Heh.
I’ll be jotting down some thoughts after listening to a podcast interviewing a new book on the Communist Manifesto (CM), “A Spectre, Haunting Europe: on the Communist Manifesto”, by China Miéville.
I say “re-read” as I’d had to study it, the CM, seriously, in 1976, at the Peking Language Institute, with the double horror of studying it in Chinese.
Meantime, the above meme is place-marker-cum-troll. Kind of spot on, isn’t it, though? One of the best learning in life is “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” (Milton Friedman).
LATER: My process leading me back to a re-reading of the Communist Manifesto:
Yesterday’s screenshot of looking up “Twitter” on NYT site ⇨ To Chris Hayes article ⇨ Chris Hayes podcast with China Miéville ⇨ New book on the CM, called “Spectre, Haunting”, which is the first line in the Introduction to the CM ⇨ And so back to the CM....
The CM is a shocking read even today. One could make the case that it’s “hate speech”. Hatred towards groups of people (the bourgeoisie and capitalists) and calling for their elimination (“genocide”?).
One sometime hears an apologia for Communism (aka socialism) along the lines of “the original idea is great; just that it’s not been implemented well”. I’m not so sure the original idea was all that great, tbf. Read it. Read the CM. To me it’s pretty grim, and I’m sure it seemed pretty grim to many even when it was published in 1848. But even if one grants that it was a grand idea then, in 1848, (which, to repeat, I don’t), even if you grant that the idea was a wonderful, utopian one, we’ve had nearly two hundred years of trying it out in practice since then. And not a single country out of the dozens that have tried, not a single one has succeeded.[*] They have all fallen into dictatorship and despair. That’s on record, so why on earth do we still have people the likes of Chris Hayes (senior at MSNBC) and China Miéville (award winning author) still admiring the Manifesto with so much admire? Why? I don’t get it.
[*] China has been successful in recent decades to the exact extent that it has given up on the principles of the CM. When I arrived in 1976, they were following the CM. They were dirt poor. They gave them up when I was there. The economy boomed. QED.
Snippets below. They are cherry-picked, of course. But everything in life cherry-picked. Including this sentence, cherry-picked from my mind. In any case, they are representative and the full text is right there for the reading (only 12,000 words). Here are my snippets:
In this sense the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
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In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.
And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois: abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.
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the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.
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you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so: that is just what we intend.
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Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.
On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
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The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.
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In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end. [PF: But how can the “antagonism between classes” vanish, if the proletariat is busily destroying the bourgeoisie?]
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When people speak of ideas that revolutionize society they do but express the fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence. [Doesn’t this mean that as a Communist society gets old, it too will dissolve?]
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We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class; to win the battle of democracy.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie; to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property…
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These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
Nevertheless in the most advanced countries the following will be pretty generally applicable:
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 right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands 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 liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries: gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population 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., etc.
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The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Workingmen of all countries unite!
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China Miéville says that he finds two things are “absolutely crucial to” the CM: “... one is freedom, and one, as part of that, is democracy...”.Which is strange, because on my reading of the CM, freedom is reviled. As you see from the first snipped above. And below I paste all the places where “Freedom” is mentioned. And as for “democracy” to the writers of the CM it was defined by the proletariat being able to overthrow, suppress and ultimately expunge, the bourgeoisie.
Where “freedom” appears in the CM text
It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
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We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labor, which property is alleged to be the ground work of all personal freedom, activity and independence.
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And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois: abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.
By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.
But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other “brave words” of our bourgeoisie about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the middle ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.
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But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, etc. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will, whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.
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By this, the long wished-for opportunity was offered to “True Socialism” of confronting the political movement with the Socialist demands, of hurling the traditional anathemas against liberalism, against representative government, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that they had nothing to gain and everything to lose by this bourgeois movement….
