The Communist Manifesto
Among the many influential documents in existence today, which bear heavily upon life in the United States, stands the Communist Manifesto.
This is an extremely interesting document, and it would behoove us to understand at least certain things about it.
It was written, as I think possibly most of us realize, back in 1848, at the time the revolt of the Paris communes was getting underway.
Marx and Engels, who collaborated with Marx in the preparing of the instrument, felt that the Paris communal incident could be expanded and exploited into a world revolution.
Revolution, and the Communist Manifesto was written to inspire the working classes to unite
so that this world revolution could get underway.
It did not have the desired effect, and Marx and Engels, I presume, were always disappointed
in that fact.
Although I don't know that they were disappointed in the document, in many ways the Communist
Manifesto is the clearest statement of the communist purpose that Marx ever put on paper.
Marx's writing tends to be a little obscure, and although many have hailed him as scientific,
I'm happy to note that currently a much better analysis has been provided of Marx because
they are beginning to realize that he really was a mystic and not a scientist, although
he claimed himself to be scientific.
Now the Communist Manifesto is, in a sense, a little bit like the Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence inspires men with the idea that each man has equal rights
in a moral sense, and that there is no political power that has rightful control of him, rather
The Communist Manifesto does not say things like that. It says something else entirely, and I think the instrument itself is the best evidence, so let me turn to it and see just what it does say.
The Communist Manifesto is separated into four parts. Actually, there's a preamble that could be, that is really called the manifesto. And it's a very brief part, sort of a preamble. And then there are four other parts. The first section devoted to what is called the bourgeois and proletarians in which Marx makes a clear delineation of the difference between the bourgeois, who are the people who own property,
and the proletarians, whom, as he sees it, are the workers who own nothing but the shirts on their backs.
Then part two deals with proletarians and communists and tries to show the relationship between the proletarian as the working class and the communists, who theoretically, according to Marx, are to be the leaders of the working class.
The third part devotes itself to socialist and communist literature and is subdivided to describe different types of socialism as Marx saw it, including petty-bourgeois socialism, German or what he calls true socialism, conservative or bourgeois socialism, and critical utopian socialism and communism.
You see, all of these are related to particular types of literature, then extant.
And finally, part four deals with the position of the communist in relation to a world revolution movement, and that's how the instrument divides itself.
The important thing for us to realize is what the communist manifesto is seeking to do.
And just as in the Declaration of Independence, the authors of it were setting down the proposition
So, in the Communist Manifesto, the authors are setting down the basic philosophic position
that they intend to take.
Now, the interesting thing here is that the Communist Manifesto is concerned not with
morality and not with rights, but with property per se.
I think this is why this manifesto is so interesting because it states with great clarity what
communism is all about.
Let me read here from the second page of that part of the manifesto called Proletarians
and Communists.
This is the second part.
The distinguishing feature of communism is not the abolition of property generally, but
the abolition of bourgeois property.
Now what does Marx mean by that?
What Marx is getting at here is that he wants to abolish the private ownership of the tools
of production and distribution.
Many says and again I quote from the manifesto, in this sense, the theory of the communists
may be summed up in the single sentence, abolition of private property.
In other words, that's what it's about.
The idea of communism is to destroy the idea that a private individual can own one of the
tools of production or distribution.
That's to be passé.
That's what the communist revolution is all about.
In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so,
that is just what we intend. I think that's clear. There is no question at all but what
the entire purpose of Communism is to alter the relationship between persons and property.
It is to eliminate the private ownership of property, notably the particular type of property,
which is called bourgeois property, or the tools of production. Marx proposes that we
will be better off if all the tools of production and distribution are taken away from private
persons centralized in the hands of the government, and then the government will manage them.
Now that's the idea.
Many persons have been confused by his praxeology because he doesn't say ownership.
He says the purpose is to abolish private property and this has caused people to believe that
Marx was something of a madman intending to burn up all the property in the world or something
of the sort.
That was not his intention.
He is actually trying to explain that what he proposes here is to abolish private ownership
of property.
Now here is an extremely interesting point and a very vital one for us today. Many people
in this country presume that communism is some kind of a foreign political movement.
That is, that it has something to do with Russia and that if you are opposing Russia
or possibly China or maybe Cuba, but some nation or possibly all three of those nations,
If you will oppose them, you are opposing Communism. Actually you are not. Communism
is not a Russian, a Chinese or a Cuban idea. It is essentially an economic idea relating
to the redistribution of economic goods. And it can be held and is held by many persons
of many nationalities. It has no national boundaries at all. Communism is just an economic
Theory. That's all it is. And if you approach it as though it has some kind of national implications,
then you get yourself in the unfortunate position of those people who feel that they are fighting
communism when they start killing, say, Viet Cong. That doesn't fight communism at all. That kills
people. And the ideas of communism could even spread as a result of killing these people.
You don't eliminate an idea by killing a person who happens to have the idea.
On the contrary, that may be a very effective way of spreading the very idea that you're trying to
kill. I might point out to you that that same effort was made by the Roman government in its
effort to suppress Christianity. They started out to torture and kill Christians, and they gave
Christianity such a shot in the arm with all of the Christian martyrs that were created that a great
Mass Movement ended up moving into the Christian area because the whole proposition wasn't
fair and people sympathized with the martyrs and they joined hands with them.
The same sort of thing has happened in this country and not only in this country but around
the world in respect to communism.
Communism in the early part of the century was getting nowhere and then certain people
People who were anti-communists began charging that it was a Russian plot, and the whole
thing took on nationalistic overtones.
And presently, if you were a good American, you had to hate Russia and Russians.
And that is supposed to make you an anti-communist.
It doesn't at all.
And it could actually take and make a number of martyrs political victims of sacrifice
who happen to believe in the communist idea and suddenly then you have many people moving
into the area of communism and beginning to believe it and accept it simply because they're
sympathetic to the victims of a government that will persecute people for their beliefs.
Now it happens that I think it could be demonstrated on all kinds of scientific ground that the
Communism ideas are fallacious. You really don't have to worry about them. They're completely
unscientific. The whole communist idea is as full of holes as a piece of good Swiss cheese
and wouldn't stand for a minute, excepting it has adherents who have become martyrs,
and then you'll have sympathy, and then the next thing you'll have is a major movement,
and of course that has happened. But let me get back to the instrument itself because, again,
This is its own best evidence. Mark sets down, and this is in the second portion, which is
really the meaningful part of the manifesto, the process by means of which a country that
is not particularly communistic and which does believe in a certain amount of private
Property could be moved into a position where private property is virtually eliminated.
He sets down the ten steps, and I'd like to just go over these briefly with you, and
as I do, you ask yourself how many of these steps have been taken by the American government,
which nominally is opposed to communism.
In actual fact, I don't think I'll have to say too much about it.
If you concentrate on these points that Marx set down in 1848, you may be stunned to discover
that the American government has adopted most of them.
But let me establish that with you.
Here is the manifesto again, and I quote,
The Communist Revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations.
No wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.
We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to
raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.
Now that's a very interesting phrase.
Let me pause here, digress momentarily, to comment on this.
Notice that Marx is calling for the working class to take over the government.
You see, as Marx saw it, and remember he is writing back right at the time that the industrial
The industrial revolution has come to a close, and he doesn't see the future, he only sees the past, that's all any of us see, he looked to the past and he saw that the people who owned the property were the ruling class, the privileged class, about two percent of the people, for instance, in England owned about eighty percent of the property, and this he was conscious of. Actually, that condition had already begun to change very radically, but he didn't know that, he wasn't aware of it, and so he presumed that the same ruling class,
and so on.
And so what he wanted to do was to organize a revolutionary group which would seize power
to become the new ruling class and to win the battle of democracy.
Now why did he say that?
Well it was obvious.
If you're going to put everything to a vote, it follows that there will always be more
workers than there will be employers.
So the more that you can get things settled by public voting, the more surely will you
destroy the idea of bourgeois property.
Because limited numbers of persons will own productive property, and many more people
will work at jobs where they themselves do not own the property.
Consequently, if you can put things up to a public vote, then the working class, or
as Marx calls it, the proletariat, will inevitably win.
He's right on that. He's perfectly correct. If you are going to have things settled by
popular vote, the working class will win every time. All you have to do is give it enough
time and it will positively win. No question about it. He sees that and so that's what
he's recommending. He's recommending the advance of democratic processes so that a
revolution can come about through the democratic process in which the proletariat will win
The Proletariat will use its political supremacy to rest by degrees all capital from the bourgeoisie,
to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e. of the proletariat
organized as the ruling class, and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly
as possible.
Now that's clear.
Now let me go to the ten points.
He says, these measures will of course be different in different countries, nevertheless
in the most advanced countries the following will be pretty generally applicable.
Now here are the ten steps to be taken which Marx recommends as a means of destroying private
ownership of property and centralizing that property in the hands of the state.
Point one, the abolition of property in land and the application of all rents of land to
to Public Purposes, the abolition of all private ownership of land and the application of all
income from land to public purposes.
If you think about that, you will see in the last several years how our government has
moved in more and more using eminent domain and other processes to take primary control
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax, the abolition of all right of inheritance,
The Abolition of All Right of Inheritance, The Confiscation of the Property of All Emigrants
and Rebels, The Centralization of Credit in the Hands of the State by Means of a National
Central Bank with State Capital and an Exclusive Monopoly, Centralization of the Means of Communication
and Transport in the Hands of the State, Extension of Factories and Instruments of Production
Extension is the increase in the numbers of factories and instruments of production owned
by the state.
In other words, the state is to get into more and more businesses.
The bringing into cultivation of wastelands and the improvement of the soil generally
in accordance with the common plan.
What's wrong with bringing the cultivation of wastelands and the improvement of the soil
generally?
8. The equal liability of all to labor. In other words, full employment.
Everyone will work. They boast in Russia, where they also boast that they have accepted communism, that there is no unemployment. You wouldn't dare.
So, you have equal liability of all to labor, establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. The combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, a gradual abolition of the distinction
between town and country by a more equitable distribution of population over the country.
And 10. Free education for all children in public schools. That means, of course, that
the children are to be sent by schools that are owned and operated by the government.
And that means, of course, that the government will inculcate its ideas into the minds of
the children and will exclude them, looking like so many pieces of hot metal, where they've
all been simply formed to fit the government pattern.
And continuing with point 10, abolition of children's factory labor in its present form,
the combination of education with industrial production, in other words, don't teach children
to think, teach them to work, see that they get a job and that they work at their job
and that the job of course is going to be managed by the government and that way you
combine education with industrial production. Now those are the ten points and I leave it
to you to analyze that yourself and to figure out what the effect of that type of thing
has been right in this country where in a very large measure if you will examine it
Let me turn now to point number four, which is the last part of the manifesto, and this
is what it says here.
This is the culmination, the summation of the instrument.
In short, the communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing
social and political order of things.
May I point out that where they use the term social, they mean economic.
Socialism is a kind of collectivized economics.
This is what they're getting at.
So they say a revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of
things.
In all these movements they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property
question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.
Finally, they labor everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of
all countries.
The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.
They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of
Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution.
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.
They have a world to win.
Working men of all countries unite.
And that is the close of the manifesto.
You'll notice these interesting observations that you should underline.
The communists do not propose to abolish government.
Many people have been so struck by that word forcible that they imagine that the Communist
Party is out to overthrow the government of the United States.
In fact, a law has been passed in this country that makes it a criminal act to attempt to
overthrow the government of the United States by force and violence.
But the communists never said that.
What they say is the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.
And by social conditions, they mean economic conditions.
So they are making war on the economy, not on the government, and the whole communist
movement is aimed at taking over the government and using it in order to conduct an economic
revolution.
And that's what it's about.
Also, I think it's interesting to note that they say, finally, they labor everywhere for
the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.
I know some people today who are so snide as to suggest that it's hard to tell the
the difference between a Republican and a Democrat in this country without a program.
And of course there is basic agreement among Democrats and Republicans in certain areas.
Both agree on massive taxation and massive regulation of the population.
The place that they differ is fundamentally at the area of how you will spend the goodies
that they have collected.
The Republicans tend to favor taxing everyone and then spending the money in terms of improvement
The Democrats tend to favor the taxing of everybody and the spending of money on welfare and hot lunches for the children and things of this sort.
But both of these positions are in essence sustained by the idea of taxing and regulating everybody, that's fundamental, and then you go ahead and spend it the one way or the other.
In a very real sense, then, there is an agreement between the democratic parties of this country, the very thing that Marx called for.
I know that it seems a shocking thing to say, but I would have to point out that in this country the official position of our government has never really been opposed to communism.
It may have been opposed to a number of communists, but not to communism as a doctrine.
And that is essentially the area that we would have to be concerned with if we are concerned with understanding what is going on today.
Now if you will take the Declaration of Independence and the Communist Manifesto and compare the two,
I think you'll see how remarkably different these two instruments are.
The Declaration of Independence, which is a document of inspiration, as the Manifesto is,
sets forth the proposition, however faultily it may have done so, but it sets it forth that every human being is endowed with certain equal and unalienable rights and these rights don't come from government and they don't come from other people, you simply have them as a result of the fact that you are a human being and no one has any right over you whatever and you don't have any right over anyone else whatever and you are
The proposition of moral worth is assured, providing you limit your volitional actions
in terms of your own person and property, and that's what the Declaration of Independence
sets forth.
Now, the Communist Manifesto sets forth the proposition that property should not be privately
owned particularly if it is industrial or productive property.
Any property that is for the use of production or distribution is to be owned by the state,
but it is not the state as it then existed.
It is to be a new kind of state in which the workers have won the battle of democracy and
taken over as the new ruling class.
Now that is supposed to inspire people too.
It is to inspire the workers with the idea that they have been grossly abused, that the
The reason that they don't have as much property as they ought to have is because people like
capitalists, employers, the management team, per se, has really taken advantage of them
and exploited them and thus injured them.
And the whole communist idea is to rectify that injury by creating a new ruling class,
which would be the class of proletariat in a position of power, and then from that time
on the major property, the most meaningful property would be in the hands of the state
and then the state would distribute on the basis of need. In fact, that was Marx's summation
of his own position. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
And there you have, in essence, the communist ethic as opposed to the individualistic ethic
as expressed in the Declaration of Independence.