POLITICS AND NATURE

The Communist Manifesto

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels follow the development of bourgeois capitalism from the ashes of feudal social/political orders. This pamphlet examines history as a series of class conflicts based on domination and subordination and illustrates how the ultimate development of this schism between the poor and powerful finds its expression within capitalist theories. Everything in capitalist society, according to the Manifesto, is guided by the desire for attainment of greater wealth.

Feudalism was replaced by “free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted to it, and by the economical and political sway of the bourgeois class” (p. 13). This is not, however, the “end of history” as some modern liberals have boasted about. Marx and Engels promote a universal socialism wherein the means of production are universally owned which will cause the dissipation of bourgeois political orders. The increasingly unstable economic downturns (warned of by Adam Smith and others) will, according to Marx and Engels, bring the eventual downfall of the state. The bourgeois has created the means of its own destruction and armed the proletariat with the weapons by which capitalism will be destroyed.

Capitalism, in their view, is not the ultimate defender of individual liberty it claims to be. The system creates “slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; [the proletariat] are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself” (p. 15). Life becomes dreary and prospects desolate for the proletariat. As a mere automaton surviving for the good of the factory, the worker becomes dispirited and loses his humanity. However, as industry grows, the number of workers grows and their interaction with one another enhances their feelings of solidarity until they will, eventually, break from their bondage and instill a new, egalitarian order based upon justice and individual rights. The ruling order is not, according to Marx and Engels, a natural form based on reason but a construct of the powerful, like all forms before it. (p. 29).

Sections 3 and 4 are evaluations of various forms of socialism, their developments and arguments, and their history and the role they play within various states. Section 3 analyzes what they call reactionary socialism: feudal socialism, petty-bourgeois socialism, German (“True”) socialism. It then examines conservative (bourgeois) socialism and critical utopian socialism (or communism). Each of these has its strengths and weaknesses but, in the end, the Manifesto is a call for worldwide unification of each group and all the proletariats to overthrow the current social system.

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things . . . The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at the Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. (p. 54-55).

It is an open call for worldwide revolution. The bourgeois has created the system it believes is moral and just but the worker knows better and will eventually have the means to pursue freedom and universal justice.

Capital

The Communist Manifesto was a treatise meant for the masses. Capital is Marx’s work which fully explains his critique of capitalism and his analysis of the means of its downfall. It is here he writes of how capitalism turns everything into commodities, including individuals. His labor theory of value is closely related to Locke’s. “What exclusively determines the magnitude of the value of any article is therefore the amount of labour socially necessary, or the labour-time socially necessary for its production” (p. 129). The difference, of course, is that Locke promotes the notion that one can own the labor of another through a contract while Marx makes it clear he believes the labor of the individual is what truly matters. He also emphasizes the capability of humans to work in social instead of purely individualistic settings. Therefore, the eventual unity of the proletariat and the capability to create a socialist state is possible.

Marx spends a great deal of time in Capital analyzing the complexities of capitalism, its driving forces, and its internal contradictions. He shows how the growth of capital is continuous. Through the exchange of commodities for profit, it constantly changes. If money is simply spent, it is taken out of the circulation and thus is lost as capital. The consistent reinvestment of capital leads to surplus value (profit) which can only be increased by decreasing labor costs, assuming production costs stay constant. Thus the capitalist is in a continuous expansion of exploitation in order to seek methods by which to increase surplus value.

The so-called democratic governance of liberal capitalism, according to Marx, is a poorly veiled enforcement mechanism for the bourgeois to enhance their own power over society. Legislation, such as the Factory Act of 1850, is ignored by those who would enforce worker protection in favor of the owners of capital. The end result is essentially slave conditions for the proletariat encouraged by the dominant bourgeois under cover of a governmental structure whose means and ends are merely the perpetuation of the domination-subordination relationship desired by the owners of capital. Constant labor is required by the bourgeois or else there is a resource lying wastefully which ‘represent a useless advance of capital” (p. 367).

Capital is always required to be in use, to be making more capital for ever greater gain. This demands increasing working hours which take its toll on workers but capitalists simply look to the market to get more slave labor under the guise of the employment contract. Marx tells many tales of the drudgery and blatant disregard for the well being of nineteenth century workers.

However, since labor creates surplus value, it is necessary for the owner of capital to increase the number of workers as well as their hours no matter what the personal or social costs associated with such a regimen. Workers, toiling together, develop their natural ability to cooperate, according to Marx. This helps bring workers together.

Marx also works to debunk Locke’s theories of property through his analysis of the theory of primitive accumulation. Primitive accumulation, according to Locke, resulted out of an individual’s drive and labor which allowed him to claim land for his own uses. According to Marx, the reality is that the initial gaining of land by the bourgeois was little more than state sponsored theft. Capital accumulation, to begin with, arises out of the growing labor force. Classical economists claimed this was a beneficial aspect of capitalism as it would increase the flow of money and goods. Marx disagreed. “The mechanism of the accumulation process itself not only increases the amount of capital but also the mass of the ‘labouring poor’, i.e. the wage-labourers, who turn their labour-power into a force for increasing the valorization of capital” (p. 765). The constant expansion of capital does nothing but enrich the bourgeois at the expense of ever greater numbers of workers. And it was all built on a simple transformation from feudal to capitalist society via primitive accumulation, little more than alternating masters.

Conclusion

Marx provides one of the fullest accounts of capitalism I, certainly, have read. His examination of the modes of production, the self perpetuating power relationships, and injustice involved in the system are comprehensive and compelling. As much as he disdains the utopian socialism outlined in the Manifesto, however, he fails to provide a cohesive political solution and, in the end, leaves his own brand of some utopian future where: “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” (CM, p. 37).

Marx ignores the political aspects existing within all social orders in the trust that all will be well when the workers unite. I consider this a fatal flaw in his reasoning. Whether Lenin could have pulled it off had he lived a bit longer and kept Trotsky away from the ice pick we will never know. In the end, capitalism has changed, and will need to change more to insure civil rights for all but, as a liberal capitalist, I believe Marx has a great deal to say to this society and the possibilities inherent within a more democratic system than what currently exists.

I disagree completely with the calls for revolution. I think the violent overthrow of the existing order would simply create new haves and increase the destitution of the have-nots. In the meantime, there would be tremendous bloodshed. The arguments for greater equality and justice permeating throughout Marx’s writings, I think, get lost in the overarching demands of the Manifesto. In a war of all against all, who wins?

Perhaps, given the current global economic crises, Marx will be revisited and the old fears will lead to new understandings and opportunities for the future. I think he is very relevant to today. His influence has been great. His calls for justice and righteousness are quite biblical in tone. He would have made a good Old Testament prophet.