THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO: HOW ACCURATE WERE ITS PR

The ôManifesto of the Communist Partyö by Karl Marx and Friederich Engels has proved to be an enduring and widely read call to arms for revolutionary movements around the world. However, few of its predictions came true û or even seemed to be coming true, especially in the first forty-two years after its original publication in 1848.

The document outlined a scenario for how the world, in general, and the ôclass struggle,ö in particular, would unfold over the coming decades. In general, the manifesto clearly and accurately noted the periodic occurrence of economic disruptions that Marx and Engels called epidemics of overproduction. They observed them happening about once every ten years, and assumed they were an inevitable byproduct of the so-called ôbourgeois epoch,ö or capitalist system, that would continue indefinitely and keep getting worse (Tyler, 1998, p. 12). Though later on, governments would belatedly take corrective measures, by 1890 û after a series of devastating economic depressions or ôpanicsö in both Europe and the United States, this was one idea that seemed entirely plausible.

In particular, perhaps the manifestoÆs most inaccurate call of all was the notion that individual nations would disappear before the powerful drive for dignity and equality by international workers. ôNational differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing,ö Marx and Engels wrote in

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ea was that education in a socialized or group setting, run by the proletarian state, would be a corollary to their family abolition program. However, by the late nineteenth century, most states in the U.S. and many European countries had finally and firmly established compulsory education for all û though itÆs no doubt safe to say that none of the children was being raised by anyone except their own individual families. The manifestoÆs other corollary to family abolition was a call for a ôcommunity of women,ö who would apparently give birth to babies by a variety of fathers and then give them over to the state. Marx and Engels argued that this would bring out into the open and legalize ôthe hypocritically concealedö bourgeois system of ôseducing each otherÆs wives à [and] prostitutionö (Marx 488). Even so, by 1890 their proposal had garnered little or no interest and showed no signs of coming true. On the contrary, though realizing their goal would remain years away, suffrage movements were well entrenched by then and working hard to get equal rights for women, including the right to vote (Ascherson, 1978, p. 24). In addition, in 1890, neither the graduated income tax on a heavy scale, nor abolition of all rights of inherit
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1465
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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