Reading through the program one realises the distance that has been travelled since it was written. Some of the major planks are the Abolition of Child Labour, the creation of a progressive income tax and Free Education.

Perhaps one of its major weaknesses is that Marx was a person who tended to carry a grudge. Thus a third of it is devoted to attacks on some of his contemporary enemies and rivals. These disputes have so long passed into history they are incomprehensible.

The modern notion of Communism of course stems not from Marx but from Stalin and Lenin. Marx wrote at a time when the only democratic country in Europe was France. England, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire all had limited franchises and Russia was of course an autocracy. One of the major reforms he battled for was the introduction of democracy. It was his belief that the implementation of his program would flow from that.

Following Marx's death his movement evolved into a parliamentary movement the Social Democratic Party. Communism as a modern political phenomena dates from 1917 when splinter Social Democrats followed Russia's lead and developed small conspiratorial parties who were committed to the seizure of power by force. Stalinism is an offshoot of this system and is a form of state terror aimed at ensuring the survival of unpopular anti democratic regimes.

Reading through the Manifesto one can see the basis of a system which was not only an effective for mobilising political movements, but came to influence intellectual debate for the next century. There is also perhaps a sense of a naive optimism which could not contemplate the sorts of disasters which were to occur over the next hundred years.


Marx and Engels: great thinkers, sub-par writers   June 11, 2001
 40 out of 71 found this review helpful

Reading some of the hysterical attacks on this book amuses me more than a "Fawlty Towers" marathon. Examples:

"Which country has put forth more of a concerted effort to adopt Marxist ideals, which country has tried its level best to adopt economic policy more in line to that espoused by the Communist Manifesto: U.S. or Russia? Japan or China? Kenya or Tanzania Puerto Rico or Cuba? Namibia or Angola? Hong Kong or Viet Nam? West Germany or East Germany?" Guess what? NONE of those countries even TRIED to adopt "economic policy more in line to that espoused by the Communist Manifesto" (which is fundamentally not a treatise on economics -- that'd be "Das Kapital"). Each of these countries adopted backwards, reactionary regimes based on the nationalist system of "socialism in one country," directly contradicting Marx and Engels' vision of an international workers' movement.

"Let's look at the results: over 100,000,000 killed and countless imprisoned, and an ideology for the Democratic Party." Hmm, so by that logic, Christianity is an evil system of thought because of the countless hundreds of millions killed in its name, if not its actual beliefs. And anyone who thinks the Democratic Party is "communist" must lie somewhere to the right of Mussolini on the political spectrum.

"Communists should ask themselves why only murders and tyrants have espoused their ideology." Gee, I espouse communist ideology. I guess I'm a murderer and a tyrant, then. Thanks for clearing that up -- my mind had been so damaged by this evil, deceptive swill that I didn't even realize I'm one of history's great villians!

As for the book itself......well, I have to be honest, it's not that great. It was written in a hurry and it shows, not only in its brief length but in its severe disorganization (there is much overlap between the various sections) that makes reading certain parts of the book an exercise in patience and concentration -- an exercise that is quite simply not worth the trouble when there are plenty of other works out there on socialist/communist thought espousing the same ideas as Marx and Engels but in an eminently more readable fashion. The best example, I think, is the writings of Rosa Luxemburg, who maintained a relative fidelity to Marx and Engels' theories but also grappled with the practical implementation of an international workers' movement -- which she unfortunately did not live long enough to lead. (Which raises the question: if a socialist state is such an unworkable and unreasonable goal, why did they bother killing her in the first place?)


Deadly Cultural Backslash   November 25, 1999
 32 out of 67 found this review helpful

This book exposes Marx's ideology, one of the major, influential recent thinkers, next to Darwin and Hitler. His ideology competed with Hitler's national-socialism and with capitalism / liberalism, (all these sharing however in the heritage of Darwinian scientific discoveries). This is why I read Marx' book as much as I read the classics by Darwin of Hitler, or some capitalists. What should I think of the book? Unlike many reviewers who were negative about this book, I don't think I should judge the book according to the mass slaughters that are / were necessary for implementing Marxism, but on the end result. So I will pass on the fact that Marx's followers murdered more than 100 millions innocent civilians (about 20 times more than the 6 millions Jews the nazis may have killed), not speaking of the many war casualities. I will assume it was the price to pay to implement Marxism, if Marxism is a great thing. But is it? In the book I could identify two aims in Marx's ideology: 1. to make sure everyone can consume many material goods, becomes somewhat rich. 2. to make sure that social classes disappear. Now it is very clear that Marxism, in the countries were it was implemented, has lead most of the population to utter poverty and to a lack of consumption goods, including the most basic ones (food, heating, etc.). Second all Marxist countries have lead to higher class contrasts, with those who are not member of the party on one side, and on the other side the nomenklatura, the members, esp. those who are high in the party. (Not to speak of the many other evils of marxism, such as maximum corruption & fraud, utter egoism and lack of responsability, absence of freedom and basic rights, etc.) So it is clear that Marxism fails and that Marx was dead wrong, and that his ideology will disappear, as this has almost happened. Maybe nazism will compete again against capitalism, but marxism won't, as history has proven that it is wrong.

In the book, I see at least two things that can explain why marxism is wrong. First, there is Marx's utopic, optimistic, irrealistic view of human nature. He did not realize that we are no angels and that there will always be people who will abuse the system, and even much more in a marxist regime, where there is no individual responsability but only static, bureaucratic organization. Second, Marx understood nothing of economy as is even more evident in his book Capital: a Critic of Political Economy. For example, Marx believed that the value of goods can be fixed objectively, whereas it is determined by subjective factors, such as how much people desire to acquire of get rid of goods, (hence the necessity of a free market, as Austrian scholars Von Mises, Hayek, Kirzner... have shown; see also the books of Reisman on capitalism.) This Communist Manifesto by Marx is important for understanding history, but because it is sooo wrong, I cannot give it more than one star. The question I am still thinking after reading the book, is how will those countries which have been very much ravaged, ruined by Marxism recover? Eastern European countries have been exposed to Marxism for a shorter time, and seem able to recover, but it is not the case about Russia, which has suffered much more from Marxism. This bothers me.


An alternate economic & political system?   February 21, 2001
 27 out of 42 found this review helpful

Marx's "Communist Manifesto" is a response to human cost of Industrial Revolution. It was a time when Europe was coming of age, with the development of modern industry and the potential world market. This market had an immense development to commerce, to navigation and to industry. These improvements were enacted at a cost of society as a whole divided into two hostile camps -the bourgeoise and the proletariat. Marx immersed himself into the suffrage of the new urban proletariat at the hands of bourgeoise modern capitalist. His solution lay in the abolition of private property living in a society where all are equal.

I found this document an interesting read, as this short concise book simply explains the "theory" of one economic system. It should be noted the democracy prevalent at the time of this books introduction closely resembled an oligarchy, in which the rich and powerful ruled the weak. The impact of socialist ideology on this situation was great: labor movements were created, egalitarianism became a greater part of democracy ideology and the lower classes became more significant to the political system than they had ever been before.

The greatest weakness one can note of Marx's argument, is his failure to predict the significance of the middle class in the nations. Marx's view was that the middle class would either be absorbed into the working class or proprietors. The success of the middle class in present times accounts for the failure of Marx's theory.