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dippin · 06-04-2009, 09:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

dippin: i've taught the manifeto more times than i can count, and i don't see any of these points in it except 1, 3 and 10. and none of these, except 1, are present in anything like the same language. what i see in the above is some bizarre, anachronistic cliff notes variant on the manifesto. i'd be happy to defend this, line by line with direct reference to the text, if need be.

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more generally, on the op:

it's a little bizarre to see a blog written by some russian reactionary presented as if it were a coherent take on the situation of capitalism in it's contemporary forms.

it might make intuitive sense if you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, but the key feature that determines it's persuasive power is that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

What are you talking about?

those 10 points are actually copied and pasted FROM the communist manifesto, chapter 2, "proletarians and communists," right at the end of the chapter.

Communist Manifesto (Chapter 2)

the section, at length, reads:

Quote:

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.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

And this is the Samuel Moore version that was translated with help by Engels himself, so I don't know where your claim comes from. We can argue if the "old" Marx thought like this, but the 10 points are from the original (also contained in the original German version).