Karl Marx - Communist Manifest sect. 2/3/4

Again, Communists call for the abolition of private property

- This does not mean "the property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant." - That property has already been mostly destroyed in the path of bourgeois capitalism. - This destruction shows as clearly as anything the collective nature of production in advanced industrial societies—and in the parasitic "post-industrial" societies too.

Marx goes on to consider other common objections against communism:

1. It will destroy individuality and freedom. Reply 1: "Individuality" means nothing in capitalism other than how we are defined by our various "commodity fetishisms" and also by which capitalists we are making money for. Reply 2: For 90% of the world, these things don't exist. See the chart in the next slide. 2. It will destroy incentive. Reply: If productivity were a function of monetary incentive then capitalism would have collapsed a long time ago. The richest are nonproductive while the most productive are poorest. More often than not, affluence breeds idleness, not industry.

Conservative or Bourgeois Socialists are trying to help the poor by

1. More job training for the poor, as long as they don't get all uppity and start forming unions 2. Prison reform, but no real change in the laws that protect the property of the rich while throwing away the lives of the poor 3. Nationalistic trade tariffs to protect our poor people from those horrible poor people in other countries All of this, of course, will only benefit the unproductive and parasitic bourgeois and petty bourgeois who benefit by making more money as job training counselors, prison guards and managers of inefficient local businesses.

Section IV:

1. The workers of the world unite. 2. The existing states are overthrown by force and the state "withers away."

Marx goes on to consider other common objections against communism:

3. It will destroy culture. Reply: In capitalism, "culture" is nothing more than bourgeois art, bourgeois religion and general instruction in how to become a machine for the bourgeois. 4. It will destroy respect for law. Reply: "Law" is just bourgeois law in capitalism. 5. It will destroy the family. Reply 1: Indeed, it will destroy the patriarchal enslavement of women and children. Reply 2: Indeed also, it will destroy prostitution--in all its forms. Reply 3: The romantic ideal of the family has already been smashed by capitalism.

Marx goes on to consider other common objections against communism:

6. It will destroy faith in eternal truths. Reply: In any epoch, these are just the tenets that enforce the epoch's dominant mode of class oppression. 7. It will destroy democracy. Reply: It will only destroy the capitalist's phony system of democracy (where offices go to the highest bidders and their proxies, and most eligible voters never show up). Communism is the only real democracy—the true "tyranny of the majority" that so terrified bourgeois apologists like Mill.

All three of these alternative theories envision peaceful transitions from capitalism to something better and, thus, all three are delusional.

Change will come only at the point of a gun, through violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie who will go to whatever lengths necessary to protect their holdings and their obsolete positions of supremacy.

Petty Bourgeois Socialism

Charming little mom-and-pop type businesspeople and "family farmers" who get crushed as capitalism moves toward global market efficiency—they have a tendency to blame foreigners, Jews and ethic minorities for their problems (even though the real cause is the international bourgeoisie)

Feudal Socialism

Fans of Medieval Christianity and all of its silly ideas about how the love of money is the root of all evil

Though generally careful not to speculate too much about the details of a future communist world, Marx does say this about the end of alienated labor:

In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

German or "True" Socialism

Odd intellectuals hanging out in universities saying things no one understands or cares about; they mourn about the (non-existent) good old days when intellectuals were respected for saying silly things

The claim about the state withering away is from Engels's Anti-Dühring (1878) and is troublesome

One standard interpretation is that Marxism, in the end, advocates anarchism. A second interpretation is that Marxism, in the end, advocates only the end to the state as an instrument of bourgeois oppression, the state as we know it. There would still be cops, courts, laws and restraints in the workers' paradise. Marxists also tend to agree that the workers' paradise will be preceded by a period of "the dictatorship of the proletariat." Though Lenin talked about this much more than Marx and Engels.

Critical Utopian Socialism and Communism

Think hippie communes and "intentional communities."

Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism

This is coming from bleeding-heart, bourgeois and petty bourgeois liberals who think it is really, really terrible that the poor suffer sooooo much and those big corporations are soooooo naughty

Reactionary Socialism

This is, essentially, coming from classes that had status in feudalism and early capitalism that they have lost because of the advance of capitalism, especially: Feudal Socialism Petty Bourgeois Socialism German or "True" Socialism

A second contradiction of capitalism:

capitalists have to organize the workforce into virtual armies This makes it easy for the communist revolutionary to just come along, tell the workers to put down their tools, take up arms and act like a real army. The organizing has already been done for them—by their enemies.

In capitalist societies:

even the unemployed play an important role by creating a pool of exploitation-ready slaves i. Full employment is every capitalist's nightmare because labor scarcity would drive wages up. ii. Capitalists hire as few people as possible and pay them as little as possible.

In advanced societies:

no wealth at all can be produced without coordinated, totally interdependent work from almost everyone

A third contradiction of capitalism:

sappy liberal ideas (like those of Mill) about free speech can be exploited by revolutionaries to spread propaganda to the proletariat—like the Manifesto.

one of the main contradictions of capitalism

since Capitalists hire as few people as possible and pay them as little as possible, then: eventually no one has enough money to buy any of the things the capitalist has to sell As occasionally recognized by capitalists themselves (e.g., Henry Ford and Nick Hanauer) capitalists don't create jobs, workers and consumers do. (They also make all the roads, at public expense, that all those Fords drive on—and all of the water lines, sewer lines, power grids, telecommunication lines, schools, hospitals...)