Should-Read: Friedrich Engels (1888): Notes to the “Communist Manifesto”

Should-Read: One should seek truths from facts rather than from theories. Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and the Marxists, for example, decided for theoretical reasons that countries would follow, in their economic development, the track of England and, in their political development, the track of France. Not only is such a trajectory not typical: such a trajectory has never been seen anywhere, anywhen…

Friedrich Engels (1888): Notes to the “Communist Manifesto”: “(4)…. Generally speaking, for the economical development…

…of the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country, for its political development, France.

The paragraph in the 1848 Manifesto to which this note (4) is attached:

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune(4): here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie…

Note, with respect to the paragraph’s last sentence, that it is not “the modern state is but an executive committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” It is, rather: “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” The implication is that the legislature and the judiciary–and perhaps even the civil service of the modern state may be something very different.