Again, I need help...

[GiantBear91]

Can any one of you people explain or point out the giudlines to The Communist Manifesto? To be honest, the first time I read it, I didn't get it at all...

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

What do you mean by 'guidelines'? Do you want some sort of summary?

This might help you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Manifesto

[pastradamus]

I think you should read the prefixes first (Penguin Classics put these either in the end or the start of the book). You get a good grasp of Marx in Relation to different countries. Also I would like to say, for a full, down to earth and in plain english understanding than a person like Rosa Liectenstein is your best bet. She's an incredibly intellectual, polite and Well-studious individual in Marxism. She's basically your top-banana on this site! Ask her ANYTHING and she'll satisfy!

[GiantBear91]

Thank you all. This site is starting to become a really big help in my personal study of Communism, Anarchism, and socialism.

Rosa, by guidelines I mean what points he was trying to get through and where he stated them.

[pastradamus]

Thank you all. This site is starting to become a really big help in my personal study of Communism, Anarchism, and socialism.

Rosa, by guidelines I mean what points he was trying to get through and where he stated them.

It was a really big help to me too when I started out. Keep posting in the Learning section comrade. Your asking the correct questions and im sure your'll be an excellent addition here. In So far as where Marx stated his points from than I will state his teacher was the famous philosopher Hegel. Though Marx learned from Hegel he spun off Hegalism and eventually (largely rejected some of his idea's) altered his own views. Especially with concern to Social politics and Identifying the Working class as a special group and a by-product of the industrial revolution.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Marx was trying to establish several main points.

1) History is not a random process, nor is it merely the result the development of human thought as such. It's main driving force is the class struggle, which has taken on different forms at different times in the past. In modern, capitalist society, the class war is between two main classes: those who own and control the means of production (factories, transport systems, mines, etc.) -- called the capitalists (or the bourgeoisie) --, and those who do not own and control the means of production -- the working class (under capitalism they are called the 'proletariat').

This war is sometimes hidden, sometimes open (for example, in strikes, rebellions and revolutions), but it is always there, and cannot be reformed away.

2) The capitalists are in incessant competition with one another. This forces them to revolutionise both the means of production (so that they can either undercut their competitors, or catch them up) and methods of working. However, they are also constrained to maximise profit, not because they are greedy, or because they like to spend more on luxury items (although some might so indulge), but because if they do not, they will not be able to compete with their rivals, and will be driven to the wall.

In order to do this they have continually to cheapen the cost of labour, draw in more and more workers into the labour process, and thus create larger and larger concentrations of workers (in larger and larger factories etc.). Thus, by the logic of their system, they are forced to create more and more proletarians, who are constantly, and increasingly p*ssed off with their bosses.

This is the spectre that Marx says is haunting Europe: a revolutionary class of proletarians whom the communists seek to organise. In short, the capitalists have created their own grave diggers.

3) Communists are first and foremost internationalists, and have no interests separate from or in opposition to the interests of the working class.

4) The class war will lead to revolution, and if the working class is to succeed in overthrowing the oppressive power of the capitalist state, it will need to organise itself as class, and fight in its own interests. One key element in this is the formation of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

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Now the above is but the briefest of summaries (and I have omitted many other main points). I have also deliberately left out any attempt to justify the content of my summary, much of which is controversial, but nonetheless defensible.

Hope this helps; if not, let me know.

[GiantBear91]

Thank you so much Rosa. That was greatly appreciated.