The communist manifesto - Essay Example

27 Nov The struggle The history of man as demonstrated by Marx and Engel is based on a struggle. During the communist party, the struggle was between the bourgeoisie, and feudal lords on one hand and proletariat and feudal peasant. Today, the class struggle, is as real as it was then during French revolution. The middle class has taken the place of the bourgeoisie while workers and unemployed represent the proletariats. According to Marx, the middle class interest for a humongous profit would exploit the labor force due to forces of demand in the market.

The working class being the poor would grow to a large population and because of their mistreatment and poor condition they would question the morality of the state order. This Marx thought would effect to a revolution. However, Marx predicted that the class struggle would come to an end. The working class revolution that would be brought about by class consciousness will topple the capitalist and bring social order. He envisioned a society that lacked class warfare of money, government and nation’s states.

It was this idea that shaped the communist policy. Marx’s philosophy was put in practice, in Eastern Europe and Russia where Engel and Marx believed to test their scientific truth of humanity. Karl Marx and Fredrick Engel wrote so much on class struggle. The discussion in their book ‘The communist manifesto’ is evidence on class infighting and conflict. Marx and Engel said that society comprised of two categories of people, the bourgeois and the proletariat. Marx (19) wrote that the European aristocracies used to write articles against the ruling bourgeois society of the time.

Moreover, the French revolution was inevitable given the hateful between different classes. The bourgeois were reluctant to address the problems of the working class and workers were working for longs hours in a day, and living in disease filled slums. Their population kept on growing and the economic conditions of the time made them paupers of the capitalist around them. These inevitable conditions precipitated the revolution. The aristocracies could not be classified as proletariat, but they identified with them and abandoned their interest to revolt against the owner of capital.

They used the plight of the poor working class to revenge on their master. The class struggle had borne a Feudal Socialism a class in between the bourgeois and the proletariat that choke the bourgeois to the core. After 1848, revolution, majority of the working class were going undergoing a hard time. Some of them were impatience while other wanted to maintain the status quo. Marx and Engel could not wait and see people deteriorate under these conditions. They participated in the struggle by offering advice to the labor movement when got a chance of contact.

In their book, they devoted time studying the role of bourgeois ideologists. According to Marx, bourgeois ideologists were an indispensable part of the struggle because they helped inexperienced proletariats. In former USSR, Lenin knew so well the fundamental of intellectuals and whose majority came from a bourgeois background. Lenin being a communist did not want to bring inconsistencies in his philosophy. Marx and Engel have advised him of the danger of bourgeois intellectuals. Therefore, people who belonged to bourgeois community had to show a willingness to learn communist manifesto ideals of socialism.

Lenin was worried of the emergence of revisionism. These were referred so because they despised the critic of Bernstein’s against Marx in 1890s. Lenin was aware that this would happen too, and it was inevitable for people had bourgeois ideologies. However, the development of capitalism created a bond between the middle class and the bourgeois. Many years have passed, and Marx and Engel prediction have not come to pass. The communist manifesto did not survive for long, and many scholars believed that Marx’s assumptions that guided the communist thought were mistaken.

It is argued that Marx may have been correct about communist thought, but erred on class struggle. The definite class that would subsume the others seems to be the opposite of Marx’s prediction. Critic of the communist idea says that Marx was a false ‘prophet’ because he misunderstood the production process. The production process has become less expensive as technology has replaced workers in industries. The workers also have shifted and become entrepreneurs in a free society. Therefore, the working classes have become dominant in the service industry and small businesses and thereby have no time to instigate a revolution that could destroy their livelihood.