Summary: The Communist Manifesto (page 5)

Communists share the same interests as the proletariat, but their struggle is international — as the famous closing words of the Manifesto declare: Workers of the world, unite!¹.

At the same time, their role is to prepare, coordinate, and guide the proletariat in its efforts to achieve liberation: Theoretically, they have one advantage over the rest of the proletariat: a clear understanding of the conditions, the course, and the general outcomes of the proletarian movement ².

Their ultimate goal is the conquest of political power for the proletariat ³. Marx’s materialism is evident once again when he emphasises that communist principles are not abstract ideas conceived by individual reformers, but rather the expression of the real conditions of an ongoing class struggle—a historical movement unfolding before our very eyes ⁴.

To achieve this goal, everything comes down to a single formula: the abolition of private property ⁵.

In reality, just as freedom in bourgeois society is nothing more than the freedom of commerce, private property under capitalism is, in reality, an illusion.

Indeed, it does not exist for nine-tenths of society. Communists, therefore, do not abolish property as such—for it has already been abolished for the majority—but only bourgeois property.

An objection naturally arises: wouldn’t the abolition of private property lead to universal laziness and the collapse of all industry? If that were true, bourgeois society would long since have collapsed from idleness ⁶.

Those who seek to discredit communism—whether by deeming it impossible or unjust—do so on the basis of bourgeois ideas and norms — which is precisely what undermines their case:

Do not reproach us by measuring the abolition of bourgeois property against your notions of liberty, culture, and rights that you apply to communism. Your very ideas are themselves the product of bourgeois relations of property and production, just as your law is merely the will of your class elevated to the status of law—a will whose content is determined by the material conditions in which your class lives ⁷.

This, again, is Marx's materialism at work: it is the concrete, material conditions of life—such as a society’s economic system—that shape our ideas, not the other way round.

Marx advances a particularly striking idea: the abolition of the family. More precisely, he calls for the replacement of family-based education with education provided by society ⁸. He also revisits a concept advanced by Plato in The Republic: the community of women.

Communists are often accused of seeking to abolish the fatherland. The proletariat has no fatherland under bourgeois society — the fatherland is, in effect, already abolished for them.

Moreover, only communism can bring about lasting peace between nations. The reason is simple: communism eliminates class antagonism by abolishing class distinctions altogether. And as soon as class antagonisms within a nation disappear, so too does hostility between nations ⁹.

Finally, religious and philosophical objections to communism are dismissed outright—they do not even warrant serious discussion! ¹⁰ Here, Marx's materialist credo is stated in its fullest form:

Does it take great insight to understand that with every transformation in material conditions, people's beliefs, ideas, and perceptions — their very consciousness — must change with it?

What does the history of ideas reveal, if not that intellectual production evolves in tandem with material production? The dominant ideas of any given epoch have never been anything other than the ideas of the dominant class.

When the ancient world declined, its old religions were replaced by Christianity. When, in the 18^th century, Christian ideas gave way to Enlightenment thought, feudal society was waging its final struggle against the bourgeoisie—then a revolutionary force ¹¹.

¹ p.67
² p.43
³ ibid.
⁴ ibid.
⁵ p.43
⁶ p.46
⁷ p.47
⁸ p.48
⁹ p.49
¹⁰ p.50
¹¹ ibid.