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A review by celestialideen
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels
5.0
Did everyone read a different book than me? Hm.
This is a longer review. The things I say about this book are backed by sources and quotes I have linked below.
I started my journey of admitting that I was a communist about 4 months ago. I finally picked up my first Communist text: The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx (and also Engles). Next I'll be tackling Principals of Communism (which is also pretty short) then deciding what I want to do from there. I'll likely read some Rosa Luxemburg then move onto Das Kapital Vol. 1.
But, as I was saying, did you all read something different from me or did you not understand the book? Marx claims that the only way to install Communism is through revolution, but the reason why is awfully easy to come across if you think about it. Do you really think the ruling class is going to let us, the working class, take them over without a fight? Of course they won't like not being able to exploit people anymore, or not being able to hoard most of the country's wealth.
Yes, we don't believe in private property. That's mainly because the only people with private property were, from the Manifesto, 1/10 of the population. That was years ago and still rings true today! In other words, of course we want to take away private property because the ruling class has all of it. This is entirely different from personal property, which are things like your toothbrush, guns, your food, etc.
If you think the rich care about you, you're either one of them or a fool. I cannot understand how someone who is obviously being taken advantage of can say this book is written in naivety. Human nature and power vacuum? We have the power collectively, and what about people who volunteer? I'd happily volunteer and do a pointless job to make the lives of my other workers better. What about the thousands of death by Communism? The Black Book of Communism is where that number comes from, and the book comes from a heavy bias and entirely ignores the deaths caused by capitalism, which largely outweigh the deaths from Communism, assuming that number is even correct in the first place. And yes, the source linked below also debunks "Communism caused more deaths than Nazism"
Also, read your Communist texts from https://www.marxists.org. The stuff there is free and is largely considered among us to be the best way to read Communistic texts.
Sources for this review:
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol7/no4/flewers.html "Indeed, The Black Book manages to overlook the frightful number of deaths that have occurred under capitalism. What about the many millions of deaths in the slave trade? What about the First World War, the parts of the Second World War that did not involve the Soviet Union, the millions of deaths in various Third World famines and wars, the near-extinction of Australian aborigines and the extermination of Tasmanian natives, the slaughter of Native Americans and the deaths in the US Civil War, or the Turkish genocidal attack upon the Armenians? For all what they have done, North Korea or North Vietnam did not drop hundreds of thousands of tons of high explosive on the USA, like the USA did on them, killing several million people. What can one make of people who can write about the apparent treatment of dissidents in Castro’s Cuba and the Sandinistas’ Nicaragua without mentioning the considerably greater number of political oppositionists in Latin American bourgeois states who have met a much nastier end, or write about South-East Asia without mentioning the slaughter of half-a-million Communist Party members and sympathisers in Indonesia during the 1960s?"
https://discomfiting.medium.com/debunking-communism-killed-more-people-than-naziism-7a9880696f67 "Some of the major criticisms against the Black Book of Communism includes the fact that it counts the following as “victims of communism”: some nazis and their collaborators who were killed by the Soviet Union during World War II, people who died in the 1921 Russian famine (which was caused by drought, the whites stealing food, war, etc), other hunger-related deaths caused by the nazi war against the Soviet Union, and many other incidents that were dishonestly attributed. "
Manifesto comments:
"You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society." (You don't like us taking away private property, but you don't even have it. The 1/10s do. We want to get rid of property that's existence hinges on most people not having property at all)
"Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?" (Human's ideas and views and such change due to real-life conditions and changes to their social relations in their social life (AKA there would probably be less of a desire to take power if there's no need to, the only people we'd need to worry about with that are rebels or the former ruling class))
Summary: If you didn't understand the book, or think Marx is full of it, either re-read it with a guide or read more Communist texts with a guide. You're missing what the book said.
This is a longer review. The things I say about this book are backed by sources and quotes I have linked below.
I started my journey of admitting that I was a communist about 4 months ago. I finally picked up my first Communist text: The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx (and also Engles). Next I'll be tackling Principals of Communism (which is also pretty short) then deciding what I want to do from there. I'll likely read some Rosa Luxemburg then move onto Das Kapital Vol. 1.
But, as I was saying, did you all read something different from me or did you not understand the book? Marx claims that the only way to install Communism is through revolution, but the reason why is awfully easy to come across if you think about it. Do you really think the ruling class is going to let us, the working class, take them over without a fight? Of course they won't like not being able to exploit people anymore, or not being able to hoard most of the country's wealth.
Yes, we don't believe in private property. That's mainly because the only people with private property were, from the Manifesto, 1/10 of the population. That was years ago and still rings true today! In other words, of course we want to take away private property because the ruling class has all of it. This is entirely different from personal property, which are things like your toothbrush, guns, your food, etc.
If you think the rich care about you, you're either one of them or a fool. I cannot understand how someone who is obviously being taken advantage of can say this book is written in naivety. Human nature and power vacuum? We have the power collectively, and what about people who volunteer? I'd happily volunteer and do a pointless job to make the lives of my other workers better. What about the thousands of death by Communism? The Black Book of Communism is where that number comes from, and the book comes from a heavy bias and entirely ignores the deaths caused by capitalism, which largely outweigh the deaths from Communism, assuming that number is even correct in the first place. And yes, the source linked below also debunks "Communism caused more deaths than Nazism"
Also, read your Communist texts from https://www.marxists.org. The stuff there is free and is largely considered among us to be the best way to read Communistic texts.
Sources for this review:
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol7/no4/flewers.html "Indeed, The Black Book manages to overlook the frightful number of deaths that have occurred under capitalism. What about the many millions of deaths in the slave trade? What about the First World War, the parts of the Second World War that did not involve the Soviet Union, the millions of deaths in various Third World famines and wars, the near-extinction of Australian aborigines and the extermination of Tasmanian natives, the slaughter of Native Americans and the deaths in the US Civil War, or the Turkish genocidal attack upon the Armenians? For all what they have done, North Korea or North Vietnam did not drop hundreds of thousands of tons of high explosive on the USA, like the USA did on them, killing several million people. What can one make of people who can write about the apparent treatment of dissidents in Castro’s Cuba and the Sandinistas’ Nicaragua without mentioning the considerably greater number of political oppositionists in Latin American bourgeois states who have met a much nastier end, or write about South-East Asia without mentioning the slaughter of half-a-million Communist Party members and sympathisers in Indonesia during the 1960s?"
https://discomfiting.medium.com/debunking-communism-killed-more-people-than-naziism-7a9880696f67 "Some of the major criticisms against the Black Book of Communism includes the fact that it counts the following as “victims of communism”: some nazis and their collaborators who were killed by the Soviet Union during World War II, people who died in the 1921 Russian famine (which was caused by drought, the whites stealing food, war, etc), other hunger-related deaths caused by the nazi war against the Soviet Union, and many other incidents that were dishonestly attributed. "
Manifesto comments:
"You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society." (You don't like us taking away private property, but you don't even have it. The 1/10s do. We want to get rid of property that's existence hinges on most people not having property at all)
"Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?" (Human's ideas and views and such change due to real-life conditions and changes to their social relations in their social life (AKA there would probably be less of a desire to take power if there's no need to, the only people we'd need to worry about with that are rebels or the former ruling class))
Summary: If you didn't understand the book, or think Marx is full of it, either re-read it with a guide or read more Communist texts with a guide. You're missing what the book said.