By Franz J. T. Lee

In his latest commentary, "Did God 'instruct' Bush to overthrow Venezuela's government in April 2002?", Arthur Shaw wrote:

"This fiend said, in 2000, that Jesus, the renowned semi-divine being and Lord of the Nazarenes, is his 'favorite philosopher' and 'I talk to Him [Jesus] and he talks to me.'

* In only three years, by 2003, Bush has moved up in the society of divines, for he said in the spring of 2003 'God instructed me to attack Iraq and I did.' "

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=69847

For the Bolivarian Revolution, for its praxis and theory, the above is a serious matter. First. it necessitates profound and delicate respect for the most sacred feelings and emotions of peoples and individuals. Second, we have no intention whatsoever to hurt the religious feelings of anybody or any people. However, third, although we love Jesus Christ, we love Karl Marx, we love the Truth even more.

We cannot fool our mothers, fathers, children, youth, students, workers and peasants any longer with Christian religious myths, ideological metaphysical products of the Conquest, with the patriarchal, macho religion of the foreign conquerors, imported from colonial Europe, all which only serve capitalist interests.

The blue-eyed, blond Christian god was deaf, and still is blind, he did not hear or see the cries, prayers, death yelling and agonizing pleas of millions and millions of Christianized, baptized "niggers, coolies, kaffirs, camel-drivers and slit-eyes". His angels were all white as snow, and no business wants to produce or to paint black angels. Till this very day, no child wants to touch a black doll as Christmas gift, not even with a long five meter stick.

This European and North American god is not only racist, he is against anything feminine, that gives birth, that is natural.

* When will this cultural revolution be launched within the Bolivarian Revolution?

* When will we conquer our lost souls again?

* When will we restore our true essence, emotions, feelings and sentiments?

* When will we find ourselves again?

* When will America begin to really emancipate itself from its heavy, religious chains of illusion?

For the very first time in their earthly lives, the sovereign, the poor, the wage slaves have to be given a real opportunity to discover the truth all of, by and for themselves. This has nothing to do with electoral cannon fodder, with fears to lose votes, with atheism, communism or Marxism, it concerns cruel colonial mind and thought control, a huge devouring imperialist mental holocaust lasting more than five centuries already.

The very Jesus Christ (or some other wise man) has stated that here on earth we must know the truth and that the truth will make us free. Unfortunately, in the White House the Truth is a Black Lie. Furthermore, Karl Marx, ... after having identified Christian religion and its gods as the "sigh of the oppressed creature", as the "soul of soulless conditions" and as the "heart of a heartless world", ... has invited us to pluck the beautiful, living flowers of religion. In other words, he asked us to become aesthetic, creative, to become creators of our own future, of our own earthly heaven.

However, unless we stop them pretty fast, in the near future, if the gods of war, Bush, Rumsfeld, Negroponte and Cheney, should succeed to launch their destructive world wars and to terminate their apocalypse, then, not much of nature will be left on planet earth for us to plant flowers or to be creative at all. All over we will just be hearing "weeping and gnashing of teeth", everybody will be broiling in "fire and brimstone". This is the hell which happened already in August 1945 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this all occurred with the help of the gracious blessings of the North American State God.

To crown it all, now the radical neocon hawks want to convert Japan into the next Israel, into an atomic watch-dog of corporate imperialism in Asia.

All this concerns a fundamental problem that affects human praxis and theory, that deviates the Bolivarian Revolution away from its emancipatory course. It has to do with the long overdue scientific and philosophic study of Christianity, of what it was originally, why it was reformed by all ruling classes from feudalism to capitalism, and to know into what the current Bush administration and the Ratzinger Vatican are converting world religion in the epoch of fascist globalization.

A year ago, in a VHeadline article named "Venezuela between Jesus Christ and Karl Marx..." I asked central questions pertaining to Shaw's current article:

"What would Venezuela be without these traditional colonial customs and religious beliefs? Well, the oil sabotage of the capitalist creme de la creme in December, 2002, stole all these Christmas niceties and has taught us in the long queues day after day that Venezuela could survive, could live with other delicacies, with revolutionary praxis and theory, according to new, until then, still unknown socialist measures. Months before, in April 2002, in a ferocious class struggle, we already have pulled ourselves by our own hair out of the capitalist bottomless pit of puntofijista golpismo."

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=46734

A few weeks later, in another article, "The Second Coming of George W. Bush: 'The Messiah' of the 21st century", we already confirmed what Arthur Shaw has formulated so poignantly:

"This is a classical example of a religious, pathological delirium, of a dangerous unio mistica with the earthly gods of fascism, in fact, historically it is a paradigm of why in the first place Roman feudalism, the Spanish Inquisition, had to invent official, dogmatic, Christian religion, why an omnipotent God had to be fabricated and was later used by all conquistadors, tyrants and dictators as spiritual legitimization, as absolution from the most heinous and barbaric crimes committed against humanity."

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=46358

The above is the ideological essence of the divine conception of history, that is, of a great God that makes history. By the grace of this very God, all kings, popes and presidents freely could perpetrate the most abominable crimes against humanity. Till today this obscurantist, rotten conception still spooks in our brains. This is the context in which Bush made and is making all his delirious neocon statements.

This is nothing personal, it concerns the social individual, the current head of state of the Orwellian United States of America. Bush took the job, usurped power, he gets paid for his divine hallucinations. In fact, in all probability he himself (also Ratzinger himself) does not really believe in all this "walking and talking with God" nonsense. However, it is being disseminated as part of the disinformation war campaigns across the globe to keep at bay all those billions who believe in all calibers and pedigrees of supernatural spirits, that is, to control them, to give them something to get excited about.

In reality, in macro- and microcosm, the ELF and scalar waves, the satellite death rays and espionage gadgets are all running hot with HAARP and "Flying Saucer" experiments. This is the result of urgent global preparations for military invasions, plots, plans and atomic wars against the real big powerful competitors, for example, Eurasia, striving to conquer future world hegemony.

In order that such religious hoaxes could function at all, for millennia already, the sine qua non was that we, the "les miserables" (Victor Hugo), the imperial "subjects," the absolute majority of the downtrodden world population, should internalize, should believe in these devils, gods, angels and holy ghosts, that we must see and grasp them as existing realities. Also, we must learn that hell, purgatory and limbo are concrete, real places, namely, our future transcendental destinations. Only then, Bush could bomb them away, and Ratzinger could cancel them if they do not fit in the current religious globalized policy anymore. Culturally, in our educational and socialization institutions, we are being programmed to reproduce all these ideological, religious and theological awe-inspiring paraphernalia, all these awful chimeras and awesome phantasmagorias.

How to get rid of all of them is the most serious problem that confronts the current "Misión Ciencia" and "Misión Conciencia" within the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. It blocks all serious efforts to develop a new logic, a new science, a new philosophy, a New (Wo)Man.

In this way social and individual fear is being created and perpetuated. The old and obsolete, jealous "wrath of Jahwe". the outdated "fear of the feudal hellish second death", both are now being transformed into apocalyptic "full spectrum dominance", into nuclear intimidation, into the "shock and awe" policy of corporate imperialist Donald Rumsfeld. In the United Nations (see the North Korean nuclear issue), even Europe, France, Russia and China seem to be shivering in their very own military capitalist boots because of their inherent insecurity; they are afraid of the devastating consequences that could result should Big Brother in total bankruptcy and death agony really get crazy, really begin to walk and talk with himself, and desperately start to attack everything left, right and center.

A huge crash of the USA would immediately be followed by a crash of the world market, would be the end of all the world powers, of humanity. This wear and tear of global imperialism is an in-built essential factor of the current mode of production. There is no escape, the longer the agony, the more devastating will be the end results of its inexorable, total implosion and explosion. The global situation is grievous indeed. We are slowly approximating the Rubicon already.

Changing over to day-to-day realities, with reference to the immediate revolutionary tasks ahead, Marx stated categorically that all social critique must start with religious and ideological criticism. This the bourgeoisie, the forefathers of the Bush family, knew very well; with their atheist mechanical materialism they separated Church and State, toppled archaic feudal governments by the grace of God, and victoriously they replaced them with governments of, by and for their own earthly ruling, capitalist classes. As Lenin pointed out, this occurred by means of the democratic dictatorship of the few over the many.This is the real historic context of Bush's military revelations, of his divine raison d'être to organize a coup in Venezuela, to attack Iraq, and other Arab countries in the Middle East. .

Now let us just briefly spotlight the origins of this religious, ideological mental holocaust.

The Ancient Greek panpsychic, natural philosopher Heracleitus of Ephesus (535 - 475 B.C.) indicated that patriarchal Society was progressively exploiting and dominating Nature, that male ruling class gods are beginning to conquer creative, creating Minerva or Venus. Then already he feared that patriarchal monotheistic, religious beliefs and hoaxes would strangulate healthy, creative, natural and truthful thinking and thought processes. He feared the coming mental holocaust, the mind and thought control machinations and mechanisms generated by master and slave relations within the exploitative historic labor process. According to him:

"To think healthy is the greatest perfection; Wisdom is to tell

the Truth, to act according to Nature, to listen to her."

In the very Old Testament, as we should know, Job, ... who was tortured mercilessly by the jealous and wrathful Jahwe and by evil Satan alike, ... feared the coming social religious decay; hence, he sought for scientific succor, truth and knowledge in the creative, caring womb of earthly Mother Nature:

“But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee.” (Job 12:7-9)

Even in European history itself we find all over hundreds of non-Marxist disalienating endeavors to emancipate man from the clutches and shackles of religious fantasies. Long, long ago, ... before Marx and Engels, ... more than two and a half millennia ago, another hylozoistic Ancient Greek philosopher Anaximenes of Miletus (585 - 525? B.C.) had taught us that we ourselves as human trinity can think in a "divine", transcendental way, without the necessity of creating fictional "gods", god-men or men-gods, without "believing" in our self-created divinities. Like the late German philosopher Ernst Bloch, he taught us that we could transcend in immanence, and "emanate" in transcendence.

Just like Ludwig Feuerbach in the 19th century, Anaximenes showed that by means of his own religious projections of his own inner self, global ruling class man in embryo had alienated himself, created all his gods and devils, and has transmitted all these phantoms across history to all socially oppressed layers. For any still thinking mind to grasp the earthly origins of the globalization of ruling class religious terrorism, Anaximenes very simply explained to us the following logical truth:

"Yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their several kinds.

http://www.classicpersuasion.org/pw/burnet/egp.htm?pleaseget=57

Hence, is Bush the republican painting, the image of the neocon god?

It is as simple as all that.

This is the transhistoric context of Bush's religious utterances. He really walks and talks with his god. As maximum expression of divine will, of globalization, he is a big brother, a big self-ordained god, a big power himself.

* As a white, civilized, western, Christian god, he cannot commit any error, any crime.

* He alone decides what is a crime.

* He stands above natural and divine law.

* He needs no pretext for anything.

* According to his whim and caprice, he alone creates the "axis of evil".

* Above all, he alone knows what is ethical, what is good or bad, cultured or barbarian.

* He alone ate the apple from the forbidden tree of knowledge.

* He became like god, ergo, he created god in his own image, he is a god.

* He is both the Greek god of wealth, Plutus, and the god of death, Pluto.

In a nutshell, Bush is the scientific verification of what Mammon, of what a real "devil" (Chavez) is all about. His domain, his historic task (and that of his neocon successors) is to transform the planet into hell, into hell fire. He blesses America, in him, in his divine dollar the whole world is being forced to trust. Ratzinger forms the other side of this "golden calf", of this global Baal, of this Janus-faced, corporate, military and industrial Moloch.

Only now we could really understand and fully appreciate the furious description of Arthur Shaw of North American corporate imperialism and religious blasphemy, currently personified by President Bush, and whose divine qualities will later survive in his successor:

" The most powerful man in the world is the disreputable, or ... more correctly ... despicable George W. Bush, the leader of the GOPs in the USA, who is a murderer, liar, kidnapper, concentration camp operator, election-rigger, torturer, oil thief, exterminator of humans, warrantless eavesdropper, violator of the US Constitution and the rule of law, depraved dictator, devil, pervert, etc.".

BIRTH OF THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO AND ITS BOURGEOIS-DEMOCRATIC, REVOLUTIONARY SIGNIFICANCE

PART I

12th August, 2000 / By Franz J. T. Lee

A. INTRODUCTION

Before we enter in medias res, to analyse the "Communist Nanifesto", let's enjoy some typical views about "mankind". Also, please note, for a change, that this time we are analysing the historic "significance" of the "Manifesto". Thus, we'll have an excellent perspective with regard to the quo vadis of Marxism, and who and what it intended or intends to emancipate. In general, the statements below will also highlight who is man, who has "rights", and who is supposed to be liberated on this planet. As we already know, "Niggers", "slaves", "Jews", "aliens", "Kaffirs", "coolies", "latinos", etc., -- 95% of "humanity", of 6 billion -- do not belong to the sonorous, ideological epithet: humanity. Whether we like it or not, believe it or not, know it or not, what follows is simply the "gospel truth" of our world, it is a formal- logical, self-evident Absolute Truth. Thousands of erudite ideologues have affirmed it across the ages. Who can still read, please just read your official "classics"! Anyhow, here we go:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

(Declaration of Independence, 1776.)

"Every political association has as its goal the preservation of the natural and inprescriptible rights of men. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression."

(Art. 11, Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen, 1789.)

Slaves are "Speaking Tools", they do not form part of the famous "Zoon Politikon". They are only barbaric, banausic "Speaking Tools".

(Aristotle.)

"Characteristic of the Negro (of Africa) is, that his world outlook didn't reach any definite objectivity as yet, e.g., God, Law, which would reflect a human will, and in which he could experience his essence. ... The Negro represents the natural human being still in a state of total savageness and wildness. ... The Negro displays a total disrespect, a contempt towards humanity. ... For him, humanity is worthless, this takes on incredible forms; for him, tyranny is not injustice, and a generally accepted and sanctioned custom is to devour human flesh. ... Another characteristic of Negroes is slavery. ... On their own continent the Negroes experience a slavery worse than European enslavement of Negroes. ... The fundamental expression of slavery is precisely that man is not yet conscious of his freedom, hence he degenerates into a thing, into something without any human value. ... We leave Africa, not to mention it anymore, because it is not a historic continent, because it lacks motion and development, ... it is just appearing vaguely on the dark threshold of world history. "

[G. W. F. Hegel, Excerpts from: LECTURES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. (My free translation, exhibiting the "racist" arrogance.)]

"It is almost unthinkable that God, who is all goodness itself, could have determined to place a soul -- let alone a good soul -- in a body as black and repulsive as that of a Negro."

(Montesquieu, "Esprit des Lois", Livre XV, Chapter 5.)

"The Negro race is a species of men as different from ours as the breed of spaniels is from that of greyhounds. ... If their understanding is not of a different nature from ours, it is at least greatly inferior. They are not capable of any great application or association of ideas, and seem formed neither for the advantages nor the abuses of philosophy."

(Voltaire, Works.)

Apart from the fact, that in the "Communist Manifesto", Marx & Engels, typical social products of their "racist", colonial, liberal-capitalist epoch, spoke about "barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones", Marx himself found a subject of derision in Ferdinand Lasalle's "negroid" features, calling him a "Jewish nigger", "who always conceals his woolly hair with all kinds of hair-oil and make-up", and that "it is perfectly obvious, from the shape of his head and the way his hair grows, that he is descended from Negroes." - So much as for the defendants of the working class!

However, the above has not been quoted so that Lovers of "True Americans", of "Peace" and "Democracy" should rejoice, or that Hegel -, Marx - and Communist Haters should celebrate a victorious "I always told you that" KKK-Party. No, it's a serious warning, that we should cast aside our age-old obscurantism, ignorance and arrogance. It's an example of excellent, emancipatory scientific-philosophic stringency.

These are the "human" reflections of the European superstructure of the 18th and 19th centuries. In the Third Millennium A.D., capitalist "race" prejudice and the conceptions of "man",- of the perfect, great "human being" -have not changed basically. Also the attitudes towards "barbarian races" have not ceased; on the contrary, they have become more virile, more virulent; this could be seen in the "World Wars", in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in the Nazi concentration camps, in the Stalinist Gulags, in the slaughtering carried out by tyrants such as Idi Amin and Mobutu, in the South African Apartheid regime, in the witch-hunting of the McCarthy era, in the murders of Patrice Lumumba and Walter Rodney, in the Rwanda Conspiracy, in fact, in the Global Era, as far as the eye could see, as far as the Internet could reach!

All across the planet, in capitalism, "liberalism", "libertarianism", "tribalism", "socialism" or "communism", in dungeons, in sewerage systems, under bridges, in carton-box "houses", in mud huts, barrios and favelas, in yachts, villas, palaces and sky-scrapers, in banks, multi-nationals and governments, in Red Squares, in Yellow, Green and White Houses, in Octagons and Pentagons, in the air, in space, in time, on earth, under the sea, in dark holes, in heaven, in hell, all over, and everywhere, Orwellian "racist", "racial" and "human" arrogance survive, are rife. This contagious epidemic has entered every single capillary, every cell, every chromosome of "humanity". It's simply "cool", it's "in", it is: Hate Thy Neighbour As Thyself! Very few are immune to this mortal, fatal, lethal, age-old "I Love You" - Virus of "Big Brother".

PART II

B. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE "COMMUNIST MANIFESTO"

1. "The Holy Alliance"

Here, within the ideological framework of the fatherland, as the Patria itself sees its own events, utilizing its language and concepts which are familiar to us, we'll summarize the "historical" context of the "Communist Manifesto". Later, based on other methods and logic, using our own scientific-philosophic concepts, we'll voice our own opinions about this specific, perverse labour process, dialectically producing and reproducing its own affirmative negation, Revolutionary Marxism.

Let's spotlight the situation in Europe at the beginning of the 19th century, focusing on the "Holy Alliance". It was formed in 1815, by a group of "Christian Princes" ruling by Gottesgnadentum, by Monarchies by the Grace of God, all invited by the Tzar of Russia, under the auspices of Austria and Prussia. Then, practically all absolutist monarchs of Europe joined this "Holy Club".

Inspired by the famous Austrian diplomat, Count von Metternich, at the Congress of Vienna, 1814-15, as a result of the bourgeois-democratic French Revolution, the map of Europe had to be redrawn. This was the anti-liberal-capitalist "Scramble For Europe", a counter-revolutionary attempt to restore the "ancien regime"; however, de facto, it paved the road towards the pro-imperialist-capitalist "Scramble For Africa" (1884-85). We need not tarry, giving data, who cheated who, who robbed what and who got the "lion's share". It all ended up with an alliance of "Christian States", with the "Quadruple Alliance" (Russia, Prussia, Austria and Great Britain). - What really happened, a then very popular German song expressed this evolutionary, materialist trend as lollows:

"Die irdische Trinität, Gott nachgeschaffen,

So wie der Mensch sich wiederholt im Affen."

(The Trinity on earth, God imitated,

just as man in monkey is recreated.)

2. Laissez faire, laissez passer

Between 1815 and 1830, the onslaught of upcoming capitalist forces of production progressively destroyed most of the vestiges of feudalist, absolutist modes of production, and ushered in the "Industrial Revolution". England took the lead, new factory towns like Manchester emerged. The British manufacturers believed in the Liberté generated by the French Revolution; this upcoming liberal-democratic bourgeoisie defended "free competition", "free trade", in few words: laissez faire, laissez passer. Continental Europe, -- France, Belgium and parts of Germany, -- although still rural and agricultural, also began to develop its own factory system, based on the age-old "working houses". On the political plane, this power struggle was reflected in the revolutionary and rebellious waves that shook Europe around 1830.

The European Holy Sovereigns and Metternich were not impressed at all by these revolutionary novelties; they resisted with all sorts of State Power at their disposal; they accused the opposition of being followers of -- not yet Marx -- of Robespierre, of being -- not yet "terrorists" and "communists" -- sans-culottes. With full force they launched a galaxy of oppressive measures, unravelling basic functions of the future State: censorship, police surveillance, Spitzel, mouchards, spies, laws, imprisonment and executions. In fact, they attacked the vanguard of the bourgeois-democratic capitalist revolution. As political reaction against police and army terror, radical bourgeois democrats, workers and labourers, defendants of the capitalist revolution, organized themselves in secret societies, like the Carbonari, the coal-burners. In Germany, not quite so "innocent" Burschenschaften, fraternities, came into existence.

In France, the Bourbons, who never learned anything, and who never forgot anything, were replaced. The reactionary Charles X fled, and he was replaced by a "bourgeois king", by Louis Phillipe of Orleans. Now, the wealthy French bourgeoisie took over. Guizot portrayed the "esprit" of this new wealthy class of bankers, speculators and industrialists with the following slogan: Enrichissez vous! Not "Know Thyself!", not "Do and Think It Thyself!", but "Enrich Thyself!" Of course, at the cost of others, of labourers and workers, who always have to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for their betters, for their superiors. A new constitution abolished press censorship, and cartoonists and satirists celebrated their heyday. The biting sketches and caustic novels of Daumier, Gavarni, Balzac and Stendhal refreshed the European smoky, smoggy industrial air.

3. Massacres & Weavers' Revolts

In England, after the Luddite revolts of 1811-12, and the smashing of factory machines, the British workers also began to organize themselves and to form independent workers' associations and trade unions. In 1819 occurred the "Massacre of Peterloo"; in Manchester, during a meeting of 60.000 protesting workers, police brutally intervened and suffocated the rebellion. Percy B. Shelley portrayed this event as follows:

"Rise, like lions after slumber / In unvanquishable number, / Shake your chains to earth like dew / Which in sleep had fallen on you. / Ye are many, they are few!"

("Mask Of Anarchy")

In Britain, the workers' struggle continued; it culminated in a frustrating "Reform Act of 1832" and in the "People's Charter" of 1838. A Chartist labour movement came into existence, reaching a membership of over 40.000 in 1847, a year before the publication of the famous "Communist Manifesto".

On the continent, the labour movement began relatively late. Again, France set the pace; this time for the "proletarian revolution". In 1831, also later, in 1834, the silk weavers of Lyons, the canuts, rebelled and took to the streets. Insurrections in other French cities followed, all were also brutally suppressed; the "Massacre of Paris Rue Transnonain" is well known. Listen to the "Song Of The Weavers":

"Mais quand notre règne arrive / Quand votre règne finira / Alors nous tisserons le linceul du vieux monde / Par on entend déjà la revolte qui gronde. --"

"When our reign arrives / When your reign shall end / Then we shall weave the shroud of the old world / For hear! revolt is rumbling -- "

Germany, who always, at first, makes the revolution in the head, launched its Silesian Weaver Rebellion only in 1844. The state authorities reacted with the same authoritarian brutality as elsewhere. Let's listen the the German "Weaver's Song":

"Hier im Ort ist ein Gericht / Viel schlimmer als die Fehmen*,/ Wo man nicht mehr ein Urteil spricht / das Leben schnell zu nehmen."

"In this place there is a court / Much worse than all the Fehmen / Where no one needs a court and judge / To quickly kill a person."

* medieval kangaroo courts.

This weavers' revolt became the central topic of Gerhard Hauptmann's famous play: Die Weber (1892). - Let's conclude this resume of the "historical" context of the "Communist Manifesto" with the excellent poem of Heinrich Heine, who gave us further details about this scandalous massacre:

"Im duestern Auge keine Träne, / Sie sitzen am Webstuhl und fletschen die Zähne: / (Des Leidens und Hungers ist genug); / ´Deutschland, wir weben dein Leichentuch, / Wir weben hinein den dreifachen Fluch -- / Wir weben, wir weben.'"

"Without a tear in their grim eyes, / They sit at the loom, the rage of despair on their faces: / We have suffered and hunger'd long enough; / 'Old Germany, we are weaving a shroud for thee / And weaving it with a triple curse. / We are weaving, weaving.'"

PART III

C. INTELLECTUAL FERMENT AT THE TIME OF THE 1848 REVOLUTIONS

1. Epilogue

Before we send out our intellectual reconnaissance troops, let's ponder logistically about some "home affairs", about the ontic barricades which hinder us to follow certain complex, logical thought processes. It is beyond any doubt that we do not belong to the "cultured few", to the haute bourgeoisie, who have received a thorough, fundamental economic, humanistic, historical, philosophical, political and social "education". However, exactly this inborn ostracism from the global haute monde, from its violent, exploitative quintessence, has made us immune to its cancerous, ideological germs of the specific genre: haute vulgarisation, haute alienation; this enabled us to preserve our bodily health and mental sanity.

It's not our historic task to vulgarize and alienate our mental and emancipatory faculties with formal-logical sophistry, dialectical mental gimmicks and gymnastics, to learn, to repeat and to remember all sorts of empirical, concrete "facts" by rote, in pavlov-parrot or daisy-sheep style; au contraire, they are evolving, revolving and transvolving to identify the natural essence of things, to differentiate the social existence of relations, to triversify the historic transcendence of emancipation.

Now, we're sure that the paragraph above seems like monstrous "Chinese" to you all; worse than modern sociological jargon a la Habermas. In fact, it's the easiest text in the poliverse to understand, to think, to formulate. It's the ABC of sane, sound thinking. This demonstrates the intellectual damage caused over millennia by the official dissocialization process, called "education", and where urgently our intellectual emancipation necessarily should begin.

It's arduous to activate a dusty, rusty, half-damaged brain; it's lackadaisical, it's clowny, cloney, phoney, it wants money; when given a slight theoretical push, it hobbles, stutters and straggles, it falls into coma, it faints, gets headaches, it switches off, it wants to talk about more pleasant things in an unpleasant world. These are already sure symptoms, sure red signals, of an advancing, dangerous stage, of the imminent outbreak of depressive vulgarization, of the coming of repressive alienation, of an oppressive total eclipse of reason.

For a damaged brain, for a kinky, bungly existence, thinking and thought are torturing liabilities, painful inabilities, stumbling blocks. For sound and sane active, mental, rational faculties, theory, philosophy and society are home-made, are "house words"; with them one feels at home, they flow from the brains and the lips like tender morning-dew, as sweet as natural honey.

In nuce, it's not thinking, thought, theory, logic, epistemology, political economy and philosophy that are problematic; they are not the Draculian Chimeras or the Mephistophelic Nightmares of Emancipation; it's the drastic after-effects of urgent bodily and mental purification, of the oiling, the dusting of our brains, which form the fons et origo of all our intellectual sufferings and difficulties. In this emancipatory belle esprit, with magnet-needlelike thinking, let's now focus our starved, thirsty minds on the intellectual ferment around the birth of the "Communist Manifesto" in 1848. For this, we desperately need inquisitive minds, detective thinking, oscillating thoughts.

2. "Educational Classics"

The democratic ideologues of upsurging capitalism thought incisively, decisively and sharp, just study Kant and Hegel; their revolutionary actors were merciless, razor-sharp, just become acquainted with Danton and Robespierre; power-drunk their powerful rational weapons were aimed at the medieval "seat of knowledge", at the feudalist "intellectus", and all over France, the absolutist heads, who had ruled by the Grace of God, were rolling like useless, dry bushes in the scorching desert air. Now just imagine, how sharp we have to act a n d think AND excel to match, to excel their kith and kin, armed to the teeth with all sorts of ABC weapons, with "double-thinking" and "newspeak".

In 1808, Goethe in his "Faust" explained to us the progressive degeneration of "Human Rights" on the Information Highway, in the Highway Robbery of the Labour Process, in dawning Capitalism, in distant, sneaking, sneaky Globalization:

"Laws and rights move through the ages / Like an unending slow disgrace. / They hobble through the generations, / And softly steal from place to place.

What clever was grows into nonsense / And benefice becomes a plight. / Unlucky grandson, you be pitied, / Nobody offers you your right."

In 1829, when Marx and Engels were still playing "Cops and Thieves", Bazard and Enfantin were more emphatic about this explosive, exploitative issue, which two decades later will form the very economic essence of the future "Communist Manifesto"; they mentioned it's "evident" labour core: private property of the means of production:

"If sympathy proclaims that the exploitation of man by man must disappear completely; if it is true that mankind is moving toward a state of things in which all men, without distinction of birth, will receive from society according to their merits and be remunerated according to their work; then it is evident that the constitution of property must be changed."

(See: The Doctrine of Saint-Simon, Boston, 1958.)

3. Radical Bourgeois-Democratic Dialectics

Between 1789 and 1848, we witness a real "Periclean Age" in Europe; a rejuvenating intellectual ferment which probably would never ever dawn in the "Old World" again. In literature, arts, music, mathematics, science, philosophy and even religion, all over, overnight, genii, geniuses, and even jenny-asses, were sprouting like mushrooms out of the cold, pale, sombre European soil. With pomp and glory, capitalism was ushered in. With high class it affirmed itself, with low class, it negated itself. The victors, the new capitalist mode of production, the revolutionary bourgeoisie (affirmation) and the revolutionary proletariat (negation) dialectically triumphed over the old agricultural mode of production, over the reactionary absolutist clergy (affirmation) a n d the reactionary, feudalist nobility (negation). New unbound productive relations were set free, among them intellectual labour, intellectual ferment, creative germination, not yet nazi "germanation", not yet nazification.

Thierry and Guizot already interpreted history as "a struggle of social classes". Schiller addressed the New Man, the homo faber, as follows: "Alle Menschen werden Brueder!" (All Men Will Be Brothers!) Of course, all "women", "children", "niggers" and "wage-slaves" were excluded from this "brotherhood". Once the mind is cleared of all cobwebs, dust and rust, it's so easy to see these things, to think. Everything becomes so crystal-clear, becomes so "self-evident". As explained before, as easy as all that, thinking presents itself, flows, germinates, sprouts. Thinking, Thought and Theory become a Joy, a Thing of Beauty, a Joy Forever.

In this glorious epoch, this was exactly what, among other great figures, Keats, Goethe, Heine and Shelley expressed in their poems, and what Dickens and Balzac wrote all about, what they dramatized artistically. Bourgeois heroism, epic majesty and revolutionary grandeur artistically permeated bourgeois acts, minds, works and writings. The revolutionary bourgeoisie won the economic and political "elections"; now the bell was tolling for the great, marvellous, cultural, social "fiesta". Later, ever since 1848, the betrayed "comrade-in-arms", the proletariat, -- "the damned of the earth" (Frantz Fanon), "les miserables" (Victor Hugo), -- would launch their international political carnival, which would last till our "best of times" (Charles Dickens).

4. A Hegelian Splendid Sunrise

In his "Philosophy of History", Hegel, the philosophic tutor of Marx, differentiated the "wheat" from the "straw", he called a spade a spade; a "nigger" a "nigger" (quoted before); and he celebrated the intellectual victories of the bourgeois-democratic capitalist French Revolution as follows:

"It was a splendid sunshine, all thinking human beings have participated in celebrating this epoch."

Utopian socialists and communists, long before Marx and Engels were even born, began to criticize the "natural order of capitalism"; William Godwin (1756-1836), the father of anarchism, demanded "political justice"; he considered the new capitalist state as the "root of all evil". Earlier, Gracchus Babeuf (1760-1797), founder of the "Conspiracy Of The Equals" had already introduced "conspiracy theory", "terrorism", clandestine "guerrilla warfare" into "modern" globalized politics. In Italy, Phillipe Buonarotti (1761-1837) introduced French Babouvist conspiracy tactics to the "Illuminati". The utopian socialist efforts of Saint-Simon (1760-1825), Charles Fourier (1772-1837) and Robert Owen (1771-1850) are well-known; they radically influenced the socialist theories expressed in the "Communist Manifesto".

But, even religion became revolutionary, as could be witnessed by the works of the Christian utopian socialists, of the prophet Félicité de Lamennais (1782-1854) and of the religious auto-didact Wilhelm Weitling (1808-1871). The latter, together with Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), another self-educated anarchist leader, -- who had stated bluntly: "Property is Robbery!", -- at least, gave the negation within capitalism its first "proletarian flair".

PART IV

5. Political Economy

What is Political Economy? A "Marxist", "Communist", "Illuminati" Invention? Something non-sensical, unscientific, not worth reflecting about, not relevant to study today? Something "obsolete"? Be careful, that the last attribute does not pass over, ideologically affecting and infecting our very own over-taxed nervous structure!

Let one of the famous fathers of the "Critique of Political Economy", Friedrich Engels, explain to us in simple terms the politico-economic essence and existence of this historical science. In "Anti-Dühring", he wrote:

"Political economy is therefore essentially a historical science. It deals with material which is historical, that is, constantly changing; it must first investigate the special laws of each individual stage in the evolution of production and exchange, and only when it has completed this investigation will it be able to establish the few quite general laws which hold good for production and exchange in general. At the same time it goes without saying that the laws which are valid for definite modes of production and forms of exchange hold good for all historical periods in which these modes of production and forms of exchange prevail."

Obviously, it's not our intention here to give an introduction to political economy. Already sufficient books have been written on the topic. What we want to illustrate is that Marxist political economy is pertinent to understand the "Communist Manifesto"; -- and we dare say, it is fundamental to comprehend the current process of Globalization -- it is one of the four major pillars of the historical dialectical materialist Weltauffassung (world outlook or cosmovision).

At last, toward the end of the 18th century, the Patria, after millennia of theoretical economic confusion, was able to formulate an economic theory of its own material development. It's well-known that in 1776 the Scot, Adam Smith (1723-1790), formulated surprisingly very precise laws of the free enterprise capitalist system. Although then known as British national economy, in reality, Smith is the father of political economy, that is, of intimately relating economics and politics, showing that they don't exist or function separately.

In his famous work, "Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations", Smith ingeniously translated politics, social activities and public morality into economic categories, and verified that private property of the means of production forms the very essence of the basis, of the structure of capitalist society. Marx's "Kapital", as its sub-title indicates, is simply a "Critique of Political Economy". Long before Marx, Smith gave an excellent economic interpretation of class society: the "three great, original and constituent orders of every civilized society" are: "the orders of people who live by rent, who live by wages and who live by profit".

Of course, Smith knew that Labour measures the value of a commodity; later, Marx explained that it is not "Labour" but "Labour Force". Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) continued this tradition and in his "Essay on the Principles of Population" (1798), he tried to prove mathematically that inequality is "natural" -- that is, poverty, in reality, economic exploitation, -- is in the very nature of things, of the capitalist system, because the population tends to grow much faster than the necessary means for its subsistence. In 1819, when Marx was still a baby, in his "Principles of Political Economy", David Ricardo (1772-1823) stringently reformulated Smith's basic economic theories.

It should be noted that "political economy" is not a Marxist or "communist" invention; it was a natural evolutionary mental product of the "crème de la crème" of bourgeois capitalist economic theory; it was the economic formulation of the very negation in the capitalist world system. Marx is an intellectual product of this bourgeois capitalist achievement, he criticized it, perfected its basic theories, and arrived at the gigantic Theory of Surplus Value, which showed, after all, that the "natural order" of the classical national economists was not quite so "natural", that it was only of a "passing nature", was transitory.

Already in embryo, the major politico-economic theories of Marx and Engels were present, were expressed in the "Communist Manifesto", were developed toward their formal-logical revolutionary conclusion: either "barbarism" or "communism". Not to take them into analytic consideration, is to miss the rocking proletarian boat sailing toward the future anticipated communist horizon; is not to understand that the "Communist Manifesto" -- just like the proletariat itself -- is a logical (material and ) intellectual labour product of the victorious bourgeois-democratic capitalist mode of production; is not to grasp that the "Manifesto" is the intellectual dynamo, the very theoretical expression of the Negation Within Capitalism itself. In nuce, is not to comprehend what Labour and Capital are all about, what Globalization exactly implies, is not to be able to read the Cassandra "menetekel" on the wall.

Like in a typical bourgeois-democratic, sado-masochistic productive and reproductive marriage -- as explained in the very "Communist Manifesto" itself -- , Capital and Labour, Adam and Marx, go together, as the song says: like a Horse and Carriage; like the dialectical Affirmation and Negation!

PART V

6. Classical German Idealist and Materialist Philosophy

a. Introduction

Before we tackle this titanic "pillar" of the "Manifesto of The Communist Party", as the document originally was called, that is, analyse the Hegelian philosophical roots of the "Marxist" materialist dialectical conception of history, let us quote the very first text that we ever had published on the Web, in 1998, the first page of our original Home page, "Pandemonium.Crew", still being hosted on Geocities.

"In order to introduce Philosophy, firstly, one has to be a Philosopher; secondly, to be able to philosophize, one must be able to think, must e x i s t ; thirdly, to excel in Praxis and Theory, one must t r a n s c e n d, must surpass the ordinary everyday greyness and has to ascend to the evergreen sublime, to enter the realm of Reason and Emancipation, thus, leaving all quagmires and cesspools behind, allowing them to perish in-and-for-themselves.

The famous German philosopher, Hegel, did state that 'all that comes into being merits that it perishes', (Alles, was entsteht, ist wert, dass es untergeht); this is surely true for formal logical or dialectical Being." Concerning Philosophy itself, we stated: "For us, Philosophy is not aristocratic: it is not the 'queen of sciences', or the Warehouse of Absolute Truths, or the 'ivory tower' of cool or small talk. In the same manner as Science is our Essence, similarly, Philosophy exists as our thinking and thought process. In this sense, to be homo sapiens, we have to exist as homo philosophicus, and not be a primitive zoon politikon or a modern homo faber."

Ever since then, we've gone a very long way, and yet, it is worthwhile recollecting our "point of departure". In this sense, we'll expound very simply certain elements of the classical idealist Hegelian philosophy which profoundly have influenced the views of Marx and Engels in the "Manifesto", also their whole lifework.

But firstly, let's remind our readers of three other documents, also published long ago on Geocities, which are fundamental to comprehend the Hegelian dialectical method of thinking, as expressed by Marx and Engels in the "Manifesto", and also to understand which "human being", which "proletarian" they were addressing. Thereafter, we'll summarize the impact of German classical idealist philosophy on the "Manifesto".

b. Hegel & Hegelianism

We quote:

"Because our ontic debate very much concerns the philosophies of Hegel and of Marx , it is imperative, very briefly, that we deal here with some of their major ideas, including the thoughts of some of their most ardent followers; in other words, before we continue with our intellectual and rational discussion, with our lectures on Cosmos a n d Einai, we will expound here the essential and existential, philosophic and political basics of Hegelianism and Marxism.

According to Hegel, patrian reality can only be grasped as a totality: "the truth is the whole". Furthermore, it is a philosophic fallacy to try to understand the apparently unrelated phenomena of the Cosmos, Nature, Society, History, Intellect and Reason by means of separate individual categories of thought.

Dialectics is the unifying force and process which underlies the apparent diversity of things and of the world in general. Higher and more complex entities evolve from their lesser inadequate anticipations, which are in constant conflict with each other. At the most abstract Hegelian degree of Thought, Pure Being (das reine Sein, Thesis, Pure Indeterminacy) implies its exact opposite, Nothingness (das Nichts, Antithesis). The Truth about these Concepts, about Being and Nothingness, must contain both of them. Hence, for Hegel, Truth is the Relation between Being (Thesis) and Nothingness (Antithesis), is Becoming (Synthesis). Hence, we could say that for Hegel, Truth is Becoming, is Relation, is Verhältnis, is Bezug.

Also, we could summarize the above as follows:

Sein Werden Nichts

Being Becoming Nothingness

Sein Wahrheit Nichts

Being Truth Nothingness

Thesis Synthesis Antithesis.

According to our diagorical or dialogical Method, where a n d or u n d mean Truth, Bezug or Synthesis, we could express the above as follows:

Sein u n d Nichts

(Werden)

Being a n d Nothingness

(Becoming)

Cosmos a n d Einai.

(Nothing)

Essence a n d Existence

(Transcendence)

Thesis a n d Antithesis.

(Synthesis)

Of course, what Hegel understood by the above, and, what we think about these concepts, are totally different intellectual and rational reflections. Certainly, here and there one could find similarities. For example, Hegel would turn in his grave, if he noted that we identify his Being (Sein) as Cosmos, and that we differentiate his Nothing (Nichts) as Einai, as Existence.

On the other hand, he would be delighted to note that our Bezug corresponds with his Werden. But, from bad to worse, he would doubt our philosophic merits, if we would explain to him that our transcept of Nothing or Nothingness (Nichts) transcends as NEITHER Being (Essence) NOR Existence, and not as NEITHER Being NOR Nothingness, or as Becoming, or as Werden.

But let us return to Hegelian Thought.

For Hegel, History progresses from primitive tribal life to the modern more adequate, fully rational State. The historical process ends up in the complete self-understanding of the "absolute", in the totality of everything which exists. He applied this system in detail to history, logic, ethics, aesthetics, politics and religion, and as such developed a huge, complex philosophical system which has the Dialectic as its core.

After the death of Hegel in 1831, his followers gave their own interpretations of his philosophic teachings, of "What Hegel Really Meant"; and in accordance with the Dialectic of their teacher, they rapidly developed Right a n d Left Hegelian schools. On the Right were the Old Hegelians, very conservative, religious and Christian; on the Left stood the Young Hegelians, very revolutionary, atheist and scientific socialist.

The Right, following the views of the later Hegel, claimed that the historical dialectical process culminates in the Prussian State, and that the Absolute is identical with traditional Protestant conceptions of God the Almighty. Of course, we can clearly see its "historic social order", its defence of the new bourgeois ideology, and its vehement struggle against feudalist religious absolutism. For them, the "real", the Prussian State, was "rational". Of course, they enjoyed the political support of the very Prussian State, which they adored; nonetheless, this school did not produce major thinkers; by 1860, the Right Hegelians were already fading away into absolute oblivion.

Of greater significance are the Left Hegelians; their school has produced eminent figures such as Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. These Young Hegelians interpreted the Dialectic in a radical democratic, atheistic revolutionary manner. For them, only the "rational" was "real". This was "revolutionary". The "real", the existing economic order, including its prevailing religious, ideological, political and philosophic superstructure, is inadequate; it has to be revolutionized, to be made more "rational". According to them, this truth is logically entailed in the very laws of Hegel's Dialectic. However, not like Hegel, they were convinced that the historical process would not end in the 19th century, and certainly not in the Prussian State or Lutheran Protestantism.

We should not forget that, although they were socialist, the Young Hegelians were not anti-capitalist. According to most of them, the revolutionary changes have to take place within the very framework of the Patria. Capitalism was seen as a necessary transitional stage towards Socialism. These essential changes are to be driven forward by the "class struggle", and by the dialectical dynamo of social revolution.

Marx himself was fascinated by capitalism, explaining to the colonial world, that the best thing that ever could have happened to it, was the very introduction of European conquest, slavery and civilization. Also he informed the colonial world that it could now already see its future in the mirror-image of the advancing industrialized countries. He even expected the socialist revolution to triumph in his own lifetime; at first, in countries like England, France, Germany and the United States of America, and thereafter, in the rest of the world.

In his book, "Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet", 2 vol. (1835-36; The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined), David Friedrich Strauss reinterpreted the mission of Jesus Christ on Earth. For its Age, this book certainly acted as a highly-explosive anti-feudalist time-bomb. According to him, Christ's mission was simply a parable of the Hegelian Truth, that Being is simply the dialectical unity of Spiritual and Human Essence, of Divine and Human "Nature". No further comments!

Ludwig Feuerbach, in his work, "Das Wesen des Christentums" (1841; The Essence of Christianity), went even a step further; he stated that the species homo sapiens itself had reproduced religion as a projection of its very own godliness, and that therefore, Man himself is the "new religion". In that case, at that stage, "Man" is Protestant Religion, is the Lutheran God.

Some Young Hegelians, like Max Stirner, began to interpret the Hegelian Dialectic in a psychologistic manner, deriving from it very radical philosophic and political views. Stirner argued that human self-consciousness is the highest manifestation of reality. For this very reason, he became the "father" of anarchism, and of aristocratic egoistic individualism.

It was Karl Marx who placed the Hegelian Dialectic, not in abstract realms, but in real concrete life, in the material conditions of historical evolution and revolution. He explained the Hegelian dialectical development from the inadequate to more adequate entities as the process of primitive economic modes of production toward more sophisticated ones, culminating in Communism. The dialectical process does not terminate in some nebulous absolute divine "Milky Way", but in the classless communist society.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the Hegelian movement was declining in Germany, but it still exerted a powerful influence on university life in the fields of philosophy, politics and aesthetics; as Neo-Hegelianism it spread rapidly to Britain, Italy and the United States. Especially in England it contradicted empiricism and utilitarianism, and it allowed intellectual compromises, "gentlemen agreements", to be made; egel was modernized to act as a reconciliatory platform between Science and Religion, between individual freedom and State hegemony. Famous Neo-Hegelians of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, were thinkers like F. H. Bradley and J. E. McTaggart in Britain, Josiah Royce in the United States, and Benedetto Croce in Italy. Thereafter due to the domination of positivism and empiricism in Europe, Hegelianism rapidly began to decline.

However, thanks to the French historian Jean Hyppolite, the German philosopher Ernst Bloch and the Hungarian philosopher Georg Lukacs, towards the middle of the 20th century, Hegel again dominated in the fields of sociology, literature, aesthetics and politics, not as a philosophical system, but rather many of his philosophic ideas were integrated in various philosophic or political theories. Also his dialectical method was preserved in all types of "Marxist movements."

c. Marx & Marxism

Concerning Marx's conception of "man", of the "human being", of the "proletarian", we quote:

"What is the concrete program of Marx? His point of departure is "Beduerfnis", need. The interpretation of the "human being" begins with human need. In his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, he stated:

"Man is first of all a natural being. As a natural being and a living natural being, he is endowed on the one hand with natural powers, vital powers �; these powers exist in him as aptitudes, instincts. On the other hand, as an objective, natural, physical, sensitive being, he is a suffering, dependent and limited being �, that is, the objects of his instincts exist outside him, independent of him, but are the objects of his need, indispensable and essential for the realization and confirmation of his substantial powers".

As can be seen above, Marx confirmed that the "human being" is a "living natural being", which is endowed with "natural, vital powers". Scientifically completely correct and stringent! These "powers" exist in him, that is, they constitute his Existence. Philosophically totally precise!

In our philosophical terminology, Marx states that the Human Being is Cosmos (Nature) a n d it exists as Einai (Society). Of course, he does not identify this Being a n d Existence precisely as Human Being a n d Human Existence, in nuce, as Human Existence.

Furthermore, he only mentions "aptitudes and instincts"; these are not exactly synonyms for our understanding of "Intellect a n d Reason", but at least they blaze the trail towards Thinking and Thought. What Marx explains "on the other hand" is very confusing and jumbled together, mixing up natural and social traits, hence no further comments.

Of greater interest are the "objects" of man's instincts, of his "needs"; they "exist outside him", "independent of him". Well, where? In the objective external world, in Cosmos, in Nature. We are approximating the crux of the Marxian definition of "Man", of the Human Being. These cosmic, natural resources are " the objects of his need, indispensable and essential for the realization and confirmation of his substantial powers".

Human evolution, human history, is identical with the living Human Being, with MAN, who exploits Nature to satisfy his primary human needs. And what does Marx deem to be the "first historical fact"? - "The production of the means to satisfy these needs". - The very satisfaction of human needs paves the way for the reproduction of more needs. This human productive process is human activity, "menschliche Taetigkeit", to satisfy human needs: eating, drinking, clothing, sheltering, etc. It produces and reproduces his "powers", and here "power" is central, especially when we will speak later about political power (domination, the State) and economic power (exploitation, Capital). Also, this human activity produces and develops the intellectual and artistic human abilities and capabilities.

Human Activity, Labour, humanizes Man

For Marx, human activity is Labour; as a productive being, Man humanizes himself. Through Labour, in the production process, Man humanizes Nature, while He, Man, naturalizes Himself! Obviously, here we do not have a scientific, philosophic process, where Man (Society) humanizes Nature, and where Nature naturalizes Man (Society). Human Labour is defined as Man socializing Nature, and as Man naturalizing Society, naturalizing himself. Here we encounter not a dialogic, but a one-sided pseudo-dialectic, which takes place within the framework of the Patria, which never transcends its boundaries, which always preserves and conserves the status quo.

By means of his creative activity, of Labour, the Human Being identifies itself, becomes an entity, an identity. According to Marx, by mastering, an euphemism for exploiting, Nature, Man realizes his identity with Nature, that is, he achieves free consciousness, he develops his own thinking. Actually Marx argues that Man who is a Child of Mother Nature, can only become fully human, fully manly, by opposing Nature. Here the macho, the masculine Man, becomes the Lord of the Universe, by opposing, mastering and exploiting feminine Mother Nature, and all this is called Labour, Human Labour! How deep patriarchal ideology is rooted even in Marxism! And, from bad to worse, embodied in a fundamental concept of Marxism, Labour, on which the whole edifice of Marxian Theory and Praxis stands and falls!

This aurora of "human consciousness", we would say Human Existence, cannot be separated from the dawn of the "human being" itself, with its "struggle against Nature" (later the "class struggle" will be added). The consciousness about the struggle against Nature, being aware of exploiting Nature, gives Man the powers, the conditions, for his self-realization, for the fulfilment of the whole Human Being. What a natural disaster! What a human "Crown of Creation", what a "Highest Blossom of Nature"!

"All that is called history is nothing else than the process of creating man through human labour, the becoming of nature for man. Man has thus evident and irrefutable proof of his own creation by himself .... for man, man is the supreme being."

Now we know, who is Man, who is the Human Being! For the dominant ruling classes they are Man; for them, for Man, Man is God, Man is the Supreme Being. They need not believe in any God, they are Gods themselves, Man is God Himself! If Modern Science wants to find God, it would be the most simple investigation that was ever performed on this planet. In this sense, Marx was very clear about Religion and God; he had a famous tutor: Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach.

The Marxian "Human Being" in Modern Capitalist Society

However, across the historical process, no Man, no Human Being, had acquired the fulfilment of his labour dreams, of his human needs. Few members of the species homo sapiens had enjoyed heaven on earth, but this is not what Marx understood by human emancipation. Let us see how Marx explains this historical phenomenon.

Marx himself, living in a capitalist society, came to the conclusion that Man is not really free. Adopting the concept of alienation of Hegel and Feuerbach, Marx was convinced that modern Man is estranged, that he is not at home in his earthly labouring world: "Man is made alien to man." But Labour cannot be blamed; it is sacred, it is human. Hence, Labour was alienated across the ages. The central problem is alienated Labour. Urgently Labour must be disalienated! But, how, and why, did Labour become alienated, and consequently, why is Man an alienated Being, an alienated Human Being?

The Encyclopaedia Britannica gives us an excellent summary of Marx's views in The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844:

"In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts the alienation oof labour is seen to spring from the fact that the more the worker produces the less he has to consume, and the more values he creates the more he devalues himself, because his product and his labour are estranged from him. The life of the worker depends on things that he has created but that are not his, so that, instead of finding his rightful existence through his labour, he loses it in this world of things that are external to him: no work, no pay. Under these conditions, labour denies the fullness of concrete man. 'The generic being (Gattungswesen) of man, nature as well as his intellectual faculties, is transformed into a being which is alien to him, into a means of his individual existence.' Nature, his body, his spiritual essence become alien to him. 'Man is made alien to man.' When carried to its highest stage of development, private property becomes 'the product of alienated labour � the means by which labour alienates itself (and) the realization of this alienation.' It is also at the same time 'the tangible material expression of alienated human life.'"

In brief, Marx saw alienated labour as the historic result of the exploitation and domination of Man by Man, of market production, of the division of labour, into manual and intellectual labour, of the division of society into antagonistic classes. The Encyclopaedia Britannica continues with the Marxian explanation:

"As producers in society, men create goods only by their labour. These goods are exchangeable. Their value is the average amount of social labour spent to produce them. The alienation of the worker takes on its full dimension in that system of market production in which part of the value of the goods produced by the worker is taken away from him and transformed into surplus value, which the capitalist privately appropriates. Market production also intensifies the alienation of labour by encouraging specialization, piecework, and the setting up of large enterprises. Thus the labour power of the worker is used along with that of others in a combination whose significance he is ignorant of, both individually and socially. In thus losing their quality as human products, the products of labour become fetishes, that is, alien and oppressive realities to which both the man who possesses them privately and the man who is deprived of them submit themselves. In the market economy, this submission to things is obscured by the fact that the exchange of goods is expressed in money." �

"This economic alienation causes political, social and human alienation; this estrangement results in distorted human relations. The alienated economic base distorts the ideological superstructure, thus creating perverted religious, metaphysical, philosophical, legal, political and moral ideas and notions. But let Marx himself explain the alienation and disalienation process:

"The act of making representations, of thinking, the spiritual intercourse of men, seem to be the direct emanation of their material relations."

"Men produce their representations and their ideas, but it is as living men, men acting as they are determined by a definite development of their powers of production."

"Men developing their material production modify together with their real existence their ways of thinking and the products of their ways of thinking."

"It is not consciousness which determines existence, it is existence which determines consciousness."

Led by the International Proletariat, in the Class Struggle, which logically will evolve into Social Revolution, which will topple capitalist society, and which will introduce Socialism, and finally Communism, Marx saw the historical process of disalienating Labour, and of emancipating the Human Being. Free Labour, which freely will exploit Nature, and which will eliminate the domination of Man by Man, hence liberating Society, is the solution which Marx offered to annihilate all misery and oppression in contemporary capitalist society."

d. Who Is The Marxian "Proletarian"?

Finally, we quote:

"Daily we are utilizing all sorts of words, terms and concepts, and yet, we don't even bother to investigate what we are really talking about. Obviously, with shabby tools, with empty words, sir-reverence, we coin weird notions and bizarre ideas; and we do not even notice how uncanny and banausic we express ourselves in conversations and discussions. This also happens to "expert" Marxists and "erudite" scholars, not to mention the "masses", the "working class" and the "proletariat" itself.

Who coined such concepts like the "proletariat" or the "lumpenproletariat"? Immediately, the layman, the nerd, the ideologue, would say: the "Communists", Marx and Engels. "Well, we humbly genuflect confronted by such implanted ignorance; really, it's bliss.

From the 16th century onwards, here and there, in European writings, the concepts "proletariat" or "proletary" appeared; at the eve of the French Revolution, especially in "worker's clubs", like the "League of the Just", the concept gradually acquired a worker's content. In 1837, the Swiss economist Jean Charles Leonard Simonde de Sismondi finally adopted this term. Only in 1842, Lorenz von Stein introduced the concept into German; then the famous German revolutionary poet, Ferdinand von Freiligrath passed the concept on to Friedrich Engels, who used it in the first scientific socialist work, in his book, The Condition of The Working Class in England in 1844.

As a matter of scientific-philosophic curiosity, why did the fathers of scientific socialism use this specific term in their works? After all, concepts like the "working classes", "working men", "labouring classes" were prevalent in that epoch. We know that Marx and Engels were linguists par excellence. Let's see what the etymological meaning of this concept reveals.

In Ancient Rome, the proletarius belonged to the under-dogs, to the lowest section of the population. In Latin, pro-olescere simply means "growing out of"; in the sense of mushrooms "sprouting out of the ground", "shooting up". Hence, the proletarius had a derivative, an artificial, a synthetic nature. Marx and Engels introduced him as follows in the Communist Manifesto:

"The bourgeoisie ... has ... begotten the men who are to wield those weapons - the modern workers -- the proletarians. ... The proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population."

This means that the proletariat is not primordial, not "naturwüchsig"; it is an amorphous social concoction, lacking "cultural" and "civilized" roots. According to Marx and Engels the new proletarius adopted the capitalist relations produced by the victorious bourgeoisie, and the nexus between the members of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie became "naked self-interest, callous cash payment".

However, on the other pauperized extreme, we find the "Lumpenproletariat". Why did Marx and Engels use this concept? Grimm's Wörterbuch described them as Lumpengesindel: "a slovenly mob, a pack of scoundrels, a godless pack, vagabonds". Apart from the semantic similarity, this colluvies vagabundorum, this rotting mass thrown off by the lowest sectors of "modern society", the Lumpenproletariat, in Marxian terminology, is exactly the negation of the proletariat. In 1845, this concept appeared in their work, The German Ideology. The influential contemporary work, De Cassagnac explained, that the proletariat was composed of "workers, beggars, thieves and prostitutes". This is what Hegel understood by his concept, the Pöbel.

For Marx, the Lumpenproletariat comprised the "beggars, thieves and prostitutes", the non-productive sector of the lowest classes. In Class Struggle in France, he described this class as "gens sans feu et sans aveu". However, both had the following in common: both were "free" and both could be "bought" or "bribed". However, the differentia especifica is, that the Lumpenproletariat are déclassés; that they lack a "class interest"; that they can't develop a "class consciousness"; in other words, they can't be conscientized for anything whatsoever.

Now, we know what Marx and Engels, the fathers of scientific socialism, understood by the proletariat, which/who should unite itself, and would emancipate all mankind. We should just analyse whether this proletariat, including its "lumpen" side, ever had authorized us to "free" or to "emancipate" it, whether it ever had an interest in "emancipation", and from where precisely we got our brilliant, human, humanitarian, humanistic and humane ideas. Anyhow, "Love Thy Neighbour As Thyself!", and Thy Neighbour surely will teach thee how to rape and pillage the 'Ten Commandments'."

e. The Impact of German Classical Idealist Philosophy

In the previous part, we have dealt with German philosophy rather extensively, here we will just make brief remarks, make references to the philosophic background of the "proletarian revolution", to "communism", as expounded in the "Manifesto".

Between 1789 and 1848, the "German Quartet", Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, was dominating the intellectual and philosophic scene. Even if Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) would not have written his famous philosophical "trilogy", "Critique of Pure Reason" (1781), "Critique of Practical Reason" (1788), and "Critique of Judgement" (1790), he would have become world famous as a natural scientist. However, what interests us here, is that he as a great thinker of the bourgeois-democratic enlightenment, as the founder of critical idealism, had paved the road towards Hegelian objectivist idealism and Marxian historical materialism, as expressed in the "Manifesto" and other works.

Like us, Kant was not happy with everyday, stale thoughts about reality, he wanted to enquire into the uttermost limits of knowledge. Strange enough, he could have saved himself a lot of trouble and headaches, because finally he came to the philosophic conclusion that the ultimate nature of reality, of all things-in-themselves, will forever remain obscure to the human mind; in other words, not by means of the intellect, not by reason, will we ever know anything about the essence, existence and transcendence of the cosmos, of us, of anything for that matter. For us, in our Science and Philosophy, things only existing in themselves are no problem, that's precisely the way to recognize, to know them.

Of course, according to Kant, we could only know phenomena, appearances, manifestations of things. The human mind, more precisely, der Verstand, the intellectus, possesses "forms of sensibility", Space and Time, these are impressed on the original data of the senses, and then the mind orders all the phenomena according to the "categories of thought", for example, substance or causality. Kant actually says that Space and Time do not "exist" independently, not in "objective reality", they are just intellectual products, tools of the mind. If this should be true, then we could imagine in what a dream world we are living, and in what a miserable, ghost "train of thought" we're travelling daily. What would happen with our "Millennia Celebrations", with our "alphas and omegas", with "life and death", with the "parallel universes"?

Kant was very "romantic", for him, development was "formal", and he even constructed formidable bridges between "beauty", ethics, religion and philosophy. Later, the other members of the "Quartet" continued his philosophic endeavours, the "German dream", the desires to find "Ruhe und Ordnung", laws, freedom of mind, a just future society. In the previous century, thinkers like Descartes and Leibniz were still looking for a universal science to aid the exploitation of nature, to solve the human problems with nature.

Adam Smith had already found the perfect, natural world order, capitalism; now it was Hegel's turn to guarantee that it works, that it remains eternally true and rational to itself; that it bears rational and rationalized fruits, that it brings accumulative profits, that its madness has a method, a dialectical method. Hence, after the political victory of industrial capitalism, a universal method of radical, efficient exploitation and domination of natural and human sources and resources became an urgent necessity; by hook or by crook, an everlasting, absolute system had to be found, a new world order which would forever affirm itself, would eternally rot in its very status quo.

As we all know, Hegel presented this new method, this new system, and he made sure that nothing would ever change again, by forever imprisoning natural, intellectual and rational production in the Absolute Idea, void of any external or transcendental influences and interferences, in a type of Platonic intelligible world that is finished, is only recollection of the World Spirit, is passe, is in an absolute state of rest and peace, that rests in peace, that is worldly and spiritually dead.

This Marx and Engels also wanted, this is the proletarian dream of the "Communist Manifesto". They only insisted that Hegel had mistaken the time, the date, that the closed system of labour is still in process, that it goes beyond the Prussian State, that it would end in earthly communism, someday, some decade in the very near future. As logical negation, as Hegelian "Left", the authors of the "Manifesto" represented the "proletarian" side of the World Spirit. They even had dreamt about the realization of communism in their own lifetime. They did not portray the "future communist society", simply because there would be nothing to illustrate anymore. Hegel said everything already, the end was near, as sure as "amen!" in church. What is realized, is finished, has reached its end, its Death. Also this will be the inevitable case of Capitalism. Hegel said it: everything that comes into existence, merits to pass away, to fade away into oblivion. Well, let the haute bourgeoisie enjoy the global party on the "Titanic" while the perilous voyage lasts.

f. The Political Influence of the French Revolution

Introduction

Ever since the French Revolution, all over the globe, sprouting like fresh mushrooms, various thinkers and actors tried to explain this political phenomenon, the very concept of revolution, and also how to complete, to continue the revolution. Within this context, with their Manifesto Of The Communist Party, Marx and Engels made their praxical and theoretical contributions. By far, well ahead of all other efforts, the "Manifesto" formed and is still blazing the revolutionary inferno and invierno of the "damned of the earth", the epicentre of proletarian emancipatory fire. At least, this is about what their followers, the Marxists, dream, what they do and think. Certainly, we have no problems with them, neither with their followers nor with their revolutionary work or their emancipatory labour. Like them, we utter: to every true, social "under-dog" his bone of contention; to every rabid, orthodox "fanatic" his apple of discord.

From Edmund Burke's "Reflections On The French Revolution" until the latest sociological "System Theories", numerous authors are preoccupied to explain to us the essence and laws of social evolution and revolution. Especially since the famous "Paris Commune" of 1871, hundreds of works were written on the topic, especially how this great bourgeois-democratic, capitalist revolution had influenced Marxism and the "labour movement" in general, and the "Communist Manifesto" in particular. Let's now focus on the 'third" cornerstone of Marxism!

What is a revolution?

Do revolutions aim toward the destruction of our age-old labour process, our jobs, our means of existence and subsistence? Will the revolution upset our life styles? Is it systemic, evolutionary change?

Who discovered it? As always, for sure, the Marxists. What relations does it have to evolution and emancipation? Is it a "good" thing? Will it better our lives? Is it related to the "sexual" or "technological" revolutions? What's its relation to capitalism? Is it important to understand the "Communist Manifesto"? Like Marxism, is it "obsolete"? Is it not dangerous to speak about revolution? Sometimes I just wonder: Are the "Pandemonium Crew" perhaps not just disguised Marxists, in reality, masked radical, anarchist revolutionaries?

We cannot give detailed answers to all these important questions, but we'll summarize their quintessence. Firstly, what is the etymological origin of this concept, who coined it, and who used it at first as a means of socio-political change? Unbelievable, nobody else than precisely the very upsurging capitalist bourgeoisie itself. In the Italian R Republics, already in the 14th century, when the first "work houses" were established, everybody spoke about "rivoluzione", about "rivoltura"; concepts, which described "turbulent, political events", "heavy revolts" or "chaos in internal and/or external policy". In reality, these were the first signs, the distant, roaring thunder of the awe-inspiring drums of the coming violent, terrorist French Revolution.

In those days, the concept was not ethical or normative, it was not used in a "good" or "bad" sense; it was simply identified as a capricious whim of fate, even of divine will. Only in 1688, in Great Britain, at the time of the "Glorious Revolution", did the term gain new connotations, for example, as an expression of a unique political or social event, which brings with it far-reaching radical changes, especially in the domain of the State.

What is of significance for us, is that the "Glorious Revolution" took place without "revolutionaries", without revolutionary actors and thinkers. In fact, in a Marxian sense, it was exactly the opposite of a revolution; it was counter-revolutionary. The British nobility manipulated itself into complete legal and political chaos; then, William III was called, to clean up the royal mess; the British citizens welcomed him in a delirious, hilarious manner, extremely happy that he would restore the feudalist status quo ante rem. Nonetheless, ever since, in Europe, a unique political "palace revolt", a coup d'etat, became known as a "revolution".

The French Revolution was anything else except "glorious"; au contraire, it guillotined divine glory, it had exactly the opposite political essence. It made the greatest discovery which the Patria had accomplished till them, for the smooth, profitable forward march of its exploitative economic production, it discovered an excellent political panacea, which heals the world order till today. It introduced intellectual power, the subjective factor into political "rivoltura". Not the Almighty, but Great Men, Great Revolutionaries, with Great Ideas -- better Absolute Ideas -- make Great Revolution, make Great History.

Kant & Hegel Celebrating

No wonder that Kant rejoiced as follows:

"The revolution of an ingenious people, that we are experiencing these days, it may fail, it may be victorious, and may be filled with misery and heinous acts ... this revolution, I think, with enthusiasm takes place in the minds of all the spectators. Such a phenomenon will never ever be forgotten in human history, because it unveiled the human characteristic and potentiality striving towards a better world. "

Hegel was even more poignant:

"As long as the Sun appeared in the heavens, and the planets rotating around it, never did it dawn to anyone, that Man would stand on his head, that is, on his thoughts, and accordingly construct reality. As first thinker, Anaxagoras had said that nous rules the world; only now, Man recognizes that thought must govern spiritual reality. Thus, it was a glorious sunrise. All thinking beings together have celebrated this epoch-making event."

Henceforth the revolutionary political slogan was: without subjective theory, no objective revolution. Exactly this, Marx and Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, Mao and Ho Chi Minh, and Castro and Che, had inherited from the French Revolution. This revolutionary, democratic inheritance dates back to the "Communist Manifesto". Finally, as we have seen, this is the revolutionary "pillar" of Marxism, the logical continuation and enrichment of bourgeois democratic political domination, the anticipatory aspiration of the Communist Manifesto.

PART VIII

g. Christian Messianic & Missionary Influence

Blazing The Trail

Let's illustrate the fourth, and for the time being, the final cornerstone of Marxism, that is, the "historical" religious background of the "hopes", "dreams" and human values that are expressed in the "Communist Manifesto", which have inspired Marx and Engels, and which epitomized in such medieval movements as the Peasant Revolution of Thomas Münzer, and in our times, in the Latin American "Theology of Liberation". We'll just introduce the topic, and in later discussions and debates, we could investigate other specific topics and individual areas of emancipatory interest.

As we already have stated in previous publications, normal "human" existence encompasses three major spheres, generally expressed as follows: "I do ... ", "I think ... " and "I believe ... " Most people even mix up the latter two. In brief, these are Doing, Thinking and Believing. Around them, the lives of billions revolve. There are others, for example, "I hope ..." or "I love ...", but they pertain to other sub-spheres.

Generally, "I do ..." functions at best, when no intellectual participation is involved, when we follow orders, when we perform physical labour. "I think ... " normally has nothing to do with thinking, thought, reason or knowledge; it is just a repetition of implanted ideology and the rumination of everyday "common sense" phraseology. Often, it's even mixed up with "I believe ... ", and functions as a synonym to it, or to stress the venomous substance of ideology, to convince the "masses". Politicians, Radio and TV programmes just love to use this phrase in the dissemination of their "great ideas". Switch on the Radio or TV and the first thing you'll hear is: "I believe that .... ". Check our chats and debates, and count the "I believe that ..."; of course, the operation is already sub-conscious and unconscious; the more dangerous it has become. Also check, if I ever used it, and when, in which context.

The same applies to "I hope that ...". Don't forget that "Hope" and "Belief" belong to some of the divine gifts of the "Holy Ghost", which have entered Christian, Western, Civilized Culture and Tradition surreptitiously, and hence are hidden in the uttermost dark dives and innermost obscure drives of our manipulated minds. Belief operates as follows: "How are you?"; already in your closed, nailed coffin, emasculated by AIDS, spontaneously, like a bolt from the blue, you reply: "I'm fine, thank you!". Also, to verify this, just look around, and listen.

Nonetheless, "I believe ... " is our topic right now; we will concentrate on how Marxism has inherited its "conscientization" and "humanistic" tricks and methods.

In our Christian, Western World, in the New World Order, in Globalization, the absolute majority of citizens are either staunch Christians or christianized Believers, who consciously or unconsciously practise or eternalize Christian values, like belief, love, hope, charity and final justice. For this, to be a member of any church is not necessarily a quintessential prerequisite; all over, in their words and deeds christian and religious infiltration had played mental havoc already. In Muslim, Buddhist or "Marxist" societies, it's similar; religion has already made its hey-day; capitalist and socialist ideology gave the "masses" the rest of it. Very few survived this religious, ideological "holocaust", this Baal, Behemoth and Moloch, this Haven and Heaven of Labour Pain.

Third Millennium: tertium imperium: Third Reich

As the 20th century German philosopher Ernst Bloch had already pointed out, it's strange indeed what a global influence the "Holy Bible" had experienced, like no other book or writing ever before or after. However, it's an excellent example, in addition to Plato's Republic, how perfectly ruling class ideology can be developed, indoctrinated and how detrimental it can be to human thinking and thought; across the millennia, billions were converted into "brainless" believers. Millions of eager students had entered the institutions of "higher learning" and they left their alma mater brainless and spineless summa cum laude. Speaking about labour or capital crimes, this mental "holocaust" is the most cruel that ever occurred on earth. Either we'll never ever be able to repair this mental damage anymore or it will take millions of years to obliterate and neutralize this brutally inculcated alienating venom. For billions, the only consolation: "Ignorance is Bliss!" For us: "It's Folly to be Wise!"

Within the Roman Empire, the original Christians, living a communist life, hidden underground in the catacombs, were the religious forerunners of Marx and Engels, of the "Communist Manifesto". This Rosa Luxemburg in her essay, "Socialism And The Churches" had described in detail. Also, various medieval heretic movements have sown the rebellious seeds, which eventually had germinated and produced contemporary Marxism.

In the 12th century, the Calabrian abbot and heretic, Joachim of Fiore, developed a philosophy of history; ever since Augustine, it was the first heretic, revolutionary attempt to counter the coming Dominican religious doctrines and savagery, and to challenge the divine rules and laws of the Spanish Inquisition. He divided "history" into three epochs: The Era of the Old Testament, the Reign of Awe and Law; The Era of the New Testament, the Reign of Love; and the Third Testament, the tertium imperium, The Third Reich. It's "incredible", sorry, it's unthinkable, how "right", sorry, how scientific and philosophic, his "prophecy", sorry, his prediction has been. This sentence demonstrates how deep beliefs have crept into our very emancipatory "souls". And, Marx and Engels, as their 'racist' expressions had shown, were not free from such powerful ideological fire-works.

Of course, Joachim of Fiore did not see Hitler's "Third Reich", Stalin's "Gulags", presentday "Globalization" or the Reign of Big Brother; like Marx and Engels, he pictured the tertium imperium as an Epoch of Enlightenment, of the Free Spirit, as a Free Society, a Communist Society. This eschatological tradition, with its messianic features, was continued by Thomas Münzer and it reached the "proletarian movement" in the mid-19th century. Marx and Engels, also other Marxists, were fascinated and inspired by these heretic, religious, revolutionary movements.

Education and Conscientization of the Masses

Across the millennia, in Pavlov-Dog fashion, civilization, christianization, westernization, tradition, culture, customs, norms, behaviour patterns, in a word, education, had conditioned, manipulated and indoctrinated the minds of the masses, of the people, to such an extent that they can now ONLY be "recruited", be "converted', be "conscientized", can ONLY be "educated"; they serve for nothing else anymore, their daydreams are destroyed, their will power is broken, they cannot be scientized or philosophized, or even emancipized for anything anymore. There are exceptions, but they prove the "golden rule". However, for sure, these exceptions can emancipate themselves, can become excellent, can be transcendentalized!

Marx and Engels followed the "golden rule"; they inherited the Platonic educational tradition, the Christian conversion, recruitment and conscientization campaign. They believed that anybody can be conscientized, can be won for the proletarian revolution; to achieve that, the "Communist Manifesto" had to have educational characteristics just like the "Holy Bible"; in fact, it's easy to read and understand it, but it is not quite up to Christian absolutist standards. Its negative "spectre" counters the affirmative "Holy Ghost". Together, they assure the eternal existence of Labour, in future, never ever to pay-out its "life insurance policy".

PART IX

7. THE POLITICAL ESSENCE OF THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

a) Structure Of Contents

" .... That is the line of action [first laid down in the Communist Manifesto] which the great founder of modern socialism, Karl Marx, and with him, I and the Socialists of the nations who worked along with us, have followed for more than forty years, with the result that it has led to victory everywhere, and that at this moment the mass of European socialists ... are fighting as one common army under one and the same flag."

(Friedrich Engels, Preface to The Condition of the Working Class in England (1887 Edition)).

"In this work the new world outlook is sketched with the clarity and expressive power of genius: the consistent materialism which also embraces the domain of social life, the dialectic as the most comprehensive and most profound theory of development, the theory of the class struggle and the world socialist revolutionary role of the proletariat, the creator of the new, the communist society."

(V. I. Lenin, Karl Marx, 1914.)

Let's look at the structure of the "Communist Manifesto", and highlight some notions of its various parts. Of the four sections, the first one opens as follows:

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."

It continues to elucidate the rise of the bourgeoisie, its battle against feudalism, and to portray the powerful forces of industrial production unleashed by emerging capitalism, to such a degree that they are not compatible anymore with the obsolete feudalist property relations of production. Then Marx and Engels explain, that the bourgeoisie has created its own negation, its own non-bourgeoisie, the proletariat. This "revolutionary" negation, the proletariat, is the only social class which has the "historic" task to liberate mankind, by annihilating the exploitation of man by man, by furthering the development of modern industrial technology.

The second section identifies the "communists" as the proletarian vanguard, as the most resolute, constant, advanced, revolutionary sector of the working classes. They, the communists, think, have developed revolutionary theory. They have the "historic" task to "educate", to "conscientize" the workers, to develop a proletarian class consciousness. They, theoretically, "illuminate" the revolutionary trail of the working class movement. Somehow, they have to play a missionary, messianic role; they are acting like divine shepherds, shamans, priests and rabbis, directing and driving the holy flock, the illiterate, toiling "sheep and cows", towards the "Happy Hunting Grounds", to the revolutionary "green pastures" of Psalm 23. In this section also the corresponding communist programme, and its historic objectives, are elaborated.

The third section identifies the "Communists", the "Communist Party", and differentiates them from other existing utopian socialist, fake communist groups or reactionary humbugs. Here, especially, the "True Socialists" are attacked; in any case, they are historically irrelevant; they only have become known, precisely because the "Manifesto" mentions them. Furthermore, here, communist dialectical principles and their practical application to social life are clarified.

Finally, in the fourth section, the position of communists in relation to other radical democratic groups or capitalist governments is explained. Of course, without losing their proletarian identity, all communists have to adopt a non- sectarian political attitude, welcoming and supporting all genuine democratic tendencies. As a matter of interest, Germany is seen as the cradle of proletarian world revolution, because of the belated, impending bourgeois-democratic revolution there. Finally, expressis verbis, Marx and Engels declare, that they have nothing in common with any Illuminati, with any "conspiracy sect", hence their clarion call: "Proletarians of All Countries, Unite!"

This was the revolutionary, bourgeois "spirit" of the time; in faraway France, Considérant as counter-attack, published his own "Manifesto of Democracy", voicing his own slogan:

"Our cause is the cause of God and of Humanity; our Banner that of Justice, of World Peace and of the Association of Peoples".

b) Epilogue -- General Comments

Marx never denied his indebtedness to the major bourgeois economic, philosophical, political and social achievements of his epoch. On March 5, 1852, Marx wrote to Weydemeyer:

"As far as I am concerned, I cannot claim the honour of having discovered the existence either of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Bourgeois historians a long time before me have established the historical development of this class struggle, and bourgeois economists its economic anatomy."

Then, he stated what he discovered:

(1) That the existence of classes is bound to definite historical phases of the development of production;

(2) That the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; and,

(3) That this dictatorship itself is only transitory, in the revolutionary process of abolishing all social classes, and of eventually establishing a classless, communist society.

For sure, the "Communist Manifesto" has been cursed and blessed, burnt and framed in gold, bedevilled and glorified, criticized and analysed, ignored and studied, used as a fig leaf and been tyrannically applied, and yet, the most sound and stringent critique and criticism came from Marx and Engels themselves. They immediately drew the necessary scientific and political conclusions, for example, from the collapse of Chartism in England, from the June 1848 Massacre of Striking Workers in Paris, the cowardice of the German bourgeoisie, the dynamics of French and German reaction, and the brutal intervention of the Russian Tsar in Hungary.

Concluding, let's remind our friends of this dialectical self-criticism, from which we could learn excellent emancipatory lessons. In 1895, long after Marx's death in 1883, and two years before his own, Engels summarized the up-and-down and the laurels of the "Communist Manifesto" as follows:

"All of us, as far as the conceptions of our conditions and the course of revolutionary movements were concerned, were under the spell of previous historical experience, particularly, that of France. It was, indeed, the latter which had dominated the whole of European history since 1789, and from which now once again the signal had gone forth for general revolutionary change. It was, therefore, natural and unavoidable that our conception of the nature and the course of the 'social' revolution proclaimed in Paris in February 1848, of the revolution of the proletariat, should be strongly coloured by the memories of the prototypes of 1789 and 1830."

From this, he concluded, that history "has not merely dispelled the erroneous notions we then held; it has also completely transformed the conditions under which the proletariat has to fight. The mode of struggle of 1848 is today obsolete in every respect".

(Friedrich Engels' Introduction to Marx's The Class Struggles in France, 1895 Edition.)

It was not necessary for genuine Marxists to wait that bourgeois "scholars" of the 20th and 21st centuries would declare the "Communist Manifesto" and its revolutionary endeavours "obsolete"; for them, far better, Marx and Engels themselves already had performed this excellent job; hence, the modern outcry against out-dated "Marxism" is in itself, at best, downright plagiarism, at worst, totally obsolete.

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