Western Studies
Ms. Portman

*Note: All information excerpted from the Encyclopedia Brittanica

Communism: A system of political and economic organization in which property is owned by the community and all citizens share in the enjoyment of the common wealth, more or less according to their need.

The origins of the idea of communism lie deep in Western thought. The idea of a classless society, in which all the means of production and distribution are owned by the community as a whole and from which any traces of a state have disappeared, has long held a fascinationfor human beings.

Communism acquired a new meaning in 1848 with the publication of the Communist
Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. According to Marx and Engels, communism would occur as the inevitable outcome of a historical process. In their view, all of human history has been a long, protracted struggle between an exploiting class, the capitalists in the present age, and an exploited class, the workers, or proletariat. This historical struggle enters its critical stage in the period of capitalism and its highest achievement, industrialization. The effect of industrialization is to heighten and intensify the internal contradictions in capitalism.

In practical terms, Marx and Engels asserted that the ownership of industry would become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, while the capitalists' exploitation of the urban workers would plunge the latter into a state of ever-increasing misery. The impoverished workers would grow in numbers and organize themselves into a political party that would lead a revolution in which the proletariat dispossess the capitalists. The proletariat would then establish a society governed by a "dictatorship of the proletariat" and based on the communal ownership of wealth. Marx referred to this phase of human society as socialism, and reserved the word communism for the authentically propertyless, classless, and stateless higher phase of society for which he asserted socialism is merely a preparation. Communism is, strictly speaking, the stage of final transcendence of class division and the elimination of a coercive State. This is the reason that "communism" is missing from the name U.S.S.R.; it is the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

German MANIFEST DER KOMMUNISTISCHEN PARTEI (1848; "Manifesto of the
Communist Party"), pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to serve as the
platform of the Communist League. It became one of the principal programmatic statements of the European socialist and communist parties in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Manifesto embodied the authors' materialistic conception of history ("The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles"), and it surveyed that history from the age of feudalism down to 19th-century capitalism, which was destined, they declared, to be overthrown and replaced by a workers' society. The communists, the vanguard of the working class, constituted the section of society that would accomplish the "abolition of private property" and "raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class."

Karl Marx websites

http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/marx.html

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mancont.htm

We will be reading the majority of the Communist Manifesto as a class. Each night you will be given a reading assignment and question(s) for you to answer thoroughly. Be prepared for reading quizzes and discussion of the material.

Read pages 473-483

1. Why do Marx and Engels criticize the bourgoisie? You need to give at least 3 specific examples.

Read pages 483- 491, 499-500

1. What is the ultimate goal for the Communist Party and how will this goal be achieved?

2. What's your opinion about the Communist Manifesto? Do you agree with their analysis of society? Why or why not?