I read for you The Communist Party manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

1840. Monarchs fell almost everywhere in Europe under the blows of the big bourgeoisie. In France, we even tried our hand at the Republic. But the serfs of the feudal society are not released. By leaving the countryside, they certainly got rid of the ropes in which the Grand Lords hindered them, but it was to find others: those that awaited them in the big factories, then the big factories. Two classes were then formed: those of the owners of the means of production (the capitalists) on one side and that of the proletarians (the workers) on the other; the former stealing the work of the latter. Pay is indeed an illusion. He does not pay for the work at fair value. With the salary, the proletarian has the bare essentials to maintain his labor power and reproduce himself to prepare the next generation of exploited. In this sense, the worker is not free and wages are his new obstacle:

The domain of freedom begins where the work determined by necessity stops. Karl Marx.

For Marx, work is both a source of freedom (with regard to nature) but also of alienation (in Capital). The owner, on the other hand, does not work. He is content to accumulate surplus value which is nothing other than the spoliation of part of the work of the workers. This added value allows him to further increase his capital. On the other hand, the proletariat can never acquire capital. At vitam æternam, he can only sell his labor power. And the system thus freezes into two distinct and enemy classes.

But does wage labor, the labor of the proletarian create property for him? No way. It creates capital, that is to say the property which exploits wage labor, which can only increase under the condition of producing additional wage labor and exploiting it again. Property, in its current form, moves in the opposition between capital and wage labor. The proletarians have only their labor power to sell. Karl Marx.

Marx and Engels announces the end of the story ; Capitalism creating its own negation, it will take the form of a classless, uniform society without wage labor, where equality will be integral: communism. It is clear that they were wrong.

I read for you The Communist Party manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Marx and Engels co-wrote this work, intended to lay solid scientific foundations on which the Communists could rely. The idea of ​​a Workers’ International (“Workers have no homeland”) was already present in the Manifesto, which therefore had a global vocation from the start.

These workers, forced to sell day by day, are a commodity just like any other article of commerce. Karl Marx.

Interpretation of history

Kant , then Hegel saw in the movement of history the intervention of an abstract “Idea”, a kind of spirit which would naturally lead men towards a free society. History, for Hegel, would be a succession of theses and antitheses which would find its resolution in a “synthesis” reflecting the truth of the world (Hegelian dialectic). Thus, the Revolution was opposed to the Monarchy; Napoleon ensuring the synthesis of the whole before being himself denied by the Restoration…

Rejecting this contemplative attitude, Marx and Engels showed on the contrary that it is the material development of the means of production (dialectical materialism) and the ensuing class struggle that would be the engine of history; men have made history have yet to change its course through revolution.

Philosophers (notably Hegel) have only interpreted the world differently, what matters is to change it. Karl Marx.

The history of any society until today has been nothing but the history of class struggles. Karl Marx.

Against private property

Rousseau had said that the first man who had enclosed land and said “this is mine” and had found people simple enough to believe it was the true founder of civil society. Proudhon went further, saying that “property is theft”. Marx continues by wanting to abolish the very idea of ​​private property

You are seized with horror because we want to abolish private property. But, in your society, private property is abolished for nine tenths of its members. It is precisely because it does not exist for these nine tenths that it exists for you. You therefore criticize us for wanting to abolish a form of property which can only be established on the condition of depriving the vast majority of society of all property. Karl Marx.

Capitalism carries with it its own negation

By bringing men together in factories, capitalism has given them a class consciousness of common interests. This association carries within it the seeds of the violent Revolution which will lead to the destruction of capitalism that Marx saw in the very short term …

But the bourgeoisie has not only forged the weapons which kill it: it has also produced the men who will handle these weapons – modern workers, the proletarians. Karl Marx.

Society: superstructure of the ruling class

For Marx, society, its laws, its police and its justice have always been at the service of the ruling class (the Bourgeoisie).

The modern government is only an administrative committee of bourgeois class affairs. Karl Marx.

Long live the revolution

The Proletariat must take by force the orders of society to forge it according to its own interest (that of the majority). Marx and Engels reject the too lukewarm theories of utopians like that of Proudhon : one should not manage with the power in place but fight it and destroy it. The dictatorship of the proletariat must be the rule. Proudhon had written Philosophy of misery. In response Marx wrote Misery de la philosophie.

Any class which aspires to domination must first conquer political power to represent in turn its own interest as being the general interest. Karl Marx.

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of all countries, unite!

So why doesn’t it work?

Marx had established incontestable scientific bases. They were to free the man. However, all the great thinkers (Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Castro …) who tried to put these big ideas into practice helped found dictatorial and bloodthirsty societies. Why ?

Marx had apparently forgotten what man is deeply about. Man, as Rousseau, Freud, Nietzsche and many others have shown, essentially sees in his actions his own interest. He is the life that seeks to persist in his being. If he associates in a union, a political party, it is above all to guarantee the sustainability of his well being. He is ready to make the revolution if it benefits him.

Make a proletarian a bourgeois, and he will swap these workers’ certainties for those of a capitalist.

It is not the conscience of men which determines their existence it is on the contrary their social existence which determines their conscience . Karl MARX.

A dictatorial dimension

The communist regime carries with it a necessarily dictatorial dimension: any challenge is a priori a questioning of the truth which, by definition, is unique (La Pravda also means “the truth”). It must therefore be corrected (re-educated). How many millions of protesters have garnished gulags and other re-education centers? Freedom is therefore relative because it excludes that of thinking

An ineffective masterpiece

The wages having disappeared, the work is not paid on merit. No matter the value of the individual, his ardor on the trail, his reward will be the same. Why under these conditions make efforts? No. The China of Mao (the great good forward), the Soviet Union of Stalin (the collectivization of the lands), in spite of fertile lands and millions of peasants lived the worst famines in history.

A brief biography of Karl MARX

Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883) was first a journalist (Gazette rhénane). He met Engels (son of a Manchester factory owner) in Paris, with whom he created, in 1847, the League of Communists. The two friends brought the movement the theoretical foundations it needed through the ”  Communist Manifesto“. 1848 was the year of the failed Revolutions, from Paris to Berlin, forcing Marx to take refuge in London. He took the opportunity to bring together the first international workers and to write his major work Le Capital, the first theme of which was not published until 1867. Engels worked on drafts to publish the following two volumes. Marx naturally gave birth to the movement which bears his name: Marxism which will take several forms, most of them bloody and dictatorial.