The Communist By Karl Marx and Friedrich

Engels

Manifesto, SOCI 3200

1848
McKay
2 Unit 1 Marx
Relevant Course Learning outcomes:

 Explain how classical social theory has been shaped by

social, political and economic events in European and
North American societies

 Define and apply basic concepts developed by classical

theorists, with enduring importance in sociology
3 Marx Learning Goals
Engage in interpreting Marx’s texts
Articulate Marx’s contributions to social theory
 To conflict theory (and Marxism): (historical) materialism, power,
antagonism, struggle-resistance, class, consciousness, freedom, ideology

 Define and explain Marx’s philosophy and analysis of capitalism:

 Core concepts: commodity, fetishism of commodities, alienation, exploitation
 Theories: primitive accumulation (dispossession), labour theory of value,
surplus value
 System: (Base & superstructure, Bourgeoise and proletariat; mode of
production, forces and relations of production), accumulation, crises
4 Marx – Content Delivery
There six slide decks, with accompanying audio narration. Two are general and one for each of
the assigned primary texts:

1. Introduction to Marx
2. The German Ideology, 1845-6
3. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1844
4. The Communist Manifesto, 1848
5. Capital, 1867
6. Review of Marx

Notes: All page numbers refer to Edles and Appelrouth (2015), 3 rd edition (hardcopy)
You will learn about The Communist Manifesto

1. Background: context and significance

2. Marx’s core ideas of history and the social order under
capitalism
• Historical materialism
3. Dual Theory of Social Change
• Class antagonism and struggle as a motor of history
• Contradiction between forces and relations of production
Context
 This is the most widely read and known work by Marx and Engels

 1840s was miserable for the working class

 1847 The Communist League commissioned Marx and Engels to write a political
tract: declaration of principles and beliefs
 It is therefore not academic but polemic, a pamphlet intended to recruit adherents to
the movement written by activists
 1848 is a significant year in European history: 50 worker revolts; massive social
change and revolution; social and political change
 Call to arms. Not radical then.
 Part of a larger dialogue about the failure of monarchies and ruling classes to
represent the needs of small peasants and urban factory workers. People wanted
change and wanted to be represented in their governments.
What does the Manifesto articulate?

Marx’s theories of:

1. Class antagonism
2. Class consciousness
• Proximity of factory work could enable workers to develop consciousness of
alienation and exploitation

3. Historical materialism
• Observe human practice to arrive at theory
• Communism is inevitable
• Dual Theory of Social Change
Feudalism to Capitalism

 “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of

communism.”
 Bourgeois and Proletarians
 “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles.”
 In opposition, and, “…now open fight, a fight that each time
ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at
large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”
“All that is solid
melts into air”
Workers as commodities
“The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to
with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the mans of
science, into its paid wage-labourers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its
sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation.” (p. 62, 3 rd
ed.)

“Owing to extensive use of machinery and to the division of labour, the work of the
proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman
[sic]. He [sic] becomes an appendage of the machine…the cost of production of a workman is
restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and
for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is
equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work
increases, the wage decreases.” (p. 64 3rd ed.)
 Recall what you know

 Recall Marx’s Dual Theory of Social change

1. Class antagonisms: Social class is the motor of history
 A social class is responsible for transformation of one mode of production to another in
each stage of development

 Marx explains how social classes are related to forces and relations of production in
different historical epochs:

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and
slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word,
oppressor and oppressed…now an open fight”[with the consolidation of bourgeois and
proletarians (Marx and Engels, 1848, p. 61, 3rd ed.)
12 Class consciousness

An objective class-in-itself needs to overcome the market

competition between individual labourers for jobs and wages. Only
when a group of people share the same relationship to the means of
production, and by means of a concerted political struggle develop a
subjective consciousness about their common interests can they be
considered a class-for-itself.
Once this is achieved, it can be said that the proletariat have class
consciousness. Its oppression can be reversed only through self-
emancipation, leading to revolution.
The System: Capitalist contradictions and
Crisis
Recall Marx’s Dual Theory of Social change
2. How the social relations of production (the way productive activity
is organized, including laws, e.g. private ownership) become a
fetter to the forces of technology

 Increasingly sophisticated forces of production (technology and efficiency)

lead to overproduction
 Bourgeois “chokes” on over-abundance (they take many actions to minimize
over-supply)
“The bourgeoisie…has concentrated property in a few hands…during its
rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more
colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations
together…railways, clearing of whole continents for cultivation,…”

…Revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of

production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the
existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. 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.”
(p. 63, 3rd ed.)
“Working men of all countries, unite!”

 A Call to Arms, raising Class Consciousness

 “Wake up” and see exploitation
 Identity and Empowerment
 Action: Revolution (freedom) is at hand
What you learned

1. Background: context and significance

2. Marx’s core ideas of history and the social order under
capitalism
• Historical materialism
3. Dual Theory of Social Change
• Class antagonism and struggle as a motor of history
• Contradiction between forces and relations of production