   —Karl Marx Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were the founders of modern socialism and communism. Together they authored the Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, and collaborated on Marx's famous work Das Kapital, in which he analyzed economic and social history. Marx and Engels' ideas came to be known as 'Marxism', which greatly influenced the development of socialist ideas. Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818 in the city of Trier, Germany. Marx was a revolutionary who advocated 'merciless criticism of everything existing'. In 1843, Marx went to Paris in order to publish a journal of his radical ideas. He was a critic of capitalism, and an advocate of socialism. The following year he met Frederick Engels, who was to become a friend and collaborator. Marx and Engels were both active in various revolutionary groups, and together worked out the theory and tactics of 'Revolutionary Proletarian Socialism', which they called 'Communism'. Marx was banished from Paris in 1845 as a dangerous revolutionary. He went to Belgium, where, in the spring of 1847 Marx and Engels joined a secret society called the 'Communist League'. Together they wrote the 'Communist Manifesto', which outlines their theory of class struggle, and of the revolutionary role of the proletariat (the common working man). Because of his revolutionary activities, Marx was also banished from Belgium in 1848, ending up in London, where he worked on his book 'Das Kapital', and where he lived until his death in 1883. Marx and Engels' Ideas: Marx used the words 'bourgeois' and 'proletarian' to describe different classes in society. - The bourgeois referred to the class of capitalists ... owners of factories and employers of wage labourers. - The proletariat was the class of wage labourers who didn't produce things of their own, selling their labour in order to live. The term 'socialism' refers to a theory of government where the state owns and administers all production and distribution of goods. There is no private property. The term 'capitalism' refers to an economic system where there is private or corporate ownership of goods, and decisions about production and distribution are made by the owners, as determined by prices and demand set in a free market. A 'manifesto' is a document which proclaims publicly ('makes manifest') the ideas of a group or individual. The term 'communism' has several meanings. According to Marxist theory, it is the final condition of a country when goods produced by the workers are distributed equally to all, and where 'the state' no longer exists. After socialism was adopted as official doctrine by various countries, noteably the former Soviet Union, communism came to mean the political system of a country where a single authoritarian party controls all state-owned production.  In their Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels argued that history always leads eventually to a social revolution, where the result will be a society without economic classes. The Manifesto was written in 1847-48. In 1888, after Marx's death, Engels published an English translation (the cover of the first edition is pictured at the right) and added some notes of his own. We have available for you the complete text of the first section of the Manifesto, entitled Bourgeois and Proletarians, for you to read or print.
The Manifesto had little influence when it was first released. Only after Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' views on socialism became widely known did it become famous; it has since become one of the most widely read (and misread) documents in the world. Some people claim that since its release, Marxists have so completely misinterpreted Marxism that a reading of the original document will show why attempts at building communist states have always failed ... they were never truly 'Marxist' at all. Indeed, Marx's ideas seem far removed from the actual practices of communist countries, like the Soviet Union, which later claimed to follow his writings. According to Marx, socialism would let the workers control the wealth of a country by having the state take control the production of factories, farms, mines, and other industries. He believed that the common worker could never have political equality or freedom without this economic equality. Social services like health, education, and housing would be provided free, but people would still be paid wages according to their work. When all countries had developed socialist economies, they would form an international 'communist' society, ... a stateless society where central government had 'withered away', and there was local control of all affairs by democratic processes at the place of work. There would be no market system (no money, no buying, no selling); rather, there would be a system where people would voluntarily work for the common good, with the understanding that they could receive whatever they needed for free ('from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'). National boundaries and governments would be eliminated, and wars would no longer happen. Marx believed that state control of production (socialism) was a necessary first step. Workers would need re-education under socialism to move them away from selfish capitalist ideas, and this might take many years of state control. But eventually a country could move to true communism, where the 'state' would disappear. His critics, who wanted to see a communist society established right away, argued that once there was a centralized state in control, those rulers would not willingly give up their power. History has proved these critics correct. Both Marx and Engels believed that the ruling classes would never willingly give up their control of society to a socialist government, and that revolution would be necessary. "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways — the point is to change it" The Communist Manifesto was meant partly as a warning to the bourgoisie ... that revolution was inevitable, and they had better accept it. Marx and Engels wrote: " We have seen .. 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. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, 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 productive forces as rapidly as possible. " In their own words, Marx and Engels felt that the following steps would be necessary:
Commentary by the creator of this page: The twentieth century saw many countries adopt Marx and Engels' ideas as a foundation for establishing socialist states, often with violent revolutions. But countries which were to be labelled 'communist' were in fact not communist at all, according to Marx's ideals, but merely socialist totalitarian states which institutionalized the rule of the 'state' and its leaders, while attempting to make everyone else 'equal'. Almost all of these countries are no longer around. Those few that remain keep their citizens in ignorance of the prosperity that surrounds them, while the people suffer repression, and starve, in order that their leaders can remain in power. The question was whether a worker in a socialist totalitarian country, who worked not for himself but for the 'state', but who received various free services, was better off than a worker in a capitalist country where most of the wealth was controlled by a few, but everything a worker made or grew was his own to sell or eat. The answer only became clear near the end of the century, when democratic processes, aided by technology and healthy capitalist societies, helped ensure the prosperity of the citizens of these democratic countries as never before. The central control of communist countries ... indeed, the very ideals of Marx ... overlooked an important quality of human nature which can't be lost through 're-education'. People work harder, longer, and with more energy and enthusiasm, when they benefit from their own labour. No factory worker in Leningrad, or farmer in Siberia, working to produce goods for the State, ever outproduced a worker in the West who made a wage based on how much he made or grew. The industrial base of the Soviet Union relied on State control ... the State told each factory manager what to produce, how much to produce, and how much to sell it for. No ingenuity or inventiveness was encouraged. Western industries in the Free Market system operated on the basis of producing and selling the best quality items, and were in competition with others who were doing the same. This encouraged ingenuity and inventiveness, since the best or newest idea would result in more sales and profits. Scientific educational institutions in communist countries did not generally allow free and independent research by their scientists; they were told what lines of research to follow, and what results were necessary. Only the most famous of their scientists were allowed free reign, and this only because of the international prestige which would reflect well on their country. Most scientists either had to do research in areas of direct and immediate benefit to the State, or had their lines of research laid out for them. But the history of scientific discovery has shown clearly that you can't produce results this way. You can't make discoveries happen 'with a gun pointed at a scientist's head'. Discoveries in science and technology happen most frequently when researchers are free to study whatever they want, according to what interests them. Sometimes results follow from the most unusual lines of research ... lines which would never be permitted in a totalitarian society. This is one chief reason why the West was able to so greatly outdistance the Soviet Union technologically and scientifically. (A good example might be Albert Einstein's work on matter and energy (E=mc2), which was highly theoretical and esoteric ... and which would never have been permitted in a totalitarian country. Yet colleagues of Einstein took his abstract ideas and converted them into hard technology ... the atomic bomb.) Another, somewhat looser, analogy might be the way fighter pilots were trained in the West, and in the Soviet Union. In the latter, pilots were not allowed to experiment with their planes. Training was rigidly controlled, and even attack sorties were directed by a central controller, leaving the pilots little freedom to decide what to do. Western pilots, however, have always been allowed to 'play' with their planes when training, and are encouraged to push them to their limits. Fighter pilots are given the freedom to make their own decisions. The result was, and still is, simply that Western-trained pilots were better, in practice and in battle. They knew their planes' abilities, and were more effective in combat. It is no coincidence that much of the industrial and technological product of the Soviet Union over the course of the twentieth century, with very few exceptions, was crude and backward, compared to what was produced in the West. When it came to science and technology, where discoveries and breakthroughs were the result of employers encouraging their workers to think up new ideas and applications, the State-controlled industries of the Soviet Union, which discouraged independent thought, couldn't keep up. Indeed, much of their technology was stolen from the West and copied. The breakup of the Soviet Union was due, in no small part, to the inability of the Soviet economy to match that of the West. Their system was bankrupt ... centralized control of agriculture was causing their people to face the threat of starvation every winter, while they were spending much of their GNP on outdated weapons. Meanwhile, Western economies were booming, their citizens enjoyed a standard of living unequalled in the history of the world, and technology was producing weapons systems (Ronald Reagan's proposed 'Star Wars' system) with which no communist country could hope to compete. The facts in this article (and the opinions expressed at the end) are the result of considerable research, and we hope you find them useful. However, the author is in no way to be considered an authority on the subject; feel free to point out errors, or give us your opinions. We welcome your thoughts ... you can comment . |