(LAST UPDATE: 940716, BY: VIDAR HOKSTAD) Written by Vidar Hokstad Translation, and changes, from the original done by the author. All rights reserved. Permission for *free* redistribution granted. THE MANIFESTO TODAY It is almost 150 years since the Manifesto of the Communist Party was published for the first time. Since then revisionists and reformist have one after the other attacked the manifesto, trying to prove it faulty; trying to find faults they decided in advance must be there. They have been working to "prove" that marxism is dead, outdated. In fact it was with that attitude I myself read it the first time some years ago. I quickly discovered how prejudiced I had been, even though beeing leftist for years. The manifesto isn't outdated today. Sure it has faults, but what was the largest error of the manifesto at the time it was written, is today irrellevant. The description given in the manifesto fits todays society better than society when Marx and Engels lived. Because while Marx and Engels in the manifesto made the assumption that capitalism had already moved past it's days of glory, capitalism was still young and healthy: Marx and Engels did not see the enormeous amounts of capital hidden in America, Asia and Africas natural ressources and labour, and the new growth for the European capitalists could create from the capital freed by enslaving these entire continents and their original inhabitants.[1] While the manifesto starts with the words "A spectre is haunting Europe", a manifesto of today would by necessity start with "A spectre is haunting the world", because while capitalism of 1848 still was restricted to the great powers of Europe by the geographical position of the industry, industry of today is reaching every corner of our globe, and with it capitalism. The class-struggle isn't dying, it hasn't been weakened, but it's most violent forms have been exported out of Europe, out of USA. Today, the rest of the world can't anymore bear the increasing burdens that the industrialized world tries to impose on it, and each day a greater part of profit must again be collected from the workers of the rich countries: Reproletarisation, this silent empoverment, of the workers of the industrialized countries will mean the death of the bourgeoisie. Silent because the working class ever since World War II have been gagged by socialdemocratic tradeunion-leaders with nice words about the blessings moderation brings national economy. Because while the bourgeoisie found it's fountain of youth in the oppression of the third world, it is today gradually discovering a decay accellerating faster than ever before. Still, they don't want to believe it is happening, for isn't their profit higher than before? Aren't they richer? Exactly. Socialdemocracy was a traison towards the working-class in the underdeveloped countries. It was, and is, an arrogant, eurocentrist ideology claiming to have the solutions because they managed to give the workers of Europe a few drops of the sea of blood and sweat that was, and is, beeing extracted from the workers of the poor countries. Socialdemocracy sold the international class-struggle to ensure the workers of Europe, and the bourgeoisie of Europe. Later, when socialdemocracy spread out of Europe, it kept it's nationalist elements, teaching a doctrine about love for your country in content not much different from Stalins "socialism in one country". This gigantic cooperation across classes showed the world once and for all that the working class still haven't seen that the idea of a fatherland, for the working class, is, and will continue to be, an illusion. This nationalism still lives, and many places it grows, thanks to our weakness, our cowardness, and our own tendency to hold on to national symbols: We still haven't managed to put our national flags aside in anger, and rise the red flag, the symbol of the international unity of the working class. On the contrary: Today many of us rise national flags with an even greater feeling of pride. Even on the first of May. Perhaps it is only a manifestation of the situation of the international proletariat: No unity. No brotherhood. Only chaos and despair. What is left to believe in? For isn't communism dead? But it isn't only the socialdemocrats who have betrayed the proletariat, also we, the revolutionary movement of the industrialized countries, have let the struggle for freedom, for the oppressed, drown in our admiration of any force opposing capital, not necessarily as representatives for progressive liberation movements, but as members of reaction. Our movement worshipped nations where the barbary extended as long as to systematically murder members of their own people; nations that fought the bourgeois parliamentary system not to replace it with true workers democracy, but to replace it with a society where class- antagonisms survived not because of economic opression alone, but as a direct result of political opression even more extreme than the capitalist bourgeois dictatures in which we live. What are the signs of true socialism? True socialism's features include the workers right, as a class, to control the means of production; by economic planning instead of war-like competition. Socialism is a negation of capitalism; a qualitative leap from a society that have the means to give everyone a true vote, that have the capital to give everyone a life without poverty, to a society that in deed does these things. But what are the features of stalinist regimes? We can recognize them because they have the all-embracing poverty that is typical for the newborn capitalist state; the poverty that creates capitalist competition, and that always will crush any attempt at a socialist revolution not being the direct result of a well developed capitalist system; a poverty increased by the socalled socialist revolutions national character, that prevented the working class of the industrialized countries from saving the ideals of these revolutions. Marx' himself clearly stated what such a poverty would cause: " Without [the development of the means of production] only the poverty would be generalized, the basic needs would therefore ensure that the struggle for necessities would start over again, and the entire old shit would be ressurected. " [2] In the stalinist regimes, this poverty was there, and stalinisms birth out of regimes that had barely managed to crush feudalism, once again makes it clear that these revolutions, even though they were led by the proletariat, would have to degenerate; that they never could have been the seed of socialism, but only a primitive stage in between the feudal and the capitalist economy: They kept the feudal structures in the political framework, but had to accept that they were a part of the increasingly powerful capitalist world market. " The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. " (The manifesto, Bourgeoisie and proletarians, paragraph 20) The characteristics of stalinism are not those of socialism. They're not even a part of the characteristics of capitalism. Stalinism, in contrary to socialism, does not give the means of productions to the workers, it gives the new elite, the party elite, the control over not only the means of production as capitalism to the bourgeoisie, but over society as a whole. It rebuilds, in a capitalist economy, the feudal empire that the revolution crushed, and despite trying to conquer capitalism, despite wanting to destroy capitalist competition, the stalinist regime ia itself a part of capitalist competition. It acts like a giant capitalist corporation, exploiting it's workers, controlling them, fighting to increase profit. But as the monster it is, a mix of capitalist economic structures and feudal political structures, it is doomed to loose, for not only is it forced to fight the true capitalists, but also the same proletariat which in the course of it's birth, it's organisation, gave the regime power. Stalinism is true internationalist communism turned upside down. Stalinism is nationalist, in contrary to the needs of the proletariat. Stalinism is dogmatic. As Hegel claimed Preussian capitalism to be the "end of history", stalinism claims it's interpretation of communism to be the final goal of mankind, contrary to marxist theory that relies on the idea that *nothing* is eternal. Stalinism is, as communism, a result of a revolution under the leadership of the proletariat, but in contrary to communism, stalinism is a result of a revolution under the leadership of a national proletariat in an underdeveloped country. A proletariat not representing the majority of the people, but only one out of ten, two out of ten, or maybe tree out of ten of the inhabitants of the country. It is the proletariats first non-successful attempt to build socialism, for it isn't the workers that win the political power when stalinism wins, but the intelligentsia that gave the wrong answers; that thought they knew when time was right for socialism. The true value of the manifesto, lies in that Marx and Engels longed for the revolution. They longed for it so much that they described it's coming as exactly as they could, but expected it to come in their own time. They described the death of the middle classes, the degeneration of capital, the growth of the proletariat, seen as of Europe 1848. Europe 1848, that's the world 1994. The same tendencies, the same development, that could be found in Europe 1848, can be found in the world of today. And this time the capitalists can't find new peoples to oppress, if they don't at a sudden find life in outer space. Today we can see the centralisation, monopolisation and empowerment even clearer than Marx ever got the opportunity to. We see the disasters and the need. The capitalists claim that Marx were wrong because the workers of Europe became "rich and fat": Marx claimed that the workers of Europe would become poor, they say. What Marx claimed was that the proletariat would grow, due to the empowerment. He limited his observations to Europe, because what he knew was Europe. That was a mistake. But removing this limitation, applying the same theory not to Europe, but to the world, it once again become a mirror of reality: Never before have so many starved to death each day; never before have so many been about to die because of poverty, and they become more every day. " The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons -- the modern working class -- the proletarians. " (The manifesto, Bourgeoisie and proletarians, paragraph 27/28) VIDAR HOKSTAD Red Forum / Internationalists Committee Earlier published in Norwegian in FRIHETEN (Freedom), newspaper of the Norwegian Communist Party, 21/1993. ------ [1] However, one can several places find indications that Marx and Engels started to realise this error. Most striking is their corrections in the preface to the Russian 1882 edition of the Communist Manifesto, but also in his late speeches, Marx was searching for a way to explain the growth that was inevitable in Europe. [2] From "Die Deutsche Ideologie". Beware that this quote is translated to English in a hurry from a bad Norwegian translation of the original german text.