Karl Marx/Addendum

Communist Manifesto

The classic "Communist Manifesto" by Marx and Engels called for the working classes to rise in rebellion. Eric Hobsbawm has argued there was a "triumphal march" of capitalism after the European revolutions of 1848-49, which proves that Marx and Engels were completely wrong in their prognosis of the rapid intensification of class conflict and the destruction of capitalism. From 1848-49 onward the European bourgeoisie implemented successfully various reforms that insured their hegemony and confounded the prognosis of the "Manifesto".

10 Rules to Achieve Communism

In part II of his Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx laid out ten rules that he believed would be "unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production" and "pretty generally applicable" to different countries when the "proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie"

These rules are often referred to as the "10 Planks of Socialist Communism":

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat

The "dictatorship of the proletariat" was introduced by Marx and Engels, and later used by V. I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin to justify their totalitarian rule. They controlled the Communist party in the Soviet Union in the name of the proletariat (which had no voice.) Marx and Engels believed in the need for such a dictatorship during the transition to communism following the takeover by the proletariat. They envisaged some undefined form of absolute sovereignty of the people in a radical democratic state based on universal and equal suffrage. Supposedly the dictatorship would allow the proletariat to abolish bureaucracy and private ownership of the means of production, using force and repressive or dictatorial methods to overcome the inevitable resistance by the bourgeoisie. Lenin, however, saw the concept in terms of a dictatorship exercised not by a democratically chosen majority but by a vanguard minority revolutionary party; he eventually accepted the need for a state bureaucracy, and his more extreme opposition to the bourgeoisie led him to favor their exclusion and disenfranchisement to the benefit of the urban working class.

Revolution of 1848

Just as soon as the "Communist Manifesto" appeared, but unrelated to its publication, rebellions erupted in Europe in which workers and intellectuals, and even some members of the middle classes participated. The first of the revolutions of 1848, broke out in Paris. Marx rushed back to Paris at the invitation of the liberal provisional government that had replaced the government of King Louis Philippe. By March 1848, the revolution had reached Prussia, and in Berlin King Frederick William IV had been compelled to grant an elected parliament, a free press, and the convening of an assembly to draw up a new constitution. Marx hurried to Cologne (part of Prussia), and resumed his journalistic activities, concentrating his energies on a new paper, the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung," which under his editorship favored an alliance between the German workers' movement and the more progressive elements of the middle class. By autumn, 1848, the revolution had been defeated in France and in the Austrian Empire. Marx still favored such an alliance and refused to support separate working-class candidates in elections. Not until April 1849, a month before the final collapse of the revolution in Germany, did he change tactics and advocate separate working-class political action. But it was far too late. Marx returned once again to Paris, expecting the revolution to succeed there; it did not and he was expelled in July 1849. Marx returned to London to begin his long exile.