...rs argue, Marxism has intrinsic flas that doomed it from the beginning, emight hope to discover traces of them here hich might teach us hy Marxismshould be shunned. The goal here is not to convert you, but to help you exploreMarxs riting from his point of vie, so that you can understand his actualmeaning hile still maintaining a stance that can allo you to think criticallyabout the subject and form your on opinions.It is important to understand that Marx played to important roles in orldhistory as a critic of capitalism and as an advocate of socialism. Heactually rote very little on the latter subject. Although a strong believer inthe importance of building socialism, he spent most of his time and energy on asubtle and complex critique of the capitalist system. This critique is stillvery influential on many historians, art and literature scholars, sociologistsand others. There have been many neo-Marxisms hich have been based more orless loosely on the original ideas of Marx and hich are idely discussedtoday. hether you ant to explore such ideas or combat them, its good to havesome notion of the subject.A manifesto is a document hich proclaims publicly--or makes manifest-- thecentral ideas of a group or individual. Although the organization for hichthis one as ritten as underground for the simple reason that it as illegalMarx alays envisioned the socialist movement as open. He rejected secretconspiracies because his ideal of building socialism as envisioned as amajority enterprise hich could only accumulate the necessary momentum throughan open, broadly-based campaign of education and exhortation. Engels as Marxs close collaborator and an important thinker and riter in hison right. He outlived Marx by many years, and produced several volumes hichare still influential. Marx as clearly the more poerful thinker of the to,but Engels as the better stylist. Although Engels may have been responsiblefor much of the eloquent riting in the Manifesto, because it incorporates Marxs ideas and embodies some central concepts of hat came to be knon as Marxismthe folloing questions ill refer to the authors simply as Marx.The terms socialist and communist have been defined ina beildering variety of ays. hen reading them it is alays important to knohat the riter means by them. For Marx socialism as the more comprehensiveterm communism as an advanced stage of socialism. Socialism ould preparethe ay by nationalizing the means of production factories, farms,mines, transportation, etc. and putting them under the control of those hevieed as the sole producers of ealth the orkers. He vieed politicalequality and freedom as incomplete or even illusory ithout economic equality. Therefore this redistribution of economic poer as aimed at extendingdemocracy far beyond the limits envisioned by earlier democratic revolutions. Social services like health, education, and housing ould be provided free, butpeople ould still be paid ages according to their ork.hen all nations had developed socialist economies, they ould begin to evolveinto an international communist society. The vision of communism as verysimilar to that of anarchism a stateless society in hich central governmenthad ithered aay, local, ground-up control of all affairs bystrictly democratic processes based at the place of ork, abolition of themarket system no money, no buying and selling and its replacement by a systemaccording to hich people ould voluntarily ork for the common good to theextent they ere able under the understanding that they could receive hateverthey needed for free from each according to his ability, to eachaccording to his needs. National boundaries and governments havingbeen eliminated, ar ould cease.Marx rejected the belief that such a society could be set up immediately asutopian. People ould need a long period of reeducation under socialism tocondition them aay from the selfish orientation produced by capitalism andtoard the ider perspective necessary to create communism. Many of hissocialist and anarchist adversaries argued that it as impossible to achievecommunism by passing through a stage hich retained and even strengthened thecentralized state government. Marx replied that it as impossible to leapdirectly into communism from socialism. hats your opinion on this question The most common reply is that both are impossible because you cant changehuman nature. hat Marx set out to prove as that not only hadhuman nature changed many times in the past there is no such thingas a static human nature. e are products of our environment, particularly ofthe economic system in hich e live. People living under feudalism aremotivated by feudal motives and think them natural and fixed, just as peopleliving under capitalism are motivated by capitalist motives and think thosenatural and fixed. Occasionally in history people undergo hat is no called aparadigm shift in values, based on an economic transformation. Itis this process that he attempts to sketch in the first section of the Manifesto. If peoples values have changed radically in thepast, he implies, they are certain to change again radically in the future. Ina socialist society it ould be nonsense to say that people ill alaysnaturally tend to become oners of factories because such oners ould be asimpossible, and such desires ould be as irrational as the desire to on theMoon. Engels spent a good deal of energy studying so-called primitivecommunist societies to sho that sharing could be as natural andidespread an attitude toard ealth as acquisition. hat do you kno aboutpre-capitalist cultures that might support or undermine this argumentAlthough he does not address the question in the Manifesto, itis important to understand hy Marx believed an armed revolution ould benecessary to establish socialism. He as convinced that the democraticrevolutions hich sept Europe in 1848 had merely substituted one tyrant foranother. The bourgeoisie oners of the means of production had replaced theold aristocracy as the rulers in la as ell as in fact. Their slogans offreedom and equality for all, he felt, concealed a determination to remain supreme over the proletariat industrial laborers hich made up the vastmajority of society. He did not reject bourgeois democracy because it asdemocratic, only because he felt it as limited to the bourgeoisie. Economicpoer, not the vote, as the ultimate guarantee of political poer. He as infavor of using elections as an organizing tool, but he as certain that in mostcountries the ruling class the bourgeoisie ould forcibly prevent anydemocratically-elected socialist government from taking poer. He once commented that in only to industrialized nations ere democraticinstitutions so firmly entrenched that a transition to socialism might bepeacefully achieved the Netherlands and the United States. hy do you thinkthis transition did not happen He also felt that communism could be builtonly in highly industrialized countries. hy do you think communist revolution...
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