The Communist Manifesto after 100 years

It is now 150 years since the Communist Manifesto was first 
published. Much has happened in the almost 150 years since this 
article* was written but its analysis remains valid today. 
Capitalism remains capitalism and Marxism and socialism are as valid as 
ever.

The Communist Manifesto, the most famous document in the history of 
the socialist movement, was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels 
during the latter part of 1847 and the first month of 1848. It was 
published in February 1848. This appreciation of the Manifesto at 
the end of its first century is thus more than a year late. This ia a case, 
however, in which we hope our readers will agree with us: better late than 
never.

Historical importance of the Manifesto

What gives the Manifesto its unique importance? In order to answer 
this question it is necessary to see clearly its place in the history of 
socialism.

Despite a frequently encountered opinion to the contrary, there was no 
socialism in ancient or medieval times. There were movements and doctrines 
of social reform which were radical in the sense that they sought greater 
equality or even complete community of consumer goods, but none even 
approached the modern socialist conception of a society in which the means 
of production are publicly owned and managed. This is, of course, not 
surprising. Production actually took place on a primitive level in 
scattered workshops and agricultural strips — conditions under which 
public ownership and management were not only impossible but even 
unthinkable.

The first theoretical expression of a genuinely socialist position came in 
Thomas More's Utopia, written in the early years of the 16th Century 
— in other words, at the very threshold of what we call the modern period. 
But Utopia was the work of an individual genius and not the 
reflection of a social movement. It was not until the English Civil War, in 
the middle of the 17th Century, that socialism first began to assume the 
shape of a social movement.

Gerrard Winstanley (born 1609, died sometime after 1660) was probably the 
greatest socialist thinker that the English-speaking countries have yet 
produced, and the Digger movement which he led was certainly the first 
practical expression of socialism. But it lasted only a very short time, 
and the same was true of the movement led by Babeuf during the French 
Revolution a century and a half later. Meanwhile, quite a number of writers 
had formulated views of a more or less definitely socialist character.

But it was not until the 19th Century that socialism became an important 
public issue and socialists began to play a significant role in the 
political life of the most advanced European countries. The Utopian 
socialists (Owen, Fourier, St. Simon) were key figures in this period of 
emergence; and the Chartist movement in Britain, which flourished during 
the late 1880s and early 1840s, showed that the new factory working class 
formed a potentially powerful base for a socialist political party.

Thus we see that socialism is strictly a modern phenomenon, a child of the 
industrial revolution which got under way in England in the 17th Century 
and decisively altered the economic and social structure of all of western 
Europe during the 18th and early 19th Centuries. By 1840 or so, socialism 
had arrived in the sense that it was already widely discussed and 
politically promising.

But socialism was still shapeless and inchoate — a collection of brilliant 
insights and perceptions, of more or less fanciful projects, of passionate 
beliefs and hopes. There was an urgent need for systematisation; for a 
careful review picking out what was sound, dropping what was unsound, 
integrating into the socialist outlook the most progressive elements of 
bourgeois philosophy and social science.

It was the historical mission of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to perform 
this task. They appeared on the scene at just the right time; they were 
admirably prepared by background and training; they seized upon their 
opportunity with a remarkably clear estimate of its crucial importance to 
the future of mankind.

Marx and Engels began their work of transforming socialism "from Utopia to 
science" in the early 1840s. In the next few years of profound study and 
intense discussion they worked out their own new socialist synthesis. The 
Manifesto for the first time broadcast this new synthesis to the 
world — in briefest compass and in arrestingly brilliant prose.

The Manifesto thus marks a decisive watershed in the history of 
socialism. Previous thought and experience lead up to it; subsequent 
developments start from it. It is this fact which stamps the 
Manifesto as the most important document in the history of 
socialism. And the steady growth of socialism as a world force since 1848 
has raised the Manifesto to the status of one of the most important 
documents in the entire history of the human race.

How should we evaluate the Manifesto today?

How has the Manifesto stood up during its first 100 years? The 
answer we give to this question will depend largely on the criteria by 
which — consciously or unconsciously — we form our judgments.

Some who consider themselves Marxists approach the Manifesto in the 
spirit of a religious fundamentalist approaching the Bible — every word 
and every proposition were literally true when written and remain 
sacrosanct and untouchable after the most eventful century in world 
history. It is, of course, not difficult to demonstrate to the satisfaction 
of any reasonable person that this is an untenable position. For this very 
reason, no doubt, a favorite procedure of enemies of Marxism is to assume 
that all Marxists take this view of the Manifesto. If the 
Manifesto is judged by the criterion of 100 per cent infallibility 
it can be readily disposed of by any second-rate hack who thus convinces 
himself that he is a greater man than the founders of scientific socialism. 
The American academic community, it may be noted in passing, is full of 
such great men today. But theirs is a hollow victory which, though repeated 
thousands of times every year, leaves the Manifesto untouched and 
the stature of its authors undiminished.

Much more relevant and significant are the criteria which Marx and Engels 
themselves, in later years, used in judging the Manifesto. For this 
reason the prefaces which they wrote to various reprints and translations 
are both revealing and important (especially the prefaces to the German 
edition of 1872, the Russian edition of 1882, the German edition of 1883, 
and the English edition of 1888). Let us sum up what seem to us to be the 
main points which emerge from a study of these prefaces:

(1) In certain respects, Marx and Engels regarded the Manifesto as 
clearly dated. This is particularly the case as regards the programmatic 
section and the section dealing with socialist literature (end of Part II 
and all of Part III).

(2) The general principles set forth in the Manifesto were, in their 
view, "on the whole as correct today as ever" (first written in 1872, 
repeated in 1888).

(3) The experience of the Paris Commune caused them to add a principle of 
great importance which was absent from the original, namely, that "the 
working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and 
wield it for its own purposes." In other words, the "ready-made state 
machinery" bad been created by and for the existing ruling classes and 
would have to be replaced by new state machinery after the conquest of 
power by the working class.

(4) Finally — and this is perhaps the most important point of all — in 
their last joint preface (to the Russian edition of 1882), Marx and Engels 
brought out clearly the fact that the Manifesto was based on the 
historical experience of western and central Europe. But by 1882 Russia, in 
their opinion, formed "the vanguard of revolutionary action in Europe," and 
this development inevitably gave rise to new questions and problems which 
did not and could not arise within the framework of the original 
Manifesto.

It is thus quite obvious from these later prefaces that Marx and Engels 
never for a moment entertained the notion that they were blueprinting the 
future course of history or laying down a set of dogmas which would be 
binding on future generations of socialists. In particular, they implicitly 
recognised that as capitalism spread and drew new countries and regions 
into the mainstream of modern history, problems and forms of development 
not considered in the Manifesto must necessarily be encountered.

On the other hand, Marx and Engels never wavered in their conviction that 
the general principles set forth in the Manifesto were sound 
and valid. Neither the events of the succeeding decades nor their own 
subsequent studies, profound and wide-ranging as they were, caused them to 
alter or question its central theoretical framework.

It seems clear to us that in judging the Manifesto today, a century 
after its publication, we should be guided by the same criteria that the 
authors themselves used 25, 30, and 40 years after its publication. We 
should not concern ourselves with details but should go straight to the 
general principles and examine them in the light of the changed conditions 
of the mid-20th Century.

The general principles of the Manifesto

The general principles of the Manifesto can be grouped under the 
following headings: (a) historical materialism, (b) class struggle, (c) the 
nature of capitalism, (d) the inevitability of socialism, and (e) the road 
to socialism. Let us review these principles as briefly and concisely as we 
can.

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM. This is the theory of history which runs 
through the Manifesto as it does through all the mature writings of 
Marx and Engels. It holds that the way people act and think is determined 
in the final analysis by the way they get their living; hence the 
foundation of any society is its economic system; and therefore economic 
change is the driving force history. Part I of the Manifesto is 
essentially a brilliant and amazingly compact application of this theory to 
the rise and development of capitalism from its earliest beginnings in the 
Middle Ages to its full-fledged mid-19th Century form. Part II contains a 
passage which puts the case for historical materialism as against 
historical idealism with unexampled clarity:

Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views, 
and conceptions, 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?

What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual 
production changes its character in proportion as material production is 
changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its 
ruling class.

When people speak of ideas that revolutionise society, they do but 
express the fact, that within the old society, the elements of a new one 
have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even 
pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.

CLASS STRUGGLE. The Manifesto opens with the famous sentence: 
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class 
struggles." This is in no sense a contradiction of the theory of historical 
materialism hut rather an essential part of it. "Hitherto existing society" 
(Engels explained in a footnote to the 1888 edition that this term should 
not be interpreted to include preliterate societies) had always been based 
on an economic system in which some people did the work and others 
appropriated the social surplus. Fundamental differences in the method of 
securing a livelihood — some by working, some by owning — must, according 
to historical materialism, create groups with fundamentally different and 
in many respects antagonistic interests, attitudes, aspirations. These 
groups are the classes of Marxian theory. They, and not individuals, are 
the chief actors on the stage of history. Their activities and strivings — 
above all, their conflicts — underlie the social movements, the wars and 
revolutions, which trace out the pattern of human progress.

THE NATURE OF CAPITALISM. The Manifesto contains the bold 
outlines of the theory of capitalism which Marx was to spend most of the 
remainder of his life perfecting and elaborating. (It is interesting to 
note that the term "capitalism" does not occur in the Manifesto; 
instead, Marx and Engels use a variety of expressions, such as "existing 
society," "bourgeois society," "the rule of the bourgeoisie," and so 
forth.) Capitalism is pre-eminently a market, or commodity-producing, 
economy, which "has left no other nexus between man and man than naked 
self-interest, than callous 'cash payment.'" Even the laborer is a 
commodity and must sell himself piecemeal to the capitalist. The capitalist 
purchases labor (later Marx would have substituted "labor power" for 
"labor" in this context) in order to make profits, and he makes profits in 
order to expand his capital. Thus the laborers form a class "who live only 
so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor 
increases capital."

It follows that capitalism, in contrast to all earlier forms of society, is 
a restlessly expanding system which "cannot exist without constantly 
revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of 
production, and with them the whole relations of society." Moreover, "the 
need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the 
bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, 
settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere." Thanks to these 
qualities, "the bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, 
has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all 
preceding generations together." But, by a peculiar irony, its enormous 
productivity turns out to be the nemesis of capitalism. In one of the great 
passages of the Manifesto, which is worth quoting in full, Marx and 
Engels lay bare the inner contradictions which are driving capitalism to 
certain shipwreck:

Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange 
and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of 
production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to 
control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. 
For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the 
history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions 
of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for 
the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention 
the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of 
the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In 
these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of 
the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In 
these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, 
would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of overproduction. 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 civilisation, 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. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the 
one hand, by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the 
other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough 
exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more 
extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means 
whereby crises are prevented.

THE INEVITABILITY OF SOCIALISM. The mere fact that capitalism is 
doomed is not enough to ensure the triumph of socialism. History is full of 
examples which show that the dissolution of a society can lead to chaos and 
retrogression as well as to a new and more progressive system. Hence it is 
of greatest importance that capitalism by its very nature creates and 
trains the force which at a certain stage of development must overthrow it 
and replace it by socialism. The reasoning is concisely summed up in the 
last paragraph of Part I:

The essential condition for the existence and for the sway of the 
bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the 
condition for capital is wage labor. Wage labor rests exclusively on 
competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose 
involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the 
laborers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to 
association. The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under 
its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and 
appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, 
are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are 
equally inevitable.

THE ROAD TO SOCIALISM. There are two aspects to this question as it 
appears in the Manifesto: first, the general character of the 
socialist revolution; and, second, the course of the revolution on an 
international scale.

The socialist revolution must be essentially a working-class revolution, 
though Marx and Engels were far from denying a role to elements of other 
classes. As pointed out above, the development of capitalism itself 
requires more and more wage workers; moreover, as industry grows and the 
transport network is extended and improved, the workers are increasingly 
unified and trained for collective action. At a certain stage this results 
in the "organisation of the proletarians into a class, and consequently 
into a political party." The contradictions of capitalism will sooner or 
later give rise to a situation from which there is no escape except through 
revolution. What Marx and Engels call the "first step" in this revolution 
is the conquest of power, "to raise the proletariat to the position of 
ruling class, to win the battle of democracy." It is important to note — 
because it has been so often overlooked — that basic social changes come 
only after the working class has acquired power:

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, 
all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of 
production in the hands of the state, i.e. of the proletariat organised as 
the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive powers as rapidly 
as possible.

This will be a transition period during which the working class "sweeps 
away by force the old conditions of production." (In view of present-day 
misrepresentations of Marxism, it may be as well to point out that 
"sweeping away by force" in this connection implies the orderly use of 
state power and not the indiscriminate use of violence.) Finally, along 
with these conditions, the working class

will have swept away the conditions for the existence of class 
antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its 
own supremacy as a class.

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class 
antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of 
each is the condition for the free development of all. 

So much for the general character of the socialist revolution. There 
remains the question of the international course of the revolution. Here it 
was clear to Marx and Engels that though the modern working-class movement 
is essentially an international movement directed against a system which 
knows no national boundaries, "yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat 
with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle." And from this it 
follows that "the proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all 
settle matters with its own bourgeoisie." At the same time, Marx and Engels 
were well aware of the international character of the counter-revolutionary 
forces which would certainly attempt to crush an isolated workers' 
revolution. Hence, "united action of the leading civilised countries at 
least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the 
proletariat." Thus the various national revolutions must reinforce and 
protect one another and eventually merge into a new society from which 
international exploitation and hostility will have vanished. For, as Marx 
and Engels point out:

In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an 
end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end 
to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation 
vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.

As to the actual geography of the revolution, Marx and Engels took it for 
granted that it would start and spread from the most advanced capitalist 
countries of western and central Europe. At the time of writing the 
Manifesto, they correctly judged that Europe was on the verge of a 
new revolutionary upheaval, and they expected that Germany would be the 
cockpit:

The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that 
country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried 
out under more advanced conditions of European civilisation and with a much 
more developed proletariat than that of England was in the seventeenth, and 
of France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution 
in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian 
revolution.

This prediction, of course, turned out to be over-optimistic. Not the 
revolution but the counter-revolution won the day in Germany, and indeed in 
all of Europe. But at no time in their later lives did Marx and Engels 
revise the view of the Manifesto that the proletarian, or socialist, 
revolution would come first in one or more of the most advanced capitalist 
countries of western and central Europe. In the 1870s and 1880s they became 
increasingly interested in Russia, convinced that that country must soon be 
the scene of a revolution similar in scope and character to the great 
French Revolution of 100 years earlier. No small part of their interest in 
Russia derived from a conviction that the Russian revolution, though it 
would be essentially a bourgeois revolution, would flash the signal for the 
final showdown in the West. As Gustav Mayer says in his biography of 
Engels, speaking of the later years, "his speculations about the future 
always centered on the approaching Russian revolution, the revolution which 
was to clear the way for the proletarian revolution in the West." (English 
translation, p. 278) But "he never imagined that his ideas might triumph, 
in that Empire lying on the very edge of European civilisation, before 
capitalism was overthrown in western Europe." (p. 286)

The general principles of the Manifesto a hundred years later

What are we to say of the theoretical framework of the Manifesto 
after 100 years? Can we say, as Marx and Engels said, that the general 
principles are "on the whole as correct today as ever"? Or have the events 
of the last five or six decades been such as to force us to abandon or 
revise these principles? Let us review our list item by item.

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM. The last half century has certainly provided 
no grounds whatever to question the validity of historical materialism. 
Rather the contrary. There has probably never been a period in which it was 
more obvious that the prime mover of history is economic change; and 
certainly the thesis has never been so widely recognised as at present. 
This recognition is by no means confined to Marxists or socialists; one can 
even say that it provides the starting point for an increasingly large 
proportion of all serious historical scholarship. Moreover, the point of 
view of historical materialism — that "man's ideas, views, and 
conceptions, 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" — has been taken over (ordinarily without acknowledgment, 
and perhaps frequently without even knowledge, of its source) by nearly all 
social scientists worthy of the name. It is, of course, true that the 
world-wide crisis of the capitalist system, along with the wars and 
depressions and catastrophes to which it has given rise, has produced a 
vast outpouring of mystical, irrational theories in recent years, and that 
such theories are increasingly characteristic of bourgeois thought as a 
whole. But wherever sanity and reason prevail, both inside and outside the 
socialist movement, there the truth of historical materialism is ever more 
clearly perceived as a beacon lighting up the path to an understanding of 
human society and its history.

CLASS STRUGGLE. The theory of class struggle, like the theory of 
historical materialism, has been strengthened rather than weakened by the 
events of the last half century. Not only is it increasingly clear that 
internal events in the leading nations of the world are dominated by class 
conflicts, but also the crucial role of class conflict in international 
affairs is much nearer the surface and hence more easily visible today than 
ever before. Above all, the rise and spread of fascism in the inter-war 
period did more than anything else possibly could have done to educate 
millions of people all over the world to the class character of capitalism 
and the lengths to which the ruling class will go to preserve its 
privileges against any threat from below. Moreover, here, as in the case of 
historical materialism, serious social scientists have been forced to pay 
Marx and Engels the compliment of imitation. The study of such diverse 
phenomena as social psychology, the development of Chinese society, the 
caste system in India, and racial discrimination in the United States 
South, is being transformed by a recognition of the central role of class 
and class struggle. Honest enemies of Marxism are no longer able to pooh-
pooh the theory of class struggle as they once did; they now leave the 
pooh-poohing to the dupes and paid propagandists of the ruling class. They 
must admit, with H. G. Wells, that "Marx, who did not so much advocate the 
class war, the war of the expropriated mass against the appropriating few, 
as foretell it, is being more and more justified by events" (The Outline 
of History, Vol. II, p. 399); or, with Professor Talcott Parsons, 
Chairman of the Social Relations Department at Harvard, that "the Marxian 
view of the importance of class structure has in a broad way been 
vindicated." (Papers and Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the 
American Economic Association, May 1949, p. 26)

THE NATURE OF CAPITALISM. In political economy, bourgeois social 
science has borrowed less from, and made fewer concessions to, the Marxian 
position than in historiography and sociology. The reason is not far to 
seek. Historical materialism and class struggle are general theories which 
apply to many different societies and epochs. It is not difficult, with the 
help of circumlocutions and evasions, to make use of them in relatively 
"safe" ways and at the same time to obtain results incomparably more 
valuable than anything yielded by the traditional bourgeois idealist and 
individualist approaches. When it comes to political economy, however, the 
case is very different. Marxian political economy applies specifically to 
capitalism, to the system under which the bourgeois social scientist lives 
(and makes his living) here and now; its conclusions are clear-cut, 
difficult to evade, and absolutely unacceptable to the ruling class. The 
result is that for bourgeois economists Marxian political economy scarcely 
exists, and it is rare to find in their writings an admission of Marx's 
greatness as an economist stated so specifically as in the following: "He 
was the first economist of top rank to see and to teach systematically how 
economic theory may be turned into historical analysis and how the 
historical narrative may be turned into histoire raisonnee." (J. A. 
Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 1st edition, p. 
44)

Does the neglect of Marx as an economist indicate the failure of the ideas 
of the Manifesto? On the contrary; the correlation is an inverse 
one. What idea has been more completely confirmed by the last century than 
the conception of capitalism's restless need to expand, of the capitalist's 
irresistible urge to "nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish 
connections everywhere"? Who can deny today that the periodical return of 
crises is a fact which puts the "existence of the entire bourgeois society 
on its trial, each time more threateningly"? Who can fail to see that "the 
conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth 
created by them"? In short, who can any longer be blind to the fact that 
capitalism is riddled with contradictions which make its continued 
existence — at least in anything like its traditional form — impossible 
and unthinkable?

THE INEVITABILITY OF SOCIALISM. There are, of course, many who, 
recognising the dire straits to which the capitalist world has come, 
believe that it is possible to patch up and reform the system in such a way 
as to make it serve the real interests of society. But their number is 
diminishing every day, and conversely the great international army of 
socialism is growing in strength and confidence. Its members have every 
reason for confidence.

When the Manifesto was written, socialism was composed of "little 
sects," as Engels told the Zurich Congress of the Second International in 
1893; by that time, two years before his death, it "had developed into a 
powerful party before which the world of officialdom trembles."

Twenty-five years later, after World War I, one sixth of the land surface 
of the globe had passed through a proletarian revolution and was, as 
subsequent events showed, securely on the path to socialism.

Three decades later, after World War II, more than a quarter of the human 
race, in eastern Europe and China, had followed suit.

If capitalism could not prevent the growth of socialism when it was healthy 
and in sole possession of the field, what reason is there to suppose that 
it can now perform the feat when it is sick to death and challenged by an 
actually functioning socialist system which grows in strength and vigor 
with every year that passes? The central message of the Manifesto 
was the impending doom of capitalism and its replacement by a new, 
socialist order. Has anything else in the whole document been more 
brilliantly verified by the intervening 100 years?  (This statement calls
for revision following following the defeat of socialism in the Soviet
Union and eastern Europe. However, in the present period, working-class
struggles, the socialist movement and particularly struggles in the
under-developed countries are on the increase again)

THE ROAD TO SOCIALISM. Much of what Marx and Engels said in the 
Manifesto about the general character of the socialist revolution 
has been amply confirmed by the experience of Russia. The working class did 
lead the way and play the decisive role. The first step was "to raise the 
proletariat to the position of ruling class." The proletariat did "use its 
political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, 
to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state, ... 
and to increase the total of productive powers as rapidly as possible." The 
conditions for the existence of class antagonisms have been "swept away." 
On the other hand, the relative backwardness of Russia and the aggravation 
of class and international conflicts on a world scale have combined to 
bring about the intensification rather than the dismantling of state power 
in the USSR. The achievement of "an association in which the free 
development of each is the condition for the free development of all" 
remains what it was a century ago, a goal for the future. It is also true 
that an important part of what is said in the Manifesto about the 
international course of the revolution has been corroborated by subsequent 
experience. The socialist revolution has not taken the form of a 
simultaneous international uprising; rather it has taken, and gives every 
prospect of continuing to take, the form of a series of national 
revolutions which differ from one another in many respects. Such 
differences, however, do not alter the fact that in content all these 
socialist revolutions, like the bourgeois revolutions of an earlier period, 
are international in character and are contributing to the building of a 
new world order. We cannot yet state as a fact that this new world order 
will be one from which international enmity will have vanished, and the 
quarrel between Yugoslavia and the other socialist countries of eastern 
Europe may seem to point to an opposite conclusion. The present status of 
international relations, however, is so dominated by the division of the 
world into two systems and the preparation of both sides for a possible 
"final" conflict, and the existence of more than one socialist country is 
such a recent phenomenon, that we shall do well to reserve judgment on the 
import of the Yugoslav case. In the meantime, the reasons for expecting the 
gradual disappearance of international exploitation and hostility from a 
predominantly socialist world are just as strong as they were 100 years 
ago.

We now come to our last topic, the geography of the socialist revolution. 
Here there can be no question that Marx and Engels were mistaken, not only 
when they wrote the Manifesto but in their later writings as well. 
The socialist revolution did not come first in the most advanced capitalist 
countries of Europe; nor did it come first in America after the United 
States had displaced Great Britain as the world's leading capitalist 
country. Further, the socialist revolution is not spreading first to these 
regions from its country of origin; on the contrary, it is spreading first 
to comparatively backward countries which are relatively inaccessible to 
the economic and military power of the most advanced capitalist countries. 
The first country to pass through a successful socialist revolution was 
Russia, and this was not only not anticipated by Marx and Engels but would 
have been impossible under conditions which existed during the lifetime of 
their generation.

Why were Marx and Engels mistaken on this issue? We must examine this 
question carefully, both because it is an important issue in its own right 
and because it is the source of many misconceptions.

At first sight, it might appear that the mistake of Marx and Engels 
consisted in not providing explanatory principles adequate to account for 
the Russian Revolution. But we do not believe that this reaches the heart 
of the problem. It is, of course, true, as we pointed out above, that 
during the 1870s and 1880s Marx and Engels denied the possibility of a 
socialist revolution in Russia. But at that time they were perfectly right, 
and it is not inconsistent to record this fact and at the same time to 
assert that the pattern and timing of the Russian Revolution were in accord 
with the principles of the Manifesto. What is too often forgotten is 
that between 1880 and World War I, capitalism developed extremely rapidly 
in the empire of the tsars. In 1917 Russia was still, on the whole, a 
relatively backward country; but she also possessed some of the largest 
factories in Europe and a working class which, in terms of numbers, degree 
of organisation, and quality of leadership, was almost entirely a product 
of the preceding three decades. Capitalism was certainly more highly 
developed in Russia in 1917 than it had been in Germany in 1848. Bearing 
this in mind, let us substitute "Russia" for "Germany" in a passage from 
the Manifesto already quoted above:

The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Russia, because that 
country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried 
out under more advanced conditions of European civilisation and with a more 
developed proletariat than that of England was in the seventeenth, and of 
France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in 
Russia will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian 
revolution.

Clearly, what Marx and Engels had over-optimistically predicted for Germany 
in 1848 actually occurred in Russia 70 years later. What this means is 
that, given the fact that the socialist revolution had failed to 
materialise in the West, Russia was, even according to the theory of the 
Manifesto, a logical starting point.

Furthermore, there is no contradiction between Marxian theory and the fact 
that the socialist revolution, having once taken place in Russia, spread 
first to relatively backward countries. For Marx and Engels fully 
recognised what might be called the possibility of historical borrowing. 
One consequence of the triumph of socialism anywhere would be the opening 
up of new paths to socialism elsewhere. Or, to put the matter differently, 
not all countries need go through the same stages of development; once one 
country has achieved socialism, other countries will have the possibility 
of abbreviating or skipping certain stages which the pioneer country had to 
pass through. There was obviously no occasion to discuss this question in 
the Manifesto, but it arose later on in connection with the debate 
among Russian socialists as to whether Russia would necessarily have to 
pass through capitalism on the way to socialism. In 1877 Marx sharply 
criticised a Russian writer who

felt obliged to metamorphose my historical sketch (in Capital) of 
the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into an historico-philosophical 
theory of the marche generale imposed by fate upon every people, 
whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself, in order 
that it may ultimately arrive at the form of economy which will ensure, 
together with the greatest expansion of the productive powers of social 
labour, the most complete development of man.  (Marx and Engels, 
Selected Correspondence, p. 354)

And Engels, in 1893, dealt with the specific point at issue in the Russian 
debate in the following terms:

...no more in Russia than anywhere elswould it have been possible
to develop a higher social form out of primitive agrarian communism unless 
— that higher form was already in existence in another country, so 
as to serve as a model. That higher form being, wherever it is historically 
possible, the necessary consequence of the capitalistic form of production 
and of the social dualistic antagonism created by it, it could not be 
developed directly out of the agrarian commune, unless in imitation of an 
example already in existence somewhere else. Had the West of Europe been 
ripe, 1860-70, for such a transformation, had that transformation then been 
taken in hand in England, France, etc., then the Russians would have been 
called upon to show what could have been made out of their commune, which 
was then more or less intact. (Selected Correspondence, p. 515)

While this argument is developed in a particular context, it is clear that 
the general principle involved — the possibility of historical borrowing -
- applies to, say, China today. Unless both the theory and the actual 
practice of socialism had been developed elsewhere it is hardly likely that 
China would now be actually tackling the problem of transforming itself 
into a socialist society. But given the experience of western Europe (in 
theory) and of Russia (in both theory and practice), this is a logical and 
feasible course for the Chinese Revolution to take.

Thus we must conclude that while of course Marx and Engels did not expect 
Russia to be the scene of the first socialist revolution, and still less 
could they look beyond and foretell that the next countries would be 
relatively backward ones, nevertheless both of these developments, coming 
as and when they did, are consistent with Marxian theory as worked out by 
the founders themselves. What, then, was the nature of their mistake?

The answer, clearly, is that Marx and Engels were wrong in expecting an 
early socialist revolution in western Europe. What needs explaining is why 
the advanced capitalist countries did not go ahead, so to speak, "on 
schedule" but stubbornly remained capitalist until, and indeed long after, 
Russia, a latecomer to the family of capitalist nations, had passed through 
its own socialist revolution. In other words, how are we to explain the 
apparent paradox that, though in a broad historical sense socialism is 
undeniably the product o{ capitalism, nevertheless the most fully developed 
capitalist countries not only were not the first to go socialist but, as it 
now seems, may turn out to be the last? The Manifesto does not help 
us to answer this question; never in their own lifetime did Marx and Engels 
imagine that such a question might arise.

The problem of the advanced capitalist countries

To explain why the advanced capitalist countries have failed to go 
socialist in the 100 years since the publication of the Manifesto is 
certainly not easy, and we know of no satisfactory analysis which is 
specifically concerned with this problem. But it would be a poor compliment 
to the authors of the Manifesto, who have given us all the basic 
tools for an understanding of the nature of capitalism and hence for an 
understanding of our own epoch, to evade a problem because they themselves 
did not pose and solve it. Let us therefore indicate — as a stimulus to 
study and discussion rather than as an attempt at a definitive answer — 
what seem to us to be the main factors which have to be taken into account.

If we consider the chief countries of Europe, certain things seem clear. 
First, even under conditions prevailing in tile middle of the 19th Century, 
Marx and Engels underestimated the extent to which capitalism could still 
continue to expand in these countries.

Second, and much more important, this "margin of expansibility" was vastly 
extended in the three or four decades preceding World War I by the 
development of a new pattern of imperialism which enabled the advanced 
countries to exploit the resources and manpower of the backward regions of 
the world to a previously unheard-of degree. As Lenin concisely put it in 
1920: "Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and 
of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the people 
of the world by a handful of "advanced" countries." (Collected 
Works, Vol. XIX, p. 87) (This development only began to take place 
toward the end of Marx's and Engels' lives, and it would have been little 
short of a miracle if they had been able to foresee all its momentous 
consequences.)

Third, it was this new system of imperialism which brought western Europe 
out of the long depression of the 1870s and 1880s, gave capitalism a new 
lease on life, and enabled the ruling class to secure — by means of an 
astute policy of social reforms and concessions to the working class — 
widespread support from all sections of society.

The other side of the imperialist coin was the awakening of the backward 
peoples, the putting into their hands of the moral, psychological, and 
material means by which they could begin the struggle for their political 
independence and their economic advancement.

In all this development, it should be noted, Russia occupied a special 
place. The Russian bourgeoisie, or at least certain sections of it, 
participated in the expansion of imperialism, especially in the Middle and 
Far East. But on balance Russia was more an object than a beneficiary of 
imperialism. Hence few, if any, of the effects which imperialism produced 
in the West — amelioration of internal social conflicts, widespread class 
collaboration, and the like — appeared in Russia.

To sum up: imperialism prolonged the life of capitalism in the West and 
turned what was a revolutionary working-class movement (as in Germany) or 
what might have become one (as in England) into reformist and 
collaborationist channels. It intensified the contradictions of capitalism 
in Russia. And it laid the foundations of a revolutionary movement in the 
exploited colonial and semi-colonial countries. Here, it seems to us, is 
the basic reason why the advanced capitalist countries of western Europe 
failed to fulfill the revolutionary expectations of the Manifesto. 
Here also is to be found an important part of the explanation of the role 
which Russia and the backward regions of the world have played and are 
playing in the world transition from capitalism to socialism.

But, it may be objected, by the beginning of the 20th Century the United 
States was already the most advanced capitalist country, and the United 
States did not really become enmeshed in the imperialist system until World 
War I. Why did the United States not lead the way to socialism?

Generally speaking, the answer to this question is well known. North 
America offered unique opportunities for the development of capitalism; the 
"margin of expansibility" in the late 19th Century was much greater than 
that enjoyed by the European countries even when account is taken of the 
new system of imperialism which was only then beginning to be put into 
operation. There is no space to enumerate and analyse the advantages 
enjoyed by this continent; the following list, compiled and commented upon 
by William Z. Foster in a recent article ("Marxism and American 
Exceptionalism," Political Affairs, September 1947), certainly 
includes the most important: (1) absence of a feudal political national 
past, (2) tremendous natural resources, (3) a vast unified land area, (4) 
insatiable demand for labour power, (5) highly strategic location, and (6) 
freedom from the ravages of war.

American capitalism, making the most of these advantages, developed a 
degree of productivity and wealth far surpassing that of any other 
capitalist country or region; and it offered opportunities for advancement 
to members of the working class which — at least up until the Great 
Depression of the 1930s — were without parallel in the history of 
capitalism or, for that matter, of any class society that ever existed. (On 
this point, see the article on "Socialism and American Labor," by Leo 
Huberman, in the May 1949 issue of Monthly Review.) This does not 
mean, of course, that the United States economy was at any time free from 
the contradictions of capitalism; it merely means that American capitalism, 
in spite of these contradictions, has been able to reach a much higher 
level than the capitalist system of other countries. It also means that 
capitalism in this country could go — and actually has gone — further 
than in the European imperialist countries toward winning support for the 
system from all sections of the population, including the working class. It 
is thus not surprising that the United States, far from taking the place of 
western Europe as the leader of the world socialist revolution, has 
actually had a weaker socialist movement than any other developed 
capitalist country.

We see that, for reasons which could hardly have been uncovered 100 years 
ago, capitalism has been able to dig in deep in the advanced countries of 
western Europe and America and to resist the rising tide of socialism much 
longer than Marx and Engels ever thought possible.

Before we leave the problem of the advanced countries, however, a word of 
caution seems necessary. It ought to be obvious, though it often seems to 
be anything but, that to say that capitalism has enjoyed an unexpectedly 
long life in the most advanced countries is very different from saying that 
it will live forever. Similarly, to say that the western European and 
American working classes have so far failed to fulfill the role of "grave-
diggers" of capitalism is not equivalent to asserting that they never will 
do so. Marx and Engels were certainly wrong in their timing, but we believe 
that their basic theory of capitalism and of the manner of its 
transformation into socialism remains valid and is no less applicable to 
western Europe and America than to other parts of the world.

Present-day indications all point to this conclusion. Two world wars and 
the growth of the revolutionary movement in the backward areas have 
irrevocably undermined the system of imperialism which formerly pumped 
lifeblood into western European capitalism. The ruling class of the United 
States, threatened as never before by the peculiar capitalist disease of 
overproduction, is struggling, Atlas-like, to carry the whole capitalist 
world on its shoulders — and is showing more clearly every day that it has 
no idea how the miracle is to be accomplished.

Are we to assume that the western European and American working classes are 
so thoroughly bemused by the past that they will never learn the lessons of 
the present and turn their eyes to the future? Are we to assume that, 
because capitalism was able to offer them concessions in its period of good 
fortune, they will be content to sink (or be blown up) with a doomed 
system?

We refuse to make any such assumptions. We believe that the time is not 
distant when the working man of the most advanced, as well as of the most 
backward, countries will be compelled, in the words of the 
Manifesto, "to face with sober senses his real conditions of life 
and his relations with his kind." And when he does, we have no doubt that 
he will choose to live under socialism rather than die under capitalism.

Conclusion

On the whole, the Manifesto has stood up amazingly well during its 
first 100 years. The theory of history, the analysis of capitalism, the 
prognosis of socialism, have all been brilliantly confirmed. Only in one 
respect — the view that socialism would come first in the most advanced 
capitalist countries — has the Manifesto been proved mistaken by 
experience. This mistake, moreover, is one which could hardly have been 
avoided in the conditions of 100 years ago. It is in no sense a reflection 
on the authors; it only shows that Engels was right when he insisted in his 
celebrated critique of Duhring that "each mental image of the world system 
is and remains in actual fact limited, objectively through the historical 
stage and subjectively through the physical and mental constitution of its 
maker."

How fortunate it would have been for mankind if the world socialist 
revolution had proceeded in accordance with the expectations of the authors 
of the Manifesto! How much more rapid and less painful the crossing 
would be if Britain or Germany or — best of all — the United States had 
been the first to set foot on the road! Only imagine what we in this 
country could do to lead the world into the promised land of peace and 
abundance if we could but control, instead of being dominated by, our vast 
powers of production!

But, as Engels once remarked, "history is about the most cruel of all 
goddesses." She has decreed that the world transition from capitalism to 
socialism, instead of being relatively quick and smooth, as it might have 
been if the most productive and civilised nations had led the way, is to be 
a long drawn-out period of intense suffering and bitter conflict.

There is even a danger that in the heat of the struggle some of the finest 
fruits of the bourgeois epoch will be temporarily lost to mankind, instead 
of being extended and universalised by the spread of the socialist 
revolution. Intellectual freedom and personal security guaranteed by law — 
to name only the most precious — have been virtually unknown to the 
peoples who are now blazing the trail to socialism; in the advanced 
countries, they are seriously jeopardised by the fierce onslaughts of 
reaction and counter-revolution.

No one can say whether they will survive the period of tension and strife 
through which we are now passing, or whether they will have to be 
rediscovered and recaptured in a more rational world of the future.

The passage is dangerous and difficult, the worst may be yet to come. But 
there is no escape for the disillusioned, the timid, or the weary.

Those who have mastered the message of the Manifesto and caught the 
spirit of its authors will understand that the clock cannot be turned back, 
that capitalism is surely doomed, and that the only hope of mankind lies in 
completing the journey to socialism with maximum speed and minimum 
violence.

* * *

*This essay was written by Paul Sweezy in collaboration with his 
fellow editor of Monthly Review, Leo Huberman, and was first 
published as an editorial in the issue of August 1949.