Communist Crap

It was really funny to be reading this because both my parents were born in Cuba, so I kind of felt naughty for reading this. Anyway, I can see how it can be conniving. This establish a solid argument by giving examples of the past and how it was, and saying this is how it is, and this is how its going to be. The system itself is going to destroy itself because of it's nature. The second part where the answer to the problem is simply to end private property is where the whole thing falls apart for me. Obviously this is an issue that has more roots than private property. Class struggles have been going on forever, and it seems like there's nothing much we can do about it. I don't think handing over everything over to the government works because then they become the oppressors.


"Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat." --> this is using terror to get people to do something. It seems very new-ish and very "well if you don't do what we say, you're screwed."


"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors", and has left no other nexus between people than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation." --->Basically stating they have stripped us of all our values and now everything revolves around money. While this is true, I wouldn't say it's completely stripped us of values. This is a very "us versus them" way of thinking about it. While we are being "exploited", in a certain sense, their answer or solution involves just as much exploitation to people. What's missing is balance.

"It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers." This is true, but what were they before? Now anybody could be these things and before only those from wealthy families could evolve to become such professionals. It all seems very dramatic.

"The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation." Another good example of over-dramatization. If families are falling apart, I'm sure there much more to it than money.

"Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them." Making people think of themselves as slaves is a very powerful image, and I think that's why this document works. People do feel like slaves when they're working.


"These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market." Also bringing the attention to the fact that we are looked at as commodities is a powerful image.


The machine metaphor makes it sound scary.