Summary
Summary Marx and Engels - The Communist Manifesto
- Module
- Marx and Marxism
- Institution
- Oxford University (OX)
Notes on Chapter Three of The Communist Manifesto, 'Socialist and Communist Literature'
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Marx & Engels - The Communist ManifestoChapter Three: Socialist and Communist Literature
1. Reactionary Socialism
● Feudal socialism
○ In the class struggle between the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, the feudal
aristocrats attempted to adopt the working class cause as a stick to beat the bourgeoisie
with
○ The aristocracy didn’t realise that the modern bourgeoisie with its form
of exploitation is the necessary offspring of their own system of exploitation
○ The feudalists don’t care that the bourgeois regime creates a proletariat;
but that it creates a revolutionary proletariat, that threatens the old order of society. They
are reactionary
○ In political practice, the feudalists are more than happy to join in the
coercion of the proletariat, to enjoy the fruits of industry etc
● Petty-bourgeois socialism
○ As well as the feudal aristocracy, the petty bourgeoisie are permanently
threatened by the bourgeois regime
○ The school of socialism that arose from this threatened class was able to
demonstrate the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the concentration
of capital and land; over production and its crises; the misery of the proletariat; anarchy
in production; inequalities etc; the dissolution of old moral bonds, old family relations, of
old nationalities
○ However, its positive aims were either to abolish modern machinery or to
subject it to inappropriate past relations of production, and hence this school is
reactionary
● German, or ‘true’ socialism
○ French socialist and communist literature was introduced to Germany
just as its bourgeoisie began to struggle against feudal absolutism
○ Yet these writings corresponded to the social conditions of France, which
were very different to those of Germany - they were an account of the proletarian
struggle against bourgeois power
○ The German philosophers tried to reconcile the demands of the French
revolution with their own universal categories, and thus completely emasculated the
French literature
○ This universality (and hence blindness to class etc) presupposed the
existence of a modern bourgeois society and hence was unable to attack bourgeois
liberalism
○ This school represented the interests of the German Philistines (petty
bourgeois?) and came to oppose the ‘brutally destructive’ tendency of Communism and
to declare its supreme and impartial contempt of all class struggles
2. Conservative, or Bourgeois, Socialism
● Part of the bourgeoisie seek to ameliorate social conditions in order to perpetuate
bourgeois society - economist, philanthropists, humanitarians etc. This socialism has been
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