history of class struggle is on the face of it not especially revolutionary, the details of Marx and Engels' claims reveal the extent to which they are proposing a fundamentally new, intelligible way of describing class conflict and the underpinnings of capitalism. Marx and Engels note that "our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses […] this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms" such that "society as a whole is splitting up more and more into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat" (Marx & Engels 90). This has coincided with the destruction of nearly all previous class distinctions "and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment'" such that "in one word, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation" (Marx & Engels 91-92). Marx and Engels are by no means attempting to excuse the brutalities committed by earlier, pre-capitalist regimes, but rather to point out that capitalism has refined the subjugation of the powerless to its bare essentials by discarding any aspects of the economic order which prove superfluous to the exploitation of labor. Thus, not only does the manifesto present, for the first time outside of Marx's Capital, a means for understanding the functioning of capitalism from an objective perspective, but also instigates a reevaluation of all human conflict with an eye towards the manipulation of the powerless through the uneven distribution of wealth. In this way, the manifesto allows one to understand how power has functioned throughout human history regardless of the specific justifications given for that power at the time (such as divine right), because these justifications are revealed to simply be the means by which economic power had previously been cloaked from view.

The rest of the Communist Manifesto consists of enumerating the necessary implications of this new conception of history and predictions regarding the next likely developments. Here it is worthwhile distinguishing between the two modes of historical analysis conducted by Marx and Engels, because while their description of power relations in the past and present is intelligible, productive, and painfully accurate, their predictions regarding the future of this conflict ultimately suffer from a lack of appreciation regarding human beings' capacity for self-interest and the effectiveness of religion and nationalism in protecting the interests of the economic elite. For example, Marx and Engels' claim that "the bourgeois claptrap about the family and education, about the hallowed correlation of parent and child, becomes all the more disgusting the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labor" is painfully accurate and serves to point out one of the many hypocrisies necessary for maintaining the artificially-created division of power present under capitalism (Marx & Engels 108). Similarly, their declaration that "the ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class" serves to almost casually reveal one of the fundamental problems with official histories, and especially histories of class conflict, because these histories have only ever been written from the perspective of the powerful (Marx & Engels 109). However, when Marx and Engels attempt to argue for certain visions of the future based on what they see as inevitable developments, they fail to appreciate certain fundamental truths regarding the utility of nationalism and religion in the service of economic power.

Although Marx and Engels admit that "the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle," they seem to believe that global Communism with eventually arise due to a nation-less unification of the proletariat, and many of their predictions for the future of Communism rely on this assumption (Marx & Engels 101). Thus, while Marx and Engels are correct in suggesting that "the theoretical conclusions of the Communists [….] express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle," they fail in accurately predicting the future of this struggle because they underestimate the effectiveness of religion and nationality in subverting dissent and maintaining the status quo (Marx & Engels 103-104). Put simply, for Communism to arise in the way Marx and Engels predict, nationalism and religion must be done away with, but they offer no argument suggesting why Communism would be able to accomplish this task in the first place. In some ways, this is akin to declaring that one will inevitably win a war once the other side disarms without actually demonstrating any reason why that should happen, because religion and nationalism, as justifications for self-interest, are two of the most potent ideological weapons deployed by the ruling elite in order to keep populations pacified, loyal, and living under a constant state of fear due to the ever-present threat of perceived foreign enemies, hell, or both. The Communist Manifesto, then, exists in a kind intermediary state, reflecting on history (including the present) while attempting to predict the future, such that it can be seen as "oscillating wildly between the modalities of an invocation of communism's specter as something already present in the nightmares that disturb the sleep of Europe's counter-revolutionary alliance, presenced through the performative rupture of the Manifesto that names it, and still absent, promised as the name of an event 'still to come beyond its name'" (Balasopoulos 2009). This has subsequently allowed disingenuous critics to disregard Marx and Engels' accurate and useful analysis of power relations alongside their less useful predictions for the future, thus further reinforcing the power of the economic elite (because the most effective tool for maintaining power is the practice of obscuring who is actually powerful). Thus, as a means for understanding the machinations of power within capitalism and the history of human conflict, the Communist Manifesto provides a still-useful description of the power-relations which characterize capitalism. However, one must be careful to fully account for the predictive limitations of the text, because the almost naive way in which Marx and Engels discuss a future revolution ultimately fails to fully appreciate the pervasive power of the economic elite.

Aside from the more obvious contribution to the study of rhetoric and ideology in the form of Marx and Engels historical analysis, the Communist Manifesto also remains relevant to this day due its profound impact on subsequent manifestos and their conception of history. This is seen most obviously in the various avant-garde art manifestos of the twentieth century, because "many of [these] manifestos […] refer to the history of manifestos in the twentieth century, some even [explicitly] harkening back to the Communist Manifesto" (Puchner 922). This is because, in addition to its specific content, the Communist Manifesto set a kind of bar for "a crucial feature of the historical manifesto, namely its performative dimension," in that Marx and Engels' work served to simultaneously demonstrate the effectiveness of a manifesto while originating a kind of ideal structure and tone reiterated by numerous subsequent manifestos. Manifestos of the twenty and twenty-first century are undeniably the result of Marx and Engels' work, as their "morphology includes such features as numbered theses; denunciations of the past; an aggressive attitude toward the audience; a collective authorship; exaggerated, shrill declarations; varied, often bold, letters; and a mass distribution in newspapers, on bill-boards, and as flyers," all features essentially pioneered in the Communist Manifesto (Puchner 450). Thus, "self-reflexivity and intermixture are not a postmodern phenomena but [rather] define the manifesto throughout its history," as seen in the performative nature of the Communist Manifesto. "Marx wants to replace the specter of Communism with Communism itself," and this happens precisely through the publication of the Manifesto; only in the expression of Communism is it able to "make" itself, and this fact has been recognized by countless other subsequent manifesto authors (Puchner 462).