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Political Ideas: Marx and Engels, the Communist Manifesto

Criticisms of The Communist Manifesto

  • 3 things to know
  • A2 Unit 2

Overview

Max Weber's challenge to the materialist account of history, conservative criticism of the ten measures and feminist criticism of the Manifesto.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Numbers

How did the actual pattern of revolution contradict the Manifesto's expectations?

Evaluation

State the feminist criticism of the Manifesto.

Key term

What is the evidence that the Manifesto's prediction of increasing polarisation failed?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Summarise Eduard Bernstein's revisionist criticism.

    Model answer

    Bernstein argued that the middle class had grown rather than disappeared, that workers' conditions and wages were improving and that capitalism was adapting rather than collapsing. Bernstein concluded that socialism could and should be achieved through trade unions, elections and gradual reform.

  2. 2

    How did the actual pattern of revolution contradict the Manifesto's expectations?

    Model answer

    Marx and Engels expected revolution in the most industrially advanced countries, above all Britain, France and Germany. The first lasting communist revolution occurred in largely agrarian Russia in 1917, and later ones in China, Cuba and Vietnam, none of them advanced industrial societies.

  3. 3

    How did Lenin attempt to explain the absence of revolution in advanced countries?

    Model answer

    Lenin argued in his study of imperialism that the export of capital and the profits of empire allowed capitalists in advanced countries to buy off a layer of their own workers. Revolution would therefore break out first at the weakest link in the imperial chain.

  4. 4

    How did Antonio Gramsci explain working-class acceptance of capitalism?

    Model answer

    Gramsci argued that the ruling class holds power in Western societies through hegemony, winning consent in schools, churches, media and civil society rather than by force alone. Overthrowing capitalism therefore requires a long struggle over ideas before any assault on the state.

  5. 5

    Summarise Karl Popper's criticism of Marx's method.

    Model answer

    Popper attacked what he called historicism, the belief that history follows discoverable laws that allow the future to be predicted. Popper argued that Marxist predictions were repeatedly rescued by auxiliary explanations when they failed, which made the theory unfalsifiable rather than scientific.

  6. 6

    State Max Weber's challenge to the materialist account of history.

    Model answer

    Weber argued that religious ideas contributed to the rise of capitalism rather than merely reflecting economic conditions. Weber also argued that stratification involves status and party as well as class, so class cannot explain everything.

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