13 - The Communist Manifesto and the Crises of Marxism

Summary

The spectre of the Communist Manifesto has haunted two major crises of Marxism in this century. The first crisis was associated with the Revisionist Debate at the turn of the century, and the second with the fall of communism in 1989, the rise of neo-liberalism, new social movements and post-modernism. In both crises the Manifesto's spinal assumption, namely, its teleological vision of history, proclaiming an inevitable proletarian revolution which would usher in the new dawn of a communist civilisation — indeed, its ‘grand narrative’ — came under the critical spotlight. What will be shown is why this vision was so fundamental to Marxist theory and practice, how it revealed itself in the Manifesto and impacted upon these two crises. And a crucial question will be addressed: has this assumption proved so fatal to Marxism that it must be abandoned in the quest for human emancipation?

THE SPINAL ASSUMPTION

The idea that history had a distinct, communist goal played a fundamental role in the theorising of Marx prior to the Manifesto. He sought, along with Engels, to create a new language for socialist politics, a language that did not start from transcendental notions of social justice and utopian nostrums, and which in effect redefined the role of the socialist intellectual. The ‘young’ Marx of 1843 wanted to avoid the imperious contempt for the masses that he saw as all too evident among the Young Hegelians. In a letter to his friend Ruge, he stated that he did not propose to

confront the world with new doctrinaire principles and proclaim: Here is the truth, on your knees before it! It means that we shall develop for the world new principles from the existing principles of the world. We shall not say: abandon your struggles, they are mere folly; let us provide you with the true campaign slogans. Instead we shall simply show the world why it is struggling, and consciousness of this is a thing it must acquire whether it wishes it or not. The reform of consciousness consists entirely in making the world aware of its own consciousness, in arousing it from its dream of itself, in explaining its own actions to it.