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Political Ideas: Marx and Engels, the Communist Manifesto

Private property and the ten measures

  • 3 things to know
  • A2 Unit 2

Overview

Kind of property the Manifesto seeks to abolish, first four of the ten measures proposed in the Manifesto and fifth and sixth measures.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

How do the authors answer the charge that communism abolishes personal earnings?

Key term

What is the Manifesto's answer to the objection that abolishing property will end all activity?

Key term

State the first four of the ten measures proposed in the Manifesto.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    State how Marx and Engels sum up the theory of the communists in a single sentence.

    Model answer

    Marx and Engels state that the theory of the communists may be summed up in the single sentence: abolition of private property. Everything else in the programme follows from that aim.

  2. 2

    Identify the kind of property the Manifesto seeks to abolish.

    Model answer

    Marx and Engels distinguish bourgeois private property, meaning ownership of the means of production that lives by employing others, from personal possessions. Modern bourgeois property is described as the final and most complete expression of production based on class antagonism.

  3. 3

    How do the authors answer the charge that communism abolishes personal earnings?

    Model answer

    Marx and Engels reply that communism deprives no one of the power to appropriate the products of society, and takes away only the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation. Hard-won personal property is not the target.

  4. 4

    What is the Manifesto's answer to the objection that abolishing property will end all activity?

    Model answer

    Marx and Engels reply that on that reasoning bourgeois society should long ago have collapsed from idleness, since those who work in it do not acquire and those who acquire do not work. The objection is dismissed as the tautology that there can be no wage labour where there is no capital.

  5. 5

    What do the authors say about capital as a social power?

    Model answer

    Marx and Engels argue that capital is not a personal but a social power, created by the united action of all members of society. Converting capital into common property therefore changes its social character rather than turning personal property into social property.

  6. 6

    How does the Manifesto answer the charge that communism abolishes the family?

    Model answer

    Marx and Engels reply that the bourgeois family rests on capital and private gain and exists in fully developed form only for the bourgeoisie, while proletarian family life is already destroyed by industry. The authors argue they intend to replace an economic relationship with a human one.

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