On the 150th anniversary of the Manifesto of the Communist Party
In terms of its significance, the publishing of the Manifesto of the Communist Party was a revolutionary act; and in terms of its meaning and essence, it is a document of the Revolution, of the complex and dramatic movement of the society towards a new world in which human beings will be brothers.
Although it is not very explicit, the Manifesto already demonstrates the duality of goals characteristic of every revolution. The manifest and sovereign goal is to replace the existing structures and the people associated with them. The secret, more important and fundamental goal is the one whose accomplishment overthrows the foundations of the society: the redistribution of the national wealth and the introduction of a new form of property. From the viewpoint of communism, its particularity consists in the «abolition of property generally, but also in the abolition of bourgeois property.»
But bourgeois property is historically the supreme manifestation and realisation of individual property. And as with all other types of property, this is not merely the ownership of wealth, a relationship that takes shape in the process of production. Consequently, parallel with the legal parameters of property, the Manifesto explores its true essence: the economic one. Behind the superficial, apparent social dynamic, people could already see the complex social mechanisms through which this dynamic is realised.
This momentous discovery by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels has had a special destiny. For more than a century and a half it has constituted the permanent object of rejection or conscious distortion, naive simplification and dogmatisation. Many people, Marxists and non-Marxists alike, continue to believe in the direct and rapid, i.e. in the automatic effect of a certain form of property on financial efficiency, on the social situation, and on political and intellectual relations between people.
Of course the form of property affects, indirectly and secretly, both the way in which production is administered, and the financial management methods. These together show the historically achieved form of organisation of social production that prevails at a given moment.
In the Manifesto, Marx and Engels were still a long way from the idea of the great reverse reaction that the form of organisation of production exerts on long-term structural changes in the form of property. And such an effect is particularly essential for any modern social system, capitalist as well as socialist. This is mentioned later, although briefly in passing, by V.I. Lenin.
Their followers also underrated this link. The profound, substantial changes in the very foundations of capitalism, in the structure of capitalist ownership especially after the 1930s, remained outside their field of interest. Even today, both the adversaries of Marxism and most of its supporters continue to believe that the form of property dictated directly both the methods of financial management and the manner of administration. Even more so, it seemed natural to them that the form of property also had a substantial effect on the efficiency of production.
There is no doubt about the importance of property to the condition, nature and essence of any society. For any social group or any person individually, the prevailing form of property at any given moment is a matter of some interest. But what makes property an even more substantial element of life in the community is its role as the most important source of power through which the dominance of certain socio-economic groups of people is imposed on others.
Such socio-economic groups of people are the classes and it is to them that Marx and Engels devote the greatest attention in their Manifesto. And for more than 150 years, this communist viewpoint of the class division and class struggle in the society has had all the hatred and spite of all possible reactionaries, all conciliators and «social balances» turned against it. Since then, the rejection of this fundamental position of Marxism has moved in a vicious circle of two commonplace erroneous views: either the classes from the Marxist viewpoint do not exist in reality, or, if they do exist, they can and must live in eternal, perfect harmony.
The question here is as clear and simple as the relationship discovered by the authors of the Manifesto: «salaried labour constitutes the condition for capital to exist.» And vice versa: The Manifesto mentions both the sources of social wealth and the ways in which it is created: salaried labour, surplus value, capital. The vital force in this conversion is exploitation.
This is the inexorable truth from which stems the relentless condemnation of capitalism by Marx, Engels and their supporters. This is why, for a century and a half now they have been subjected to rejection, persecution and extermination.
«The labour of the proletariat… creates capital, i.e. property that exploits salaried labour,» the Manifesto points out. And since then it has been clear that as long as capitalism exists, there will be no peace and stability on this earth, and that there will be salaried slaves as long as capitalists own the means of production. And as long as they exist, the political battle will always be a class struggle.
The political struggle, as the authors of the Manifesto note, is always caused by economic interests. The exploiters are more recently aware of these interests than the exploited. Awareness of class interests consists of the fact that every new generation of the bourgeois class tries to convince people that modern capitalism has changed radically, that it is different and that, in fact, it is not capitalism! Thus they try and prove that the Manifesto has become «out-dated». And by extension it is implied that the work of Marx and Engels as a whole has become out-dated. For the champions of the bourgeois class, Marxism has always been demonstrated to be «old fashioned», because it concerns something from the past which no longer exists, a ghost, a vision. Capitalism is a ghost, as is its opposite, socialism. The new age supposedly has new historical content.
Both «old» and «new» are historical categories. «Right» and «wrong» are now categories of theory. All these things are interrelated, the old can be as right as it is wrong, while what is right can be proven to be both new and old. Aren’t what was written 150 years ago in the Manifesto, still true today, namely that the bourgeois class transformed the doctor, the lawyer, the priest, and the scientist into its salaried workers? And doesn’t the difference between «then» and «now» lie simply in the fact that today’s salaried intellectuals are better paid? But they’re still salaried!
Of course, the external manifestations of the «salaried labour-capital» relationship have changed; they have become more complex, more refined and less obvious. And this too was natural. During the period between the publication of the Manifesto and our days, capital has ceased to be a personal force and has been transformed entirely into a social force. During this interval, it has been proven that capital is much more adaptable to the dynamic of changing historical circumstances than the authors of the Manifesto could ever have imagined.
Capitalism adapted successfully to the modern world. Indeed, to a considerable degree it has created this New World. Changing capitalism in the 20th century broke through the boundaries between the basic social classes and strengthened their internal structure. And with the introduction of stocks as a form of property, it was as though the mass of the petty and middle bourgeois class had disappeared from society’s field of vision. Well-paid representatives of salaried intellectual labour and small direct nominal owners merged together in the intermediate social stratum that bring the bears the aggregate and not entirely accurate name of «middle class».
But after all these transmigrations, the basic conflict between capitalism, salaried labour and capital remains. It has simply become more complex, more camouflaged. Modern capitalism continues to rely on the insurmountable contradictions between the bourgeois class and the proletariat. This is, naturally, a new bourgeois class and a new proletariat, but in essence they remain the well-known «inherent supports» of capitalism.
The new bourgeois class has internationalised its domination to the highest degree. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly criminal. If we are talking about the final stages of capitalism, a typical phenomenon of corruption is the involvement of traditional monopoly capital with criminal capital.
Modern capitalism, to which technology has given unlimited abilities to influence the information received by hundreds of millions of people as well as full access to scientific and technological progress, is moving slowly but surely toward a new form of colonial expansion. The new global capitalist totalitarianism, the new slavery, is coming into view.
Major changes have also taken place in the actual performance of salaried labour and in the structure of the proletariat. In the developed capitalist countries, it is now linked with the poverty characteristic of the past. But the most essential description provided by Marx and Engels -- i.e. that the proletariat is the class that lives by selling its labour -- remains unchanged, unshaken. And this applies to the proletariat engaged in both material and intellectual production.
When the Manifesto was written, the proletariat was synonymous with factory workers. From the beginning of the century, an intra-class group appeared the agrarian proletariat. And from the mid-20th century on, the scientific and technological revolution began to create the next new section of the proletariat in massive numbers, the mechanical-technical workers.
In the approaching 21st century, an enormous section, which, in terms of the nature of its labour, is still called the intelligentsia, will be transformed, in terms of its position in social production, into an indispensable part of the total proletariat. And it is precisely this section that will be tomorrow’s anti-capitalist vanguard. The new proletariat will continue to play that historical role which Marx and Engels had assigned it even in the Manifesto.
In this, however, they warned that, together with the class conscious slaves of salaried labour, is the vague mass of the lumpen proletariat, this passive product of the corruption of the lower strata, who because of their position in life are particularly susceptible to reactionary schemes.
The high technology development of western capitalism today and the wealth accumulated for centuries give big capital the opportunity to maintain a permanent army of lumpenised strata who have been marginalised by the scientific and technological revolution. This army will do anything to maintain its parasitic, humiliating but secure existence. And it is not inevitable that this will be an army of poverty, as it will be sustained by the bourgeois class with resources robbed from the so-called «third world». Conversely: poverty is no longer the surest source of revolutionary energy that looks forward to social change.
Marxism is the ideology of social discontent. In the 19th and 20th century, it became the mass world theory of the humble and disdained. But at the same time it became the science of the most humane social plan, which provides for greater social equality and greater freedom for all.
The strange thing is: nobody disagrees on the question of freedom. But when we are talking about social equality, legions of dissenters appear. They consider it an unfeasible state of the society, a utopia. Others see it as damaging and even as endangering progress.
But the socialism of our age has proved that social homogeneity is practically speaking possible, that it can operate and be productive. That it is not synonymous with vulgar exoticism, but that it is the basis for and the personification of an equal start through which every generation and every person individually enters life. The history of the recent past has shown that this equal start can be secured only through socialism. And this is precisely what has generated mortal fear in the bourgeois class, both old and new and will continue to do so. This is why its ideologues never ceased to contrast social equality with democracy and social homogeneity with freedom.
For Marx and Engels, as early even as the Manifesto, it was already clear that only the homogeneity of the society can be the firm foundation for real freedom, that the essence of democracy lies in the nature of participation, in the degree to which people become part of the social and political process. This is why, without social equality there can be no real democracy.
Just a few years ago, illusions were being widely disseminated that the socialism of the future would be a synthesis of the best features of capitalism and socialism. At that time, nobody paid much attention to the perceptive warning by the authors of the Manifesto that this would be impossible…
Now there is no doubt that the socialism of the 21st century will change qualitatively and will be reborn in a new cultural environment, drawing inspiration and lessons from our socialism that already existed, from our system which, despite its weaknesses, gave the masses of ordinary people more social gains and more social security than even the most developed capitalist society has ever nor will ever be able to give to all its members. This is why, today, at the dawn of the new century, the rebirth of socialism, not only in theory but also in practice, is not just a question of desire or nostalgia, but an increased social need for tens and hundreds of millions of people.
The rapid awareness of this necessity will miraculously cleanse the most radiant ideal in human history, the communist ideal, from all the stains of infinite slander used by the forces of the past to transform it into a monster.
And once again the spring of our hopes is in view.