The 1789 Discourse: Marx, Engels, And The Alternative To Capitalism
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The Communist Manifesto is perhaps one of the most influential books to ever be written. When Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published their pamphlet in 1848, it is hard to imagine that they knew their ideas would still be discussed nearly 200 years later and that those ideas would be applied to societal issues incomprehensible in their lifetimes. The more things change, however, the more they stay the same. Marx and Engels’ criticism of capitalism is as relevant today as it was during the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution.
Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in Germany. Ethnically Jewish, he studied law and philosophy at the University of Bonn and the University of Berlin. He became a journalist after moving to Cologne in 1842, and from there spent time in Paris and Brussels before seeking refuge in London in 1849 after European authorities began to consider him a political threat. It was not until his time in Paris that he met Engels, after which both men were heavily involved in organizing the Communist League.
In contrast to Marx’s middle-class upbringing, Engels was born into a wealthy German family that owned several textile mills. Both men attended the University of Berlin, though not at the same time.. Engels’ parents later sent him to work in one of their mills in Manchester, in the hope that this experience would change his radical opinions. Instead, his experience among the English working class further radicalized him. Before meeting and working with Marx on The Communist Manifesto, Engels had already written and published The Condition of the Working Class in England, describing the horrific living conditions suffered by English factory workers.
The principle idea behind communism as envisioned by Marx and Engels is that capitalism is a system of production that is unfit for purpose. Far from dismissing capitalism altogether, the two men actually believed that it was the greatest system for producing material wealth. Their problem lay with capitalism’s inability to fairly distribute that wealth, and the exploitive way in which that wealth is produced. As a result of these issues, capitalism inevitably creates conflict in society. Hence, within the first few pages of The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels write “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”.
Their ideas, however, are not simply applicable to economic modes of production. The issues faced in today’s society beyond economics can also be viewed through the lens of those ideas. In this way, alternative solutions to those presented by capitalism can be explored and perhaps those solutions may prove more successful.
In The Condition of the Working Class in England, Engels outlines the connection between the poverty of the working class and disease. He states that there are “whole generations wrecked, afflicted with disease and infirmity, purely to fill the purses of the bourgeoisie”. As the capitalist classes squeeze as much surplus labour value as they can from the proletariat, they leave their workers without adequate means to seek medical assistance in a healthcare system as driven by profit as manufacturing or agriculture.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a prime example of how capitalism allows disease to ravage the working class. Coronavirus test kits can cost hundreds of dollars, prohibitively expensive for families who can already be bankrupted by a hospital visit. In addition to this, President Donald Trump is calling for the United States to slow down its rate of testing, further restricting the ability of working class families to access this essential healthcare.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”, a slogan popularised by Marx in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program, means that every member of society should have their needs met while contributing to society as best they can. For Marx and Engels, one of the basic human needs that should be met is adequate healthcare, something that the United States has been failing on for years. The COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting the intrinsic problems with healthcare under capitalism that the two men wished to address.
On the issue of free trade, Marx and Engels found themselves in favour. This is not to say that they did not see issues with the practice. However, many neoliberal economists will find common ground with the founding fathers of communism when they say that the productive forces of capitalism can only be fully developed under free trade. Unlike those neoliberal economists, for Marx and Engels the development of the capitalist mode of production was a means to an end, not the end itself.
In the 1888 edition of their pamphlet On the Question of Free Trade, they state that free trade is “the economic medium in which the conditions for the inevitable social revolution will be the soonest created”. By driving capitalism towards the end stage of untenable economic inequality and overproduction, the working class would have no choice but to seize the means of production as a matter of survival. In this pursuit, free trade is invaluable.
In his Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of State, Marx states “The ‘police’, the ‘judiciary’, and the ‘administration’ are not the representatives of a civil society which administers its own universal interests in them and through them; they are the representatives of the state and their task is to administer the state against civil society”. For Marx and Engels, the police are the enforcers of bourgeoisie capitalism and their purpose is not to protect people but property.
This is obvious from the Black Lives Matter protests sweeping America. The police have attempted to focus the public's attention on a small amount of looting while their officers are using weapons of war against peaceful protesters. Investigations are being opened into those who pull down statues of slavers, but none of the cops who murdered Breonna Taylor have been arrested. Marx and Engels would decry the police as a bourgeoisie militia, who more often than not actively brutalize the working class to keep them subjugated. In the classless society envisioned in The Communist Manifesto, there would be no need or desire for a police force. Thus, were the two men alive today, they would join Black Lives Matter in calling for the abolition of the police.
In a strict political definition, Marx and Engels were populists. Their ‘people’ were the working class, destined for conflict with the ‘elites’ of the bourgeoisie. The popular sovereignty often associated with populism is perhaps even more pronounced under communism, with worker’s control of the means of production and democratic decision making in nearly all aspects of public life.
However, the two would warn against the nationalist populism that is sweeping so many areas of the globe in the modern day. Marx and Engels saw enough war to know that this type of populism is a tool of the capitalist classes, pitting the workers of the world against each other and keeping them divided. While they saw nationalism as helpful among Europe’s colonies, weakening imperialist and capitalist nations, the workers of the first world had to overcome national borders and unite. In today’s globalized world, they would say there are even more workers to unite and more nationalist populism to overcome.
Capitalism is reaching its crisis point, just as Marx and Engels predicted it would. The circumstances of modern society may not look the way they imagined it to, but their ideas are still relevant today to the battles people face for a more equal and just world. The final words of The Communist Manifesto hold the same weight today as they did in 1848. “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of all countries, unite!”