A Nuanced Defense of the Manifesto

 “A Spectre Haunting – On the Communist Manifesto” by China Mieville, 2022

The Communist Manifesto (CM) is a common entry point or discarded classic for many radical readers.  It is ‘a revolutionary call to arms’ combining poetry, facts, polemic, theory, prophesy, melodrama and tragedy.  “Manifestos” are by their nature different from other kinds of writing and the CM is one of the most memorable.  Miéville analyses its seismic impact, looking at its 1848 context – one of proletarian misery, the living memory of the 1789-’94 Great French Revolution and subsequent French rebellions in 1830 and 1832, a German weaver’s revolt in 1844, the terrible Irish potato famine of 1847 and the Europe-wide 1848 overturns that followed publication of the Manifesto later that year.  Then there is its legacy – it was first forgotten, then revived around the 1871 Paris Commune, the 1905 events in Russia and the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.  At one point, it became the most printed book in the world.

Miéville treats this book as a companion volume to the Manifesto, which it includes as an Appendix, along with later Prefaces.  He discusses the prior works and ideas by Marx and Engels that infused the Manifesto – “On the Jewish Question,” “Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts,” “The Condition of the Working Class in England,” “The Holy Family” and “The German Ideology.”  

The League of the Just, which changed its name to the Communist League, wanted a Manifesto and assigned Marx to write it, based on Engel’s prior work and idea for a manifesto.  This after debates with the romantic and conspiratorial socialists inside the League were won by Marx and Engels, as poorly depicted in the film The Young Karl Marx. 

Miéville goes over the Manifesto, describing at least 18 famous points it made, ending with WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE! in caps.  Its method was not determinist or stagiest, but historically grounded, as in its discussion of the communist potential of the peasant obshchina (communally-owned land) in ‘backward’ Russia. It gave a practical and transitional reform program of 10 points, which later prefaces said represented 1848 but might be adjusted later.  It denounced various mistaken socialist tendencies, some of whom had disappeared by the time the Paris Commune rolled around in 1871, so the document is partially rooted in its time.

EVALUATION

Miéville, who at this point has left behind his science fiction career and is a sort of reporter and historian, mostly positively evaluates the Manifesto as to its present resonance and accuracy.  He understands that Marx’s points about class struggle and exploitation are true under capital.  The real rub for most people is whether a revolution – an overturning of the whole structure in favor of the majority – would be possible or would be worth it. After all, since the Manifesto was written, capital has become more entrenched world-wife, more ‘totalizing,’ more pervasive, even more brutal.  And it has also provided material benefits to sectors of the population, contrary to assertions that immiseration is the fate of all workers.  

After 1848 Marx and Engels dispensed with any idea of an alliance with the bourgeoisie against feudalism (hinted at in the CM), given the events in Germany in which the bourgeoisie linked itself to the landed aristocracy.  They understood then that democratic tasks were the province of the working class itself.  They abandoned any idea of a popular front or stages and moved towards the concept of permanent revolution.  Many of their later followers didn’t do this, both reformist and Stalinist, even up to this day. 

Miéville takes a dim view of the CM’s paens to the world-wide revolutionary activities of capital, as do others.  At the time capital was quite disruptive to the feudal / subsistence agrarian scheme of things, which was the alternative.  Citing Marx and Engel’s hope that socialism could come peacefully in some countries, he advocates looking at different forms of non-violent ‘rupture’ – such as a ‘struggle within the state.’  However he has no concrete ideas as to where this might apply.  Nor does he mention electoral politics as one way ‘into’ the state, as a way to create conflict. 

From Bulgaria's Museum of Socialist Art in Sofia

CRITICISMS

Miéville sees that the Manifesto did not fully anticipate how difficult the overthrow of capitalism would be, though it was frailer in 1848.  He thinks the CM’s ‘immiseration thesis’ is weak, though the CM identified labor forces opposing it.  It’s understanding of periodic capitalist crises still stands the test of time according to him.  He questions whether proletarian ethics are embedded within it, in spite of Marx's distain for moralistic hokum. Most problematic for him is the idea of the ‘inevitability’ of socialism.  Miévillle doesn’t think the Manifesto meant this literally, but as an exhortation to revolutionaries, to give them some kind of ‘confidence of the will.’  Nor does the Manifesto really deal with other intermediate classes, which have grown under capitalism, though he refutes one critic who thinks white-collar ‘clerks’ aren’t working-class.  He dispenses with other, more clueless or crude criticisms easily.

The Manifesto denounces the oppression and exploitation of women and the bourgeois family, but doesn’t follow up, including the concept of ‘social reproduction.’  Partly behind this is the Chartist opposition to the factory’s destruction of the working-class family at the time, something Miéville ignores in his argument.  Engels expanded on the women’s question in “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.” Miéville also focuses on the strong internationalist take on nationalism, though he argues that Marx understood nationalisms power quite well, even in the CM.  Same goes for the approaches to colonialism and imperialism, racism and ethno-nationalism, which are not deeply explored in the CM either.  He recognizes that Marx and Engels elucidated more on these issues, especially on the subjects of U.S. slavery and the colonized Irish.  He writes a long discussion of racism’s relation to class using Dubois, and allegations that M/E’s approach was European-centered.  He concludes this was not due to prejudice but to lack of extensive knowledge, i.e. ‘epistemic.’    

Miéville makes fun of the lame accusation that Marxism is a ‘religion,’  Yet in a story about how pre-WWI workers in Coburg, Bavaria wished to be buried with the Manifesto, not the Bible, he points out that something else is going on here too.  Because the book “cleaves unremittingly to liberation,” containing a “millennial hope for justice” for the worker, it rises above reason to ‘the affective.”  Quite clearly, it gives hope of a better world in a dire situation, appealing to emotions too.      

Miéville ends by going into a long look at present neo-liberal capitalism, which is more adaptable than Marx & Engels expected, able to work with theocracy, virtual slavery, pre-market agriculture, royalty, subsistence economies, street vendors, pauperization, war, crime and a massive precariat.  Marx understood that individual capitalists and the capitalist class as a whole would have differences over these issues.  This  was shown by the 1864 ‘Factory Acts’ in Britain, which made labor conditions better after much pressure from labor, but hated by some capitalists.  This is the logic of almost every reform allowed under capital and also faction fights within the ruling class, but it does not negate socialist support for certain reforms.   Certainly Marx advocated full suffrage for all those above 18, no matter the flaws in bourgeois democracy.   The author also takes on the issue of ‘the Party' organization, counseling humility to Marxist comrades; advocates a ‘better hate’ and shows how ‘woke capitalism’ is used against unions and class struggle.

This is an excellent modern study guide, not slavish, and will make readers think, not just believe.   We have a good number in stock.  This is another book 'celebrity book clubs' would never read.  Take that, Oprah and Reese and ...

Prior blog posts on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 15 year archive, using these terms:  “October – the Story of the Russian Revolution”(Miévillle); “The Young Karl Marx” (Peck); “Marx” (Eagleton); “The Melancholia of the Working-Class,” “No Is Not Enough” (Klein); “Mistaken Identity.”

And I got it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

December 10, 2022