Capitalism and Stability in Society: An Analysis of The Communist Manifesto

Running head: TEXTS AND TRADITIONS
Texts and Traditions
Name of the Student
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Author Note

TEXTS AND TRADITIONS1
The Communist Manifesto is a seminal piece of work that summarizes all the theories
which were propounded by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, regarding the nature of politics and
the nature of society. The text was published in the year of 1848, a little before the time when the
Revolution of 1848 began showing signs of emerging (Wright 2015). The Communist Manifesto
is recognized to be one of the most relevant as well as influential political pieces of all time
where an analytical approach has been presented on the part of the authors to the matter of class
struggle, both historical as well as in the present, with a detailed description being provided
about what it is that the capitalist form of production entails and the conflicts that are presented
in society by the phenomenon or existence of capitalism (Neilson 2018). This essay engages in
an analysis of how capitalism is depicted in the Communist Manifesto as a force that is
destructive for the stability of social life, arguing in the bargain that capitalism makes people a
slave to their work and ruins their individual autonomy on not one but many different levels.
The history of mankind has been defined by Marx in the Communist Manifesto as the
history of class struggle. The book refers to a specter that has been haunting the continent of
Europe, a specter which is referred to by Marx and Engels as the specter of communism. The
primary purpose behind publishing a text like the Communist Manifesto is to highlight the ills
that are inflicted by capitalism on society (Lamb 2015). Stability in the view of Marx and Engels
is something that is severely ruptured because of the exploitative nature of the capitalist process,
a process which compels individuals or workers in society to labor in the interests of others,
more often than not, the capitalist or the owners of the means of production, while refusing to
take cognizance of their own interest and wellbeing in the bargain. Marx and Engels call for
workers and laborers around the world to come together and to unite against the exploitative
forces of capitalism, to fight for their rights and to work towards a society that is egalitarian in its

TEXTS AND TRADITIONS2
nature rather than one which focuses merely on the accumulation of wealth or profit, at the risk
of the rights, interests and the wellbeing of laborers. Specifically, what Marx calls upon the
laborers of the world to do, is to take control of the forces or the means of production and to be
in charge of their economic activities as this in the view of Marx would go a long way in
preventing wealth from being concentrated in the hands of a few people only (Carver & Farr
2015).
When it comes to stability in society in particular, it is argued on the part of Marx and
Engels in The Communist Manifesto that capitalist society is one where the prime focus is only
on the capitalist mode of production, where wealth generation is the only priority and where
wage exploitation is seen to take place as it is the intention of the capitalist entrepreneur to derive
as much as possible from the process of production and give as little as possible to people who
are actually responsible for the production (Marx & Engels 2002). According to Marx and
Engels, the capitalist system of production is not really a planned process. It is something that is
seen to lack structure and organization and it focuses entirely on the process of capital
accumulation and that too for its own sake. Capitalism is more often than not referred by Marx
and Engels as a sorcerer who is unable to actually control the very forces that he has managed to
conjure up in the first place. By engaging in the process of capital accumulation, people become
obsessed with the idea of wealth generation. They concentrate all of their energies only towards
the process of mass production, making sure that they are able to generate wealth and capital in
large amounts but not taking into consideration of the fact that the lion’s share of such capital
will go to the business owner and not to actually those who were involved in the process of
production in the first place. The chains of capitalism and the difficulty that capitalism puts