The Communist Manifesto, 1848-1948

Irish Jesuit Province

The Communist Manifesto, 1848-1948Author(s): Michael HurleySource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 76, No. 906 (Dec., 1948), pp. 532-540Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20515903 .

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THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, 1848-1948

By MICHAEL HURLEY, SJ.

The whole Communist movement is based upon the prin

ciples of the Manifesto. Those principles, and the story of how they came to be formulated in 1848, are set out in the

following article.

IT was in February, 1848, that the Communist Manifesto was

first published. Just then the trees of liberty were being planted and blessed all over France and Louis Philippe was arriving in

London as Mr. Brown.

1848 was a year crowded with events; another "

longus et unus

annus ". Everywhere political temperatures rose to flashpoint; every where ideas were crystallised and movements launched which fixed to a large extent the pattern of things to come. It was a momentous

year in the history of Europe; momentous, however, not for what

it achieved but for what it initiated. The men of 1848 achieved

little; they initiated much. They sowed and others entered into their

labours.

Since its first publication the Communist Manifesto has gone from

translation to translation, from edition to edition. The 1888 English version alone was reprinted as many as twelve times between the

years 1934 and 1946. This translation, so every reader is carefully informed, was revised and annotated by Engels himself and is now "

authorised by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, Moscow ". For

all that it is to be superseded; Lawrence and Wishart have

announced a new and more modern translation to appear before

the end of the present year. How did this virile little document, the Communist Manifesto,

come to be drawn up? "

A spectre is haunting Europe?the spectre of Communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into

a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich

and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies. ... It is

high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole

world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this

532



COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

nursery tale of the spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the

party itself."1 In this swaggering opening paragraph of the

Manifesto Marx and Engels give an answer to my question. Engels's own plainer statement in his preface to Moore's English version is,

however, more satisfactory. He writes : "

The Manifesto was pub Ushed as the platform of the Communist League, a workingmen's association, first exclusively German, later on international, and, under the poUtical conditions of the Continent before 1848, unavoid

ably a secret society. At a congress of the League, held in London

in November, 1847, Marks and Engels were commissioned to pre

pare for pub?cation a complete theoretical and practical party pro

gramme."2

The Communist League mentioned here by Engels has an interest

ing pedigree. Known originaUy as the League of the Banished, it

had been formed at Paris not so many years before?the members

being all proscribed German patriots. At a later date and under

the leadership of Weitling, a journeyman artisan, Schapper, a forester,

Bauer, a shoemaker, and MoU, a watchmaker, the radical element

seceded and formed a new organisation which they caUed the League of the Just Becoming impUcated, however, in an attempted revolt

against the July monarchy (12th May, 1839), Weitling and his feUow

leaders had to leave Paris, and the G.H.Q. of the League was trans

ferred to London. England at this time was aU astir with the

Chartist movement. Mass meetings were being held and petitions

being signed: the great demand was that the six points of "The

People's Charter "

should become law. The League of the Just,

however, seems to have been less interested in Lovett and O'Connor

(the Chartist leaders) than in Karl Marx, a brilliant young doctor of

philosophy from the University of Jena, then lecturing at Brussels, and

his capitaUst friend, Frederich Engels. We read at any rate of a

deputation going to interview these two men. There were inter

views, conferences and negotiations. Finally in September, 1847, the

Executive Committee of the League of the Just issued the first

number of a new magazine which bore as motto the now famous

shibboletii, "Wdrldngmen of aU countries, unite "?hvestia (the

1 Manifesto of the Communist Party. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1946. Quotations from the Manifesto in this article are taken from this edition with out further reference.

* Preface to the English (1888) Edition, p. 5. 533



IRISH MONTHLY

official organ of Soviet Russia) bears this motto still. The influence of

Marx and Engels had bome fruit; the League of the Banished had

again been transformed; this time it had become the Communist

League. And now we can see further into Engels's bald statement; now the reason emerges why the Communist League had to hold a

congress in London from November 30th to December 8th in the

year 1847; why Marx and Engels should have attended and why they should have been asked to

" prepare for pub?cation a complete theo

retical and practical party programme ". This after aU, was the first

meeting of an old organisation just embarked on a new venture;

poUcies had to be outlined, plans discussed; and naturaUy enough* the two men whose principles had won acceptance were invited to be

present and were commissioned to draw up a manifesto defining and

explaining the new position of the organisation. To put it in other

words?Marx and Engels were wedding their ideas to the League of the Just and this was the giving away.

The Manifesto, then, is a guide to Communism, written not for

party members only but for the whole world. "

It is high time," the

authors say, "that Communists should openly, in the face of the

whole world, pub?sh their views, their aims, their tendencies." The

Manifesto is a handbook of Communism and might indeed (with

apologies to Peacham) have been sub-titled : "

The Compleat Com

munist, fashioning him absolute ". But why did Marx and Engels

fight shy of the word "

socia?st "; why did they insist, as they did, that the League be caUed the

" Communist

" League, and the Mani

festo the Communist Manifesto, when in point of fact all movements

such as theirs which worked for social reform and the emancipation of the working-class, were currently known as

" socialist "? The

answer is that they highly disapproved of all these movements and

wished to disassociate themselves from them. The movement they were leading, while it might coincide with those others in its general aim, stiU differed radicaUy from them in aU its philosophy and in its

methods; and they were anxious to forestall confusion. The social

ists aU cherished frothy utopias; they each sponsored some ready made plan for a new social order: there were the ParaUelograms of

Robert Owen, the Phalanxes of Fourier, the Workshops of Blanc and

the Icaria of Cabet. They professed to redress aU sorts of social

grievances, but as Engels says, "

without in the least hurting capital and profit". They themselves belonged to the middle-classes and

534



COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

looked to these for aU their support. The philosophy, which con

sciously or unconsciously they acted on, was that of Rousseau. For

them the world, nature and man were essentiaUy good. OriginaUy, then, society was perfect?a sort of Cockaigne?and it was a pleasure to be aUve. If in 1848 this was not so, the anomaly could only be

explained by postulating that the original natural harmonious order

had been disturbed; man had tampered with the original perfect con

stitution of human society and had overlaid it with vicious institu tions (such as private property); aU these were therefore to be

removed and a social order devised which would give nature's forces,

full play; man would then revert to the natural and the good. This Utopian Socia?sm Marx and Engels eschewed. They looked

to the working-class : " ... our notion from the beginning wa^ that the

emancipation of the working-class must be the act of the working class itself "8 What was new and original in Communism was that

it hitched the movement for social reform on to the working-class and made it what it had never been before, a working-class move

ment. As Max Beer says : "

The working-class and socia?sm were

formerly separated; Marx welded them together."1 Besides, whereas

socia?sts wished to attain their ends by peaceful means, Marx and

Engels were convinced that social reform could never be achieved

that way; and instead of rose-water they* advocated revolution. "

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They

openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible

overthrow of aU existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes

tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men

of aU countries, unite."

But the difference between Marx and Engels and their contem

porary socia?sts is more deep-seated stiU. That whole philosophy whose undertones we can catch in Utopian Socia?sm was to them

anathema. Marx and Engels started from no abstract idea of nature as essentiaUy good; they began rather from actual concrete condi

tions. "

Communism," they say, "

as taught by Cabet and others is a dogmatic abstraction ... we do not then proclaim to the world in doctrinaire fashion :

* this is the truth, bow down before it

* . . ?.

we only make clear to men for what they are reaUy struggling and

?Preface to the English (1888) Edition, p. 7. * Social Struggles and Modern Socialism, p. 57.

535



IRISH MONTHLY

to the consciousness of this they must come whether they will or

not."3 And in the Manifesto they boast: "They (the Communists) do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to

shape and mould the proletarian movement. . . . The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or prin

ciples invented or discovered by this or that would-be universal

reformer. They merely express in general terms, actual relations

springing from an existing class struggle, from an historical move

ment going on under our very eyes." Marx and Engels profess to

have an eye for the recurring patterns in the tapestry of history; they

profess to have their fingers on the pulse of the world, to record

faithfully all its beats and to have an ear for the rhythm'that governs them; they profess to be interested solely in that rhythm of events

which is the law of history. Rhythm, after all, is in its primary mean

ing, that which imposes bonds on movement, and away back ip the 7th century b.c. we find old Archilochus of Paros singing of

" the

rhythm which holds mankind in its bonds ".

The method followed out by Marx and Engels then is supposed to have its feet firmly established on the solid ground of history, while that of their contemporary socialists is built on nothing but

the shifting sands of aprioristic truths; between them there is fixed

a great chaos. And this divergence at the start accounts for every

thing else along the line. It accounts for the very different reactions and procedures of Communists and Socialists.

" The Communists,"

as we are told in the Manifesto, "

have the advantage of clearly under

standing the Une of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement." They know that the bour

geoisie cannot but "

forge the weapons that bring death to itself "; that it cannot but

" call into existence the men who are to wield

those weapons "; that it cannot but "

produce its own grave-diggers ".

They have tapped the message of history; they see where* they are

going and why; the future to them is as much an open book as the

past And born of this second-sight there is a confidence which

defies all shaking and a self-assurance proof against all argument

They trust implicitly in history and they are willing to wait With that

" huge impatience

" of theirs, they mysteriously combine the

5 Quoted in Laidler: History of Socialism, p. 155. The phrase is that of Douglas Hyde, one-time news-editor of the Daily

Worker.

536



COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

opposite quality of longanimity?" the abiUty not to be discouraged because the good aimed at is so far off, the road so long ". Not so

the socia?sts. Lacking the others' preview of the future, ignorant that the conditions necessary for the/emancipation of the proletariat are in the making and in due course to appear, they take it on them selves to create them and here and now begin to cast about for

panaceas. In their opinion "

historical action is to yield to personal inventive action; historicaUy created conditions of emancipation to

phantastic ones; and the gradual spontaneous class organisation of

the proletariat to an organisation of society specially contrived by these inventors. Future history resolves itself, in their eyes, into the

propaganda and the practical carrying out of their social plans."

(Manifesto, p. 35.) Communism, then, on its authors' own showing seems to be

revolutionary; unlike socia?sm it seems to hold a brief for non

intervention. Historical action, as we have just seen, is favoured by Marx and Engels as opposed to personal inventive action; historicaUy

created conditions of emancipation as opposed to imaginary ones; a

gradual spontaneous class organisation of the proletariat as opposed to an organisation of society speciaUy contrived. What then of their

open advocacy of revolution? Are Marx and Engels contradicting themselves when they conclude their Manifesto with these words: "

They (the Communists) openly declare that their ends can

be attained only by the forcible overthrow of aU existing social con

ditions "? Here indeed Marx and Engels seem to be on the socialist

road of intervention and interference, only, of course, considerably further advanced on it than they. Later, in

" Capital ", Marx himself

wiU write : "

Violence is the obstetrician that waits on every ancient

society which is about to give birth to a new one; violence is in itself a social factor." And so the problem poses itself: how can Com

munism be at once revolutionary and evolutionary? How can

impatience meet longanimity and blend with it? Does not violence

throw out peace and longanimity neutralize impatience? The answer

to the problem is found m the dialectic of Hegel. Dialectic is the art of arguing. It is that process of question and

answer, of thrust and parry by which ignorance is dispelled and truth

made to appear. Now between this logical conflict emerging in truth, and that -other conflict emerging in being (we caU it change or becoming) then is a certain similarity; Hegel saw it and trans

537



IRISH MONTHLY

ferred the term "

dialectic "

to the sphere of metaphysics. According to his analysis history evolves inevitably but it evolves violently. Is it not a fact that life is full of storm and stress, that progress is never

smooth, development never ruffled? The prizes of life suffer violence and the violent bear them away* All change and becoming, all evolution, Hegel would say, is a conflict: a conflict between being and non-being, between thesis and antithesis, between positive and

negative. Change is possible only because all things contain their

opposites : they are compounded of what they are and of what they are not. Chance is precisely the tension between these two. The

antithesis (or negative) operating against the thesis (or positive) brings forth the synthesis; but in doing so the thesis and itself are destroyed.

Up to the point therefore, where the synthesis emerges, the whole

effect of the negative is violent and revolutionary. It follows that

evolution and revolution are not mutually exclusive; indeed according to the Hegelian analysis they are not only incompatible; they demand

one another. Evolution without revolution is no more possible than

revolution without evolution.

Now this dialectic of Hegel runs right through the Communist

Manifesto. From the provocative opening?"The history of all

hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles," to

the demagogic conclusion?" That proletarians have nothing to lose

but their chains. . . . Working men of all countries, unite," it is

everywhere implicit as a basis of interpretation and nowhere justified. That natural tug of interests which has always existed between the

different classes of society?sometimes tightening, sometimes slacken

ing, but never altogether relaxed?Marx and Engels erect into a law.

Looking at everything through Hegelian spectacles, they see in that

eternal conflict the expression par excellence of the dialectic; and "

class warfare "

they say is the dynamic principle of history. In the

past they point to "

freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord

and serf, guildmaster and journeyman"?all standing over against each other, their mutual opposition the principle and cause of all the

progress made at the time by society. Then, more in detail, Marx and

Engels review the rise of the modern bourgeoisie. It rose, they tell

us, on the ruins of feudalism. In "

the chartered burghers of the

earlier towns "

they see a revolutionary element (an antithesis or

negative) which operated against the feudal system (the thesis or

positive) to bring forth eventually bourgeois conditions (the synthesis).

538



COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

Progress, indeed, was slow. First there was the guild-system, in which

"industrial production was monopo?sed by closed guilds"; then "

the gufld-masters were pushed aside by the manufacturing middle

class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop ";

finaUy, with the coming of the Industrial Revolution, "

the place of

manufacture was taken by the giant, modern industry, the place of

the industrial middle-class by industrial milUonaires, the leaders of

whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois ". But if progress was slow, it was sure; and there was never any doubt about the final

result.

Bourgeois conditions, however, are not a ne plus ultra in the march

of human society. By no means. History, in fact, like Tennyson's brook flows on always.

" Men may come and men may go but I go

on for ever ". Who, then, have inherited the mantle of the mediaeval

burghers? Who are the disruptive element in the new bourgeois

society? "

The proletariat "

answer Marx and Engels. "

Of aU the

classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie to-day, the pro letariat alone is a reaUy revolutionary class," so they write in the

Manifesto. And this proletariat is in their eyes, not so much some

Trojan Horse dragged wiUly within the walls of the bourgeois city. Rather, just as the mediaeval burghers sprang from those very condi

tions which they were destined to destroy, so too the modern

proletariat is generated by the bourgeoisie themselves and is in fact "

their special and essential product ". "

What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above aU, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and

the victory of the proletariat are equaUy inevitable." Marx and

Engels trace the stages of the struggle between the two. At first it

is individual and local; the object of attack being not the bourgeois conditions of production but the instruments of production them

selves, e.g. they smash machinery to pieces. GraduaUy, however, the proletariat goes from strength to strength; its sense of solidarity increases;

" the collisions between the individual workmen and

individual bourgeois take more and more the character of coUisions

between two classes. Thereupon the workers begin to form com

binations (trades unions) against the bourgeoisie ". Now, say Marx

and Engels, "

every class struggle is a po?ticai struggle ^ The

organisation, therefore, of the proletarians into a class is followed by their organisation into a political party, and as such they compel

539



IRISH MONTHLY

legislative recognition of the particular interests of the workers.

Meanwhile the ranks of the proletariat are being enlarged from the

other strata of society, and its own ideology is continually gaining

ground. "

In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without

property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industrial

labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in

France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace

of national character. Law, morality, religion are to him so many

bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many

bourgeois interests." So the development proceeds, the proletariat

operating always as antithesis or negative against bourgeois society

(the thesis or positive) to bring eventually into existence that classless

society so beloved of Communists; what it will be like we are not

told.

VESPER

Lambs are lying with the sheep,

Things that fly and c?mb and creep AU are hushed in gentle sleep; God His endless watch doth keep.

Lord of earth and sea and sky, You whom men did crucify,

Looking down from heaven on high Guard us now till day is nigh.

And when night is rolled away Guard us through the golden day

WhUe we work and while we play; Hear our prayers, Lord, we pray.

Glory to the Father be,

Glory, Holy Ghost, to thee;

Good Lord Jesus think on me :

Glory to the One in Three.

Raymond G?rlick

540



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The Communist Manifesto, 1848-1948