The Communist Manifesto & Family

I paid $6.00 USD for The Communist Manifesto.

I haven't read it ever but I brought it home and my Dad started reading it immediately. My Dad is a person who I have never seen read a book in my entire life.

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Other urls found in this thread:

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm
mronline.org/2017/08/26/a-critique-of-david-harveys-analysis-of-imperialism/
thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2018/04/02/marxs-law-of-value-a-debate-between-david-harvey-and-michael-roberts/
thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2014/12/17/david-harvey-monomaniacs-and-the-rate-of-profit/
youtube.com/watch?v=AwJ7Rqe5l8g
roape.net/2018/01/10/david-harvey-denies-imperialism/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Strong thread

Why. It's like 20 pages long and can be found for free online.

Nice blog post. Tell your Dad to read Althusser.

I have no problem imagining that. It sounds like a very dadish thing to do.
Maybe we should just start handing out copies of The Communist Manifesto. I'm sure plenty of people would be curious enough to give it a read. We'd need to add some updated material though, discussing some common misconceptions, the failure of the USSR, and the potential of cybernetic communism. Communism is very exciting stuff. People would love it.

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Brah you could spend 6 bucks to get a copy of Selected Works of Marx and Engels.

give your dad state and revolution

I really think that a new work should be written for distribution. The immediate political program laid out in 1848 is not necessarily relevant to wherever you live, and there should be more discussion of the nature of wage labor.

I would have bought that one…

They had it for $7.00 USD. I chose the Communist Manifesto because it was the most lightweight and I can only carry so much weight in my backpack….


What about Che Guevara's literature?

I think that "The Communist Manifesto" certainly has some 'prestige' behind it which makes it an interesting read.

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Can you show me where it is on this map?

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t. liberal

By that retarded logic then every single country in history that no longer exists was a failure, which is a baseless claim and something a stupid fuck like yourself would claim.

I'm only familiar with his manual on guerrilla warfare, which is apolitical enough that Al Qaeda used it for a while, and the Motorcycle Diaries, about his travels around south america. I guess you could use one of his speeches at the UN if you really wanted to, but I don't know if those explain communism very well.

Allow me to rephrase for that user: the failure of the USSR to bring about a world socialist republic and ultimately achieve communism

We always give shit to the Communst Manifesto and we shouldn't do that. People say Marx's economic works are much better, that it's better to start with something like Gothakritik or the Economic Manuscripts. What people forget when they compare the Manifesto to those works is that it's not trying to be hard economics. You're comparing professional wrestling to olympic wrestling. The Manifesto trying to draw people in and explain the basics of class struggle and its form throughout history in a compelling, simple, and somewhat romantic, story-like way. Most normies don't want to read something economic, even something short and sweet like Gothakritk. The Manifesto is not going to give an avid Marxist any new info, but it's not for anyone whose read Capital, it's for the people who aren't likely to read anything else by Marx. And it's crazy well written. We should shill it like crazy.

We'd need a really good author though. Marx is a literary legend.
Is wage labor itself still the most relevant topic to first-world proles? Sure, it's the basis of everything, but unlike workers in the time of Marx, people aren't worried about having to meet their basic necessities anymore. My impression is that different topics would speak to them, such as alienation, worker control, and the irrationality of the capitalist economy.
Further we'd need to talk about information economics. It's a strong topic that will play in our favor. Especially since it's unexpected. Capitalists think they can corner us by shouting "PRICE SIGNALS" at the top of their lungs. If we start talking about how the capitalist economy completely mismanages information (a fact which everyone and their dog could tell you at this point) they'd be stumped.


If you can't accept the narrative that the USSR failed to a minimal degree, you won't be able to connect with people. It's over. You've shot yourself in the foot. We need to present ourselves as "libertarian" communists. I know the term is theoretically meaningless, but they won't appreciate that. They just want to be assured we won't do whatever they imagine Stalin having done. We should just acknowledge that enormous personality cults and one hundred quadrillion-zillion people dying are bad things, and start doing real work.

The manifesto is totally irrelevant. There are no feudal socialists to worry about corrupting the movement. The demands have mostly been met in many wealthy countries. The reader is not left with much of an idea of what exactly is wrong with capitalism.

Please, write such a work- these topics are not treated on thoroughly or at all in the manifesto.

This is true. If we make some new text, we should retain the historical narrative present in the Communist Manifesto. That stuff is golden and couldn't be communicated better.

On those last statements you made, Stalin never wanted a personality cult, watch finbol's video on it. And secondly, only around 800,000 people were executed under Stalin's government, and this was simply because the death penalty was a thing in the USSR. Now, regardless of what you think of the death penalty, it was legal back then, and the people executed weren't all just political dissidents, it was literally just criminals convicted of a crime being punishable by death. Regardless the famine during the 30s, where millions did die, it wasn't man made like how anticommunists make it out to be, it was mostly due to the bad weather that time that killed most crops and also the refusal of the kulaks to collectivize their crops. As a matter of fact, more people would've died if the crops hadn't been collectivized.
And your claim about labelling as "libertarian" communists is retarded. It's baseless, fake and has no point other than "reassuring" people we are not "le ebil commies". It's rebranding for the sake of rebranding. So imagine we do start calling ourselves that. So even if we do the exact same shit we would've done otherwise, now it's ok just cause we are "libertarian" communists? You are peak idealism, not a socialist.

Its still alive in my heart.

To be honest, I am a "leftist noob" if anything, but I think the most powerful literature I've come across on the subject what be the book written concerning objective accounts of the "conditions of the working class of England" by Engels.

As a student of history, this work of literature has left a more lasting impact on me than any other sort of leftist literature.

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Isn't it kind of difficult to die of starvation?

Especially if you are someone like a spiritual Russian Orthodox Ukranian whose bodies were very used to fasting???

I can't tell if you are being serious

frlz

The manifesto is a great intro to historical materialism. Historical and dialectical materialism is the core of Marxism, his economic criticism, while indispensable, comes second.

couldn't you just take the communist manifesto and cut out the bits where he decides he really needs to call a scribbler from prussia a dickhead then stick a quick explanatory infographic on the end of each chapter.
I feel like that's an idea that appeals more to the creator of such a document than it would to the reader.


true but i've always felt like the "Manifesto" title doesn't help since it conjures up those very undesirable images
Even I only skimread For the Many, Not the Few. The Labour Party Manifesto 2017, but that's basically the idea you get. When you hear "The Communist Manifesto" it immediately primes you for "Here are our aims - 1. Free Education, 2. Nationalised Trains, 3. Mega Guillotine funded by the National Investment Bank", rather than the bulk of what people actually read it for which is explaining class struggle.
It's particularly bad if you're dealing with an idiot since they'll see that a lot of the aims of the manifesto have been achieved and conclude that was the manifesto for building actually existing communism, then they'll go all ancap freak.

just make sure he realizes The communist manifesto is a polemic written early in the career of Marx, and a lot of it gets overturned in the work of later Marxists. For example, Marx conceives of history as a conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, while we know today the real conflict is between the first world labor aristocracy and the 3rd world bourgeoisie.

forgot my flag

sounds like a brainlet idea but maybe it's dumb enough to work i mean a ton of people read mein kampf just for the meme of it even though it's a shit book

As if this is not a completely valid move.
Absolutely not. It's an explicit commitment to avoid that shit whether it actually happened or not.
You're the one who believes rebranding is invalid because it's "fake." How about we try to make some material progress, instead of worrying about whether we're being posers in our branding? This branding is surface level shit. The point is to get people to take a closer look at our ideas, instead of instantly dismissing them like most people do. Adding a largely meaningless qualifier to our ideology is a perfect way to do this. We aren't even lying to them, just signalling that our ideology isn't what they expect it to be.
I also didn't mean "libertarian" to literally be the label we use. If you have problems specifically with that term, we can talk about that. We just need something along those lines.

Look, the simple fact that you call it "rebranding" proves you are thinking like a porky.

"The Principles of Communism" by Engels was sort of an early draft of the Manifesto, and it's pretty underrated. It's basically an FAQ of Marxism, a format that seems to be popular today. It's not as eloquent or dramatic as the Manifesto, but it is clear and concise. It also addresses wage labor.

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

The essence of communism isn't words or imagery, it's the movement of the working class for certain social transformations.

The experiences of the Soviet Union et al. absolutely should be discussed and analyzed by socialists, but it can't be the focus of our propaganda or our public presence. Partly because most people turn their brains off at the first sight of a hammer and sickle, but it goes further than that.

You're calling people idealist, but you're fetishizing terminology and the memory of a country that no longer exists over presenting a working-class program and building a movement. As historical materialists, we know that political movements are primarily driven not by symbols they see in history textbooks, but by their material needs as a class.

For better or worse, mainstream conceptions of the USSR are entrenched in the public consciousness. The ruling class would love to argue with you about 20th century communism, because they hold a decisive ideological advantage on that front; even if you flawlessly proved that Stalin did nothing wrong, most people would still side against you and more importantly, ordinary working class people wouldn't care at all, because you're not speaking to their conscious needs or aspirations. But confront the bourgeoisie on exploitation at the workplace, from landlords, from hated corporations, and *they* will be on the defensive, because you will be putting into words what every worker already feels on some level.

Gonna boost David Harvey's "Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason." He cuts right to the chase.


My comrade

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you're dad is obviously a boomer experiencing his own personal apocalypse now

Congratulations, ChristCom. You are officially the fifth-worst shitposting flag on the board.

NO, NO, NO
mronline.org/2017/08/26/a-critique-of-david-harveys-analysis-of-imperialism/
thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2018/04/02/marxs-law-of-value-a-debate-between-david-harvey-and-michael-roberts/
thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2014/12/17/david-harvey-monomaniacs-and-the-rate-of-profit/
youtube.com/watch?v=AwJ7Rqe5l8g

oh and
roape.net/2018/01/10/david-harvey-denies-imperialism/

don't

die

this

The communist Daddyfesto

Disgusting hipsters.

Buy wage labour and capital next, at least that one is actually somewhat substantial

Burn it

found the nazi

are you even for real, like honestly kill yourself

it's unironically a garbage book though, There are much better books for entry level leftists out there. The manifesto is extremely outdated and some of the stuff in it only reinforces the "gommunizm is wen gudmnid do" mindset.

No it's not you stupid Trot. Shitting on the Manifesto is a sure-fire sign of someone who rejects dialectical and historical materialism.

:^)

Your response doesn't apply to the post you're responding to, I'm sorry.
Have you even read the fucking thing? The "ten posts" part especially might have been a important back then, but now it doesn't apply the same way.