For whoever has read the communist manifesto or has an interest in the subject, lend me your ears!
Karl Marx, a German philosopher exiled from Germany and later other European nations such as France for his radical views and animosity towards the government. He settled down in London with his colleague Friedrick Engels. It was there that in 1847 the communist league commissioned these two brilliant men to write down their theories which was to be translated into English, French, Russian, Italian, Polish, Spanish and any other major European language. In this book, Marx and Engels attempt to explain the goals of communism. They divided the Manifesto into four sections, detailing the relationships between the Bourgeoisie and the proletarians, relationships between the communists and the proletarians, one targeting flawed socialist literature of the past and finally the fourth section tackles the relationship between the communists and other parties. They also describe how class relationships are influenced by the means of production and analyze the past; saying that the history of man is the history of class struggles. Marx and Engels specifically attack capitalism, which they argue is naturally unstable and will tremble and fall before the members of the proletariat ( urban workers ) via a [/i]communistic revolution[i]. However, Marx and Engels point out that this sort of revolution is supposed to happen naturally will be different from all previous revolutions in history. This is because all revolutions have forwarded all of the property to a new higher class. The communist revolution would involve the victorious proletarians throwing away all of their private property and thereby making no classes. My Opinion:
After all of Marx's predictions, history has proven otherwise. Socialism by itself was not as impractical as Marx said compared with his communism and capitalism made nations very powerful without having a huge amount of upheaval during times when the economy was reasonable. Former powers such as the USSR and Red China under Mao tried to simulate the Manifesto in their own countries prematurely and the result was not a utopia owned by all working men and women. Instead the government, under a harsh dictator almost everytime, directly controlled the lives of all men and women; basically making the nations they ruled industrialized dumps for slaves getting no reward for hard work and having even fewer rights than they did under their previous system. Communism ( or what it had devolved to ) ended up completely failing the 20th century and killing off over 100 million people directly and indirectly. Socialism never became a communist utopia, instead of the workers democratically making the decisions dictators make decisions for them.
However, one thing that I'd have to give Karl Marx credit for is his predictions that eventually capitalism will grow to the extent that every nation is dependent upon capitalism and the industrial bourgeoisie. Every nation, regardless of how barbaric its practices, will become attached to the internationally growing market, or economic globalization as we now call it. It's very possible that all borders will be erased because of the fact that globalization will cause any and all nations to become so dependant upon each other that if they split or declared war on each other they'd be committing suicide. Eventually, maybe people would look back at the Manifesto and see that although Marx's theories are flawed they hold some amount of logic and truth. Perhaps some people will acutally revolt in order to make a statelss/classless society ( Or maybe just a pure socialism ). Perhaps they'll see that capitalism is evil to them and that the rich are given an unfair share sometime far off in the future. Capitalism will one day outgrow itself here on earth after all, Marx said it would and so did other economic thoerists. And with rising oil prices, we are in the and very beginning, not really that far in though, of feeling those effects. But that is only a little possibility after globalization is complete after all. Maybe we will get a perfect capitalist or socialistic system without any need for true Marxism, or maybe not.
