Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto, originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party, is a political pamphlet
written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, commissioned by the Communist League and originally
published in London in 1848. The text is the first and most systematic attempt by Marx and Engels to
codify for widespread consumption the core historical materialist idea that, as stated in the text's
opening words, "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles", in which
social classes are defined by the relationship of people to the means of production

The Communist Manifesto opens with the dramatic words “A spectre is haunting Europe—the
spectre of communism” and ends by stating, “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.
They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite.”

The communists, the vanguard of the working class, constituted the section of society that would
accomplish the “abolition of private property” and “raise the proletariat to the position of ruling
class.”

In the first part of the manifesto, Marx and Engels explain the evolution of capitalism and the
exploitative class structure that resulted from it. Next, Marx and Engels discuss the cruel, exploitative
reality of what happens when workers are forced to compete with each other and sell their labor to
the owners of capital. When this occurs, the social ties that used to bind people together are
stripped away. Workers become expendable and replaceable, a concept known as a "cash nexus."

Marx and Engels go on to state the 10 goals of the Communist Party:

Marx and Engels propose the following transitional policies

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 hands 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.

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 liability 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.
 Marxism and Literature

Marxism is a materialist philosophy which tries to imterpret the world based on concrete, natural
world around us and the society we live in. It is opposed to the idealist philosophy which
conceptualize the spiritual world elsewhere that influences and controls the material world. The
philosophers have only interpreted the world in various world: the point is to change it it is true that
while other philosophy tried to understand the world, Marxism try to change it. According to
Marxism the society progresses through the struggle between opposing forces. During the feudal
period the tension was between the feudal lords and the peasants and in the industrial ages the
struggle was between the captlist class and the industrial working class.

Another important concept used by the Marx was the dialectic which was originally developed by
the 18th century German philosopher Hegal. Hegal believed that the world is governed by thought
and material existence but Marx used the same concept to interpreted progress of material world.
According to him, Hegel put the world upside down by giving primacy to the ideas whereas Marx’s
attempt to reverse it. So, Marx’s dialectic is known as dialectical materialism. Marx argued that all
mantel systems are product of real social and economic existence.

Bertolt Brecht a close friend of Benjamin developed the concept of epic theatre against the
Aristotelian dramatic theatre. Brecht dismantled traditional naturalistic theatre and produced a new
kind of theatre adulting the functional relations between stage and audience, text and producers,
and producer and actor.

The French Marxist thinker Louis Althusser further dev the Marxist approach through the
introduction of various concepts like over determination etc.

The founder of the Italian communist party Antonia Gramsci was a politician, political theorist
linguist and philosopher known as an original thinker among Marxist scholar Gramsci introduced the
concept like Hegemony and the subaltern. Hegemony is the domination of lower section of the
society by the powerful classes. It is the moral and intellectual leadership of the upper class in the
particular society. The term subaltern was originally used by Gramsci.
 Creative Writing and Daydreaming by Sigmund
Freud
The essay “Creative Writers and Daydreaming” suggests Freud's interest in the relationship
between the author and his work. He sees a piece of creative writing as a continuation or
substitute for the play of childhood. Freud also displays some aspects of his approach to the
psychology of the reader.
He suggests that the superficial pleasure of the work releases to deeper psychic pleasure and
thereby liberate tensions. Thus, reading a text is known the psyche of the author.

Human beings have innumerable wishes and desires that can't be expressed freely due to social
boundary, morality and other restrictions. The desires remain suppressed in our unconscious
level of mind. Somehow, we try to express those desires and, according to Freud, there are three
ways to do so- Sex, tongue slips and writing. Artists take help of writing to express his
repressed desires of their childhood. He fantasizes and creates daydreams in place of playing
games of their childhood. Through writing, the author expresses his desires. He remembers his
golden past and wants to express the experience of the past in the present but can't do so.
Therefore, he fantasizes and manifests his wishes in the form of art.

During childhood, a child plays with the mother's body but later on he identifies himself with
fatherly figure, who comes in between mother and child , and the bodily unity with the mother is
broken but the desire to play with mother's body remains throughout his life. Children forget their
imagination by indulging themselves in games. The writer has nostalgic towards the blissful past
and the same romantic nostalgia becomes immense energy for creativity. So, there is some sort
of similarity between children and writers. Both use their emotion and imagination seriously in
game and writing.

According to Freud, wishes or desires are divided in to two parts as:

Ambition: Ambition, which is found only in male not in female, is to uplift the personality.
Erotic Wish: This wish is noticed in both- male and female.

Freud focuses Id that enforces erotic wish in a person. Id is an irrational and immoral force
located at the unconscious level of human mind. It guides sexual desire. However, Idic factor is
controlled by a stricter factor, which carries the principal of morality, value and humanitarian,
called Superego. Superego does not let id express those desires. There is the conflict between
Id and superego. But Ego, that works with the reality principle stands as a mediator between id
and superego. When unfulfilled desires are suppressed and pushed back in our unconscious,
they manifest in the form of dream, tongue slips and literature. It is ego that helps the writers to
express the repressed desires in a socially accepted form, not directly but in disguised form.
There are three phases upon which an artist undergoes while creating a work of art, they are:
A. Condensation
B. Latent
C. Substitution
E. Symbolic/ image stage manifest

The first two are the psychological stages that are invisible located in mind but the third one is
expressed in language.

Author's mind possesses many desires so he selects the wanted desires but leaves out the
unwanted desires. Those selected desires are combined in to single desire, and such process is
called condensation. In substitution, those erotic and socially unaccepted desires are substituted
by non-erotic ideas and are changed in to socially accepted one. In the symbolic stage, author
takes help of symbols of pond, cave, ring and such other circular and concave symbols refer to '
vegina' whereas convex and vertical symbolizes like hill, stick, tree, finger etc, refer to ' Phallus'.
While reading a text, the readers identify themselves with the writers and get the aesthetic
pleasure.

In releasing unfulfilled desires, the poet uses' censors' but the meaning can be accomplished
through analysis. He says, this reading is allegorical. The day dreaming and creative works both
transforms the mental contents in to something where the latter is more creative and interesting.

Freud also talks of two kinds of dreams: latent and manifest. Latent dream can only be thought of
in our mental imagination, which cannot be seen but manifest dream is the revelation of the
disguised one, which we perceive.
 Orientalism
If given the opportunity to name the top ten most important -- yet
controversial -- books, Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) would invariably
appear on any given list. At its core, Orientalism is a study of, as the title
suggests, orientalism. In the book, Said traces the roots of orientalism to
the long period of colonialism and imperialism in which Europe
dominated areas around the world -- particularly the Middle East and
Near East.

Orientalism is a clear study of the fabricated ideologies of the Orient.

Political and social ideas that were manipulated and implanted by the
British mainly dominated the East during colonization. The author looks
deeply into the opinions and propaganda that were fueled in the East by
the colonial powers that governed the continent. Orientalism, as traced
back as far as three centuries ago, entailed the translation of Oriental
materials to the dominant British language, English. The British
colonizers deemed it necessary to translate these materials to
understand the people they sought to rule over.

The Western colonizers believed themselves to be superior to other

races. They saw the Orient as the complete opposite of themselves. The
Oriental was the entire Asian continent. It is made up of many nations
with completely different cultures. Orientalism played a significant role
as the system used by colonial governments in the Orient to amass
power, control millions of people and have autonomous control over the
East. Even though colonization is somewhat over, the mentality, way of
life, and representation that were the pillars of colonial rule are still
deeply rooted in the world. Acting as a post-colonial read, it
fundamentally seeks to expose the dark sides of colonialism. It exposes
why the deliberate assumptions made during the colonial period still
prevail some 200 years later.

These false assumptions are still harmful to the Eastern continent. This
type of thinking divided people who resorted to conflict to affirm back
their culture and way of life. It makes it even harder for a genuinely
interested outsider of the culture to see the honest and pure way of the
Eastern side of the world. The West deliberately made the people from
the East be viewed as irrational, overtly passionate, and stereo typically
seductive and exotic. The study of Orientalism did not benefit the
Eastern world at all, it only promoted the West’s domination of the
world. The colonial masters from the West even went as far as to claim
that they knew more about the Eastern landscapes and history than the
people who had lived there for generations. The text calls out the
grounds on which oriental studies were built. It’s also viewed as a
political statement meant to further push the exploitative and controlling
ideology of the West.