Marx and Engels' 'Communist Manifesto'

A Reader's Guide

Peter Lamb

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781472507488
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Introducing the most famous work of the nineteenth-century radical thinkers Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, this comprehensive reader's guide to the Communist Manifesto explores the key themes, ideas and issues of the revolutionary pamphlet. Beginning with a discussion of the intellectual, political and social context of the Manifesto, the Reader's Guide illustrates the themes by clearly relating points in the work to ideas and theories made in other texts written by Marx and Engels. This is followed by a closer examination and analysis of the text that covers the introductory statement and each of the chapters in detail and discusses its style, structure and intended audiences. This guide also explores the ways in which the Manifesto was received both during the lives of Marx and Engels and in the twentieth century, for example the Soviet Union's version of Marxism, China's re-interpretations of the ideas, and the innovative political philosophy found in Western analytical Marxism. As well as presenting relevant biographical points about Marx and Engels and giving concise information on prominent people mentioned in the text, this valuable study resource features discussion questions and annotated guides to further reading. For students studying political philosophy and political theories, Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto: A Reader's Guide provides a better understanding of the ideas, theories and contexts discussed in the most famous work of the writers who founded the ideology of Marxism.

CHAPTER ONE

Context

The radical activity of 1848 constituted an important episode in the development of the international labour movement, within which the Communist League was a revolutionary player. In order to gain a fuller understanding of this development, the events of 1848 must be seen in their broader historical, economic, social and political setting. A wave of uprisings against the established social and political orders swept Europe that year. This was the climax to a period that, having begun with the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, is sometimes known as the ‘epoch of the dual revolution’.¹ The reason for labelling this epoch, or period, as such is that it was characterized not only by the political revolution that had erupted in France, but also by the industrial revolution. Starting in Great Britain, the process of this ‘revolution’ accelerated in the early nineteenth century with the development of the railways and spread to Western Europe and the United States. The combination of political and industrial revolutions had enhanced the political and economic power of a social class that held significant shares of capital (or in other words of the property and equipment needed to conduct industrial and financial business). This class came to be known as the bourgeoisie. Even in those European countries where formal political power remained in the hands of monarchies, the influence of the bourgeoisie on the decision-making processes was growing. This gain was not shared with others in society, even though the French Revolution had promised liberty and equality for humanity. The working classes and peasantry indeed benefited very little from such progress in practice. Dissatisfaction and revolutionary attitudes thus began to stir in Europe, leading to the insurrections of 1848.

The publication of the Manifesto

Since the outbreak of the French Revolution, various groups whose members considered themselves to be communists or socialists had sought to harness the dissatisfaction. On this basis they began to perceive possibilities for social and political change. Marx and Engels grasped and built on the radicalism which had thus begun to brew.² When, in this environment in February 1848, the Manifesto was finished and sent for publication as a pamphlet for the Communist League, its drafter and final author were unwittingly laying the foundations of the movement that came to be known as Marxism. At the request of their comrades in the League, of which they had by then become prominent and influential members, they published the Manifesto in London. It began to appear in Paris later in February, less than a fortnight before the uprisings began in the latter city.

The insurrectionary activity quickly spread beyond the French capital to many other major European cities.³ Rather than being either a stimulus or a response to the unsuccessful revolutionary efforts of 1848, the Manifesto can, however, be seen as a tactical document intended to be a contribution to the broader cause and campaign.⁴ Indeed, as the pamphlet had only begun to appear in print for the first time at the end of February, any influence upon the uprising in Paris that month can only have been upon an already-precipitated campaign. While the Communist League did play a significant role in the attempted German Revolution of May, the Manifesto would have been received in April by activists there whose work had already begun.⁵

It would be wrong, furthermore, to assume that the uprisings of 1848 were the practical reflection of a firmly established and unanimously embraced doctrine of communism in the broader workers’ movement. Before Marx and Engels had employed the term ‘communist’ for their famous work, early notions of communism, while varying considerably, were generally republican and egalitarian. These were characteristics that were not generally associated with socialism at the time. Although the terms ‘communist’ and ‘socialist’ had sometimes been used interchangeably, socialism was often considered to be more concerned with association and cooperation than with republicanism and egalitarianism. Nevertheless, all socialists and communists considered some kind of social and political change for the benefit of ordinary people to be possible and desirable.

In their contribution to this broader movement, inspired by their growing confidence in the prospects for change, Marx and Engels drew in the Manifesto upon some tenets that had been associated with earlier versions of communism and some that had been linked with socialism. They nevertheless also offered, with recourse to some brief examples, bitter criticism of many of the ways in which the tenets had thus been previously employed. Furthermore, and crucially, they presented their critical analysis of capitalism, at the heart of which were their distinctive conceptions of class relations and class struggle.⁶ The belief they presented in the possibility of radical and fundamental change as a result of the struggle reflected the industrial and scientific developments of their times. Such developments, while bringing misery to the many and great wealth to the few in those times, could, if suitably harnessed, be utilized in order to provide the conditions for and means to a better life for humanity. As will hopefully become clear in the course of this guide, the combination of critical analysis of these developments and consideration of their potential was a key thread of the pamphlet.

The efforts of Marx and Engels did not, however, have their intended impact in the short term. The revolutions of 1848 soon fizzled out and the Manifesto would enjoy only a very narrow readership until it was revived in the early 1870s.⁷ As will be discussed in Chapter four of this guide, the influence of the Manifesto grew thereafter. Sometimes this growth was gradual and at other times more rapid in political environments that changed considerably in terms of both time and location.

That the Manifesto did eventually become hugely influential reflects not least the abrasive, strident and thereby exciting nature of its argument and rhetoric. Marx and Engels thereby made a distinctive and innovative theoretical contribution to the broader radical tradition – a tradition that, as we have just seen, had shot to prominence in the several years of upheaval that followed the outbreak of the French Revolution of 1789. The powerful prose that Marx used to convey his message in the pamphlet upon receiving the draft from Engels will be discussed in Chapter three. At this point, however, in order to appreciate why the pamphlet was conceived in the first place, it will be useful to focus briefly on the intellectual development of these two collaborators in the years prior to 1848 and during the production of this famous text.

The authors

Born in 1820 to a wealthy businessman, Engels was brought up in the German Rhineland town of Barmen. His hometown is difficult to find on maps today, as in 1929 (34 years after his death) Barmen would merge with Elberfeld and several other towns to form the city of Wuppertal. Working for his father’s company as a young man, Engels gained direct experience of capitalism. This job did not, however, satisfy his intellectual and recreational appetite. Hence, he danced, rode horses, swam and participated in debating clubs – the latter being an activity which combined intense philosophical conversation with heavy drinking. He also produced radical journalistic articles that were published in some of the more progressive newspapers of the region. Disenchanted with the protestant beliefs on which he had been brought up, he came to reject religion itself. He also embraced radical interpretations of the ideas of G. W. F. Hegel, especially those concerning the dialectic.⁸

The Hegelian dialectic has acquired a reputation for being quite daunting. This, however, is not really warranted, as its core point is quite simple. In summary, it holds that spirit, or mind has developed throughout history, gradually improving societies and enhancing the freedom of people who composed them. Hegel implied that, with its liberal reforms that had been introduced after Napoleon Bonaparte’s victory over its former rulers, the state in Prussia was at the most advanced stage of freedom yet to be attained. Nevertheless, the liberal reforms were soon replaced by new reactionary policies and the Prussian state became increasingly conservative. Some enthusiasts for Hegel’s political philosophy continued to suggest that despite this conservative drift Prussia was his ideal state. Radicals among the Young Hegelian intellectual movement disagreed, however, stressing that he considered the present society to be no more than one of the phases in the dialectical process.

Ludwig Feuerbach, who was one of the radical Young Hegelians, argued furthermore that existence actually precedes thought, rather than the other way around. Engels, significantly, approved of Feuerbach’s position. Although this was in effect to step outside Hegelianism rather than to extend it, the belief in a dialectical process of history had become securely lodged in Engels’ worldview. It will be useful to bear this belief in mind when, in Chapter three, we come to grips with the argument that he helped Marx construct for publication in the Manifesto.

It was not philosophy alone which cultivated in Engels’ mind the ideas that would inspire him to work with Marx on the Manifesto. When he moved to England in the early 1840s to work for his father’s business in Manchester, he witnessed at first hand the abject poverty and desperate living and working conditions of the working class (indeed, he was guided through even the most dangerous parts of Manchester by his working-class lover Mary Burns). He began to perceive these conditions as direct consequences of the capitalist system. The industrial working class that sold its labour for a wage – a class which he and Marx consistently referred to as the proletariat – had not only been created artificially by that system, but would also be at the forefront of the movement to replace it with a better society. Engels had thus begun to conceive of historical development.⁹ He published the result of his study of working-class life, titled The Condition of the Working Class in England, in German in 1845 (but not in English until 1885).¹⁰ He was thus ready to combine his philosophy with political economy in two important drafts of the Manifesto with which Marx would subsequently work. As will be discussed at a number of places in Chapter three of the present guide, those drafts, which would later be published with the titles ‘Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith’ and ‘Principles of Communism’, are of considerable value to the understanding of some of the important points that Marx would go on to make in the pamphlet.

Marx’s intellectual development had led him into collaboration with Engels several years before they worked together on the Manifesto. Born in the Rhineland, Marx experienced a rather different upbringing and education from that which Engels experienced in the region. Marx’s rearing was indeed a liberal and humanist one in his home city of Trier. His father Heschel had been born into an influential Jewish family but converted to Protestantism when the Rhineland, having been occupied by Napoleon, passed into Prussian hands. Prussia increased restrictions on the career paths open to Jews. Therefore, Heschel, who as a humanist was of course not enthusiastically religious, converted in order to allow him to continue with his work as a lawyer. He subsequently changed his name from the Jewish Heschel to Hienrich. As an aficionado of the rationalist and liberal ideas of the Enlightenment, Hienrich sent Karl to a school with a humanist ethos. Karl’s work shows that he took to Enlightenment ideas very well.¹¹

To continue his education Karl went to the university in Bonn; but his father withdrew him after only one year. Marx senior had disapproved for a wide variety of reasons, including his son’s enrolment in too many courses, his heavy drinking and fighting and eventually his tendency to be more interested in poetry than in law. So Karl Marx transferred to Berlin University in October 1936, having become formally engaged with Jenny von Westphalen during the summer ¹² Jenny and Karl went on to have six children – three of whom died tragically in infancy.¹³

As a student in Berlin, Marx developed an interest in the philosophy of Hegel, of which he became increasingly critical. Like Engels, he became involved with the Young Hegelians. Marx decided to pursue an academic career and so he remained at the University of Berlin to write his doctoral thesis. Tactically, judging that his argument would be received more sympathetically at the University of Jena, he submitted his thesis at the latter institution instead. He graduated in 1841.

The hostility in authoritarian Prussia to radical philosophy rendered Marx’s chances of gaining a secure academic post very slim. Subsequently, he decided to pursue a career in journalism. However, his work as an editor and writer for the Rheinische Zeitung newspaper was suppressed and he decided to leave Prussia in order to be able to express his views more freely. Shortly before he embarked on the journey to make his new home in Paris, he had drafted an article which was significant for its insistence that economics, rather than politics or religion, was the source of the most fundamental problem of modern society. The article, titled ‘On the Jewish Question’, was a critique of the work of Bruno Bauer who not only disapproved of the Christian state for its restrictions on the rights of Jews, but also criticized Jews themselves for expecting the enjoyment of civil rights without renouncing their own religion. Marx argued that the problem was neither the Jewish faith nor the Christian state in particular but, rather, the modern state itself. While the state focused on political rights, individualism flourished in civil society, meaning that social rights were ignored. The predominantly egoistic character of human beings cultivated in capitalist society was thus made to seem natural. This disguised the fact that economic life, rather than religious or philosophical d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Context
• 2 Overview of themes
• 3 Reading the text
• 4 Reception and influence
• 5 Further reading
• Notes
• Index
• Copyright