The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx & Freidrich Engels)

Every once in a while when discussing politics I hear someone say, "I like communism in theory. Too bad it doesn't work in practice." Sometimes, someone takes it a step further and says, "Communism would be great! There just haven't been any real instances of real communism yet." So what is real communism and how does it compare to how we've seen communism implemented in practice? Fortunately for us, back in 1848, Karl Marx wrote a program manuscript describing what he thought Communism with a capital "C" should be like. While he chose not delve far into the specifics of implementation, Marx did make his underlying motivations very clear. Now that I have read the book, I have to say, Marx's Communism is not entirely what I'd expected.. and I mean that in a bad way.

The text starts off by explaining that the history of all society hitherto is the history of "class struggles". What Marx means by class in this case, has actually more to do with perceived social status than personal wealth. Simply put, when employers (bourgeoisie) pay their enslaved employees (proletariat) in accordance with the marginal product of their labor and in advance of any actual profit to the company, the proletariat are unfairly exploited, stripped of their individuality, and alienated from their very own human nature. Marx's main goal was therefore to transform human society, through permanent Communist revolution, back into the natural state of the species, which would in turn finally lead to peace, prosperity, and happiness.

The book goes on to describe the vile status quo caused by capitalism and how the proletariat can free themselves from their serfdom. For instance, while Marx noted that free enterprise had created one hundred times more productive forces than all preceding generations combined, he saw the technological innovation that allowed this as a tool of perpetual oppression. Constant improvements in technology allowed the bourgeoisie to constantly do away with unnecessary human labor thereby subjugating the proletariat. Some of the proposals with which Marx meant to eradicate all of these injustices include the following:
- abolition of all private property
- punishment of ideas counter to the revolution
- state monopoly on capital, infrastructure, and communication
- liability of all to labour
- revolutionary re-schooling (e.g. to abolish of the bourgeoisie's slavish "family unit" concept)

So how similar was the communism implemented by, for instance, China to the proposed Communism of Marx? In my opinion, pretty spot on!! I was very surprised to find how this manuscript describes almost all the disruptive and violent reforms China underwent. I've heard individuals try to attribute the gross failure of Communism in China/USSR to the fact that they weren't democratic in the modern sense of the word. While I casually observed that the word "democratic" only appears twice in the Communist Manifesto, Mao Zedong himself met this criticism in, "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship". He described how China was already step above artificial western bourgeoisie democracy, and well on its way towards a classless and stateless society. I have to agree with Mao; Communism didn't get much better than that.