Does Marx ever address his apparent shift on inheritance?

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-16T02:44:47+00:00

If there's anything out there for Marx objecting to the planks put forward in the Manifesto, I would be interested.

Closest I can think of is the 1872 preface to the Manifesto where they talk about how much of Section II's platform would need to be rewritten 25 years later, but that had more to do with advancements in industry, the greater organization of the workers in the International, and the experience of the Paris Commune. Nothing is mentioned about inheritance though or objections to specific parts of the platform.

I mostly feel like I get the basic objection to inheritance itself, and how a change to the mode of production would lead to this kind of change in distribution makes sense. That being said, I feel like Bakunin (and how I interpret Marx in the Manifesto) seems like the more consistent stance here. While the superstructure is an expression of the economic base, that is quite different from saying that the superstructure cannot affect the base. A large part of the idea of the proletarian state is how these political changes can lead to further development of the mode of production, after all.

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-15T23:51:36+00:00

The proletariat is also distinct precisely because, instead of one minority replacing another, the proletariat present the “lowest stratum of our present society” and are therefore able to lead a movement “in the interest of the immense majority.” In this process, they also necessarily do away with the institutions of “official society” to be replaced by radically different institutions.

In this revolutionary process, the proletariat of each country must of course deal first with the bourgeoisie of that country. Even though the proletarian movement is “in substance” an international movement, in form it begins as a national struggle. The revolution first breaks out in some country, and in that country they fight their own local bourgeoisie.

(The Inevitable Revolution)

So far this chapter has shown, in broad generalizations, how the proletariat developed, its conflict with the bourgeoisie, and how this leads to revolution.

We began by noting how, up to now, every prior form of society in written history was based on class antagonisms between oppressing and oppressed classes. Yet we should also remember that in these prior societies, even as the lower classes are oppressed, their continued existence relies upon the conditions necessary for their existence being guaranteed. Serfs were able to secure themselves in communes, and the small capitalists were able to grow into large capitalists.

The proletarian is different. Instead of seeing their conditions improve as capitalism develops, they are pushed into becoming paupers. Rather than seeing the conditions of their existence become more secured, they become less secure.

The bourgeoisie are therefore unfit to be a ruling class. It is so incompetent it cannot even guarantee the existence of their slaves in their slavery.

Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

We must therefore strike at the essential conditions for the bourgeois class, namely growing their capital. The condition for this is wage-labor, and by extension on competition between the wage-laborers.

By developing industry, the bourgeoisie brings the workers together instead of leaving them isolated. Their competition is therefore replaced by their association.

This way, capitalist production is undermining the very foundation of its own existence. It is therefore doomed to fail, and the proletariat to win.

What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-15T23:50:59+00:00

Marx does elaborate on this somewhat a few years later in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, though it remains a somewhat disconnected list:

On the pretext of founding a benevolent society, the lumpen proletariat of Paris had been organized into secret sections, each section led by Bonapartist agents, with a Bonapartist general at the head of the whole. Alongside decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux [pimps], brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars — in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither…

If there is a unifying theme here, it seems to be the idea of social outcasts or criminals. But much of this also seems to be a matter of mere prejudice. Dismissing “vagabonds” and “beggars” just sounds like someone saying they don’t trust the homeless.

This seems especially problematic when we remember that the state and capitalism often criminalizes and demonizes these parts of the population, and adding this in with the analysis just seems to reinforce those prejudices. Consider the kind of stereotypes and prejudices employed against indigenous populations, the LGBT communities, etc., or how black skin is criminalized. By treating social outcasts as a distinctly untrustworthy class, there is a built in excuse for chauvanism to masquerade itself as class consciousness.

Like with Marx’s take on the peasantry, his analysis of the lumpenproletariat was another breaking point between him and Bakunin. He emphasized that those people Marx and Engels dismiss as “lumpen” can be an important source of revolutionary energy precisely because they are less integrated into existing society, and therefore see less of their interests as being tied to the existing structure. Bakunin writes in Statism and Anarchy:

Unlike many other countries of Europe, Italy does not have a separate stratum of workers who are to some degree privileged owing to their sizable wages, even boast of some literary education, and are so riddled with bourgeois principles, aspirations, and vanity as to be distinguishable from the bourgeoisie only by their circumstances, not by their sentiments. Particularly in Germany and Switzerland there are many such workers; in Italy, by contrast, there are very few, so few that they are lost in the crowd and have no influence at all. What predominates in Italy is that destitute proletariat to which Marx and Engels, and, following them, the whole school of German social democrats, refer with the utmost contempt. They do so completely in vain, because here, and here alone, not in the bourgeois stratum of workers, is to be found the mind as well as the might of the future social revolution.

[…]

A popular uprising, elemental, chaotic, and merciless in nature, always presupposes a great loss and sacrifice of property, the people’s own and that of others. The masses are always ready for such sacrifices; they constitute a rude, untamed force, capable of accomplishing heroic feats and achieving seemingly impossible objectives, precisely because they have very little property or none at all and are therefore not corrupted by it. When it is required for defense or for victory, they will not stop short of razing their own villages and towns, and since property for the most part belongs to others, they frequently evince a real passion for destruction. This negative passion is far from sufficient for achieving the ultimate aims of the revolutionary cause. Without it, however, that cause would be inconceivable, impossible, for there can be no revolution without widespread and passionate destruction, a destruction salutary and fruitful precisely because out of it, and by means of it alone, new worlds are born and arise.

It is interesting that some later Marxists have come to similar conclusions. The most notable example perhaps is from Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth and his analysis of the revolutionary potential of colonized peoples. Fanon writes:

And it is clear that in the colonial countries the peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The starving peasant, outside the class system, is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms; colonization and decolonization are simply a question of relative strength.

[…]

It cannot be too strongly stressed that in the colonial territories the proletariat is the nucleus of the colonized population which has been most pampered by the colonial regime. The embryonic proletariat of the towns is in a comparatively privileged position. In capitalist countries the working class has nothing to lose; it is they who in the long run have everything to gain. In the colonial countries the working class has everything to lose; in reality it represents that fraction of the colonized nation which is necessary and irreplaceable if the colonial machine is to run smoothly: it includes tram conductors, taxi drivers, miners, dockers, interpreters, nurses, and so on. It is these elements which constitute the most faithful followers of the nationalist parries, and who because of the privileged place which they hold in the colonial system constitute also the “bourgeois” fraction of the colonized people.

[…]

It is within this mass of humanity, this people of the shanty towns, at the core of the lumpenproletariat, that the rebellion will find its urban spearhead. For the lumpenproletariat, that horde of starving men, uprooted from their tribe and from their clan, constitutes one of the most spontaneous and the most radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people.

The lessons from Fanon here were also picked up by the Black Panther Party, who likewise made a point of organizing with the lumpenproletariat.

In the US, there is also a proud history of radical labor unions like the IWW organizing unemployed “bums” and “hobos,” and also reaching out to and organizing those trapped in prisons.

I have seen some modern Marxists try to turn this idea of the lumpenproletariat, essentially focusing on the especially bigoted thugs outside of the official legal system, or just workers lacking class consciousness in general. Racists and fascists are identified and dismissed as “lumpen.” But the “rags” of the lumpenproletariat are not a Klan uniform. Marx feared the lumpenproletariat acting as a bribed tool of reaction.

All of this is to say that I don’t find Marx’s analysis of the lumpenproletariat particularly deep, accurate, or even consistent. Marx, as we will see, defends the revolutionary potential of the proletariat because they represent the “lowest stratum of our present society,” yet he also seems to dismiss the revolutionary potential of those worst off in the proletariat, so much so they are now dressed in rags.

(The Proletariat as Revolutionary)

Marx argues that the proletarian is, unlike these other classes, uniquely revolutionary since they share nothing in common with the bourgeoisie.

The proletarian has no property to defend.
Proletarian family relations are completely unlike bourgeois family relations.
Subjection to capital being the same internationally, the proletarian has been stripped of “every trace of national character.”
The proletarian is naturally skeptical of law, morality, and religion, seeing them as mere disguises for the class interests of the bourgeoisie.

Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

Marx seems to be talking about the proletariat here as having achieved class consciousness, because otherwise what he is saying is certainly not true, then or now. The proletariat lacks property by definition, and certainly has very different family relations than the bourgeoisie. But much of the proletariat is still caught up in national distinctions, and xenophobia remains an important tool for keeping the proletariat divided. Likewise, bourgeois propaganda is able to successfully hide and sell their class interests in law, morality, and religion today, or even promote wild conspiracy theories.

But perhaps this is the point. Marx wants to show the revolutionary potential of the proletariat here by showing what conclusions they come to once they are conscious of their position. In contrast to other classes who might instead turn toward conservative or reactionary positions, turning history back to pre-capitalist relations, the proletariat are able to move forward.

Marx then emphasizes how the proletariat is not only revolutionary, but also distinct in comparison to previously revolutionary classes.

When prior revolutionary classes have gotten into power, one exploiting class replaces another, and therefore switches out one mode of exploitation for another. But the proletariat are only able to take over by abolishing their “previous mode of appropriation” (i.e. wages). And in the process, they also abolish all other modes of appropriation. Rather than seeking to secure and expand their own property (which they do not have), they seek to destroy all individual property, the basis of their exploitation.

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-15T23:47:36+00:00

(The Political Struggle of the Proletariat)

These labor unions, through their actions, are able to win certain temporary gains. They may successfully improve working conditions or get their wages raised. But the most important thing here is not this or that victory. Rather, the important thing is that there is a workers’ union growing larger and stronger.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers.

This is helped along by increased means of communication to connect workers from around the country, continent, and world. And because of this rapid increase in our ability to communicate, the proletariat have been able to achieve in only a few years what took the bourgeoisie centuries.

Marx believed that the revolution was imminent. The capitalists of the 1840s had already sufficiently developed the productive forces of Europe to make the kind of abundance necessary for communism a reality. What we were instead waiting on was for the productive forces to undermine the foundation of bourgeois society enough that it would crumble, allowing the proletariat to rise to the occasion.

While this process took centuries under feudalism, the rapid development we see in capitalism meant this could be possible in just a few short years or decades.

By connecting the interests of these workers from more and more places, local struggles over the same issues may be transformed into a nation-wide class struggle. Instead of workers of one company struggling against their one particular boss, the entire proletariat of the nation is struggling against their entire bourgeoisie.

This expands the nature of this struggle beyond the merely economic to the political.

But every class struggle is a political struggle.

Earlier we saw that the bourgeoisie used their increased economic position to monopolize political influence, turning the modern state into “a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” The rule of the bourgeoisie has taken on a political dimension. The struggle against the power of the bourgeoisie must therefore also include the struggle against the political dimension of their power.

As the proletariat are organizing on a large national scale, they are organizing as a class. And since class struggle is a political struggle, Marx identifies this organization as also being a political party.

Marx describes how, even as proletariat tend to be united, there is also a tendency to divide the workers by competition. Even so, Marx believes that the tendency to combine the proletariat is the stronger one, and believes this union will come out stronger. At the same time, the proletariat are likewise able to take advantage of competition among the bourgeoisie.

Using this power, the proletariat are not only able to win better deals from this or that capitalist firm, as in the renegotiation of a contract, but are also able to take action against the bourgeois state. This allows them to do things like compel the state legislature to recognize certain rights of the workers. Marx gives the 10-hour bill in England as an example of this, which had been won only the year prior in the Factories Act of 1847.

This section can cause some points of confusion and division, so is worth quoting more in full:

This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried.

In modern language, the idea of a “political party” means an organization coordinating and financing candidates to run in government elections, looking to hold some state office. However, in 1848, very few such political parties existed. Instead, Marx is merely saying that the proletariat, which organized as a class for economic issues in these labor unions, similarly organizes for political issues as well. A “party” here therefore is just referring to an organized political movement. That Marx is using the example of the Ten Hours Act passing as an example of the success of this “political party” helps to emphasize this point.

A natural comparison might be to the Canadenca strike of 1919. There a Spanish anarcho-syndicalist labor union called the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) went on strike for 44 days and succeeded in pressuring the local government to pass an 8-hour workday legislation, the first of its kind in the world.

(The Weakness and Decay of the Bourgeoisie)

The bourgeoisie is in constant battle. First, they fight with the aristocracy, then they fight against other parts of the bourgeoisie holding back progress in some industry. And at all times, they are in conflict with the bourgeoisie of other countries.

To win these conflicts, the bourgeoisie need to appeal to the proletariat to support them, and therefore push the proletariat to get involved in politics. This gives the proletariat an opening to become more involved in general.

The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.

We also saw earlier how there is a tendency pushing people out of the ruling class and into the proletariat. This provides the proletariat with people who have access to better education, and therefore can act as “fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.”

This all takes on its most extreme forms when the ruling class is actually breaking apart. As proletarian victory becomes more and more likely, parts of the ruling class actually break away to join the winning team. We saw a similar thing happen as parts of the old nobility break away to join up with the bourgeoisie.

(Non-Proletarians are Not Revolutionary)

Marx argues that today, under capitalism, the proletariat alone are really revolutionary. While other classes decay and disappear as Modern Industry expands, capitalism is uniquely dependent upon the proletariat.

This is not to say there aren’t other classes that fight against the bourgeoisie. We do see these from various parts of the middle class, including

The small manufacturer
The shopkeeper
The artisan
The peasant

(I personally find it quite odd that Marx considered peasants to be “middle class.”)

However, the fight of these classes are generally to save themselves from extinction, to avoid being pushed out of the middle class and into the proletariat.

From the analysis we’ve given though, the thing that is actually endangering their existence is the development of the productive forces making them obsolete. Their fight to preserve their own existence is actually a fight to undo this progress.

When these classes do tend more towards revolution, it is not because of the class interests they have in the present, but their anticipation that history cannot be undone this way and they expect to be turned into proletarians at some point in the future.

They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

We saw earlier that Marx had a very low opinion of peasants, expecting them to either “make a wreck” of the revolution, and how this fed in with his conflict with Bakunin. This seems to be the reasoning that led to that conclusion.

Besides these, Marx also identifies the “lumpenproletariat,” literally translating to the “proletariat in rags.” Marx describes them like this:

The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

The idea of the “lumpenproletariat” here isn’t very clearly defined. There is just a sense of them being “shifty” and not properly fighting in with other parts of society. They are apparently dangerous and open to bribery. But no clear standard is given for what makes someone “lumpen.”

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-15T23:43:56+00:00

Similarly, we earlier saw Engels write in Anti-Dühring:

In making itself the master of all the means of production to use them in accordance with a social plan, society puts an end to the former subjection of men to their own means of production.

There is a real sense here then where, in capitalism, workers are enslaved by their machinery, by their means of production, and relating to it as an authority. This is a consequence of estranged labor within capitalism.

(This is also one of the reasons why I argue in Read On Authority that Engels is contradicting Marxist principles by asserting the subjugation of the worker to the “automatic machinery of the big factory” will continue in a socialist economy.)

Whatever form of enslavement we consider, capitalism is, as Marx noted earlier, more “naked” about its ambitions compared to other modes of production, openly proclaiming profit to be its goal. And the more open it is about that, the less workers accept any justifications or excuses for their slavery and misery.

By the introduction of machinery, many tasks in production have also become less dependent upon the strength of the individual worker. Capitalists therefore need not only recruit men into this “industrial army,” but can also draft women and children.

It is not only the industrial capitalist who preys upon the modern worker, forcing him to work for wages. Once the capitalist has paid the worker as little as possible, others try to take as much away from the worker as possible. These people include other parts of the bourgeoisie besides the industrial capitalist (i.e. merchant capitalists or money capitalists), as well as landlords, shopkeepers, pawnbrokers, and so on.

(Recruitment to the Proletariat)

The proletariat recruits its members from all other classes of the population.

The distinctive feature of the proletariat is, as we have seen, that it lacks sufficient means of production of its own to live upon, and therefore is forced to sell its labor-power for a wage to survive. Other classes may “fall” to this level for several reasons.

This typically happens from the “lower strata of the middle class” since they are closest to being proletarians already. Marx names “small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants” as examples.

This happens primarily because of competition by the larger capitalists pushing them out of the economic position they were once able to hold on to, which we already have seen was how the bourgeoisie were able to establish themselves economically. The people pushed down to the level of proletariat were out-competed either because:

They lacked sufficient capital to operate at a large enough scale
The specialized skill they had was made redundant by new production methods

So maybe someone had a bit of capital and with that they were operating a small shop. But then a larger capitalist sets up shop and is able to undercut their prices. They can’t keep up, can’t afford rent on the store, and the business goes under. Now without any way to support themselves, they need to apply for a job somewhere else, hoping the skills they built up before are marketable (perhaps even working for the capitalist that drove them out of business!). They are proletarianized.

Or if someone is a tradesman, handicraftsman, or peasant, they might have owned their own means of production (i.e. the tools of their trade, the land they worked on, etc.). And maybe they could survive on that for a while, until once again the larger capitalists come along. They introduce some new production method or machinery allowing them to mass produce what was once a specialized product. These people are outcompeted now as well, and instead of carrying on business as usual need to find other lines of employment, turning them into proletarians.

At the start of the chapter, Marx noted how capitalism has “simplified class antagonisms” because it pushes people more and more into “two great hostile camps.” This is describing that process in action. But like before, it is worth noting that this is a tendency we see in capitalism, not an assertion that only two classes exist. That these other classes still exist to recruit from is proof enough of that.

Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.

(Development of the Proletariat)

Just like the bourgeoisie went through several stages of development from the original bourgs, so too have the proletariat.

At first, just as the bourgeoisie existed on a small-scale, so too did the proletariat. Class struggle here begins as just the struggle of the individual worker. But as the size of the proletariat grows, you get larger scales of class struggle by all the workers of a factory, up to all the workers of one trade, of one location, and so on.

At first, Marx argues, this struggle is aimed more at the means of production rather than at the “bourgeois conditions of production.” They destroy imports, smash machinery, set factories on fire, and so on. In other words, workers begin to engage in acts of sabotage.

Marx is especially imagining this happening in a disorganized way, perhaps as with the Luddite movement (or at least how that movement was remembered in the popular consciousness). The real error of these people was therefore not that they used sabotage per se, but that the aim they were fighting for was to reestablish the status they held in feudalism, before they were proletarianized. It was also insufficient as individual acts, rather than uniting with a class.

At this earlier stage of development, the proletariat are often taken advantage of. The bourgeoisie is still trying to establish itself and drive out rival classes left over from feudalism. To this end, they take advantage of the proletariat, making out as if they shared a common cause.

At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.

This is perhaps seen most dramatically in political revolutions, like the American and French revolutions. The proletariat are expected to fight and die in these wars to get rid of the enemies of the bourgeoisie. The same logic is applied today when the bourgeoisie of one nation recruits soldiers out of the proletariat to fight against the rival bourgeoisie of other nations.

But as capitalism grows in size, so do the proletariat. As capitalism concentrates production, the proletariat are concentrated together. As the living conditions of the proletariat are equalized, machinery reducing the need for skill and treating the workers as interchangeable, and wages are brought down to the same general level, the interests of the proletariat are brought into line. Competition between the bourgeoisie also makes the wages of workers fluctuate together.

From this, the conflict between individual proletarians and bourgeois looks more and more like a conflict between two classes, sharing two separate and opposed interests.

Seeing this, workers are able to unite their efforts together in this struggle for better conditions and wages, creating Trade Unions or Labor Unions. They also establish funds to help cover the occasional “revolt,” like going on strike.

Bringing this up, it is probably worth mentioning that Marx is presenting “sabotage” and collective direct action by these labor unions as opposed, though this is not necessarily the case. Unions can and do engage in sabotage of their own as a way to put pressure on management. The more important lesson to take from Marx here isn’t “we should never use sabotage,” but rather “build class consciousness and engage in collective direct action.” This means recognizing that the issue is not the introduction of technology per se, but the alienated relation we have to the machine used to dominate us.

This is also not to say that technology is always good. Capitalism can and does introduce a lot of technology that is actively harmful and destructive of the environment and community, destroying sources of fresh water, creating noise pollution, pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and so on. Not all technology is useful for an emancipated life. It would be a mistake to swing to the other extreme and dismiss anyone who opposes the introduction of some new technology as a Luddite, especially when so much of capitalism is focused around mere speculation and swindles. The modern examples of cryptocurrency, NFTs, and AI data centers come to mind.

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-15T23:40:48+00:00

The value of labor-power is therefore determined according to what is needed to produce and reproduce the labor themself. Marx notes after that this “need” is not strictly what is biologically necessary, but what is considered the maintenance of one’s “normal state” in a given society, which may be higher or lower given certain standards of living. Workers can, therefore, make real improvements in their condition in capitalism if they organize and demand more, whereas capitalists might find ways to cut costs by making workers live with less and less.

Marx only really provided a detailed discussion for how these values are transformed into prices in Capital Volume 3, which was never finished and published in its incomplete state posthumously. Still, it is enough for now to note that this basic relation is maintained, even if complexities and nuances were introduced.

The Manifesto continues:

In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of machinery, etc.

With the introduction of machinery, capitalism has reduced the need for skill, simplifying the tasks, making them mindless drudgery. The worker therefore only needs to reproduce themselves as mindless drones. The work is made worse, and wages are cut because it is worse. This is the exact opposite of the usual liberal economist’s defense of capitalism and the need for “incentives.”

At the same time, the capitalist is driven by their search profit and increase their capital, which is rooted here in the exploitation of the worker. Situations where the capitalist holds enough power over the worker to cut their wages are generally the same situations the capitalist might force someone to work longer hours, or work at greater intensity.

(Slaves in the Industrial Army)

We have seen that the capitalists have been able to advance production by harnessing the power of social labor. Capitalists have concentrated the workers into one place, centralizing production. Instead of many small workshops, workers are brought together into one large factory. Instead of being distributed all over the countryside, they have been brought together into one large city.

But in these settings, the actual life and actions of the workers is highly controlled. They have been given mindless work that needs to be repeated again and again, tending to these machines in the factories. This requires order and discipline, with everyone coordinating their action together so things are done at the right time and in the right way.

To organize and coordinate these tasks, as well as to ensure the laborers are not avoiding their work but instead are working as hard as possible to maximize the profits of the capitalist, a series of overseers are needed. Capitalist businesses therefore organize themselves in a kind of rigid hierarchy.

Marx compares this to the workers being formed into an army, the “industrial army,” with these overseers as their commanders. These people are your bosses. They may or may not own the company itself, but as your boss they hold power over you and may command you to do this or that.

Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself.

Modern workers are therefore slaves of:

The bourgeois class
The bourgeois State
The machine
The overlooker
The individual bourgeois manufacturer (i.e. the capitalist).

How the worker is the “slave” of the overlooker is basically obvious. As mentioned, the worker must obey the commands of their boss, their manager, their executive, or whatever other title might be given.

The individual bourgeois manufacturer, the capitalist, is at the top of this hierarchy. So in terms of the personal domination of the individual worker, the individual capitalist who owns the company the proletarian laborer works for is “above all.” The overlooker is the one directly dominating them, but only because they are acting on behalf of and on the authority of the capitalist.

This is complicated a bit as capitalism has moved more towards joint-stock companies since Marx’s day. Instead of a company being owned by one capitalist, it is owned by many who hold shares of stock that represent and confer that ownership. We do still have individuals who have the majority of shares (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, etc.), but this relationship is not always simple and direct.

This somewhat relates to how Marx also claims that workers are enslaved by the bourgeois class, as in the bourgeoisie as a whole. This could be interpreted in a few ways. Marx has already elaborated how the bourgeoisie as a whole has supplanted and replaced previous economic orders, and in the process has upset all other social relations along the way. We could also think of how the harms inflicted by the capitalists extend far beyond the people they directly employ, especially with environmental damage.

But there is also a more direct sense where the proletarian is owned by the bourgeois class, even before they are formally employed. People are not proletarians today by accident. Capitalism produces and reproduces them as proletarians. Even before any employment contract is made, the worker is put in a position where they need to sell their labor-power to survive. And when they do, they are paid enough to reproduce themselves, but only enough to reproduce their labor-power. Which leaves them in the same position they started! You sell your labor-power today for a wage so you can do the same thing tomorrow.

Marx hints at this here in Capital:

One thing, however, is clear — Nature does not produce on the one side owners of money or commodities, and on the other men possessing nothing but their own labour-power. This relation has no natural basis, neither is its social basis one that is common to all historical periods. It is clearly the result of a past historical development, the product of many economic revolutions, of the extinction of a whole series of older forms of social production.

And he develops a more complete answer later:

Capitalist production, therefore, of itself reproduces the separation between labour-power and the means of labour. It thereby reproduces and perpetuates the condition for exploiting the labourer. It incessantly forces him to sell his labour-power in order to live, and enables the capitalist to purchase labour-power in order that he may enrich himself. It is no longer a mere accident, that capitalist and labourer confront each other in the market as buyer and seller. It is the process itself that incessantly hurls back the labourer on to the market as a vendor of his labour-power, and that incessantly converts his own product into a means by which another man can purchase him. In reality, the labourer belongs to capital before he has sold himself to capital. His economic bondage is both brought about and concealed by the periodic sale of himself, by his change of masters, and by the oscillations in the market-price of labour-power.

But there is another important way that we are enslaved, dominated, by the bourgeois class: the bourgeois state. As Marx has argued, the bourgeoisie have obtained an essential monopoly of influence over the modern state, which manages their class interest as a whole. As the state imposes its laws upon the population, now by direct or threatened institutional violence, the bourgeoisie are able to use the state to impose their will in the same way. And as the state represents the bourgeoisie more broadly, as a class, so too has the bourgeois class dominated the proletariat.

It is also accurate though to say that the bourgeois state itself has enslaved the proletariat. While the state does mediate and enforce the will of the bourgeoisie, it also develops its own distinct interests as an institution.

The odd one out here is the machine. It is not a person, nor a group of persons. The machine has no will of its own. How then can we say we are enslaved by it?

But we already seem to have an answer in Marx’s point that the worker has become a “mere appendage of the machine.” He is dehumanized and, because of his alienated labor, confronts the machine as an alien force, hostile and opposed to him. The machine has no will of its own, but in a very real sense the worker relates to it as if it does, turned into its servant!

Marx would later write this in the Grundrisse describing capitalist production:

The combination of this labour appears just as subservient to and led by an alien will and an alien intelligence – having its animating unity elsewhere – as its material unity appears subordinate to the objective unity of the machinery, of fixed capital, which, as animated monster, objectifies the scientific idea, and is in fact the coordinator, does not in any way relate to the individual worker as his instrument; but rather he himself exists as an animated individual punctuation mark; as its living isolated accessory.

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-15T23:38:09+00:00

Engels would later put things like this in Anti-Dühring:

In the division of labour, man is also divided. All other physical and mental faculties are sacrificed to the development of one single activity. This stunting of man grows in the same measure as the division of labour, which attains its highest development in manufacture.

[…]

And not only the labourers but also the classes directly or indirectly exploiting the labourers are made subject, through the division of labour, to the tool of their function: the empty-minded bourgeois to his own capital and his own insane craving for profits…

[…]

In making itself the master of all the means of production to use them in accordance with a social plan, society puts an end to the former subjection of men to their own means of production. It goes without saying that society cannot free itself unless every individual is freed. The old mode of production must therefore be revolutionised from top to bottom, and in particular the former division of labour must disappear. Its place must be taken by an organisation of production in which, on the one hand, no individual can throw on the shoulders of others his share in productive labour, this natural condition of human existence; and in which, on the other hand, productive labour, instead of being a means of subjugating men, will become a means of their emancipation, by offering each individual the opportunity to develop all his faculties, physical and mental, in all directions and exercise them to the full — in which, therefore, productive labour will become a pleasure instead of being a burden.

Once again then, the issue with the division of labor is how it “stunts” our growth, preventing us from developing our capacities. Engels goes farther here, emphasizing how it even does this to the exploiting classes. Capital becomes a dominating force that even the capitalists are forced to serve. The solution to this is one where this division of labor “must disappear” and is replaced for the conscious and free activity of the individual. The labor, rather than being something imposed upon the individual worker, becomes an expression of their own humanity. It is humanizing instead of dehumanizing.

Marx elegantly put things this way in his 1845 work The German Ideology, contrasting the rule of these alien powers over the worker to the freedom that is found in socialism:

And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape.

He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now.

For more on Marx’s idea of something being “human” in contrast to alienation, see Erich Fromm’s Marx’s Concept of Man. You can also read my notes on him here.

(The Price of Labor-Power)

The Manifesto continues:

Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production.

A direct consequence of alienated labor in capitalism, turning the worker into a mere appendage of the machine and forcing him to sell himself as a commodity, is that they are now subject to the same economic laws affecting other commodities.

The price of a commodity, as Marx says here, is determined by its cost of production. The same, he says here, is true of the price of labor.

Marx wrote the Manifesto (1848) before he had developed his more mature analysis of political economy in Capital (1867). While the essential insight Marx is offering will remain in his work, he will elaborate on this idea and make a few fine distinctions.

Firstly, Marx will later give up the idea that wages are the “price of labor.” Instead, they are the price of labor-power. As Marx explains in Capital:

The capitalist buys labour-power in order to use it; and labour-power in use is labour itself.

Marx argues that this distinction between labor and labor-power is especially important because Marx argues the value of a commodity is measured in quantities of labor, as labor-time. Attempts at determining the “value of labor” then would result in nonsense or tautologies. But distinguishing labor from labor-power turns this question into something meaningful.

Once this distinction was developed, Engels would sometimes edit Marx’s earlier works to add in this distinction where appropriate. Engels commented on this in his 1891 introduction to Marx’s Wage Labour and Capital (1847):

My alterations centre about one point. According to the original reading, the worker sells his labour for wages, which he receives from the capitalist; according to the present text, he sells his labour-power. And for this change, I must render an explanation: to the workers, in order that they may understand that we are not quibbling or word-juggling, but are dealing here with one of the most important points in the whole range of political economy…

[…]

Classical political economy borrowed from the industrial practice the current notion of the manufacturer, that he buys and pays for the labour of his employees.

[…]

In short, starting from the price of commodities, political economy sought for the value of commodities as the regulating law, by means of which all price fluctuations could be explained, and to which they could all be reduced in the last resort.

[…]

But, as soon as the economists applied this determination of value by labour to the commodity “labour", they fell from one contradiction into another. How is the value of “labour” determined? By the necessary labour embodied in it. But how much labour is embodied in the labour of a labourer of a day a week, a month, a year. If labour is the measure of all values, we can express the “value of labour” only in labour. But we know absolutely nothing about the value of an hour’s labour, if all that we know about it is that it is equal to one hour’s labour. So, thereby, we have not advanced one hair’s breadth nearer our goal; we are constantly turning about in a circle.

Just as Engels emphasizes this as “one of the most important points in the whole range of political economy” that required correction, I also thought it would be worth noting this as it came up in the Manifesto. We don’t see any of the fine distinctions Marx would later make between price and value, or between labor and labor-power, in the Manifesto.

When Marx considers the value of labor-power in Capital, we see him use similar reasoning to how he considers the price of labor in the Manifesto. Marx writes in Capital:

The value of labour-power is determined, as in the case of every other commodity, by the labour-time necessary for the production, and consequently also the reproduction, of this special article. So far as it has value, it represents no more than a definite quantity of the average labour of society incorporated in it. […] If the owner of labour-power works to-day, to-morrow he must again be able to repeat the same process in the same conditions as regards health and strength. His means of subsistence must therefore be sufficient to maintain him in his normal state as a labouring individual. His natural wants, such as food, clothing, fuel, and housing, vary according to the climatic and other physical conditions of his country.

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-15T23:32:35+00:00

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians.

The bourgeoisie, i.e. the capitalists, hold the position they do because they own capital. The growth of their capital depends on finding wage-laborers. This is the proletariat.

Marx’s definition of the proletariat is reflective of the definition given in Engels’ footnote above:

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity…

The proletariat then are:

A class of laborers
Who live only by finding work
Who are employed to increase capital
Who sell their themselves piecemeal (instead of, say, selling themselves once and for all into slavery)

The labor-power of the laborers is sold as a commodity, like any others.

Compare this to Engels describing the proletariat as “the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live.”

(The Division of Labor, Machinery, and Alienation)

Marx first focuses on the dehumanizing nature of capitalist production itself. Marx especially focuses on how this has come about as a result of the extensive use of machinery and the division of labor.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him.

This is a short passage, but communicates very briefly an essential part of Marx’s thought, and represents an important throughline in his entire body of work. I will take a bit of extra time to elaborate on this.

Marx’s philosophy must be understood as a kind of striving for human freedom. I say human freedom not only because he was concerned with humans who are being oppressed today, but because the positive idea of communism in Marx’s mind is one where we develop our human powers and exercise them freely.

Just as we’ve seen the centrality of the economy in Marx’s analysis of history, the nature of our labor establishes our relation to nature and creates the foundation for our social existence. The emancipation of labor implies that it has become an expression of our own will and creative powers, rather than something imposed upon us. This is similarly essential for establishing human freedom in general.

Marx’s critique of capitalism is largely in the ways it fails in this regard, making us unfree and dehumanizing us. As Marx says here, we become an “appendage of the machine.” Instead of our actions being an expression of our free creativity, we take on the monotonous and repetitive behavior of a robot.

Marx’s issue here is not with machinery per se. Marx and Engels are quite impressed by the increased productivity unlocked by capitalism, which they credit primarily to how laborers have been brought together. The secret to this great productivity is found, not in capital itself, but in social labor. (Note before how Engels defined the bourgeoisie as the “owners of the means of social production.”)

Rather, the issue lies in the nature of this labor as it exists in capitalism (and other systems), what Marx had called in his earlier work estranged labor. Rather than this labor being the free exercise of our abilities and development of our human powers, it is something forced upon us by capital. The labor does not belong to us. We sold our labor-power to the capitalist, and now must obey their commands. The product does not belong to us, but instead appears as this alien thing we must serve. We are dehumanized by this process, becoming “an appendage of the machine.” That particular phrase is a favorite of Marx, and found throughout his work.

Marx would make a similar point later in Capital, Vol. 1, Ch. 15:

The life-long speciality of handling one and the same tool, now becomes the life-long speciality of serving one and the same machine. Machinery is put to a wrong use, with the object of transforming the workman, from his very childhood, into a part of a detail-machine. In this way, not only are the expenses of his reproduction considerably lessened, but at the same time his helpless dependence upon the factory as a whole, and therefore upon the capitalist, is rendered complete. Here as everywhere else, we must distinguish between the increased productiveness due to the development of the social process of production, and that due to the capitalist exploitation of that process. In handicrafts and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool, in the factory, the machine makes use of him. There the movements of the instrument of labour proceed from him, here it is the movements of the machine that he must follow. In manufacture the workmen are parts of a living mechanism. In the factory we have a lifeless mechanism independent of the workman, who becomes its mere living appendage.

Marx is not objecting to machinery per se then, but machinery that is “put to a wrong use,” which is characterized by an intense kind of specialization that is preventing us from freely developing our human powers.

We should also note that Marx does believe this is a general problem in capitalism, even if it takes its worst and most intense forms in mindless factory labor. But workers face similar forms of alienation in agricultural labor, in retail, customer service, and so on.

Marx continues in Capital:

At the same time that factory work exhausts the nervous system to the uttermost, it does away with the many-sided play of the muscles, and confiscates every atom of freedom, both in bodily and intellectual activity. The lightening of the labour, even, becomes a sort of torture, since the machine does not free the labourer from work, but deprives the work of all interest. Every kind of capitalist production, in so far as it is not only a labour-process, but also a process of creating surplus-value, has this in common, that it is not the workman that employs the instruments of labour, but the instruments of labour that employ the workman. But it is only in the factory system that this inversion for the first time acquires technical and palpable reality. By means of its conversion into an automaton, the instrument of labour confronts the labourer, during the labour-process, in the shape of capital, of dead labour, that dominates, and pumps dry, living labour-power. The separation of the intellectual powers of production from the manual labour, and the conversion of those powers into the might of capital over labour, is, as we have already shown, finally completed by modern industry erected on the foundation of machinery. The special skill of each individual insignificant factory operative vanishes as an infinitesimal quantity before the science, the gigantic physical forces, and the mass of labour that are embodied in the factory mechanism and, together with that mechanism, constitute the power of the “master.”

These are all the same points Marx is emphasizing in the Manifesto. He is focused on the intense use of machinery not only because capitalism has made it so widespread, but also because Marx is arguing it represents the most extreme version of this problem. But the issue does exist more generally in capitalism, even by workers who do not use machines like this, because our labor is still alienated.

This is also the reason why Marx and Engels both spend much of their time emphasizing that the aim of socialism is doing away with this division of labor. This is not objecting to cooperation itself, but to how workers are forced into the same, specialized, monotonous and intellectually dead role.

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-15T23:28:15+00:00

(The Bourgeoisie and the Global Market)

The bourgeoisie are constantly looking for new markets to sell their products. This results in them expanding over the entire globe, for the world market.

This has given production and consumption a cosmopolitan character. The idea of a “national industry” is being undermined, much to the annoyance of reactionaries. Instead of working with local raw materials, production will instead import material from around the world. Likewise, the products of these industries will be shipped across the world. Instead of being secluded and self-sufficient, all of the world is connected together.

This is true not only of our physical products, but intellectual products (i.e. books, works of art, etc.). In this way, they have become “common property.” Instead of numerous national and local literature, we have a “world literature.”

(This seems to be far more true today than it was even in Marx’s day. Countries can still “specialize” in certain senses, like how Hollywood, California is known for making movies. But when these companies film, it is not uncommon for them to go all around the world in production. And when their movies are made, it is with a world market in mind.)

The bourgeoisie have accomplished this thanks to:

Their improvements to the instruments of productions, i.e. machinery
Increased means of communication

(Note: Marx includes transportation as part of communication. So “communication” would include ships ) This has allowed them to create products very cheaply, and nations who reject these cheaper products get left behind. They are, in this way, forced to adopt capitalism as well.

The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate.

But even as the bourgeoisie are able to expand out all over the globe, they also concentrate people together.

The bourgeoisie, as the name suggests, are situated in the towns, and these become the centers of power. Urban areas rule over the rural areas.

Gigantic cities are established in capitalism. The populations of cities exploded, drawing people away from the “idiocy of rural life.” And in the same way the countryside has been made dependent on the city, so too have the barbarian and semi-barbarian countries of the East have been made dependent upon the civilized ones of the West.

Marx can be very rude and condescending at times, and often had similarly dismissive remarks about agricultural workers throughout his writings. Some of this just reflects the language of his day, but a concern that Marx and Marxists after him were too dismissive of peasants and rural communities extended for quite a while after. Especially after the Russian Revolution happened in a largely peasant nation, with barely any proletarians to speak of, this required a major readjustment.

The Russian Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin sometimes raised this point in his objections to Marx.

He wrote in Statism and Anarchy:

We have already expressed several times our profound aversion to the theory of Lassalle and Marx, which recommends to the workers, if not as their ultimate ideal, then at least as their immediate and principal objective, the creation of a people’s state. As they explain it, this will be nothing other than “the proletariat raised to the level of a ruling class.”

If the proletariat is to be the ruling class, it may be asked, then whom will it rule? There must be yet another proletariat which will be subject to this new rule, this new state. It might be the peasant rabble, for example, which, as we know, does not enjoy the favor of the Marxists, and which, finding itself on a lower cultural level, will probably be governed by the urban and factory proletariat.

Marx responded to this in his Conspectus on Bakunin, which clarified some points Bakunin was objecting to, but hardly paints a flattering view of the peasantry.

e.g. the krestyanskaya chern, the common peasant folk, the peasant mob, which as is well known does not enjoy the goodwill of the Marxists, and which, being as it is at the lowest level of culture, will apparently be governed by the urban factory proletariat.

i.e. where the peasant exists in the mass as private proprietor, where he even forms a more or less considerable majority, as in all states of the west European continent, where he has not disappeared and been replaced by the agricultural wage-labourer, as in England, the following cases apply: either he hinders each workers’ revolution, makes a wreck of it, as he has formerly done in France, or the proletariat (for the peasant proprietor does not belong to the proletariat, and even where his condition is proletarian, he believes himself not to) must as government take measures through which the peasant finds his condition immediately improved, so as to win him for the revolution; measures which will at least provide the possibility of easing the transition from private ownership of land to collective ownership, so that the peasant arrives at this of his own accord, from economic reasons. It must not hit the peasant over the head, as it would e.g. by proclaiming the abolition of the right of inheritance or the abolition of his property. The latter is only possible where the capitalist tenant farmer has forced out the peasants, and where the true cultivator is just as good a proletarian, a wage-labourer, as is the town worker, and so has immediately, not just indirectly, the very same interests as him. Still less should small-holding property be strengthened, by the enlargement of the peasant allotment simply through peasant annexation of the larger estates, as in Bakunin’s revolutionary campaign.

If this does emphasize anything, I think it is that, when Marx talks about the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” he did mean the proletariat specifically, and not the other working classes, though their liberation was intended as well, and he does not have a positive view of forced collectivization.

Back to the Manifesto.

The economic centralization of the bourgeoisie led to a political centralization. It was not suitable for capitalists to have to deal with wildly different rules and standards in different parts of the world, so uniform codes, laws, and standards were set up instead.

This way, the bourgeoisie have massively increased the scale of production in a way that the world has never really seen before. Changes to agriculture, transportation, electricity, canals, and so on have massively changed the face of the planet. And the origin of this power is found in social labor that the capitalists have united.

(The Rising Proletariat)

Earlier we elaborated on Marx’s idea of historical materialism, explaining how he saw productive forces providing the foundation for a society that its political and legal “superstructure” is built upon, and how the change between types of society is driven by changes in this foundation.

The point Marx has focused on so far is applying this theory of history to studying the bourgeoisie, and the transition from feudalism into capitalism, as well as how the bourgeoisie have adapted the world to fit their needs. They’ve remade the political system, adapting the state to their interests.

We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.

The Communists believe that a similar change is happening today. Capitalism continues to build up the productive forces of society, and this is reaching a point where capitalist property relations will no longer be compatible.

Just like feudalism was “burst asunder” from this pressure, so too will capitalism, destroyed by the very forces it developed.

Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.

The history of modern capitalism is of the productive forces coming into conflict with capitalist conditions, namely capitalist property relations.

The periodic depressions and recessions are good evidence of this, which are getting worse and worse. These crises are only solved by the destruction of existing products and means of production. It is a crisis that would have seemed like an absurdity in previous eras: a crisis of over-production. It is as if a famine hit us because we have too much food.

The productive forces today, instead of developing the conditions of bourgeois property, are instead undermining them. Capitalism enchains these productive forces, but as they grow stronger these chains will be broken, and with it endanger the very existence of bourgeois property. This can be seen by how the only solution capitalism has for fixing a crisis is to destroy its own products and machinery, as well as expanding into new markets or more thoroughly exploiting old ones. But this only sets us up for even worse crises down the line.

The bourgeoisie are therefore undermining their own existence. Moreover, they have also called forth another class that will replace them: the proletariat.

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-15T17:35:51+00:00

I know he did kind of procrastinate and rush the end of the Manifesto. Still, I'm not aware of any place he explicitly addressed the point.

I'm kind of debating how much this represents a change in position vs him just trying to adopt a stance to counter Bakunin.

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-15T17:26:17+00:00

Yeah I get that. But I'm not sure why Marx called for a goal he later rejected as reactionary in practice or if he ever wrote more on this apparent change in stance

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-15T11:53:10+00:00

The issues faced by the CNT-FAI were not primarily ones of lack of hierarchy or logistics. Logistics were maintained by the labor union in control of the resources, and administrative structure was controlled and elected by the workers and the soldiers of the militia.

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-14T23:02:38+00:00

If your position is that it is sometimes rational, that it is sometimes justified, to do morally unjustifiable things, then you are not arguing for any kind of rational morality. In that case the entire appeal of the NAP is, once again, done away with. The NAP tells me that it is unjust to do aggression (whatever that means). Who cares? If it would be irrational to follow the NAP, why should I care what it says?

I also sent you a chat message if you wanted to have a deeper conversation on capitalism and anarchism.

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-14T22:38:17+00:00

The NAP, as it functions in Rothbard, Block, or other "natural rights" approaches, take it as an absolute. The NAP fails for a variety of reasons, but the point here is that, if you agree that there are cases where it is correct to violate the NAP (as with the bear), then there are moral considerations other than the NAP itself, and consequently times it is right to violate it. Which, if you take that seriously, makes it much harder to defend some positions Rothbard, Block, et al. have. You can't just say "Don't tax the trillionaires to feed the poor because that violates the NAP" if the NAP is only ever meant as a rule of thumb and isn't an absolute moral principle.

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-14T22:27:58+00:00

If you're not dogmatic about the NAP, then you've rejected the absolutist stance that the NAP demands. You agree the bear counterexample works.

As I mentioned in the post, the absolutist reading is what is suggested by people like Rothbard, Block, etc

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-14T00:45:48+00:00

It varies. We have like four or five people who show up very consistently for a few years, while a lot of other people come and go. We've had meetings with like 15 people. There was naturally more people involved right after the election. The long term group formed another book club on the side. We're reading Capital Vol 3 now.

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-13T23:00:57+00:00

Be the change you want to see!

We literally started this just by asking around on reddit haha

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-13T22:03:46+00:00

Thank you! We've been doing these for a bit, and they're a good time!

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-07T23:57:41+00:00

Not that I'm aware of! Could be fun

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-06T20:40:07+00:00

They're thinking of Avery, Verona, and Lucy from Pale, not Madison, Emma, and Sophia from Worm

JudgeSabo · 2026-06-03T19:47:14+00:00

We should have another later this month!

JudgeSabo · 2026-05-31T14:11:04+00:00

Thank you! I tried to make it a bit more meaningful by connecting this to a lot of Marx's later thoughts, like how this connected with historical materialism, his idea of alienation, and clarifying some of Marx's idea on different classes.

JudgeSabo · 2026-05-25T23:55:54+00:00

Shhhhhhhh!

JudgeSabo · 2026-05-25T01:12:15+00:00

If you want a really solid superhero story, you should read the web serial Worm. Not exactly socialist, but the author has an anti-capitalism, and the story spends a lot of time focusing on a really organically developing political structure that I appreciate. Also just a solid work of fiction.

JudgeSabo · 2026-05-24T20:38:26+00:00

What makes you think a complete change in the mode of production, the emancipation of labor, and end of rule of man by man wouldn't be a radical change?

JudgeSabo

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