“If that’s Marxism, then I’m not a Marxist.”
Karl Marx, 1883, writing to French labour leaders who completely missed the point of his ideas, accusing them of “revolutionary phrase-mongering”.
His Communist Manifesto is a bastion of common sense and a collection of slightly skewed (but still essentially accurate) predictions for our economies and societies. It’s nothing more than an appeal to the notion that workers should control the means of production (in other words, they should all contribute to the formation of the decisions that affect them). In any other arena of human activity, we’d just call that “democracy”.
The most common review of his work from people who haven’t read it is “a good idea in theory, but it would never work in practice”. This, from a bunch of free-market capitalists who just watched their self-styled “best of a bad lot” system crash the entire world’s banking system and possibly destroy the planet with no defence other than a bunch of bullshit “justifications” as to why this must be so.
Never mind those two last paragraphs. Perhaps the most important thing about The Communist Manifesto is that you should read it for yourself and make up your own mind. This applies to any book, of course, but The Communist Manifesto seems to be particularly misunderstood. Do not listen to anyone else’s views on it, not your father’s, not your teacher’s, not your friend’s and not mine.
