History In Minutes: The Communist Manifesto

On its 177th anniversary, Utkarsh Mishra explores the history and relevance of The Communist Manifesto.

Since its publication on this day, February 21, in 1848, The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels has been one of the most widely read documents worldwide.

While some historians have, quite ironically, termed it a 'holy book,' others have called it "the single most influential text written in the nineteenth century."

Even those who have not read it can recognise phrases like 'a spectre is haunting Europe' or 'workers of all countries, unite' when they see them.

So, what makes it such a sought-after text almost two centuries after its publication? Under what conditions was it born, and how far have the ideas envisioned in it been realised? On its 177th anniversary, let's explore some of these questions.

The History Behind It

Accustomed to seeing their photographs with long, white beards, we often fail to appreciate the fact that when they wrote the manifesto, Marx was 29 and Engels was 27. Scholars have argued that it would have been difficult for the manifesto to have been written in any decade other than the 1840s, which was a period of 'growing political and economic crises in Europe'.

In 1846, Marx and Engels began a Communist Correspondence Committee, which brought them into contact with the League of the Just, an organisation of German workers mostly living in exile in Paris and London. They joined it in 1847 and, at the League's congress in June that year, renamed it the Communist League.

In November 1847, at the second congress of the League in London, Marx was commissioned to write its official programme.

That led to the birth of The Communist Manifesto.

The Central Ideas

The manifesto is divided into four sections, preceded by a preamble.

Marx and Engels had a 'materialist conception of historical change' (also called 'historical materialism'), which held that a 'society can be understood and changed by examining the material conditions on which it is based," that is, by examining the way in which it "organises production.'

According to Marx, this depends on 'forces of production' (raw materials, technology, skill, etc) and 'social relations of production' -- 'who controls the forces of production and how'.

The relations of production, in turn, define the 'class structure' of a society.

In the first section of the manifesto, Marx and Engels argue that 'the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles'. That is, they believed that all societies have been divided into classes with conflicting interests, with those at the top controlling the wealth, or 'forces of production'.

Contemporary society has been divided into the 'bourgeoisie', or modern capitalists who own the forces of production and employ wage labour, and the 'proletariat', workers who 'live entirely from the sale of labour' and do not derive 'any profit from any kind of capital'.

Marx and Engels argue that capitalism is based on exploitation, as capitalists buy labour only if they can make more than they pay the worker in wages.

This leads to workers being dissatisfied and 'alienated' from their jobs.

They also argue that capitalism often leads to overproduction, resulting in economic crises and further declines in wages. This 'growing contradiction between forces and relations of production' will eventually lead to the downfall of the bourgeoisie at the hands of the proletariat, establishing the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.

The later sections develop the idea of communism and its relationship with working and non-working classes, along with a critique of 'petty bourgeois socialism'.

The Impact It Had

Initially, the Manifesto had a limited but notable impact. Within days of its publication, the wave of 1848 revolutions began across Europe, but it appears to have had little influence over them.

As these uprisings subsided, the Manifesto faded into obscurity, with only sporadic reprints and translations. However, as socialist movements gained traction in the 1860s -- especially in Germany and within the First International -- interest in the Manifesto resurged.

Marx's defence of the Paris Commune in 1871 further elevated his reputation, leading to renewed attention to the Manifesto . Its citation in the 1872 treason trial of the leaders of the German Social Democratic Party enabled its first mass publication.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Manifesto gained even wider recognition with the rise of socialist parties. But it was the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Tsarist Russia that truly cemented its global significance.

Although Marx argued that the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie would inevitably lead to a revolution, he did not provide a detailed roadmap for how this revolution would unfold, assuming that it would emerge organically from the contradictions of capitalism.

On the other hand, Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, argued that the State (controlled by the proletariat through a 'vanguard party') would play a central role in overthrowing capitalism and establishing socialism.

Nonetheless, the Russian communists aligned themselves explicitly with the Manifesto, enabling its publication across the world.

Over the years, Marxism has become a dogma, and few communists today feel the need to revise the doctrine to better suit contemporary society, despite so-called Communist governments failing worldwide after causing much disruption in people's lives.

Why It Stays Relevant

Simply because the problems that the Manifesto claims to address still exist.

We are not really out of what Marx called the 'crises of overproduction'. We have surplus food production on one side and people dying of hunger on the other.

Many Marxist scholars today believe that climate change is the most appropriate example of capitalist destruction, where big producers avoid measures to cut back on emissions despite massive scientific evidence predicting irreversible damage otherwise.

Big companies still focus on maximising profits while minimising 'costs', including wages. This exercise in 'optimisation' leads to workers receiving paltry wage increases even when profits soar.

Can It Help Us Today?

It would be utterly delusional to think that capital can be destroyed. It would be even more delusional to believe that the means of production can be fully democratised.

The world has changed a lot in 177 years. We have seen how non-Communist welfare States have done a much better job of ensuring labour security than those that have called themselves 'People's Democratic Republics'.

What is needed is to end the exploitative nature of capitalism, a tendency that seems not to have abated over the years.

While the traditional understanding of the 'working class' is still factory or farm workers, the modern-day reality is that the condition of anybody working for a paycheck is not much different. At least the COVID-19 pandemic has made it glaringly clear that all of us are vulnerable to 'cost-cutting' or 'downsizing'.

It can lead to worse outcomes in countries with weak social security nets.

In the Manifesto , Marx and Engels admire the achievements of capitalism. What they want is for these benefits to be 'enjoyed by everybody rather than monopolized by a small ruling class'.

Some of the observations made in the Manifesto are truer today than they were then. For example, the work of labourers losing 'all individual character'. It is much easier to replace a worker today than it was earlier.

So, we can conclude that a 'classless society' means the cessation of class struggles, not necessarily the destruction of class itself. How we achieve this in today's setting can be debated. But dismissing the problems at hand as 'communist issues' will do more harm than good.