The Short Comings of the Communist Manifesto

The short comings of the Communist manifesto

Like many documents before and after it the Communist Manifesto was intended for the audience at the time. Much like other political documents the communist manifesto was a product of it's time and made it's appeal to people of the lower class in 1848 provoking them by using problems of the time to get the working classes attention. Along with pointing out the problems with society the Communist Manifesto describes the war between the poor and rich offering the poor an alternative to their current situation. Since times change the issues that the Communist Manifesto used to rally support for it's cause have long since vanished, with this change the Communist Manifesto has lost some of it's relevance.

Now that the gap between the rich and poor has shrunk and with the creation of the middle class the Communist Manifesto has lost a considerable amount of relativity this loss has resulted in a massive loss of support this has made the Communist Manifesto a radical and unpopular document. The Communist Manifesto has fallen short on many issues by not describing how to resolve future problems. This is one of the documents many deficiencies, this deficiency has resulted in the documents inability to change over time resulting in a radical document that is bound in it's quest for the "Abolition of private property" (Marx, Engels) without being subject to modern change the Communist Manifesto like many documents before it is doomed to fail as a political document.

Another deficiency in the Communist Manifesto is it's point of view, like most documents the Communist Manifesto is incredibly biased in it's point of view being a European document the Communist Manifesto speaks of easterners as barbarians by stating "Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, The East on the West." (Marx, Engels) this example alone shows how ethnocentric the Communist Manifesto is, this ethnocentric view limits the audience of un already unpopular document by excluding the East from communism.

Though the Communist Manifesto is a flawed document it is still crucial to the history of the world by illustrating the feelings of the people of that time. The Communist Manifesto was influential in developing the modern world we live in today, without it the U.S.S.R would of never been created. The Cuba and China we have today wouldn't be and the world as we know it wouldn't exist. Even though the Communist Manifesto is flawed it is a foundational document that historians can still learn from.