America: Land of the Free?

America: Land of the Free?

The Communist Manifesto once shocked American readers with its version of radical socialism, called communism. Now, it’s nearing complete implementation in America. ...
Charles Scaliger

One hundred seventy years ago, Europe was a continent in ferment. Dissatisfied with the feudal/monarchical system that had sustained most of the continent since the collapse of the Roman Empire, many European intellectuals and agitators wanted to completely overturn the old order. The French Revolution had spawned many imitators, and a number of movements, known collectively as “socialists,” worked to sow unrest and urge their fellow Europeans toward revolution. The most extreme of these was the “scientific socialism” of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and a circle of leftist intellectuals and malcontents who called themselves the League of the Just. In seeking to differentiate themselves from the many brands of “Utopian socialism” then in vogue, Marx and his collaborators eventually hit on a new name for their program: communism. Before long, the term was on the lips of every informed European, and young Karl Marx soon produced a statement of the communist ideology, the Communist Manifesto.

The Communist Manifesto, a brief and very accessible piece of political pamphleteering, was once required reading in high-school civics classes across the land — in a day when many of its claims still had the power to shock. But nowadays, the Manifesto is seldom read except by political science majors. The reason for this is not hard to discern: The Communist Manifesto, indisputably one of the most influential pieces of writing ever produced, no longer offends or surprises, because nearly all of its philosophical underpinnings have been accepted, and nearly all of its program adopted, in whole or in part, in the formerly free nations of the West, including the United States.

Profession of Faith

The Manifesto was published in 1848, a time of social upheaval across Europe (1848 was Europe’s famous “year of revolutions,” which saw socialist uprisings in dozens of states large and small, including the many Italian states, France, Ireland, the Hapsburg Empire, Poland, the German states, Denmark, western Ukraine, Switzerland, and Belgium). Monarchies, including the Capetian dynasty in France, were overthrown, and other reforms that allegedly broke with Europe’s feudal, aristocratic past were instituted. But it was not so much against the entrenched political elites that the Communist Manifesto was directed; instead, it aimed to abolish the “bourgeoisie,” the rough equivalents of the entrepreneurial and mercantile classes that constituted Europe’s budding capitalist classes, whom Marx termed “the middle class owner[s] of property.” These were the men who had brought about the Industrial Revolution, with its exquisite division of labor and productive factories and mills, as well as the shopkeepers, merchants, and traders who found markets for the fruits of Europe’s miraculous new productivity. They were also the people and corporations who fomented international trade, beginning the process of enriching and improving the lot of the entire human race through such trade — a process that continues apace in our day, with Western modes of manufacture and capital accumulation now being spread to the nations of Asia and Africa. The Manifesto rejected all of these things, proclaiming instead the ascendancy of the so-called working class, and railing against the material blessings of what Marx termed capitalism. In an age of optimism, prosperity, and relative freedom — at least, in contrast with what Europe had known for centuries — the Manifesto’s ranting pessimism did not sit well with many enlightened minds.

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