Communist Manifesto

One of Karl Marx's formidable works, COMMUNIST MANIFESTO (CM), is an accessible declaration for change (revolutionary) in the spectrum of developed countries. In a dialectical manner, Marx emphasizes the different manifestations of class exploitation by the bourgeoisie (petty and industrial) and deduces that the appropriation of industry and property by the bourgeoisie has disenfranchised the true working class, the proletariat.

Further, he elaborates that class antagonism is prevalent on behalf of the bourgeoisie due to the fact that "it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him." Also to Marx, wage-labor is incompatible to workers due to the fact that it relies on competition, which is inevitably not amicable with the human condition.

In the next section, Marx emphasizes that the proletarian struggle is universal and that workers of all nations have common interest. Also, that the struggle of the proletariat is an evolutionary process. Just like feudal countries being replaced by the bourgeoisie, so too will the proletariat replace the bourgeois.

Reading through the CM, it became unclear on what he meant by the abolition of family. My take has always been that Marx advocated the abolition of a capitalist driven family (bourgeois family) but it's a little unclear. Also, though he's against the notion of nationality and country, he's not against the State. Logically and from the perspective of historical necessity, it has been shown that nationalism has only been dislocated to reverence to the State.

One component that Marx failed to realize is the importance and reliance of credit. With toxic assets, mortgage failures, and austerity measures due to bank bailouts, credit has a large impact on global markets. Though Marx does talk about reification of capital and commodity fetishism he never would of realized the inherent abstraction of capital in the post-modern context.

Also, class consciousness can be flawed in our modern context. With the abstraction in the division of labor, the universal constitution of a proletariat has materialized in a different form. Exploitation of the 21st Century does not manifest the same as in the late-19th Century. Further, his intent was to push forward revolution in developed countries but only developing countries have adopted the proletariat struggle.