Talk:The Communist Manifesto

Oopshee

I accidentally edited this entire page with something I was inserting onto my own wiki. I have reverted the page back to last edit. Sorry about that :D

Trivia

The Cardinal, singer with punk band The Blood, identifies The Communist Manifesto as the Never Mind the Bollocks of the 19th Century, arguing that it challenged both belief and class systems with the same ferocious imagination.

... the above is what i the cardinal want to put in this article under the influence section ...if you read marx's communist manifesto ... it has all the bollocks and energy of the work never mind the bollocks ...

my point is when you identify this type of work in a ... doldrumatic ... vapid ... sterile .... style ... it does not represent the work ... and is in fact an injustice to the people who created the work and in no way an encyclopedic reference ...

thereto ... the comparison i make between never mind the bollocks and the communist manifesto is the kind of comparison that marx would have expected ... its about the people and the developing perception of the street ... and the worker against the establishment ...

remember wikipedia is for every one in the world not just those who have been to university ... the cardinal The Blood

--I'm not sure if a quote from a band whom, no offence to 'The Blood', is not at the least--iconic--is really trivia. It seems kind of like saying, "John Smith" from West Anytown, Carolina says that, 'The world is flat.'" Not a very important piece of info. This particular trivia section doesn't fit in an encyclopedia such as this(IMO). =Rust_In_Peace (Steve)

Prefaces

Does anyone else think that this page should include info about, or at least mention the seven prefaces written by Marx and Engels? Npalumbo58 (talk) 07:30, 26 January 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Npalumbo58 (talk • contribs) 00:51, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes ! I think the importance of 7 prefaces should be present . I am ready to contribute for it Commons sibi (talk) 16:19, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Page Title

Why is this page's address "The Communist Manifesto" not "The Manifesto of the Communist Party"? Any objections to moving it to the latter? Stephen MUFC (talk) 14:06, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

See WP:COMMONNAME. Google shows three times more results for the current title. It's also been widely published under the current name. See for example [2] -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 14:17, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't make it right thought does it? Still fair enough after having read WP:COMMONNAME. Stephen MUFC (talk) 14:33, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

No, not the most right, though looking at articles like Libya and Bangkok, you can see why it can sometimes be good not to be too right. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 16:59, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

How did this page turn into a critique of Marx and Engel's 'Communist Manifesto' and not reflect the actual text of the Manifesto as previously hosted? If I am missing the specific link please correct me, but nobody in the Party would ever condone the slapshod summaries made in the current sub-academic article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Venzen (talk • contribs) 01:22, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Article a bit one sided

You know, being a lefty myself, I think the Communist Manifesto to be a pretty important and relevant document. However, I've heard others say different, and so it'd be nice to get some alternative opinions under "subsequent reception". WMdcu (talk) 04:24, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree 100%! Looking through the Talk Page, I can see that the article's pendulum has swung from overly critical of the document to overly praising to the document itself. In its current state, it seems overly praising. Here are some suggested criticisms:

- Marx and Engels seem to be overly angry, and allow their anger to guide their conclusion--by violently overthrowing all existing social conditions by force. No other outcome is acceptable, they claim.

- As they wrote, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Then why do they have the naive utopian ideology that there is no struggle in a communism society?

- The manifesto was written as a response to the industrial revolution and the perceived condition of 19th century western society. In the last 160 years (since the manifesto was written), the middle class has grown bigger, richer, and more powerful. Fukuyama, for example offers a worthy criticism in the Future of History: "Yet even as the great ideological conflicts of the twentieth century played themselves out on a political and military level, critical changes were happening on a social level that undermined the Marxist scenario. First, the real living standards of the industrial working class kept rising, to the point where many workers or their children were able to join the middle class. Second, the relative size of the working class stopped growing and actually began to decline, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century, when services began to displace manufacturing in what were labeled “postindustrial” economies. Finally, a new group of poor or disadvantaged people emerged below the industrial working class -- a heterogeneous mixture of racial and ethnic minorities, recent immigrants, and socially excluded groups, such as women, gays, and the disabled." --Lacarids (talk) 05:25, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Strongly agreed! There must be an enormous corpus of work critical to Marx that we could draw from - but I'm not a scholar in that area.

The Fukuyama quote seems very relevant, so I've added it - thank you.

While I personally think your first two points are good ones, we'd need references. Have these arguments been made, in a notable way, by critics? Or are there other criticisms that are more worthy of being added? --Chriswaterguy talk 13:17, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

New section

So it is made out that Communism is argued as a non-predictive model by the point "Commissioned by the Communist League, it laid out the League's purposes and program. It presents an analytical approach to the class struggle (historical and present) and the problems of capitalism, rather than a prediction of communism's potential future forms.[2]" - I and other in the party would argue that Communism is a model applicable a 1000 years hence and that Socialism is our preferred form of government in the interim. Who is saying these things? Not the Party, for sure. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Venzen (talk • contribs) 22:26, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Preamble: How did this page turn into a critique of Marx and Engel's 'Communist Manifesto' and not reflect the actual text of the Manifesto? If we are missing the specific link please correct, but nobody in the Party would ever condone the slapshod summaries made in the article. ~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Venzen (talk • contribs) 01:23, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

In addition to the original text of the Communist Manifesto, We would like to add references to Joe Slovo and the South African Communist Party to this article (which is currently in a sadly anorexic state). Communism is becoming more and more relevant and yet we have a sliver of the article that existed only 2 years ago. Who sabotaged it? Any opinions, please voice here before 30 June 2011. Nothing will be deleted, but the full text of the original added. Reasonable, surely. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Venzen (talk • contribs) 01:36, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

In the absence off any objections I will revert this page to the actual contents of the Communist Manifesto on 6 Sept 2012 in replacement of the subjective running commentary by the current commentators ~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Venzen (talk • contribs) —Preceding undated comment added 22:08, 4 September 2011 (UTC).

Of course there are objections. This is an article about the Communist Manifesto, not the Manifesto itself. You are welcome to make well-sourced and sensible changes to the article. But the action you propose could be considered as vandalism. and might lead to your being blocked from editing Wikipedia. RolandR (talk) 22:48, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Commissioned by the Communist League

I think using word "Commissioned" gives wrong impression on the origin of the manifest. In Communist League "mandated" is used, for example, which is somewhat better. From "Commissioned" people make some particular conclusions like quote below:

"The phrase "Commissioned by the Communist League..." appears in the very first paragraph of Wikipedia's article on the Communist Manifesto... ...the common meaning of the word "commissioned" in this context is clear: it is generally accepted to mean ordering work to be done, usually for pay. Dictionary.com says "to give a commission or order for: The owners commissioned a painting for the building's lobby "Further yet, there is no conflict involved in the fact that Marx and Engels were members of the organization. There is no law against some organization hiring one of its members to build a new meeting hall... in fact I would think that they would usually hire from within before going outside the organization. Similarly, there is no law against some organization hiring someone to write a book. Why you seem to feel that this did not take place I do not know, but the word "commissioned" is pretty clear, and I read elsewhere that Marx was indeed paid for the work.I have not managed to locate a copy of the book cited by Wikipedia"

I think the wording should be more precise. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.120.174.56 (talk) 10:51, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Cites vs. Common Sense

Fact tagging digests of something very well known (without cause) is picayune, small minded, and pointless. Digests of say the U.S. Constitution, or the Gettysburg Address, are not contentious in the way quotes from say the Book of Job or the Anglo Saxon Chronicle might be. The former are extremely well known texts about which there is no contention as to the original text so any misrepresentation of them, POV, pushing etc. can easily be determined by inspection and fact tagging should only be used when such a discrepancy has been detected. If the tagging I removed has such a justification, please restore them with a comment on what needs to be addressed. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 16:36, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Awkward writing style in Reception

I've read through these sentences several times and find them awkward and nearly meaningless. There has to be a better way to express this.

The revolutionary wave throughout Europe in 1848, which began in France in February and immediately spread to most of Europe and parts of Latin America,[18] owed nothing to The Communist Manifesto, but within a year the revolutions collapsed.[19] Subsequently, traditional authorities found in The Communist Manifesto and its contents a good excuse for action against its authors.

--Davjosmes (talk) 20:36, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Reception

There is a danger that this section is turning into a general section about Marx's relevance today, rather than a specific consideration of the work in question. Comments about what Francis Fukuyama or anyone else considers as defects in Marx's thought seem far off the point. Rachel0898 (talk) 07:39, 11 June 2012 (UTC)