MANIFESTO OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY: Karl Marx and Friedrich

Engels :

Base and Superstructure: The base is the economic foundation of society

Superstructure is everything that is built on that base.

[Link]

Historical Materialism:

Primitive Slave Feudalism Capitalism Communism

Commun Society
Context of the Communist Manifesto:

The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848 during a period of widespread political
unrest in Europe, when societies attempted to replace aristocratic and authoritarian
monarchies with democratic and representative systems. Revolutions began in France and
spread to the German states, Austria, Hungary, and Italy. These movements were led mainly
by liberals and nationalists—not Marxists or communists—aiming to establish republics,
constitutions, and national unity during what was called the “springtime of nations.” Most of
these revolutions, however, were short-lived.

The Manifesto was also shaped by the Industrial Revolution and its consequences. Although
industrial capitalism generated immense wealth, it led to severe exploitation of workers.
Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England showed that industrialisation
worsened living conditions through low wages, overcrowding, disease, and high mortality.
These issues, known as the “social question,” raised doubts about why workers remained
impoverished despite growing material prosperity. Engels’s critique of British capitalism is
condensed and reflected in Section I of the Communist Manifesto.

Class Struggle:

History of mankind is a history of class struggle –

between the oppressor & the oppressed, between the
exploiter & the exploited.

With steam and machinery, factory owners became

millionaires - the new bourgeoisie.

Every traditional and honored profession – physician,

priest & poet – was reduced to a factory-hand.
 Today there are only 2 classes – the
bourgeoisie & the proletariat.

Family, laws, morality, religion, all are

made to serve the interests of the burgeoisie.

As the life of the workers become more and

more miserable and large numbers of them
are together in one factory, they form trade
unions and rise against the bourgeoisie.

Private Property:

Private property which is only in the hands of the capitalists is used to enslave the
workers. Abolition of private property and bringing all property under the state is
necessary, even by use of force.
The first order of business is to seize political power.

Once the proletariat becomes the ruling class, all the other
classes will either disappear or will join the proletariat.

Class struggle will disappear because there is now only one

class, an association of all the people.

We will have a society free of class struggle where the

development of each is the condition for the development of all.
Nickel and Dimed in America, Barbara Ehrenreich:

v “Veteran Muckraker” (New

Yorker)
v PhD in Theoretical Physics
v Botched child birth experience
v Became a feminist and Shift to
focus on women’s health
v Various Academic Positions in
NYU, University of Missouri, Ohio
State, and various policy and think
tanks.
v Prolific Author -26 books
v Best known for “Nickel and
Dimed”

Source: Wikipedia: ([Link]

The Experiment and Housing Struggles: Ehrenreich leaves her regular life to work
unskilled jobs, attempting to see if she can match income to expenses while earning
close to minimum wage. She discovers that affordable housing is scarce. She initially
settles for an efficiency apartment 30 miles away from Key West because closer
options, such as trailers, are too expensive ($675/month),. Later, to save on gas and
time, she moves into a tiny, cramped trailer closer to work. Despite many "help wanted"
ads, finding a job is difficult. She applies for housekeeping and supermarket positions
but faces onerous application processes, including personality tests and interrogation
about theft. She is hired as a waitress at a family restaurant she calls "Hearthside,"
earning $2.43 an hour plus tips. The workplace is controlled by strict managers who
prohibit sitting down, conduct locker searches, and threaten employees with drug
testing to crack down on "gossip" and perceived insubordination. Ehrenreich realizes
her coworkers are barely surviving. One lives in a truck, another cannot afford estrogen
medication because the company "lost" her health insurance application, and none have
a financial safety net. After two weeks, she realizes her tips and wages are insufficient
to cover her rent, prompting the need for a second job. She takes a job at a high-volume
restaurant she calls "Jerry’s." The work is physically punishing, causing old injuries to
 flare up, and the environment is chaotic and dirty. Employees are not allowed breaks
and must eat on the run. The only rest area is a folding chair near the restrooms where
staff smoke. She notes that "Visible Christians" who come in after church are often the
most demanding and the poorest tippers. Desperate for money, she takes a second job
- a housekeeping job at a hotel. The work involves cleaning 19 rooms a day and
enduring significant physical pain alongside her coworker, Carlie. Attempting to work
both the housekeeping job and the waitressing job proves impossible. She relies on
painkillers and caffeine to function. During a chaotic shift at Jerry’s, a "perfect storm"
of demanding customers and a screaming manager pushes her over the edge. Unable to
cope with the conflicting demands and the manager's rage over a mixed-up order, she
walks out of the job without permission, feeling a sense of personal failure despite the
experiment's scientific intent.

ECONOMIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL MANUSCRIPTS OF 1844, Karl Marx:

◦ Context: The backdrop of the industrial revolution – its promises and outcomes.
◦ The impact of the industrial revolution (18th-19th century) on workers and wage
earners was clear. Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England
shows how the industrial revolution worsened rather than improved the social
conditions of England's working poor.
◦ Increased disease and mortality rates, lower incomes, and poor living
conditions. Known as the "social question," these problems left many
wondering why workers were still so poor when industrial capitalism was
producing great wealth and material richness.
◦ Exile: After school, Marx turned to writing and journalism to support himself. In 1842
he became the editor of the liberal Cologne newspaper “Rheinische Zeitung," but the
Berlin government banned it from publication the following year. Marx left Germany—
never to return—and spent two years in Paris, where he first met his collaborator,
Friedrich Engels.
◦ Chased out of France by those in power who opposed his ideas, Marx moved to
Brussels, then london.
◦ Financial hardships: Life of poverty, supported financially by Engels.
◦ Impact: Several successful revolutions occur, propelled by groups that adopted
communism—including those in Russia, 1917-1919, and China, 1945-1948. Flags and
 banners depicting Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution, together with
Marx, were long displayed in the Soviet Union. The same was true in China, where
similar flags showing the leader of that country's revolution, Mao Zedong, together
with Marx were also prominently displayed.

◦ Production by force: Start with facts: The harder the worker labors and the more he
produces, the more he sinks into misery. The worker produces not because he wants it,
not because it satisfies his physical and intellectual needs, but because he is forced to
produce
◦ Alienation:

The worker is free only when he is engaged in the animal functions like eating, drinking
and procreating. The worker is alienated from his product, the activity of his work, from
others, and from his species being. Estrangement – emotional disconnect

◦ Consequence of alienation:

What the worker produces goes to the capitalist who is inimical to the worker. Private
property is the direct, necessary consequence of alienated labor. Reciprocal relationship
between alienated labor and private property.
 ◦ Emancipation:

An increase in wages does not enhance the worker’s human dignity, it is payment to a slave.
The emancipation of the worker from private property leads to universal human
emancipation

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904-05], Max Weber:

Context: Religion and change: 16th century Europe:

◦ Beginning with German cleric Martin Luther (1483–1546), Reformers, who became
known as Protestants, challenged the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and its
doctrines.
◦ Protestant reforms: promotion of the translation of the Bible into local languages,
instead of relying on the interpretation of clergy. In the Catholic Church, the Bible
and services were in Latin, a specialized language, considered holy, that concentrated
authority in the hands of the priestly class. Reliance on clergy rather than a direct and
unmediated connection with God.
◦ Across Europe, wars erupted between peoples and governments who adopted
Protestantism and those who remained loyal to the Catholic Church. The Thirty Years'
War (1618–1648) between Protestant and Catholic states. Started when Ferdinand II
in 1618, attempted to impose Roman Catholic absolutism on his domains, and the
protestant nobles of both Bohemia and Austria rose up in rebellion.
◦ One of the major consequences of the Protestant Reformation was the great number of
independent churches and Christian groups that arose, and continued to evolve, in the
years that followed.
◦ Puritans persecuted due to their refusal to accept the authority of the Church of
England. Their tools destroyed and places of business damaged uneasiness with the
puritanical commitment to work.

Context: Shift from traditional to capitalist economy:

◦ The German Empire at the time of the first publication of Weber’s PE in 1904 and
1905 was characterized by a dynamically growing economy together with increasing
 social and political tensions. Between 1850 and 1910 Germany developed from a
backward economy into Europe’s industrial core.
◦ The German Empire was highly heterogeneous, given its rather small size. The
Prussian state had a leading position, representing about 60 percent of the entire
population. But Prussia itself was heterogeneous, split between dynamic cities such as
Berlin and backward agrarian regions, old Prussian territories such as Brandenburg,
and new ones recently conquered after the Napoleonic Wars. And most importantly,
Prussia experienced conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, and between
Germans, Poles, and other national minorities.

Max Weber (1864-1920):

◦ German (born in Prussia) sociologist and political economist best known for his thesis
of the “Protestant ethic,” and for his ideas on bureaucracy and status.
◦ Grew up in the suburbs of Berlin. His father was a city councilor and politician, and
mother was raised in Calvinist orthodoxy.
◦ Trained as a lawyer and historian but was drawn to social sciences. Gained
professorships in Economics and Political Science.
◦ In 1897, he went into a depression that halted all work. When his capacity for work
returned after several years, he changed direction of his scholarship from economic
and legal history to the study of societies. He produced his most important work after
this illness.
◦ Weber sought to develop a scientific approach. Weber demonstrated that the
comparative method was essential because the behavior of institutions in societies
could not be understood in isolation.
 Key Difference between Marx and Weber:

Web
er
x
ar
M

Superstructure
creates the base

Key Points:

• Protestantism, especially Calvinism, (compared to Catholicism) was prevalent in the

richest regions.
• Strange given that it replaced a lax God with all-seeing God, invigilating every second
of our lives, demanding hard work, frugality, absolute honesty, constant striving and
reinvestment, turning economic activity into a moral obligation rather than a pursuit of
self-interest or survival.
• In contrast, the traditionalist pre-capitalist view, focused on “what we need” and saw
wealth accumulation as “greed.” The traditional approach focused on doing things the
way it was done before, rather than constant reinvestment, innovation and growth.
Weber claims that the traditionalist mindset had to be replaced for capitalism to take
off.
• Over time, the protestant ethic led to great prosperity. But then, it was a victim of its
own success - slowly the spirt faded, leaving behind only a constant grasping-striving,
which took on “the character of sport” – the "iron cage" (“specialists without spirit,
sensualists without heart”)
Difference between protestants and catholics:

◦ The difference cannot be explained by richer people throwing off the yoke of religion
- because Calvinism was a very strict form of Christianity where every aspect of
people’s life was controlled
◦ Not explained by the fact that protestants were a minority and had no choice other than
to get into economic activity - because even when catholics were a minority, as in
Germany, they did not get into economic activity

Protestantism:

• Protestants preach that acquiring wealth through hard work and wholly legal means is
a virtuous duty enjoined by God.
• Protestantism also emphasizes asceticism, frugal living, shunning of luxuries and
notusing wealth for self-indulgence.
• This removes the opprobrium and guilt attached to being rich.

Traditional attitudes inimical to capitalism:

• More money doesn’t motivate workers: Less work for the same money is more
attractive than more money and more work.
• Cheap labour leads to more profit: Not necessarily. Cheap labour means poor-quality
labour which leads to less profit. “You throw peanuts, you get monkeys” who have to
be constantly monitored
• Unscrupulous greed

Modern capitalism:

• Religious asceticism combined with the idea that work is a calling from God and wealth
is to be used only for growth and the common good is the spirit of capitalism.
• Unequal distribution of wealth is part of God’s mysterious plan, and by grace and hard
work can be changed to abundance -> if someone is poor, then they must be less
deserving (lazy, backward)
• The unintended consequence: Frugality and hard work will inevitably make the group
rich, but with riches came pride and the temptations of the material world.
• Religious support for acquiring wealth is no more needed. Making money has become
a passion and a sport.