Communist Manifesto, part 1: Prolegomena, Preface, and Preamble

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. The Communist Manifesto [1848]. Authorized English Translation. Translated by Samuel Moore. New York: International Publishers Co., Inc., 1948.

 

 

Prolegomena, or Intro stuff

This entry is a (part of a 4-5 part series) review that covers Engels’ 1888 preface to the authorized English translation of the manifesto, as well as the “preamble.” Thus begins my foray into reviewing the major works of Marxism and socialism (way down the road I will probably do this with anarchism).

In this most (in)famous of texts, The Communist Manifesto (CM), Marx and Engels lay out the program for the overthrow of the bourgeois (those who own the means of production) by the working people (proletariat). Its pace is fast, its metaphors strident. I have read the work maybe twice before, but never in so much detail as now. For example, I went so far as to number the paragraphs and summarize each in my own words. My life situation also makes this reading more memorable.

The CM text I review divides into seven sections, but four primary parts. Engels’ preface covers the reception of the CM following the revolutions of 1848. The second section, or preamble, lists communism as a bogeyman that requires definition and subsequent defense. The main argument of the book (and how the work is structured) consists of four parts: “Bourgeois and Proletarians,” “Proletarians and Communists,” “Socialist and Communist Literature,” and “Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties.” The final section concludes with Engels’ notes.

The Preface: The Communist League and Growing Working-Class Movement

What is now available online for free, and has been read and used by many revolutionaries since its publication, was once the agenda of a secret group called the “Communist League.” They quickly translated it from German into the major languages of Europe. However, Engels remarks on the vulnerability of the group. After the 1848 Paris revolt, and its subsequent repression, many of the League were imprisoned, until they quickly dissolved the group of their own volition.

It is common now to see the left a splintered mess: egoists, anarchists, communists, social democrats, democratic socialists, Maoists, Marxist-Leninists, Marxists, Luxemburgests, situationists, and habitual circle-jerkers. Apparently this sectarianism was present in the 1850s, too, for Engels refers to Marx’s grating success of uniting followers of Proudhon, LaSalle, and English unionists into the International Workingmen’s Association (First International).

Engels claims that the emerging working-class movement followed the translation of the CM into various languages. Though he admits the words “socialism” and “communism” could be used roughly interchangeably by 1888, they definitely could not be used synonymously in 1848. Then, socialists were those who wished to improve the welfare of people without challenging capital; communists were working class people who wanted the benefits that derived from owning capital themselves (more on Marx’s definition of “capital” in upcoming posts). Or to quote Engels: “Whatever portion of the working class had become convinced of the insufficiency of mere political revolutions, and had proclaimed the necessity of a total social change, called itself Communist” (5).

Engels is rather self-effacing when it comes to the origins of the manifesto. He attributes the nucleus of the work to Marx (though he would say they came to similar conclusions independently): social organization being invariably linked to economic production, class struggle, and proletarian emancipation from the bourgeoisie.

I find Engels’s historicizing remarks in the concluding paragraphs of his preface quite striking. He (and Marx for that matter) did not take their words as sacred scripture to be taken without criticism. For example, one of the most famous passages occurs at the end of part two, a ten-point program of sorts (from which The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense would pen its own ten-point program). Engels states that some of these aims simply don’t match the historical conditions of 1888 and so remain an artifact of 1848. He also remarks that the socialist literature reviewed in part three only goes up to 1848 and that some of the parties mentioned in part four no longer existed.

That is Engels’ preface. Now to the preamble.

Preamble: “A specter is haunting Europe–the specter of Communism.”

The Communist League saw their mere existence as a threat so severe as to elicit a unified response from parties as diverse as pope, emperors, financiers, and police-spies. The writers took this to mean that they were a power, but one which deserved a hearing of its aims and demands. It was internationalist from its beginnings. In other words, there’s was not a nationalist situation, but a union of members from England, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Internationalism would play a huge part in communist revolutions globally.

Concluding Thoughts

Is the CM mere antiquities, a literary piece for hobbyists? One could use it that way, I suppose, but to do so would forfeit the document’s power. Even if one does not agree with all of Marx and Engels’ assertions, they should at least give one pause. What does it mean if people are grouped into antagonistic classes? What would it mean for working people to unite as a class, overthrow bourgeois hegemony, and obtain political power (the aims of the Communist League on p. 22)? Do the revolutions of Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, and the various Bolivarian revolutions speak to the truth or falsehood of this document? Or how do those revolutions compare to the ideas Marx and Engels put forth?

My life situation makes this reading more poignant this time. I had written toward the end of last year a massive reading goal of 22 non-fiction works and 10 fiction works. Surely with school being done I would have nothing to do. It turned out that working 40+ hours a week in manual labor plus 10+ hours a week in commute time make for a tired and ragged Monte. It’s hard enough being a parent who is present and getting chores done; what little time I have is devoted to reading for this blog, and I don’t exactly feel great about my efforts.

I don’t know how the miners of yesteryear worked 12-16 hour days by candlelight and still made time to organize for better conditions. They are inspiring. They inspire while I feel the pressure of student debt, tired muscles, anxiety and desperation to use my mental skill, little time for my wife and children, and even less time to just read. So is the working class life. We work just to survive, while those who own capital make money off the labor of those who work. This is no a c’est la vie, or “it is what it is” statement; such is the outlook of those who share precarious conditions (like trying to find affordable healthcare), but through some obfuscation see this way of things as natural, unalterable, divinely-inspired, deserved. Recognize the power of your own activity. The way things are are not the way things have to be. Far from it.

Labor Day: The Domestication of Radicalism

Labor Day in the United States began as a local display of union power in New York in 1882. Many workers worked 12+ hour days and 7 days a week, and many were precarious immigrant workers. 10,000 workers took unpaid time off of work to march from City Hall to Union Square. Twelve years later it would become a national holiday, after over 20 states had made it a holiday. What occurred in the intervening 12 years?

According to the House website, Senator Kyle of South Dakota introduced S.730 in August 1893, proposing the establishment of Labor Day, where it sat untouched for 10 months. However, once brought forward, it passed quickly through congress. Why the swift passage?

Never trust a goat man

Workers in Pullman, IL (now Chicago) had begun a strike that eventually turned national. Pullman was a “company town,” a place where George Pullman housed his workers. Pullman’s eponymous town had a Pullman bank, which took out Pullman rents from Pullman worker’s Pullman checks.

When the Panic of 1893 hit, the Pullman Palace Car Company (sleeping cars) began to cut wages while it kept rents the same. Workers went on strike on May 11 the following year. The American Railway Union called on all railway workers not to run trains with Pullman cars on June 22. On June 29, workers were so agitated, they set fire to a train connected to a mail car.

Governor Altgeld of Illinois

This destruction sparked the ire of President Grover Cleveland. He tried to send in troops because of the breakdown in law and order, but governor John Peter Altgeld blocked this move, seeing claims of anarchy as overblown. Cleveland secured an injunction and sent in at least 10,000 troops. In response to an assault on July 7, troops opened fire, injuring dozens, and killing between 4 to 30 workers. The strike soon ended.

President Cleveland

Now 1894 was a midterm election year. Cleveland was a democrat. Much of his base belonged to the American Federation of Labor, a union not involved in the Pullman strike. In an effort to appease this base, the creation of Labor Day easily passed. Note, though, that the new holiday passed on June 28, a little over a week before the violence that occurred. The Pullman workers regained employment only on condition of never joining a union again.

Labor Day is probably seen as the mere transition from summer to fall because of the shrinking power of unions. It doesn’t help that a large segment of the public sees unions as the problem (e.g., “sending” jobs outside the U.S., as if the workers who don’t actually own the companies voted to send their own jobs away) instead as security for workers. Who do you think got you weekends, an 8 hour workday, pensions, child labor laws, sick days, and social security? Bosses weren’t trying to find ways to share wealth; they had to be forced by labor.

Why do most workers not realize the radical origins of this day, while business blogs (like Forbes and Business Insider) do? I believe it’s due to the leisure time afforded such persons by their high pay, while gas station, food service, and hospitality workers face precarity and just want a little break from it all. Cheap goods can inoculate a populace to the source of the cheapness. Cheap goods comes on the back of the third world with the full security of U.S. gunboat diplomacy. Even a well run social democracy (aka “welfare state”) can only survive with exploitative capital.

As my pastor stated, it’s ironic that a day established to celebrate workers celebrates capitalism with savings on cars and furniture. And those workers have to work on Labor Day. Who are the workers who still get terrible pay and terrible treatment by the public? This is their day. The thing that labor in the U.S. can do is not blame fleeing jobs on immigrants or “foreigners,” but realize the common struggle of global workers vs. international capitalists. As two cool German dudes once said, “Workers of the World, Unite!”