Talk:The Communist Manifesto
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Why does manifest point to a triple redirect, and doesn't talk about other meanings, like manifest freight trains? --Cctoide 10:20, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Text of the Manifesto taken from http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1848-CM/cm.html
This needs to be Wikified more. -John Lynch
If the book calls itself communist why do Europeans call its philosophy socialist? Also if the book is called "The Communist Manifesto because it explains the Communist party's philosophy, than the party must be older than the book. Is that true or was the party founded based on the book?
Marx and Engels were asked to write the Manifesto by the Communist groups. So, yes the political entity preceedes the Manifesto. The "Communist Party" as such, however, did not exist. -John Lynch
I took out the line
- an economic philosophy which is based on the individual unit of a commune, or community
which I consider a vague and perhaps misleading definition of communism, and replaced it with something more specific (see the text) SR
This page isn't particularly NPOV, is it? The claim that Lenin and Stalin "misused" the term "Communism" is a Trotskyist or Menshevik assertion against Leninism or Bolshevism. (That most remaining Communists in the West today are anti-Soviet doesn't change the fact that it is a politically rife assertion historically.) --FOo
Better to rewrite than to whine, I have discovered. I'm not a Communist or socialist of any ilk myself, but I have tried to give a sympathetic reading of Marx and the early Communists as historical figures -- while also mentioning the tension between Marxism and the Soviet system as well as the critics of Communism.
The interstitial quotes from the Manifesto are intended to convey its style as a piece of writing, as well as its political content. (It is to exemplify its style that I chose these three, rather than (for instance) its enumeration of the Communist program.) Of course, they include the famous opening and closing, in a little more context than the previous revision of this page.
I would like to ask that those who edit this page keep NPOV strongly in mind. There are few topics in recent world history more disparate in people's feelings than Communism: there are many who see it as virtuous and noble, and many who see it as evil; many who romanticize pre-Soviet Marxism, and many who condemn the whole affair as a road to hell paved (at least at first) with good intentions. I for one am compelled by my education to admire the spirit of Revolution, though compelled by my learning to agree with the critics I mention in the article. --FOo
I think your middle quotation particularly important for understanding how deterministic the authors believed history to be (i.e., "communism" would be unavoidable at a certain point in the development of "capitalism" and would happen automatically by the conditions of life of the workers brought about by the great "capitalist" monopolies.) These conditions were never reached in any "capitalist" country and other means were found of handling monopolies (e.g., unions, anti-trust laws). RTC 02:48 Oct 30, 2002 (UTC)
The way this article is worded indicates that the author accepts that Marx intended a distinction between "socialism" and "communism." A textual analysis of Marx's and Engels' works shows that, at least as far as they were concerned, the terms were interchangeable. It was Lenin, in his 1917 book The State and Revolution, that specifically distinguished between socialism as the transitionary phase and communism the terminal phase of the revolution. So with that in mind, if no one objects, I'd like to edit the article to read as follows:
The program described in the Manifesto -- that is to say, the policies the Communists of its day sought to implement -- is termed socialism or communism. These policies included, among others, the abolition of land ownership and inheritance, the progressive income tax, and the nationalization of means of production and transportation. These policies, which would be implemented by a revolutionary government (the dictatorship of the proletariat), would (the authors believed) be a precursor to the stateless and classless society envisioned by the socialists. The term "Communism" is also used to refer to the beliefs and practices of the Communist Party, including that of the Soviet era which differed substantially from Marx and Engels' conception.
[...]
It is this concept of the transition from capitalism to communism which many critics of the Manifesto, particularly during and after the Soviet era, have alighted upon....
[...]In other words, the dictatorship of the proletariat fades into communism when the representative democracy of the revolution fades into the direct democracy of communism.
This will more accurately reflect the wording of the Manifesto as well as Marx's and Engels' other works. I'm also adding a link to the text of the Manifesto at the Marxists Internet Archive (available under the FDL).--Eric 03:12, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
February 21st or 26th?
I have seen some sources claiming that the Manifesto was published February 26th and not 21st. Is there a reliable printed source for the exact date? I thought Marx and Engels were on the continent in February and March of that year. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:23, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
socialist
well actually communism is all about socialism it realy is just the idea that if you become socialist enough classes will disaper
how relevant is the communmist manifesto today?
can we still say that the motor of history is the class struggle? if the classes polarisation of bourgeois and proletariat is not similar to our present society, the exploitation of the many by the few is nonetheless still present. another point is that capitalism was see nby marx as a necessary stade for the communist revolution. if this revolution is hard to imagine nowadays, what is the next step?
- This isn't a forum for the discussion of communism or the manifesto, it's solely for discussion of the article. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 10:56, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)