Post: After reading the Manifesto of the Communist Party—specifically the “Preamble,” “Chapter I. Bourgeois and Proletarians,” and “Chapter II. Proletarians and Communists,” choose one of the two options listed below and write a 500-word post responding to the questions in your selected option.
Option 1: Chapter I. Bourgeois and Proletarians
For Marx and Engels, “the [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” In this chapter they set out a sweeping history of class society, in particular the struggle of the bourgeoisie against the rotten feudal system, and explain how the bourgeoisie, having taken power in one country, is forced by its own system to revolutionize production on a world scale and with this, produces “its own grave-diggers”: the proletariat.
Questions:
How do Marx and Engels define “class”?
What are the bourgeoisie and proletariat?
How did capitalism come into existence according to Marx and Engels?
What relationship exists between economic development and the political struggle? Can we find examples of this in society today?
What do Marx and Engels mean when they write, “The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part”?
How does this chapter predict globalization?
In what sense is capitalism “like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells”?
How is the proletariat formed under capitalism?
What is the role of trades unions for Marx and Engels?
Option 2: Chapter II. Proletarians and Communists
In this chapter, Marx and Engels first explain the role of Communists in the class struggle and then confront some of the main accusations levelled at Communists by their bourgeois detractors of the time. In answering their critics, Marx and Engels also offer clarification and explanation of their own ideas, for example on the question of what is meant by the “abolition of private property” and of the “bourgeois family”: questions that are still raised to this day. Finally, Marx and Engels set out a list of demands to be raised by Communists active in the movement.
Questions:
What lesson(s) should we draw from the statement that “The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties”?
How can Communists “point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality”?
What is “capital”? What is “wage-labour”? And how do the two relate to each other?
What place would the individual have in a Communist society?
What do Marx and Engels mean by “abolition of the family”?
What is the role of the state, and what form would the state take in a Communist society?
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