Questions about the Communist Manifesto

[communist72]

first one Marx is saying like if you work for someone they should be working next to you making the same amount of money as you? is that what he saying

Second I might just being reading it and just it's being digested in my brain wrong but does Marx want to abolish family?

Third abolished all rights of inheritance. is he saying like if gates and his wife die their daughter wouldn't get any of there money

who are emigrants? is it just typo for immigrants or does it have its own meaning?

Thank you for those who answer my questions

[Invincible Summer]

first one Marx is saying like if you work for someone they should be working next to you making the same amount of money as you? is that what he saying

What is the specific quote? But overall, Marx is saying that a worker is exploited by his boss (not being paid the full amount for his work), which is unfair. The boss is making more money because he is cheating his workers out of their fair pay.

Marx is saying that the workers shouldn't even need bosses or wages as they can work for themselves to produce for their own interests, not the interests of their boss.


Second I might just being reading it and just it's being digested in my brain wrong but does Marx want to abolish family?
He has problems with the traditional notion of the family, and that is what he wants to abolish.



Third abolished all rights of inheritance. is he saying like if gates and his wife die their daughter wouldn't get any of there money

Yeah, basically. It's unfair for their kids to get a shitload of money from doing nothing (not that their parents were really hard working anyway), when others may even leave family debts to the children.


who are emigrants? is it just typo for immigrants or does it have its own meaning?


To emigrate is to leave one's own country to settle. It's the same as immigration, but from the perspective of the country where one is leaving from.

[communist72]

so with the family thing he wants to abolish like the percived subaran family with a big Suv a lush green yard a little all american boy or girl in a nice subarn neighborhood and the dad works an office job and the women id either a 1. stay at home mom or 2. nurse and then the family has a big dog to fit with it all
is this what marx is trying to abolish?

[Chambered Word]

I read the Manifesto ages ago and I don't remember a whole lot of it, but I'll answer some of these anyway.


first one Marx is saying like if you work for someone they should be working next to you making the same amount of money as you? is that what he saying

Sort of. Under socialism you don't work for someone, you work with other people. Everyone pretty much makes the same wage.


Second I might just being reading it and just it's being digested in my brain wrong but does Marx want to abolish family?

I think he was protesting against the rigidity of the family and how it only serves the needs of the bourgeoisie. I don't think he argued for it to be abolished as a social construct altogether. Someone else could answer this better.


Third abolished all rights of inheritance. is he saying like if gates and his wife die their daughter wouldn't get any of there money

Exactly.


who are emigrants? is it just typo for immigrants or does it have its own meaning?

Emigrant: someone who leaves one country to settle in another.
Immigrant: a person who comes to a country where they were not born in order to settle there.

To emigrate from a country would be to leave it. To immigrate to a country would be to settle in it.


Thank you for those who answer my questions

No worries mate. :)

[Joe_Germinal]

first one Marx is saying like if you work for someone they should be working next to you making the same amount of money as you? is that what he saying

Yes. He (and Engels) are saying that in present society we have people who work for a living--the proletariat--and people who don't work but rather make their money from exploitation of the workers--the bourgeoisie. Basically, the bourgeoisie own private property (the means of production, i.e. land, factories, machines, etc.) and hire workers to produce with this property. Only a small amount of the wealth produced goes to the workers; the owners keep the remainder for themselves despite the fact that they don't work. In a socialist society, workers would own the means of production, and everyone would do some type of work for a living.


Second I might just being reading it and just it's being digested in my brain wrong but does Marx want to abolish family?

Marx is arguing that the idealize bourgeois family exists only for the bourgeoisie. For most people (especially in Marx's time) the family was a source of labor which needed to be exploited in order to survive (putting young children to work, etc.) This type of family, like the idealized bourgeois family, would cease to exist. What will replace it is a subject of some debate.


Third abolished all rights of inheritance. is he saying like if gates and his wife die their daughter wouldn't get any of there money

Damn right! You see, "Bill Gates money" isn't his; he stole it from the workers whom he paid less than the value of what they produced. Therefore, his daughter surely has no legitimate right to it.


who are emigrants? is it just typo for immigrants or does it have its own meaning?

It's not a typo, emigrants are people who leave a county. Marx and Engels were particularly thinking of the French Revolution (although most revolutions have the same problem). Basically, after the French Revolution began, many aristocrats left the country (emigrated) and used their wealth to organize a counter-revolutionary invasion of France. To prevent this in a socialist revolution, Marx and Engels say: if the bourgeoisie leave after the revolution, take their money so they can't use it to wage counter-revolutionary war.

[Chambered Word]

so with the family thing he wants to abolish like the percived subaran family with a big Suv a lush green yard a little all american boy or girl in a nice subarn neighborhood and the dad works an office job and the women id either a 1. stay at home mom or 2. nurse and then the family has a big dog to fit with it all
is this what marx is trying to abolish?

I think the actual structure of the family was the point Marx was making, not the superficial details like where they live etc. Perhaps he's arguing that women for example should be equally allowed to work while men stay at home.

[communist72]

I think the actual structure of the family was the point Marx was making, not the superficial details like where they live etc. Perhaps he's arguing that women for example should be equally allowed to work while men stay at home.

that makes more scence to me now. instead of the man always working the women can work too

[Uncle Rob]

that makes more scence to me now. instead of the man always working the women can work too


Something like that. The bourgeois family serves as the economic institute for the right to inheritance, which is how most of the bourgeoisie make their wealth in the first place. However the family also serves various othe purposes as well, such as the oppression of women in our society by men. The family instills the idea that men have the god given right to own the women and children of their family. In bourgeois society women are seen as a means of production to be owned.

What we also find is the oppression of all those who challenge the classical concept of the family, our gay and lesbian comrades. As soon as the idea of a gay couple became popularized, it was met with the utmost of hostility. They were beaten, murdered, and dragged through the mud, and why? Because they cannot produce offspring, they challenge this conventional concept the bourgeois need to continue the practice of their dominance over women and their right to inheritance.

Often times we hear "It's impossible to abolish the family! It's a natural human practice!" However, what these philistines don't realize is that the modern proletarian family is daily being abolished, just like petty-bourgeois property. How many of your friends have the stereotypical mother, father, children set-up? My guess is not many. Fiscal problems make such a concept very difficult, and it's more often then not that the kids are already at preschool all day while the parents work to the bone. What we also see, at certain stages of historical development, the family structure has changed dramatically. In tribalism, where women would take on various partners and children could only be tied to the mother, women we're more respected, and through that respect, we see a more matriarchal society.

If we abolish private property, thereby altering the class character of society it is no doubt that the family will too change. Into what form, as previously state is u for much debate.

[robbo203]

I read the Manifesto ages ago and I don't remember a whole lot of it, but I'll answer some of these anyway.



Sort of. Under socialism you don't work for someone, you work with other people. Everyone pretty much makes the same wage.


No this is not correct. In communism you dont have a wages system. Marx in fact argued that a gneralised wages system implied the existence of capital and capitalism which is why of course all the so called communist or socialist regimes are more accurately called state capitalist since wage labour is generalised in these regimes. Communism entails the abolition of wage labourand its replacement by free voluntary labour

[ZeroNowhere]

voluntary labourPerhaps this was a typo?

[mikelepore]

See the preface to the 1872 edition of the Communist Manifesto. Marx and Engels no longer agreed with what they had said in 1848 were the correct actions to take.

[el_chavista]

first one Marx is saying like if you work for someone they should be working next to you making the same amount of money as you? is that what he sayingPut in another way: the capitalist class has not to work because it historically appropriated the means of production. Is it not unfair?


Second I might just being reading it and just it's being digested in my brain wrong but does Marx want to abolish family?He's referring to the family as it is in the capitalist system -the patriarchal family. What is a matrimony in the capitalist system but a civil contract dealing with the properties of the spouses? What are the children for a poor family patriarch but workers.


Third abolished all rights of inheritance. is he saying like if gates and his wife die their daughter wouldn't get any of there moneyThe inheritance of the private property of the means of production is the legal recognition of the dominion of the capitalist class.