Book: The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels

I read The Communist Manifesto last week, right after I finished the Economics lectures by Timothy Taylor. This is my first time learning about economics, the basic theory and issues. Economics is a fascinating subject. It all comes from common sense, and it is an accurate description of the real world. Economics is the nightmare of all idealists. What impacted me the most are: economics is a powerful force that one cannot ignore; incentive drives the world around.

Then I read Marx and Engels. Written in 1848, this book is relevant and refreshing. I forgot that Marx had a doctorate of philosophy. The writing is precise, and the translation is clear. Below are a few notes I took during the reading (without using blockquote)

"The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all nations, even the most barbarian, into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In a word, it creates a world after its own image." (How visionary!!)

In times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour..., a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole." (This is talking about Marx and Engels themselves.)

"The bourgeoisie if unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society... because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him." (The keyword here is unfit. It says if the overall human condition become worse, then it is time to change the social structure.)

"The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole." (This says that the communists are the ultimate idealists, because they represent all people in the world, regarding to nations and vision.)

"The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas of principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer." (Not a reformer)

"Capital is therefore not a personal, it is a social, power."

"In Communists society, accumulated labor is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the laborer." (Idealist speaking here).

Mike had a discussion with my father about the "communal of women" issue in the Manifesto. My father said there were not such clause in the Chinese version, and Mike insisted that it was advocated in the English version. I read the relevant passages carefully and found that Mike had misunderstood the text. The main point was to attack the family system of the bourgeois because of their hypocrisy, because they are basically treating women as communal properties, as prostitutes, public or private. The text in question is this: "The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial", which says that communists are only being truthful to nature. Later it declares the disappearing of communal women: "the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private".

"The first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to establish democracy." (This is where the theory becomes too idealistic that it falls apart. Individuals are more or less the same, be them of the working class or of the ruling class. They only become different when their different social roles dictate different social behaviors. When the proletariat becomes the ruling class, they adopt the interests of the new class. The proletariat will no longer be proletariat, and their only interest is to rule.)

More thoughts: Marx establishes in the beginning that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles", so the existence of classes will not go away in any society. In another word, class struggle comes with human society and will not go away. Like everything else in the universe, class polarity is only natural. Communism aims to do away with classes, and to create an ideal world of one-ness. This one-ness can never happen in the real world. Communism is an ultimate goal and a direction of social evolution, a Buddha-state of society. It is easy to describe the one-ness, but no one yet knows how to achieve it. The last section "Socialist and Communist Literature" is a throughout analysis of other more practical theories. Communism is also, as it says about the others, "the interests of human nature, of man in general, who belongs to no class, has no reality, who exists only in the misty realm of philosophical fantasy". This is why I think the Communism theory presented in this book is flawed.