The Communist Manifesto: Was Written To Serve as the Announcement of the Platform for Their Newly-formed Communist League
In 2002, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development inEurope (OECD) detailed the growing gap between the incomes of the rich andpoor in 20 OECD member states. In particular, the study concluded that thepoorest 30 percent of the population in the countries examined receivedonly 5 to 13 percent of the national income while the richest 30 percent ofthe population received 55 to 65 percent. The United States, Great Britainand the Netherlands demonstrated the biggest growths in social inequality(Henning 1). These numbers suggest some validity to Marx's claims of anuneven class structure inherent to industrial capitalism. However, the factthat a workers' revolution has not yet erupted in any significantlyadvanced capitalist country suggests a significant flaw in Marx and Engels'arguments in the Communist Manifesto. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The Communist Manifesto" in 1848to serve as the announcement of the platform for their newly-formedCommunist League. They published the text just after a revolutionarymovement swept across Europe during 1848 and into 1849 (EncyclopediaBritannica 1). This movement evoked uprisings in numerous European
The proletariat did not seek to revolutionize the system. The proletarian revolution that Marx expected never happened in anyadvanced industrialized country (Constitutional Rights Foundation 1). Elizondo attributes this confidence toMarx's deterministic view of history and his belief in the idea ofhistorical progress. It was this degradation of the proletariat that Marx and Engels arguedwould lead to the workers' revolution that would ultimately overthrow thiscorrupt capitalist system. Thereare, of course, Communist countries today, such as Russia, China, and Cuba. Marx argued that the necessary consequence of the bourgeoisie's ambitionwas the increasing centralization of politics in the hands of a few peopleand for the benefit of these people only (Marx & Engels Part II). Similarly, he believed that he could foresee the eventual demiseof industrial capitalism due to the same historical forces. Marx and Engels state explicitly in Part II of the Manifesto that theybelieve "[t]he history of all hitherto existing societies is the history ofclass struggles" (Marx & Engels Part II). Moreover, the bourgeoisie would only hire them ifit believed that the worker would increase the bourgeoisie's wealth. Thus, for Marx and Engels,concepts such as "free trade" and "laissez faire economics" were not themeans of expanding access to and for foreign markets, but rather the meansby which the bourgeoisie performed "naked, shameless, direct, brutalexploitation" of workers (Marx & Engels Part II). As far as Marx and Engels were concerned, the conclusionson which the Communist Party were based were not hypothetical theories. Rather, the two men stated that their conclusions and predictions werebased on simple observations of "actual relations springing from anexisting class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our veryeyes" (Marx & Engles Part III). But simultaneous with these workers increasingimpoverishment was the increasing wealth of an emerging mercantilist classthat controlled and benefited from the expansion of trade and industry. Sonny Elizondo, in his discussion of the Manifesto, describes Marx andEngels' tone in the Manifesto as "straightforward, even prophetic" and"that of a man confidently explaining to a confused world the reasons for atumult which had not yet begun" (1).
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