Comments from a reactionary

I had read the Communist Manifesto in a vague sort of way for other classes before, but I had always considered it a sort of artifact of history and not a text with the power of persuasion for subsequent generations of would-be revolutionaries. It is difficult for me to account for the lasting power of the Communist Manifesto because I don't find it persuasive. It's lofty language and exaggerated claims seem hardly serious to me. I find it more funny than persuasive. From the opening sentence, "A spectre is haunting Europe--the spectre of communism," the manifesto strikes a tone that is at once powerful and comical. This is a fantastic and extremely memorable opening sentence for a work of literature, but in this context, when I read this line all that comes to mind are a bunch of zombie revolutionaries stalking the darkened streets of Paris. Marx and Engels' attempts to frighten their readers into agreement with lofty similes end up sounding ridiculous, "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." This childish, fairytale analogy makes the arguable claims advanced about the bourgeoisie trite. The strong image that the analogy conjures obscures the modern conditions that the sorcerer is being compared to.

The manifesto makes bold, unwavering claims, as a manifesto should: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." The phrasing of this sentence so that the word history is repeated emphasizes the radical recasting of the dominant historical narrative by Marx and Engels. As potent and quotable these simple declarative sentences that are spliced throughout the text are, I think their simplicity undermines the argument. History is not so simple as to be reduced to an overarching declaration. The tone of certainty, articulated in vitriolic rhetoric, has a great deal to do with the historical power of the manifesto, as it has lasted through its quotability and memorability. However, I find the certainty unsettling.

One of most powerful rhetorical strategies used by Marx and Engels is inversion. As the argument proceeds from their account of perpetual class struggle, they declare, "The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part." Recasting the group they had just labelled as oppressors as having been, historically, revolutionary, Marx and Engels make way for the second part of their argument: the inevitability of the impending proletarian revolution. The bourgeoisie revolution has outlasted its time, they argue. The time for a workers revolution has come.

Throughout the manifesto, the opposing of groups (bourgeois/proletariat), communists/everyone else as anti-communist, forces the reader to take a side. From the opening, the reader is labelled either as a communist, or as one among the reactionaries who are already behind the momentous revolution. "Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?" Communism is declared to be a power, in fact declared by the opposition to be a power, and those that are sceptical of it can only be those currently in power or those that are against change. This may be an effective rhetorical strategy for readers that are prone to take sides; perhaps at the time the Communist Manifesto was written there were more such readers. However, I find it alienating, and imagine that others might react similarly. As many critics have said before, the high language can hardly expect to be appreciated by the proletariat it incites to revolution, so the question remains, who is the intended audience? While Marx and Engels make many statements that would seem to alienate the "petty bourgeoisie," whose interests are so opposed to such a communist revolution, it is to this audience that the manifesto seems to most clearly apply. Certainly, in its current circulation, the Communist Manifesto seems to be most often espoused by those who are minimally oppressed and privileged enough to claim to speak for the lower classes.