The Communist Manifesto is the founding document of the socialist movement.

It has been more

widely read than any other book in history, with the possible exceptions of the Bible and the Koran.
It was not conceived as some theoretical tome it was a popular pamphlet, a call to revolt, written
just as Europe was being swept by a wave of revolutionary uprisings in 1848.
And I would argue, still very relevant today.
1 in 200 homeless in aus
According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty
The wealthiest nation on Earth has the widest gap between rich and poor of any industrialized
nation.Source 24
80% of the world population lives on less than $10 a day.
In 1998, the UN estimated that it would take $40 billion annually to offer basi c education, clean
water and sanitation, reproductive health, and basic health and nutrition to every person in every
developing country. That would be about $58 billion today.
HSBC $120 billion
Across the world the 85 richest people have as much wealth as the 3.5 billion poorest. In Australia,
the richest 1% are as rich as the poorest 60% of Australians.

Cap isn't just sick it's depraved. Feeding off human misery, profiting off of it actually.
In its most extreme and barbaric forms like war, or the daily denial of life saving medicines to that
kind of use em up and spit em out mentality of the budget. The liberals whole agenda.

The opening phrases of the Communist Manifesto are perhaps its most famous:
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word,
oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted,
now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of
society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
What Marx presents us with here is a radically different world view to all those that are generally
accepted. He says that social progress doesnt come about through changes in ideas, or the actions
of great men, but through the struggle between different social classes.
One of the things the communist manifesto is well known for is its analysis and critique of the
system of capitalism.
Marx explained how capitalism, for all its dynamism, was a system of contradiction and crisis. It is
this part of the Manifesto that establishes both the socialist indictment of capitalism, and also the
starting point for understanding why the system can be overthrown.
The indictment is that capitalism has unleashed social forces that for the first time in human history
make it possible to alleviate human suffering, and provide a society fit for all its inhabitants to not
only live, but prosper. And yet we live in a world where the gap between rich and poor grows ever

wider, in which people are alienated and exploited, and in which for many billions, the basic needs
of food and shelter cannot even be properly met.
Moreover, it is precisely the riches of the world, the productive capacity of society, that under the
system of capitalism lead to and cause poverty and misery.
But the Manifesto puts it better than I can.
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 bourgeois and of its rul e.
the problems of society are not the result of some governments flawed policies, but of the conflict
between capitalisms capacity to produce goods to provide for humanity and the profit motive that
means that people cannot use that productive potential unless it is profitable for the capitalist class.
We are ruled over by an abstraction the economy. It tells us that we cant do anything that
interferes with the market, that profitability has to be restored, that we cant just use what we are
capable of producing to meet human need. And why? Because any violation of the profit system is
also a violation of human nature!
The drudgery of work under capitalism
Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labor, the work of the pro letarians
has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an
appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily
acquired knack, that is required of him.
Sound familiar?
. Marx was right, they concede, about capitalism being a system of crisis. Many of his insights about
how the system work are valid some Wall St parasites swear you can make your fortune based on
a study of Marxs analysis of the credit system.
But he was wrong, they all say, about the other bit the call for workers revolution to overthrow
the system and bring about a new, egalitarian, democratic society.

But most of all, the defenders of the status quo object to the Manifestos proclamation that workers
created and moulded into a collective class by the system of capitalism itself also wield the tools
and the power with which to overturn it. An argument summed up by Marxs claim that: What the
bourgeoisie produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. In Marxs time, workers in the Paris
Commune taught Marx that reorganising society on genuinely democratic principles was possible,
and there have been revolutionary waves ever since. And Egypt example
why the working class
majority
collective

immense social power derived from exploitation. hence the gravediggers. caps need us, we dont
need them, but we also have the power to get rid of exploitation all together.
One: The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself. Two: We
have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to
the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.
revolution.
'festival of the oppressed'
collectivly taking over the running of society.
not what youve probably heard.

Capitalism is based on a profound contradiction. Whilst tremendous advances in labour productivity

under capitalism have produced wealth enough to wipe out hunger and poverty, it remains a sy stem
subject to profound crises that have thrown millions out of work, sparked brutal wars of conquest
and impoverished the majority of the world's population.
Capitalism has brought masses of workers together in factories, mines, warehouses and offices, as
capitalist production methods have spread throughout the world. A global working class has been
born, the largest social class in human history. Yet workers have no control over the character and
conditions of their work. Labour for capitalists is but a means to expand profits. For workers it is
solely a means to make a living.
Imagine a society where the means of production are held in common, for the common good of
humanity. Instead of goods being produced only if they can be sold for a profit, they are produced
because they are socially necessary; their production and distribution carried out according to a plan
devised democratically by workers themselves.
Imagine a society where people take what they need and give what they can; where no one is
satisfied until everyone has food, clothing, shelter and quality of life.
Imagine a society that no longer pitted workers against each other, in competition for work; where
war, famine, poverty, racism, sexism and homophobia were things of the past.
There is an alternative to the irrationality of capitalism. That alternative is socialism.
Marx and Engels explains in the Manifesto why a revolution could create that kind of world. Why
the working class can liberate all of humanity.
All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities.
The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority,
in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society,
cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being
sprung into the air.?
The ideas contained in the communist manifesto are still very relevant today, and so urgently
needed. But just having these great ideas is not enough, there needs to be an organisation in the
here and now, with these politics intervening in struggles today, in the campaigns, in unions, on our
campuses to fight for more radical change and convince more people to be active and involved.
Marx was an activists. He helped establish the First International, he participated in workers
struggles, and his collaborater Engels helped to build the first mass socialist party in Germany. They

knew their ideas had no meaning if they remained words written on a piece of paper. They had to
be used in action.
My fav marx quote. philosophers have only interepreted the world in various ways, the point,
however, is to change it.
but I'll finish on the final words in the manifesto itself
"Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but
their chains. They have a world to win."

And thats what we want to do.