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  • Essay / Social Justice as the Elusive Goal of the Communist Manifesto

    The Communist Manifesto (1848) clearly expresses the fundamental principles of communism and Marxism, exposing historical class struggles, revolutions, counter-revolutions, inequality, industry, capitalist exploitation, alienation and war declared by united workers. Set in the era of the Industrial Revolution, the manifesto highlights the role of economics in defining and undermining human relationships. Marx and Engels' argument is based on part of Friedrich Engel's dialectical theory, which they partly contradict and partly approve of. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayA commodity fetishism is conceptualized and exists in capitalism in which products are monetized and separated from man, who initiates and is at the origin of the production process. Because of the materialistic quality of communism, Marxists employ Hegel's philosophy to trace the past, evaluate the present, and determine the future of communism and laissez-faire capitalism. According to the Communist Manifesto, the essence of history includes class struggle. Marx and Engels begin by asserting that “the history of all societies that have existed up to the present is the history of class struggles.” The Marxist document launches into a narrative explaining from the dawn of Greco-Roman civilization to the time of the manifesto's publication. The story has its deep roots in the conflict of ideologies that emanate from different groups seeking to capitalize on wealth and power and other groups presenting themselves as opposing forces to resist one school of thought. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is the author of the famous Hegelian dialectic which assumes that a thesis and an antithesis produce a synthesis of the two divergent ideas. Hegel's idea forms the basis of Marx and Engel's argument, but they enhance it to add a class-conscious materialist perspective. The opposition of ideas generates a conflict between the ruling and oppressed classes. Once again, Marx and Engels reaffirm that “the history of all past societies has consisted of the development of class antagonisms” (The Communist Manifesto). The pyramid structure or gradation of society remains a threat to harmony between social classes. Due to the repetitive and cyclical formation of history, class struggles will continue unless workers rise up, demand their rights, and implement socialist, communal ownership of resources. Nevertheless, the dynamics of social classes integrate a materialism which revolves around production and the possession of means. Although Marx and Engels predate the Cold War, they both anticipate the Cold War clashes between society led by the bourgeoisie represented by democratic capitalism and society led by communists or communist socialists. The Cold War marked a bitter conflict between the two ideologies until a synthesis resolved the war in 1991 and ended the war between the two entities. Thus, Marx and Engel's argument that materialist changes aimed at getting rid of the divisive class structure proved true to some extent and ushered in a post-Cold War reality. A post-Cold War reading interprets the course of events that unfolded after the Cold War, between 1945, the end of World War II, and 1991, the dissolution of the USSR. The Cold War defines the indirect and covert war between the United Statesdemocrats and capitalists and the communist-socialist USSR. The two countries adopted different political ideologies and developed opposing economic systems. The Communist Manifesto presents the characteristics of the United States with its capitalism, its unbalanced concentration of wealth, its industrialized and metropolitan cities, its system of taxation and its centralized government. After the Cold War, barriers such as the Berlin Wall in 1989, the USSR in 1991 and the apartheid system in 1993 collapsed. In place of the USSR, the Russian Federation emerged. In 1991, the economy was reorganized, moving from a public industry to privatization which still placed enormous wealth at the disposal of a few. Here, the observer of the manifesto sees that the noble idea of ​​communism ultimately fails and gives way to capitalism, free trade and exploited industry, in which "the commodity form acts as a veil which conceals the relations of 'exploitation' (Goodman). After the end of the Cold War, rapid industrialization, liberalization, privatization, and dehumanized commerce exploded in countries like Communist China and even Communist Russia. We cannot help but think that after the Cold War, the capitalist giant continued to prosper thanks to the exploitation of human beings, reduced to the rank of means of production. In Asian countries like India and China, multinational mega-corporations are taking advantage of cheap labor and low production costs to profit. Free trade agreements are becoming popular and classify the world into trading blocs which serve as a defense against monopolization and competition. Religion influences business and doctrine since capitalism embraces liberal Christianity, while communism leans toward atheism. The post-Cold War era was also marked by outbreaks of war that negated its "desire to achieve (communist) goals by peaceful means" (Communist Manifesto). In the economic framework, commodity fetishism lies in “commodity fetishism—the domination of society by “intangible as well as tangible things” reaches its ultimate fulfillment in spectacle, where the real world is replaced by a selection of images projected above him” (Debord). A fetish is a magical object imbued with power or a cherished idea, which is why commodity fetishism idolizes the material, while demeaning other objects to the level of the commodity. Only human beings are validated when it comes to the production and sustainability of a business. Furthermore, the fixation on the commodity in the economic world has removed respect and respect for professions, turning people into units of production or wage workers instead of the value of humanity. The world becomes an environment filled with commercial products, work tools and images, rather than one with inherent, intangible and incalculable value. Debord emphasizes that the fetishism of the commodity is a principle of capitalism in which "all are instruments of work, more or less costly to use... These workers who must sell themselves by the piece are a commodity" (The Party Manifesto Communist). The economic orientation is an inverted view of money. The inversion comes into play here because money, which is a means to an end, symbolizes the end itself. Marx is credited with reversing Hegel's theory that the consciousness or spirit of man is the fertile ground of alienation, dehumanization, and reification. Hegel argues that reality is not only formed in the mind as a mental abstract, but is materialistic and class-manipulated ».