Talk:Communist Manifesto

"interesting video" - I think EL's like this should say why. What is it about? What does it mash up? 03:10, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I love the comment on YouTube that the communist should read Ayn Rand, one political fundamentalist meets another. 05:29, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Preamble
In the preamble, communism is compared to a spectre to emphasize that it is not genuine, yet it is not revealed and thus acknowledged to be a power.

I Bourgeois and proletarians
This chapter describes the miserable conditions in which the wage workers (proletarians) lived at the time. These conditions are also described as worse compared to the conditions under feudalism. Nowhere does Communist Manifesto say that it was bad, also by Marx the bourgeois society is the next step from the feudal society, so by that the change of the living conditions of the proletariat should still be seen as a step in the right direction. By Communist Manifesto, in the bourgeois society all values were taken from workers, this includes values like possession, freedom, rights and individuality. This in essence means everything which humans are and all the value which they have. It is said in this chapter that the only value which proletarians still had was performing primitive routine operations. Therefore by Communist Manifesto, all values under bourgeois society were bourgeois. Thus all the values which humans and society had, some of which are eternal and some are there since ancient times, are called bourgeois values. Thus bourgeois values mentioned in the Communist Manifesto are values of which some are inherent to bourgeoisie and some are not.

II Proletarians and communists
This chapter provides the establishment of the society where all bourgeois values are abolished. This includes abolishing family and abolishing nation states, thus communism is international by its nature. Abolishing all values is a recipe for destruction, and contrary to the popular belief Communist Manifesto does not mention any positive values such as sharing, end of oppression or guaranteed livelihood. This chapter also provides a state control of banks, transportation, communication and industry, which also requires government. It does not provide any means of voting or electing the government, and in the condition of abolished values and central control of all the possession, such government would most likely have a totalitarian power. Communist Manifesto also does not provide abolishing classes, it only assumes that the conflict between classes will not be antagonistic. Therefore government and people are assumed to be united under communism, and thus government interests would be peoples interests.

III Socialist and communist literature
This chapter begins with a description how the aristocracies, after being overthrown, tried to re-establish their power by deceiving the workers with theories like communism. In essence these theories promised overthrowing the bourgeoisie and establishing a workers country. So that when the workers country were created, they planned to form the government, thus re-establishing their former power, and subordinating the workers again to them as serfs. This is in essence the description of the origin of the communism idea.

The chapter goes on by describing how different communism ideas were spread in different countries.

IV Position of the communists in relation to the various existing opposition parties
This chapter describes how communists should work together with the existing political parties. Okasaki (talk) 00:19, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Marx and Stalin
As I understand the history, Marx and Engels wrote several works, which were later adapted and altered by Lenin,(who Marx is on record as praising, though said praise is somewhat lukewarm) who added several things, including the idea of a vanguard party and the idea that there is first socialism and then communism, when Marx and Engels made no such distinction, whose work was later in turn adapted by Stalin for his political and propaganda ends. Thusly, we have a bit of a game of telephone here, where the original message (which is flawed by the way, with one example being the idea that history moves towards a fixed end point, which Marx and Engels believed to be Communism) is distorted over time, thusly resulting in the propaganda used to justify atrocities. For another example, ideas from Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations are used to justify reckless capitalist policies that Smith himself criticizes in that very work. With Marx and Engels' work, the timeline is shorter, but the telephone game no less visible. 14:31, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pinging me and debating me on this. In regards to the section I made, I had things like these in mind, that Stalin said about Marx(ism):


 * Re: Vanguard party: The Communist Manifesto, Chapter II, "Proletarians and Communists"


 * Re: Socialism vs. Communism: The Communist Manifesto, Preface to The 1888 English Edition


 * 15:40, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I am going to try to be very patent with you on this matter. However, quoting Stalin, as if anything the man said was trustworthy or representative of his actual views, is quite stupid. In that regard, you might as well quote Trump on how much of a Christian he is. (hint, he isn't, and he's likely never read the bible before in his life). The second quote does not advocate for a vanguard party, only the organization of the working class, which, per your own quote, are mentioned as members of existing parties. Finally, the preface is fluff, and not relevant to the actual work itself. 17:56, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * "However, quoting Stalin, as if anything the man said was trustworthy or representative of his actual views" Ok, then how can I verify (or falsify) that Stalin was influenced by Marx? Give me conditions to satisfy that claim of fact. 02:51, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The best way would be to look at what kind of policies he implemented, and then try to figure out what inspired them. In this regard you'd probably have to go beyond the Communist Manifesto, and look at Das Kapital (volumes one through three) and Critique of the Gotha Program, to name all the relevant works I'm aware of. Alternately, you could argue that Lenin and later Stalin were inspired by a superficial reading of these works (After the Paris Commune Marx put a bunch of footnotes in later editions of his works stating that he didn't believe that statism would be useful on the path to communism), though I suspect the matter is more complicated than that. Finally, please stop hyperfocusing on Stalin, Lenin helped pave the way for Stalin's rise to power, albeit unintentionally, and does deserve some of the blame here. 13:31, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Updated by including Lenin in there. Also, you don't object to the claim that Marx inspired Lenin and Stalin, then? 13:35, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The way you added Lenin there makes it seem that he was involved in Holodomor as well, despite having been dead for almost a decade by then. And since the point of the sentence is to compare Holodomor and Holocaust, I don't think Lenin should be included there.Coigreach (talk) 13:50, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh yeah, that's fair. Changed it to specify Stalin for being directly responsible for it. 14:27, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It is my position that the ideological basis for the Russian Revolution, as well as its actual ideological tenants in practice, is more complex than you seem to want to believe. I also think that hyperfocusing on the soviets ignores several ideas in Marx and Engels' work that are not logically sound, such as the idea that history moves in a fixed continuum towards communism, or the flawed philosophical assumptions underpinning dialectical materialism as a whole. And instead of actually going into that, you seem to be intent on "red scare red scare!" type rhetoric, and not actually digging into the meat of the matter. In short, yes duh, Marx and Engels inspired Lenin, who in turn inspired Stalin (Stalin was more fond of quoting Lenin than Marx) who inspired others, but none of that really goes into the alterations made along the way, and is certainly not as simple as "Marxism leads to genocide", the implication you seem intent on. 17:10, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't agree at all, I do think Marxism did have it's contribution to the Holodomor as a genocide (see the material I quoted), but I'm gonna retreat on that one and just remove that paragraph. I want to use my energy for better/useful projects and this ideological resistance to anything critical is fairly boring. 02:24, 6 August 2020 (UTC)