Evaluating Ch. 1 of The Communist Manifesto
Chapter 1 of the Communist Manifesto (CM) is entitled: "Bourgeois and Proletarians" (p 57). It sets the stage for the whole book. It contains the foundational premises on which the whole enterprise of Marxism / Communism rests. It appears that everything required for communism to take or keep hold in someone's mind is to be found in the first 12 pages. Here is an itemized review of the key premises in those first 12 pages.
1a -- Marx' and Engels' faulty definitions (Bourgeois, Proletarians, and the "tribe")
Right after a profound claim that human history just is the history of "class struggles" (that it is nothing less and nothing more than that), Chapter 1 of the CM continues with a definition of the two subjects of its title: 1) Bourgeois and 2) Proletarians, followed by some insinuation that early (primitive) life in tribes has moral merit. A lot can be learned about the validity of an argument or enterprise by evaluating how it defines its terms. The Bourgeois are defined as "modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor." Proletarians are defined as "wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live."
1b -- The correct (accurate) definitions
The modern capitalists named Bourgeois would be more properly defined as entrepreneurial producers of value, rather than owners (of "social" production) and employers (of wage labor). This is because 'ownership' and 'employership' are consequences of creating something to own, and of creating the opportunity for laborers to work in order to get more wealth than they could or would have on their own -- without any collaborating with those entrepreneurial producers who pay them paychecks.
The wage laborers are defined as having no means of production of their own, and their 'plight' is described as being "reduced" to selling their labor power. These two parts of the definition of wage laborers are also incorrect. Everyone is born having no means of production of their own -- that is the human 'problem of survival.' There are really 3 options for humans living on Earth:
A) develop a means of production
B) collaborate to trade your labor with someone else who has
C) die from starvation
Think of paleolithic human life. We have archeological evidence of what it was like. Tools were created and used. It is the only way that humans were prevented from going extinct. From paleolithic life onward, the human standard of living has risen (overall). This is because enough folks chose options A or B above -- and it is for no other reason than that. So, it is just flat wrong -- the opposite of reality -- to claim that laborers get somehow "reduced" as they benefit from entrepreneurial producers. There were only two viable options in the first place. The reality of that seems lost on Marx and Engels.
This point rolls into the insinuation offered in CM about the "tribe." Tribes have much less private property than is found in cities and advanced civilizations. Some tribes have no observable private property where perhaps everything, even your underwear, is "commonly owned." Marx and Engels say that from this communal, tribal beginning "society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes." The insinuation is that if we only never left the jungle in the first place, then we wouldn't have this terrible "class struggle" thing to deal with (i.e., that life would be better back in that jungle).
Later on in the chapter -- which I will quote in later entries to this project -- Marx and Engels admit that life has gotten better and that wealth has been produced. What their insinuation amounts to, then, is merely to state a bold wish for the benefits of such 'dynamic and rivalrous, entrepreneurial discovery and innovation' -- [a paraphrase from an Austrian economics paper which I had read but have now lost] -- all these benefits without the 'cost' of free-competition. What a terribly limited understanding / perspective of reality.
To be continued ...
Reference:
Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Simon & Schuster Inc., ISBN: 0-671-67881-7, viewable cover
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