Capitalism
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What do you mean he never described what Capitalism was? You've obviously never heard of the book "Capital" (or as is commonly known "Das Kapital") where he goes in to great depth what capitalism is. He advanced the understanding of capitalism quite a lot in this book and critiqued the most prominent liberal economists of his time. The Manifesto is indeed a political propaganda piece, but that's what it was meant to be (although there was indeed a good deal of theory involved in it). He doesn't propose any type of authoritarian system, he barley proposes ANYTHING to replace it other than the vague conception of "worker ownership over the means of production".
The "10 Points" towards the end that anti-Marxists love to point to were simply the specific political demands of his time, he wrote in the 1872 preface that those were specific to the time and that even then if he rewrote the manifesto that they would be different. They are by no means "prinicples of socialism" or anything like that.
Thoughtful arguments from both the author and commenters. Re one of the comments, I do not believe that a system of government -- be it capitalism, socialism, or communism -- can make people less selfish. Marxism was tried, and it failed on a large governmental scale, precisely because it failed to kill greed and the lust for power even on the part of key leaders. Some form of socialism or commism can work in a smaller, voluntary community -- such as when the early Christians sold property in order to take care of each other. They were not doing this out of economic theory, but out of love for each other, however. On a governmental level, I don't think socialism flies. By the same token, capitalism has also been tainted by greed and selfishness. I think we have to look higher than the government or an economic system to deal with issues of the human heart.
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John Stein says:
15 months ago
He was very vague on a lot of the ideas he wrote about, especially the revolution. However, he does go into greater depth about capitalism in Das Kapital. I believe he was describing socialism, not communism at the point you were refering to. I must disagree with you about communism being totalitariansim. The point of socialism is to get people to be less selfish. Now, profit is all that people are connected by. This means changing the mindset of society. It does not mean complete submission, there would be reward, but it would be less of a reason to help each other, think of it as finding a medium between selfishness and submission.
It is a way to be more progressive in order for the needs of all people to be found and distributed. In order for this to occur, democratic centralism is necessary. This would mean that the government would have control of large scale production. The people under that government would have to be as involved as possible with decisions made in order for socialism to work, telling the government what needs to be done and the government decides how it is done. The government is purely Marxist because if the time for revolution was right, capitalism would be seen as feudalism was seen to the "capitalist" revolutionaries. If the government denies this, does not listen to all people, the people must revolt. This necessitates a militia seperate from government control, so the government would have to listen to the majority. You are correct, the way in which Marx explains it, it would become totaalitarian because it only says to give large scale production to the state. Either he had not thought of this problem, or he describes it somewhere else. You must understand that his theory was not fully developed at this point.
Socialism entails the disapearence of private, not personal property. This just means a change of social character. Universal education is also mentioned.
Like I said, he was very vague on a lot of issues. He does not go into detail on how this will be done. It was more of a way to scare capitalists, an introduction, a pamphlet like you said. It was not meant to be deep, it was meant to attract the people who it wanted to help, the workers. Go to communist party websites if you want a better explanation, read Das Kapital if you want a better, deep look at capitalism (if you haven't already)
Anyway, the sole definition of communism is a classless, stateless, society where production is controlled socially and by all. At this point, it does not matter if it is possible, I think it is, I am just giving the definition of it which Marx states exactly after he talks about socialism.
I also wonder why, if you admit it is merely a pamphlet, why do you expect him to explain it deeply. Why do you title this Capitalism, where did the name originate. Marx did not invent it, I just think the intro should be changed.
But, overall, in my opinion, you had a much more educated argument than others against communism because you based it on something you read, on the person who invented it and for that I thank you.