TODO_AUTHOR, (Marx et al. 2014)
Summary
Thoughts
Notes
The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)
- Your Highlight on page 2 | Location 28-31 | Added on Wednesday, July 1, 2015 1:36:09 PM
my knowledge of Western society was not based on hearsay and my political outlook and inclinations were communistic precisely for that reason: the reality of what I witnessed and experienced in capitalist America prior to 1953 (the year my father moved the family to Moscow) struck me as being far less just, democratic, and humane than the theory of socialism which, as my father never tired telling me, was practiced in the Soviet Union.
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The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)
- Your Highlight on page 6 | Location 88-88 | Added on Wednesday, July 1, 2015 1:45:09 PM
And the ruling classes trembled.
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The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)
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their reaction would seem to say they took and take Marx and Engels very seriously.
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The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)
- Your Highlight on page 7 | Location 96-96 | Added on Wednesday, July 1, 2015 1:46:43 PM
whatever class owns (controls) the property is in fact the ruling class;
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The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)
- Your Highlight on page 7 | Location 96-98 | Added on Wednesday, July 1, 2015 1:47:18 PM
property and power go hand in hand; that whatever class owns (controls) the property is in fact the ruling class; and that no class relinquishes its grasp on power/property without a struggle. Expressed in somewhat different terms, they were stating the view that the history of human social development is nothing less than the history of class struggle between the haves and the have-nots.
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The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)
- Your Highlight on page 8 | Location 116-119 | Added on Wednesday, July 1, 2015 1:49:39 PM
Yes, the law of social development existed and that law was economic in nature; it had to do with (1) who owned the means of production, (2) what kind of ownership prevailed, and (3) what was the method of production. In the simplest of terms, Marx proposed the following: Human society develops along certain lines; it progresses in a certain predetermined direction; it moves only one way, never going back, never regressing to a previously attained stage.
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The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)
- Your Highlight on page 9 | Location 136-138 | Added on Wednesday, July 1, 2015 1:51:01 PM
But in none of them was public, collective property instituted. What replaced private ownership was state ownership. All the means of production were both de jure and de facto owned, controlled, and run by the state.
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The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)
- Your Highlight on page 10 | Location 143-145 | Added on Wednesday, July 1, 2015 1:51:40 PM
not a struggle between democracy and communism; it was a struggle between two forms of ownership: private and state. State ownership lost. It might even be said that the struggle was between two forms of capitalism—bourgeois capitalism and state capitalism, with the former proving to be the stronger.
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The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)
- Your Highlight on page 12 | Location 176-176 | Added on Wednesday, July 1, 2015 1:54:31 PM
Lenin bears the responsibility for what followed (not that he would have supported it); Lenin, not Marx.
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The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)
- Your Highlight on page 11 | Location 167-169 | Added on Wednesday, July 1, 2015 1:55:00 PM
Leninism has, as a matter of fact, very little in common with Marxism. As the British historian Paul Johnson put it, Lenin “completely ignored the very core of Marx’s ideology, the historical determinism of the revolution” and believed that “the decisive role was played by human will: his.”
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The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)
- Your Highlight on page 10 | Location 145-149 | Added on Wednesday, July 1, 2015 1:55:29 PM
insisted that the transition from one social stage to the next could happen only when a given society had reached the limits of its development within a particular stage. Thus, the move to socialism, as Marx saw it, could happen and would happen only after capitalism in a given country had run its full course. No society could skip a stage. This to Marx was an expression of historical logic. It was akin to saying that one cannot become an adult without first passing through adolescence.
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The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)
- Your Highlight on page 13 | Location 190-191 | Added on Wednesday, July 1, 2015 1:57:10 PM
Marx “overlooked the dictatorial potential of the State . . . that was a huge mistake.”
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The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)
- Your Highlight on page 13 | Location 191-197 | Added on Wednesday, July 1, 2015 1:57:43 PM
One should certainly not look to Marx for guidance as to the workings of a Socialist economy. He had very little to say about that subject. His forte was capitalism. So, indeed, there is much to “rethink” about Socialist economies—especially considering that, as I pointed out earlier, they have never existed. What collapsed in Eastern Europe was not the system of public ownership, may I repeat, but the system of state ownership. Finally, Marx did not foresee the dictatorial potential of the state because in the society that he envisaged, the state could not be dictatorial, for it would not have any ownership and its power would be derived from those who did in fact own the means of production: the people. What Marx did not foresee and what might be called “a huge mistake” was that self-styled Marxists would make use of his teachings for their own ends, distorting them beyond recognition in the process.
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The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)
- Your Highlight on page 14 | Location 206-215 | Added on Wednesday, July 1, 2015 2:02:22 PM
a decent livelihood (the pursuit of happiness) was not possible without two basic elements: political equality and economic equality. Political equality applies to a society where the people are governed by their own consent with the voice of their own government—something that cannot exist without universal suffrage. Some have more power than others, namely, those who are elected to office. But all are politically equal in the sense of being able to elect or be elected. Political equality is democracy, and democracy is not egalitarian. Economic equality is socialism, that is to say, a system by which a decent livelihood is secured for all. This does not mean identical wages for one and all, but it does mean sufficient subsistence for one and all to enjoy the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. In short, socialism is a society where some have more, some have less, but there are no have-nots, a system that could be called nonegalitarian equality. That is the society Marx predicted would follow capitalism because capitalism was not and is not capable of creating a “decent livelihood” for all. Capitalism gives neither political nor economic equality to the people. The number of have-nots in all capitalist societies is quite high—and these are both economic and political have-nots. The reason for that, according to Marx, is the private ownership of the means of production.
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The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)
- Your Highlight on page 75 | Location 1141-1143 | Added on Wednesday, July 1, 2015 2:18:04 PM
bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern Capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage-labour. By proletariat, the class of modern wage-labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour-power in order to live.
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The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)
- Your Highlight on page 28 | Location 419-420 | Added on Wednesday, July 1, 2015 2:19:07 PM
The history of all hitherto existing society † is the history of class struggles.
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The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)
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Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
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