Thoughts and Reflections on the Communist Manifesto

     When comparing the idealistic world of the ruling proletariat portrayed in Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto to Stallin's Russia in the 1930s, it is clear that somewhere along the line something must have gone awry. A large part of what Marxism boils down to is the abolition of private property, the ruling of the working class, and the permanent removal of the bourgeoisie. While Stallin did deliver on the first and third of these, he fell short in terms of proletariat rule. Private property was indeed done away with, much to the chagrin of the kulaks, and this (along with the exploitation of anyone who owned more than a cow and a handful of grain for slave labor) resulted in the apparent destruction of class. The difference between this and the approach outlined by Marx is that Marx did not intend for mass famine and harsh working conditions to kill people by the hundreds of thousands. Indeed, these very conditions are what spurred on Marx and Engles to write their manifesto. As for the rule of the proletariat, there were two primary classes of citizens: Stallin and not Stallin. Once the revolution which Marx had predicted had installed a leader (the leader in this case referring to Stalin, not Lenin or any of his rivals), the conditions were far worse than they had ever been in industrial Europe.