The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx in 1848 is noted as one of the most influential political documents in the world. The publication of the book earned Marx the reputation of a prominent sociologist and political theorist. Despite his renown, there are many controversies concerning the ideas and concepts of communism formulated in the papers that are still heatedly debated even today. Marx (1998) opened the book with, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” (p.4). He scrutinized the class differences and social inequality between the Proletariats and Bourgeoisies, two terms he coined to represent social classes that do not own the means of production and social classes that do own the means of production respectively. Since The Communist Manifesto was produced in an era of great social distress, it was the result of Marx’s desire to eliminate the gap between the two classes in order to ameliorate the social, political, and economic conditions of the Proletarians. To achieve equality, Marx encouraged the Proletarians to conspire against the Bourgeoisies to end the exploitation of lower social classes and set up a communistic society where class distinction is a leap of imagination. However, his ideal required changes that a society cannot successfully adapt to and do not ultimately provide equality. Marx’s theories were established upon only class stratification and ignored the many other factors that contribute to the foundation of a society. The entire list of demands that outlines the rules and regulations of communism do not fundamentally offer fairness. Communism disrupts the whole social exchange system which will eventually corrupt the economy of a society. Thus, the theories introduced in The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx are not relevant in modern industrialized societies primarily because they focus only on the issue of class stratification and neglected the other complications involved in a society.

Marx (1998) believed that “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – bourgeoisie and proletariat.” (p.4). It was a vital mistake to polarize the people exclusively on classes instead of taking into account the other factors that contribute to the build-up of a society such as traditions, religious ideologies, trust, laws, cultures, and such. Attempting to create equilibrium between solely the classes will cause new and severe problems that cannot be fixed with Marx’s theories.