The Communist Manifesto Kindle Edition

My five star rating is based on the quality of this handsome edition of one of the classics of political philosophy. Classics of this magnitude, whether Adam Smith's THE WEALTH OF NATIONS, Tocqueville's DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, or THE FEDERALIST PAPERS have achieved a status that makes the assigning of a rating rather silly. Regardless of one's feelings about Marxism or Communism, a work of such gigantic influence is of such a status that rating it is almost silly. It is one of the constitutive artifacts of our culture.

The particular edition I am reviewing is the recent reissue on Verso with an introduction by Eric Hobsbawm. There are a host of editions of THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, and virtually any of them will do the trick, but I very much enjoyed this edition, partly for the handsome jacket and binding, and partly for the superb intro by Hobsbawm. It is not a new translation, and indeed it isn't clear that there will ever be much of a demand for a new translation. The MANIFESTO was first published in 1848 and this translation in 1888. Moore's translation is the standard one for a simple reason: Engels examined it closely and helped Moore in editing the final draft of the translation.

Although I had read a fair amount in the writings of Marx over the years, this was my first time to read the work from cover to cover. I found it surprising on several levels. First, it was a much easier to read work than I had anticipated. This is upon reflection hardly surprising. The work was intended as a pamphlet for the masses, and it was essential that it be as understandable as possible. Also, the concepts and ideas articulated in these pages have become a part of the intellectual landscape of Western civilization. A host of ideas are commonplace, even among those who do not consider themselves sympathetic towards Marxism. It has become a commonplace of the past decade that Communism and Democracy clashed, and Communism lost. But the fact is that Marxist thought has exerted a massive influence on the way we view the world, and many things introduced by Marx are now central constituents of our world. Just look at the way we write history now. Before Marx a detailed consideration of the economic factors in an era was unheard of; now it is considered essential.

As a credo, I find myself conflicted over its contents, just as I always find myself conflicted in reading Marx. Marx's analyses of the dynamics governing capitalist society have always struck me as dead on. No one writes more presciently or timelessly about the structures of exploitation that are inherent in capitalism. Nonetheless, I find his positive proposals as to how to transcend capitalism to be untenable, and the post-capitalist world he describes to be undesirable. The best way to express this is that I find Marx the critic to be convincing and impressive, but Marx the visionary to be irrelevant. I want us to pay attention to Marx's critiques, but not to his proposals for change.

I was delighted in reading the book to find the word "highfalutin" in the text. The world seems somehow to be a more charming place for the unexpected presence of such a light-hearted word in the midst of a serious text.

Though listed as the work of Marx and Engels, Marx was the primary creator of the work. He also did the bulk of the writing. It isn't sufficiently commented on what a beautiful writer Marx could be when he tried. Too often he adopts the try academic style begun with Christian Wolff and continued by Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. But a host of exquisite phrases such as "All that is solid melts into air" shows that Marx could turn a phrase when conviction didn't prevent him.

Everyone interested in political thought or modern history needs to read this book. Its influence--its ongoing influence--is incalculable. Its critique of the exploitative nature of capitalism remains astonishingly relevant. And its predictions about the future course of history, even if no longer inspiring or convincing, are crucial to grasp if one is to understand many of the political impulses of the past one hundred and fifty years.

Though originally written in 1848, The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels ended up exerting its greatest influence in the following century. No other book had a more profound effect on 20th-century history in terms of lives affected, governments overthrown, nations transformed, people killed or displaced, and the expenditure of time, money, and energy either for or against it. Given the fact that America was so preoccupied with the threat of Communism for decades, it's surprising how few Americans ever took the time to read the actual battle cry of their nemesis. Due to its historical importance, Communism is a political philosophy that must either be accepted or refuted, but cannot be ignored. Nevertheless, my intention here is not to critique Communism as a philosophy but rather to critique the Manifesto as a book.

A common misconception is that this book is the founding document of Communism, but in reality Communism was well-known as an active political school in Europe at the time the Manifesto was published. The purpose of the Manifesto was to ignite and unite the faithful, recruit the curious, and frighten the bourgeoisie. The authors assumed a prior knowledge of Communism on the part of the reader, and as such the text spends more time clarifying the doctrine of Communism than it does declaring it outright. Because it's a manifesto rather than a full-fledged philosophical treatise, its full of bold, undefended statements. Here you won't find well-reasoned arguments extolling the virtues of Communism, nor detailed explanations as to how exactly the world would be run following the triumph of the Revolution. For that you'll have to look elsewhere in Marx's oeuvre. The subject matter of the Manifesto is restricted to a description of the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, along with some general statements about the abolition of private property. There's also some discussion of how Communism differs from earlier forms of Socialism, and the state of its activity in Europe in the mid-19th century.

The Kindle file that's offered for free on Amazon was originally created by Project Gutenberg. It's a very short file, and one-fifth of it is taken up by the Project Gutenberg license agreement. The entire Manifesto can be read in under an hour. This is a no-frills file; it contains no introduction, commentary, or footnotes. There's no table of contents, but a file this small doesn't really need one. The English translation is from the 1888 edition edited by Engels. For the modern audience it's a bit of a clunky read. There are a few grammatical errors, subject-verb disagreements for example. Absent from this volume, however, are the annoying typographical errors often found in Project Gutenberg files created by optical character recognition of scanned books. In that respect the text is clean and user-friendly.

As a historical document, The Communist Manifesto is an invaluable artifact. As a philosophical text, it's brevity undermines its necessity. For any in-depth knowledge of the subject, you'll have to dive into Marx's Das Kapital.