strange and paradoxical encounter in time and space. There are
some passages which seem so prophetic that they could have been
written just a few years ago and others which are quite clearly
dated, if not antiquated or plain wrong. The language of the
Communist Manifesto is certainly not that of the media-hungry
politician of today's audio-visual age nor is it that of today's
allegedly value-neutral contemporary social scientist. But who
can deny the vivid imagery of the Communist Manifesto or the
power of its arguments?
This said, one should note that the Communist Manifesto had
little impact in the political world for many years. Its initial
print run was limited, its circulation was restricted, its
promised translation into other languages was generally long delayed,
and Marx and Engels themselves failed in their half-hearted
efforts to get copies of some later limited American editions to
circulate in Europe for their own propagandistic purposes. Real
attention to its contents had to await the world-shaking events
of the Paris Commune in 1871. For state managers and the
bourgeois press claimed that the Communards were inspired by that
well-known Communist revolutionary and architect of conspiracies,
Karl Marx! The Commune had resurrected the spectre of communism
that had apparently been exorcised for good just a few years
after the Communist Manifesto was first published in 1848. It
also prompted widespread interest in the Manifesto's contents
among the dominant classes as well as in the labour movement. The
double irony in this turn of events is that not only was the
Commune a spontaneous public uprising but also that Marx and Engels
had intended the Communist Manifesto to end the conspiratorial
tradition of German communism in favour of building a mass movement
that would inevitably grow stronger as capitalism developed.
Subsequent revolutionary events (such as the Russian Revolution
in 1917) and capitalist crises (such as the Great Depression)
also spurred waves of interest in the Communist Manifesto. Only
in this century did it actually win its widest circulation and
its hallowed status as 'one of the world's greatest books'. And,
just as interest was spurred by broader economic and political
events, the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and the apparent demise
of the communist movement have prompted in turn a recent decline
in political interest in the Manifesto and its contents.
Such fluctuations in interest in the Communist Manifesto should
not detract from its real significance as a major text in the
international socialist movement. Indeed this was how Marx and
Engels themselves saw it soon after its initial publication. It
was drafted hastily in a particular conjuncture and intended as a
broad statement of the views of socialism in the 1847-8 period.
It was never intended as a definitive programme of an organized
party. Indeed, there was no Communist Party in 1848 and the very
concept of 'party' referred only to a broad current of political
ideas. Unsurprisingly Marx and Engels themselves later described
the Manifesto on several occasions as an 'historical document',
insisted that they had no right to alter it, and also refused to
correct or update it. At most, Marx and Engels wrote some short
prefaces to subsequent editions in German and French; and Engels
made some minor amendments in footnotes in the first authorized
English translation (1888). Furthermore, I think this general
self-distancing by its authors from the Communist Manifesto applies
to all three of its main sections and not just to the ten-point
'party' programme.
As regards the first section, let us note immediately that Marx's
views on the dynamic of capital accumulation were still developing
and would receive their near-definitive statement only in Das
Kapital (and even this was never achieved the completion Marx
himself wanted). Regarding the second section, Marx and Engels
altered their views on communism, party organization, and political
democracy on several occasions. They did so both as political
events unfolded (most famously with the Paris Commune, which Marx
proclaimed had revealed the form of the dictatorship of the
proletariat) and as parliamentary democracy became more common in
the advanced capitalist states. And, regarding the third section,
there was clearly a massive expansion in the range of socialist
and communist views that Marx and Engels would have been obliged
to address in any up-dated critique of alternative positions.
The preceding comments suggest that the Manifesto is an
unimportant document from the viewpoint of Marx's intellectual
development. But this does not mean that it is unimportant for
the development of Marxism, socialism, or communism -- either in
their own terms or terms of their wider reception and critique.
As regards the current status of the Communist Manifesto, I think
it is best described as a 'classic' text. That is to say, it is a
work that can no longer be accepted as a definitive statement
either of Marxism as a theoretical position or of the character
and aims of socialism or communism as a political movement. But
it remains a central reference point for future theoretical and
political development in these areas and helps to shape the
identity and horizons of historical materialism. This is most
evident in the first main section of the Manifesto.
This famously describes the history of all hitherto existing
societies as the history of class struggles. Engels later
restricted the scientific scope of this claim to 'literate
societies'. Even this is insufficient. For in this form it is
essentially a propagandistic claim, intended to provide a clear
strategic orientation and a firm social basis for long-term
political mobilization in a complex and unstable conjuncture. For
this was a period in Continental Europe when market relations
were still being disembedded from broader political and ideological
relations, when the dominance of the capitalist mode of production
over other relations of production was still being established,
and when an emergent bourgeoisie was still struggling in
a complex political conjuncture to overthrow or change the ancien
regime in order to consolidate its own hold in an emerging 'civil
society'. Capitalism has now become the dominant mode of production
throughout the world and the bases of social and political
conflict have become far more complex than Marx and Engels
envisaged in the Manifesto -- though not necessarily more complex
than the struggles they described in their more historical works.
This makes it all the more important to combine a class perspective
with the recognition of other social identities, interests,
and struggles. The major theoretical and political contribution
of Gramsci's revisions to historical materialism is particularly
important here. From a theoretical viewpoint we also need to
prioritize the political economy of capital (as indicated by
Marx's Capital) over a political sociology of class. The
Manifesto presents only an embryonic critique of political
economy and even its political sociology is confusing. Yet the
overall description of the dynamic expansion of capitalism on a
world scale is still powerful and prophetic. It anticipates what
bourgeois apologists and radical critics today describe under the
rather apolitical notion of 'globalization' and also provides a
more balanced account of its progressive and destructive features.
In the same spirit it also dentifies what are still, some 150 years
later, major sites of antagonism in the struggle to establish
bourgeois hegemony not just economically but also in the wider
social, political, and ideological sphere.
The next two sections merit less attention in what must be a
short comment on the Manifesto. The presentation of communist
political principles is best read as an historical document. It
is an excellent and rhetorically well-crafted critique of the
hypocrisy of bourgeois responses to communism. It is also a fine
statement of the broader historical materialist principle that
the leading ideas of any age are the ideas of the ruling class.
But certain of the views expressed or implied (e.g., on patriarchy
and the family) are best interpreted in their historical context.
And the ten-point programme is clearly an anachronism. The
third section, on other forms of socialism, has been rendered
largely irrelevant, as Marx and Engels themselves foresaw, by the
continued development of capitalism. But one can derive some
continuing pleasure from noting how certain forms of socialism have
survived to emerge in new guise. Few critical observers in
Britain today, for example, would fail to recognize in Tony
Blair's Labour Government the very same species of socialism
which Marx dismissed as 'conservative or bourgeois socialism',
i.e., a movement which wants the bourgeoisie without the
proletariat or, at least, to lessen for the bourgeoisie the
cost of maintaining its rule. As Marx and Engels wrote, 'its
socialism consists precisely in the assertion that the bourgeois
are bourgeois -- in the interests of the working class'.
In short, let us by all means commemorate the Communist Manifesto
for the historical document that it was and still is. Let us
celebrate the powerful combination of theoretical insight and
political passion that it embodies so well. But let us also carry
forward the theoretical work in the light of Marx's Capital,
noting the continuing self-transformation of capitalism. Let us
carry forward the political work in the spirit of Marx's and
Engel's unceasing curiosity, their sensitivity to new constraints
and opportunities, and their continual self-criticism in the
light of political experience. And let us not be persuaded by the
Marxist-Leninist and bourgeois identification of historical
materialism with Soviet Marxism or of the communist project with
state socialism into thinking that the major intellectual and
political project which was publicly launched in the Communist
Manifesto has been given its final judgement by history.
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