The Communist Manifesto Mini-theme PDF

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This is a mini-theme about Marx's Communist Manifesto for Clayton Lehmann's class....

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Kendall 1 Katelyn Kendall Professor Lehmann Western Civilization II 13 March 2016 “The Evils of Capitalism” From a historical perspective, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ The Communist Manifesto is extremely significant. Throughout the document, Marx and Engels express their hatred of capitalism, using numerous reasons to back up their beliefs. They describe that a capitalist economic system will always inevitably lead to communism. To Marx and Engels, capitalism is evil because it creates rifts between people through social classes, it creates a world market over a single market, and eventually the demand for products in capitalistic industry surpasses the supply. Capitalism is an evil economic system to the authors due to its natural push on creating social classes. The beginning statement for the document states “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” showing the authors’ view on societal division into social classes (219). According to Marx and Engels, all revolutions and fights occur due to conflict between two different social classes, resulting in new countries that continue the cycle of class struggle (219). On the other side of the economic spectrum, with communism there is only one class of people, the working proletariat class. The proletariats are in a constant struggle with the bourgeoisie. Within a communist system, everyone has similar wealth and there is no division of socio-economic status. In the modern world, this can be seen through North Korea, where mostly everyone is impoverished.

Kendall 2 In addition to class struggles created by capitalism, Marx and Engels jointly believe that capitalism is a terrible system because it creates commercial industry run by the bourgeoisie. Capitalism, in itself, creates massive industries and corporations, leaving certain people in charge of trade. With the bourgeoisie, an evil class according to the authors’ beliefs, in charge of the industrial giants, the single market is destroyed and a world market is created. The world market that is created by modern industry eventually leaves the bourgeoisie with all of the power, and pushes every other class into the background. The bourgeoisie bathe in riches, while everyone else is left with the remnants of their wealth (221). Today, capitalism can be seen manifested within many economic systems around the world today, where the upper class suppresses the lower class. Along with creating conflict between social classes and commercial industry, Marx and Engels believe capitalism is evil because it causes demand to surpass supply in the market. As the demand for products rises, the supply becomes unable to keep up. As a result of this, the factories hail to new machinery in order to speed up and revolutionize production. Therefore, capitalism creates an endless cycle of times where demand surpasses supply, demand catches up, and then the process repeats itself over again (220). As demand overreaches supply, classes become outraged and a revolution occurs, pushing the nation into communism. Capitalism, according to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is an evil economic system. According to Marx and Engels, it creates social classes, overshadows the single market with a bourgeoisie-run world market, and causes demand to overtake supply in a continuous, repeated cycle. Through each of these reasons, the authors establish their firm beliefs in The Communist Manifesto. While capitalism is the current economic system of the United States, Marx and Engels give a much different perspective on it than most people in the modern world would....