"The Communist Manifesto:" the Power of Written Word

The literary instinct, or the often insuppressible urge to formulate concepts into written word, is universal to all cultures with a written language system. From the earliest epochs of recorded history, mankind has recorded thoughts and emotions into writing in an effort to affect its surroundings, and thereby enact a desired change. In some cases, the change is driven purely by the desire for self-expression, in others, material gain, and still others, the urge to raise awareness in society of a pressing issue. It is in this last cause that literature is at its most powerful, its content crystallized by the intensity of its writers' purpose.

A prime historical example of literature as a means to enact change is to be found in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels,' The Communist Manifesto. By its very definition as a manifesto, the document's purpose is made plain: to serve as a physical, ink-and-paper medium for the metaphysical, a bridge to arc between the minds of Marx and Engels to the collective consciousness of society. Through their writing, they strove to incite in the complacent, docile masses of the working classes an ever-more-insistent urge for change. The natural state of all things is for them to remain at rest. This is true of objects in the physical world, and it remains true when applied to the state of society. Freud posits that, by its definition, society is formed as a structure of living to most effectively bring happiness and deter "unpleasure." However, it is when this structure imposed upon mankind fails to serve all its members equally, that dissonance forms: beads that mar the intended harmony brought about by order.

It is when this dissonance forms, Marx and Engels assert, that those least served by the structure of their society should rise against it. However, as is true of the natural world, in order to affect any kind of change (whether to initiate a chemical reaction, set a ball in motion, or incite a revolution), a catalyst, or energy of activation must be supplied. In the perspective of Marx and Engels, that energy is already present in the outrage of the proletariat against their unjust exploitation at the hands of the bourgeoisie. However, the potential energy of the just indignation of the working classes lies dormant, seething below the surface of society like a festering wound.

Through their writings, Marx and Engels hoped to lance that wound, kindle the righteous ire of the working class, and cause them to leave their state of stasis by enacting swift and sweeping political change. Indeed, Marx and Engels contended, the only method by which the working class, rendered powerless by virtue of its very station as those least represented by society, could hope to gain power enough to enact change was to seize control of the preexisting systems of government. Essentially, the proletariat needed to hijack the runaway locomotive of society before it could be dismantled and made anew: "The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing conditions" (Marx & Engels, 44).

It is evident through their Manifesto that Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were conscious of the destructive and creative power of literature. The written word, like the spoken word, carries great heft and potential for change, as it is the chief method for conveying new concepts and images to other members of society. Through literature, one inspired man (or two) can broadcast a message limited only in its capacity for change by the desire of listeners to receive it.

Through The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels hoped both to destroy and create. With sheaves of paper and gallons of ink, they hoped to obliterate the Capitalist system more effectively than could any wrecking ball, or any machines of war; the power of literature lies not in its capacity to exert physical force, but rather in its potential to incite those who read it into action. That is the definition of power, as defined by Webster's Third New International Dictionary: "the ability to compel obedience." Marx and Engels hoped to use the power of their written word to bring about destruction in its truest sense. Down with the bourgeois-oriented, industry-fed Capitalist economy, down with the institution of money and private property, down with the family, down with traditional marriage! Through the absorption of the Manifesto's seminal words, Marx and Engels endeavored to annihilate an entire way of life. It is for this reason that Communism was viewed with such reservation, even revilement, because of the old Newtonian truth: a people at rest remains at rest. The bourgeoisie were content to ride largely upon the backs of the proletariat, and the proletariat lacked the power to hoist itself from beneath them. Thus, the words of Marx and Engels, though clamoring over one another with meaning and ringing with the call to act, failed to achieve their aim.

However, the purpose of The Communist Manifesto was not solely to destroy that which already existed; it also called for the creation of a new and model society. In the Communist system, Marx and Engels proposed, there would remain no need for the accumulation and maintenance of material possessions or monetary wealth, or capital. All services and domestic products, such as health care, food, clothes, and transportation would be distributed evenly and fairly amongst the population, and "all production concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation" (Marx & Engels, 31). In the Manifesto, Marx and Engels even go so far as to propose the establishment of a "community of women," (M & E, 27) a concept considered particularly objectionable by opponents of Communism at the time of its publication. The idea of sharing women in a vast, communal potluck of sorts seemed not only inconceivable, it rang as morally reprehensible. In the second section of the Manifesto, however, the authors assert that the bourgeoisie already employed a community of women: "Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives. Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women" (Marx & Engels, 27, 28).

Despite the Manifesto's assertion that Communism was merely expanding upon a pre-established system of communal wives, it, in reality, sought to introduce an entirely new system of mating, one that challenged the conventional, monogamous structure that had defined European lifestyle for over a thousand years. Thus, in the truest sense of the word, Marx and Engels attempted with their literature to create. They recognized in it the potential to destroy one way of life, and simultaneously create another.

Though Karl Marx and Frederick Engels never lived to see their vision of a Communist revolution come to fruition, they had the courage to decry the structure of civilization itself, and the ingenuity to envision a society in which all its members enjoyed equal representation. By not only inventing this new societal system, but also satisfying the impulse to translate their invention into written word, they acknowledged the power of language to exert force on the collective consciousness of their society, and thereby to both destroy and create.

Works Cited
Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. The Communist Manifesto. International Publishers Co., Inc. 1948.