Good Evening Comrades, and welcome to ASMARX. Hope you enjoyed the intro music, I can assure you I will not include anything that abrasive in the rest of the episode to not ruin the mood, but I also wanted to share some leftist musicians. This evening we are attempting something different. As we just finished reading The Communist Manifesto, I thought it would be fitting to have a little discussion about it, providing some context, updates, and perhaps even opinions. Due to this requiring me to think, and write, this episode required more effort to put together, so it will likely be shorter than the previous ones. This will also mean a bit of change of pace and mannerisms, as not all of my words will have been pre-written. If I am happy with how this turns out, I intend to make one of these type of episodes after finishing a book, chapter, or essay.

With no further ado, let's get into the meat of things. So, first of all, we should probably talk about the authors of The Communist Manifesto. Both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were Germans born in Prussia around 1820. Marx was 2 years older than Engels, born in 1818. Both men were philosophers, historians, and did both research and writing about economy and political theory. Engels, however, was also a businessman, a position which allowed him to finance the philosophical works of Marx, while Marx himself was not very successful financially, despite writing enormous work on economy Das Kapital. In fact, Marx lived on the verge of poverty for most of his life, and there are even anecdotes how he had to sell his last pair of trousers to afford food. Both Engels and Marx were part of the Young Hegelians in their early years. This was a group of German philosophers influenced by the works of by then late philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. We will not get into the philosophy of Hegel, as his writings are well known for their difficulty and obscurity. As far as our inventors of Marxism are concerned, they even had a rough start due to association with this group, as Marx met Engels for the first time after falling out with Young Hegelians, while believing that Engels was still part of them. Obviously, eventually they found they had more in common ideologically and together produced arguably some of the most influential texts in history. Now, the first thing to mention is neither Marx nor Engels "invented" (You can't see but I am doing airquotes) Communism. You probably picked this up if you listened to my reading, or actually read the Manifesto. It is made clear by the very first lines - "a spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism." and "where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power?". It seems that not only does communism predates Marx, but also the hurling of accusations of communism to everything you don't like. Another interesting fact to mention is that Marx himself did not distinguish between Socialism and Communism, which can also be noticed in the Manifesto, as the terms are being used interchengeably. As far as I know, the distinction of the two was first introduced by Lenin, whose writings we are hopefully going to cover in future episodes.

Now, what I want to talk about first are the 10 "commandments" outlined by Marx in the "Proletarians and Communists" chapter. They are of course not commandments, but guidelines on how Communism can be arrived at in an average first-world capitalist nation. I feel understanding these help define what Communism actually is, even though they don't quite describe it. Anyway I will attempt to cover each of these.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

Now this is probably the most famous point known (and possibly exaggarated) by even people who are not very familiar with communist theory. It usually gets shortened to "abolition of private property", but that usually causes confusion, as it's not clear what "private property" means. Anyway, this point disallows owning land by anyone else than the state. In other words, it talks about nationalizing land and using it for the public good rathen than private gain.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

This point is pretty self-explanatory. In other words, it talks about tiered income tax, which is already incorporated these days in a lot of countries all over the world. However, Marx likely intended for this tax to be much more extreme in higher levels to tackle severe income inequality seen in capitalist nations.

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.

This is seemingly a point of contention, as it affects even working class people. With the ever inflating housing pricing, a common practice is to simply rely on inheritance to have a property to live in. Furthermore, the notion to "provide for the family" motivates people to accumulate wealth even after they have intentions to spend it, and not being able to do so might be seen as a waste of their life efforts. However, we must consider that inheritance on a larger scale is one of the main ways wealth accumulation can perpetuate. You need to look no further than the existence of the Rothchilds and various Royal families to see this. And while there may be concerns about having lesser starting capital for young individuals, we must consider that this change, just like the rest, does not occur in a vacuum, and it is expected that the society will be able to afford to provide everyone housing and other essential resources, so nobody has to rely on the family they are born into to decide their level of comfort.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

My interpretation of this point is this: confiscation of emigrant property means that individuals are not meant to own property in countries they are not inhabiting, and rebels in this case would mean reactionaries, likely from the bourgeouise class, attempting to keep their riches. I am not sure why this is listed separately from abolition of property in point one.

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

In short, this point talks about nationalizing the funds of the country, as it attempts to move away from a money economy. Currency would still be required for international trade, so could not be done away with completely. This step would likely be carried out after or during the introduction of the income tax, as income in monetary form is being phased out.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State

This once again talks about nationalizing transport and communication industries. Pretty self explanatory.

7. Extensions of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of wastelands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan

Nationalized industry and farming

8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies especially for agriculture.

The equal liability of all to labour means that all who can participate in labour, should. This gets rid of positions that generate passive income that is not beneficial to society, such as landlords, stockholders, etc. that can make an investment which generates income with potentially no further action. The industrial armies are not elaborated on in the Manifesto, but from other texts we can make out that they meant reserve armies, that were made up of disadvantaged members of the proletariat, who would be able to replace workers where needed (and thus regulating wages), and to supply labour for temporary projects. These projects might refer to rapid industrialisation. The armies itself would be structured similarly to that of actual military, allowing for fast redeployment.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.

As labour is more generalised and nationalised, industries can be restructured to be more efficient, as all aspects of it are owned by one entity. Distinction between town and country is usually emphasized by class distinction. Towns usually consist of educated and white collar workers, that are middle-class. Country is usually where blue collar work happens by an uneducated workforce. It is only logical that this distinction would erode with the ubiquity of labour and reduction in ability to accumulate wealth. Furthermore, the big gating feature of towns and cities, the land and property prices, would become a non-issue.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.

Fortunately, half of these steps have already been achieved in the first world. Of course, public schools could be even more accessible and still require funds that not everyone has in some countries. Combination of education with industrial production can be interpreted in many ways, we sort of have this under capitalism in the form of professional schools, that educate students to prepare them directly for a role in industry, or at least that is how I interpret it. d Now, a few things to address about these steps. First and foremost, these steps seem to assume the existence of a state, as they talk about nationalizing various resources. However, the modern definition of communism is does not include the state at all. On the contrary, communism involves the abolition of class, money, and state. The explanation of this discrepancy in my belief is this - Marx outlined here not the features of communism, but the steps of achieving it, or, in other words, "a transitionary period". Some readers of Manifesto assume that due to these steps, Marx was in fact a statist, and indeed i made this mistake myself the first time i read it. There is a great video by Jonas Čeika about this, titled simply "marx was not a "statist"". I will try to include a link to this in the description of this episode.

Moving on to how Marx actually did define Communism in the manifesto. These features come in the form of abolition rather than introduction of constructs. For instance, the most obvious, and touched upon earlier, is the abolition of all property. In a communist society, all previously private resources would be accessed freely by anyone who needed them. Other very important abolition is the abolition of classes. As Marx pointed out in several parts of the Manifesto, the classes of proletariat and the bourgeoisie are defined by their conflict with each other. Marx also points out that some form of this conflict has been a constant in history. As long as class divide exists, this conflict exists, and exploitation is perpetuated by the ruling class. Thus, classes simply cannot exist if we are to achieve communism. Marx also advocates for the abolition of nationality, arguing that it is not true that people share most commonalities with members of the same nation, but rather with those in the same class as themselves. Therefore, Marx sees just one meaningful nation - the nation of the proletarians. This might be a contentious point for some, especially from smaller countries, seeing this as erosion of national traditions. However, I believe that this erosion is happening currently at a much bigger scale under capitalism. In fact, Marx's statement don't necessarily attack tradition, but identifying with country as an entity, rather than the culture. A controversial attack on culture comes with Marx's critique on religion. Firstly, he simply does not recognize arguments from religion as valid critique, and explicitly states this in the Manifesto. However, Marx also provides an explantion on why he believes this, namely he categorically disagrees with the notion that the material condition does not affect the belief system and norms of people. This is a presupposition required by religion, as most are based around truths that transcend time and age. This is exemplified by "holy texts", which usually are thousands of years old. I don't believe this is a very controversial point by Marx, as separation of church and state is a prevalent idea in contemporary politics, and while being harsh, I do not think Marx is actually advocating for destruction of religion. Marx also mentions the abolishing of the family. This, I believe, is the most controversially sounding idea from the outset. However, Marx explains that this abolition is due to the fact that capitalism has already boiled down the family unit to that of an economical relation, which additionally is used to objectify women. In fact, what I find quite hilarious, Marx talks about upper-class men swapping wives and perverting the family model, which, while quite lewd, is a legitimate point. Marx also elaborates how the family unit objectifies women, and that burgeouisie are scared abolition of the family would create a "society of women". Marx responds, that this society has already existed since time immemorial. I would call this statement somewhat feminist, just so I can say that this exemplifies intersectionality. Which allows me to go on and talk about what interesectionality is. Basically, it is the idea of combining movements with similar goals, and tackling all related goals, so that none are left out. For example, when marching for women's rights, you must also include women of colour, gay women, trans women, et cetera, as otherwise you are not actually fighting for women's rights, but for a specific subgroup's. This might be harder to achieve in some scenarios (e.g. due to existence of TERFs the fight for LGBT+ rights is made harder), but it also increases the size and voice of the cause. This is very important in modern leftist circles, as racial injustices and discrimination based on sexuality are seen to be part of the capitalist system, or at least help perpetuate it. Back from that tangent, I also want to mention Marx's thoughts on the opposing economical system - capitalism. First of all, I want to point out that Marx did give capitalism credit where it was due, in its speed and efficiency. As illustrated by this quote:

- - - quote here - - -

Marx does not argue for communism as an alternative to capitalism in general at all times, he argues for communism exactly because capitalism happened, and, in his belief, has run its course. He predicted that capitalist mode of production was unsustainable in the long run, and that perpetual collapse was in-built into the model itself. To quote once again: "In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity - the epidemic of overproduction. Society suddently finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a unversal war of devastation had cut off the supply to every means of subsistance; and why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistance, too much industry, too much commerce." almost 200 years later, we are still feeling these perpetual crises. This was also exemplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, where farmers had to dump tons of produce instead of giving it away, to keep the market from crashing, apparently. Lastly, Marx believes that for capitalism to exist , it has to call into existence the weapon that can destroy it - namely, the proletariat. This is self-evident, without the working class the gears of capitalism would stop turning, but by the structuring of capitalism, there must be a higher class that exploits these workers by paying a fraction of their labour's value. Inequality increases, workers get shafted more and more... until finally, historically, a revolution occurs.

That covers most of the things I wanted to cover talking about The Communist Manifesto, of course, there is always more to be said, especially if you take into account context from other literature, but since I have not read it, I did not want to get too much into it. Next week we should return to form with a simple reading, most likely of Lenin, unless I change my mind. Thank you for tuning in tonight, and goodbye.