MANIFESTO OF THE COMMUNIST PARTYMarx and Engels1

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THE BOURGEOIS REVOLUTIONS

The juridical and institutional transformations characteristic of the transition from the Ancien Régime to the modern bourgeois state, can be summarized as follows:

1. Emancipation of the serfs from personal serfdom and commutation of dues owed to their lord, from services (corvées) to money.

2. Division of the lords' fiefs into small peasant properties or their direct transformation into capitalist agricultural enterprises.

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3. Juridical transformation of conditional property rights typical of the feudal regime, into absolute property typical of the mercantile and later capitalist economy.

4. Abolition of the privileges of the nobles, including judicial and state powers in their fiefs.

5. Juridical guarantees protecting individuals and their property against arbitrary action by lords or the Crown.

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6. Restriction of Church power and land ownership and freedom of religion and conscience. Abolition of the tax paid to the Church: the tithe.

7. Equality before the law and an end to the nobility's privileged access to official responsibilities, "the opening of careers to talent."

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8. Reduction or even elimination of institutional obstacles to the free activity of artisans, merchants, and manufacturers, particularly the freedom to purchase labor power and sell commodities and services produced by it; elimination of the corporate organization of crafts and internal customs.

9. A diminution in the censorship of ideas. 10./ Rationalization of the territorial divisions,

weights and measures, education, tax system and civil and penal legislation.

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11. Limitation or even elimination of royal power by national representative bodies, elected first through a propertied franchise, and later universal suffrage.

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These transformations did not come about in linear fashion but earlier or later, in different combinations and forms, depending on the country. Some were implemented little by little as the market economy and then capitalism developed within the Ancient Regime. Others were implemented by absolutism as part of its rationalizing, centralizing and mercantilist reforms. But all bourgeois revolutions caused an acceleration of these measures, were fought over attempts to implement programs of this sort, and centered on the conflicts of classes and parties around such programs. 8

BOURGEOIS

Bourgeois; similar to middle class Juridically, any citizen of a town or city was a

bourgeois (or burgher, in English). (This definition is quite different from that used by contemporary Marxists for whom all capitalists, whether they exploit wage labor in the country or city, are bourgeois).

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THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1848.

First thing to know is that the aristocracy survived in Europe pretty much until World War I

The United States was a republic and for white males suffrage was pretty much universal from the beginning of the republic. This means that the formation of the U.S. working class took place under conditions rather different from those in Europe. Lack of agrarian aristocracy, availability of land for colonization in a frontier that was expanding, high wages historically as a result o f these conditions. None of these conditions applied in Europe.

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In Europe, DEMOCRATIC rights, including male universal suffrage, were conquests of the working class. Inclusion in the political process can be said to be the principal conquest of 19th century working class activity.

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REVOLUTUIONS OF 1848

In 1848, there were a series of revolutions in Europe, they were republican, that is, antimonarchical revolutions, beginning in Sicily and spreading to France, Germany, Italy, and the Austrian Empire. The all ended in failure and repression, and were followed by widespread disillusionment of the revolutionary forces.

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This movement extended through all of Europe. Democratic insurrections in Paris, Vienna, and Berlin. In France only the revolution succeeded, république démocratique and république démocratique et sociale, workers insurrection in 1848\First time there is a distinctively working class perspective in the revolution, unlike the revolution of 1789 in which working class placed a small role.

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Everywhere the armies remained loyal to the governments, and restoration of the old order, of the monarchies began. Repression in Paris and Prague, Lombardy and Vienna. December 1848 repression in Berlin, 1849 by Prussian army in Saxony and Baden. French restored order in Rome, in Hungary by Russian troops. European wide revolution and European wide monarchical counter revolution.

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Withdrawal of liberal, democratic or nationalist concessions withdrawn. Universal suffrage, liberty of the press, and of assembly disappeared, absolute monarchy was reestablished in Germany, Austria and Italy In France, coup-d’état against the republican assembly Prince Louis Napoleon on Dec 2, 1851, and the establishment of hereditary empire under Napoleon II in 1852.

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Restoration was not complete, universal suffrage remained in France, a constitution in Prussia, an assembly in Sardinia, but overall, counterrevolution was triumphant.

In Martinique and Guadeloupe, French colonies in the Caribbean, slavery was abolished.

Bourgeois revolutions, in Marx, distinctive epoch, contrasted from that of “Old Order” Ancien Regime, feudalism, absolutist monarchies. Marx and Engels create ideal models of the new societies, economically Britain, politically France.

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CONTEXT, THEREFORE, IS

1) absolute monarchies 2) landed aristocracies in Europe 3) incipient urban industrial development, in cities,

strength of bourgeoisie increasing 4) economic transition to a new order is under way,

political transition to the new order is not yet under way; idea of adjustment of the superstructure to the base has something to do with this reality, with the Fact. that bourgeois development was incipient, gradual, irreversible, nothing could turn it back, yet the state structures were more rigid, apparently not subject to change through evolution bur rather

through dramatic changes compressed in time, called REVOLUTION 17

IN THE YEAR 1848

A) Europe achieved universal suffrage B) Women acquired the right to vote C) There was widespread revolution

throughout all of Europe D) All of the above E Nove of the above

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IN 1848 IN EUROPE

A) The European working class fought to obtain elementary democratic rights and republican forms of government

B) The bourgeoisie gave up all of its property rights

C) The Nobility lost all of its power D) Monarchy was eradicated E) Slavery was abolished

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EULOGIES

“The bourgeoisie […] has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former exoduses of nations and crusades.”

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EULOGIES

Marx recognized the extraordinary achievements of the society he criticized, especially relative to all anterior forms of society

What Marx grasped as the dynamic aspect of capitalism is still with us today, surprisingly, few have attributed as much positive dynamism to capitalist society as Marx.

This dynamic description of capitalism, is still current today

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REVOLUTIONIZING INSTRUMENTS OF PRODUCTION “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly

revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.”

P. 5 (note: later on theory of competition; here still philosophical). 22

GLOBALIZATION

“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.” (p. 6)

(contemporary sound to these words)

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GLOBALIZATION (CONT) The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation

of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe.

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GLOBALIZATION (CONT) In place of the old wants, satisfied by the

production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

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MARX THOUGHT THAT

A) Capitalism was destined to be a local phenomenon, restricted to the British Isles and Western Europe

B) Marx thought capitalism was a disaster relative to previous “modes of production”

C) Marx was impressed by the dynamic aspects of capitalism and thought it would conquer the entire globe

D) Capitalism’s inequality was so devastating that it represented a historical regression.

E) Nothing positive could be expected of capitalist development.

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DIFFUSION, DEVELOPMENT, EARLY IMAGES The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all

instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of 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 one word, it creates a world after its own image. (p. 6)

Diffusion and equalization, or imperialism and blocked development 27

RURAL / URBAN DIVIDE The bourgeoisie has subjected the

country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West. P. 6

(Hobsbawm comment on “idiocy”)

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EULOGY/SOCIAL LABOR The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one

hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization or rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground -- what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?

(note on 1st and second industrial revolutions, ca)29

DEVELOPMENT/ REVOLUTION We see then: the means of production and of

exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organization of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.

Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted to it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class.

(incipient theory of bourgeois revolutions, 1848 precisely!)

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PREMATURE ASSESSMENT?

“Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.” p. 7

(This was probably still not true in 1848, but it certainly is today, think of the ECOLOGICAL impact of modern capitalism).

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“COMMERCIAL CRISES” .It is enough to mention the commercial

crises that, by their periodical return, put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity -- the epidemic of over-production.

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CRISES OF OVERPRODUCTION . Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of

momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand, by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented. P. 7

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IMPORTANT THEMES IN MANIFESTO

Globalization: System in relentless expansion, likely to encompass the entire globe.

Theory Bourgeois Revolutions: Uneven development of economic and political dimensions of social life leads to revolution.

Ecological Consequences of Capitalism: Development of the “productive forces” creates forces beyond our control.

Recurrent, Periodic Crises: New economic system is characterized by periodic crises, typical form is crisis of overproduction, which are distinct and different from previous forms of crisis.

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BATTLE OF DEMOCRACY “We have seen above that the first step

in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.”

“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.” (p. 20)

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WHICH OF THESE IS TRUE, ACCORDING TO HOBSBAWM,?

A) the Manifesto of the Communist Party is of interest principally because it is so outdated and irrelevant today

B) The MCP is Marx’s final word on the capitalist system

C) The MCP was written by the “mature” Marx once he had thoroughly studied political economy

D) The MCP, written before Marx studied political economy, nevertheless contains prophetic passages on the future evolution of capitalism.

E) It took Marx more than a decade to write the MCP.

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PROGRAM (MODEST?) Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the

following will be pretty generally applicable. 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all

rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and

rebels. 5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by

means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

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PROGRAM (CONT) 7. Extension of factories and instruments of

production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

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