Brian Becker: Why You Should Read The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

Dandelion Salad
March 4, 2023

BreakThrough News on Mar 1, 2023

The Communist Manifesto was a short but world-changing text that, despite being written in 1848, is a vital read for anyone who wants a better and more equal society. Brian Becker discusses the importance of the book, the historical context, and what it brought to the world.

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Eat the Rich! by Yanis Iqbal

Eat The Rich

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by Yanis Iqbal
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Aligarh, India
May 15, 2022

The contemporary neoliberal system is fundamentally unjust. It is filled with blood-sucking billionaires whose entire existence of grotesque opulence is structurally predicated on the continual exploitation of the working class – a powerful force in whose hands lie the productive powers of humanity.

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The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx Bookcover

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

Dandelion Salad
Originally posted Oct. 28, 2017

Greatest AudioBooks on Nov 2, 2012

The Communist Manifesto was conceived as an outline of the basic beliefs of the Communist movement. The authors believed that the European Powers were universally afraid of the nascent movement, and were condemning as “communist,” people or activities that did not actually conform to what the Communists believed. This Manifesto, then, became a manual for their beliefs.

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Capitalism and Alienation, by Yanis Iqbal

What is Wage Slavery?

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

by Yanis Iqbal
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Aligarh, India
August 3, 2021

Capitalism is deeply unjust. It is a system under which labour power has itself become a commodity and is bought and sold on the market like any other object of exchange. A condition of neo-slavery like this has been historically presupposed by the concentration of ownership of means of production in the hands of a minority class and the consequent emergence of a propertyless class for whom the sale of their power has been their only source of livelihood.

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Brendan M. Cooney’s Law of Value Series: Part 1: Introduction + Marx Quiz

Brendan M. Cooney's Law of Value Series: Part 1: Introduction + Marx Quiz

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the videos below

Dandelion Salad
Originally published Sept. 23, 2010

Videos no longer available; see Dude, Where Are Your Videos?

Law of Value 1: Intro (Addendum)

brendanmcooney | April 27, 2010

This is a brief Addendum to the Introduction to my Law of Value video series. It gives some advice on how to watch these videos, cautioning to think critically about the way we contextualize information online.

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Who Is Karl Marx, The Critic? by The Anti-Social Socialist

Karl Marx by Robert Diedrichs, 1970. Courtesy WikiCommons

Image by Royal Opera House Covent Garden via Flickr

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” — Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, 1848

“Marx was keenly aware of capitalism’s ability to innovate and adapt. But he also knew that capitalist expansion was not eternally sustainable. And as we witness the denouement of capitalism and the disintegration of globalism, Karl Marx is vindicated as capitalism’s most prescient and important critic.” — Chris Hedges, Left Forum, May 30, 2015

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“Creating Wealth” through Debt: The West’s Finance-Capitalist Road by Michael Hudson

Swimming With the Debt Sharks

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by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Michael Hudson, May 2, 2018
May 7, 2018

Peking University, School of Marxist Studies
May 5-6, 2018

Volumes II and III of Marx’s Capital describe how debt grows exponentially, burdening the economy with carrying charges. This overhead is subjecting today’s Western finance-capitalist economies to austerity, shrinking living standards and capital investment while increasing their cost of living and doing business. That is the main reason why they are losing their export markets and becoming de-industrialized.

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Happy 200th Birthday Karl Marx!

Karl Marx by Robert Diedrichs, 1970. Courtesy WikiCommons

Image by Royal Opera House Covent Garden via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

International May Day 2018

WSWS on May 5, 2018

The 2018 International Online May Day Rally will begin at 5:30 PM EDT on Saturday, May 5. This event is hosted by the International Committee of the Fourth International.

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David Harvey: What is Neoliberalism? + Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason

What is Marxism?

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Dandelion Salad

Democracy At Work on Jan 21, 2018

David Harvey defines Neoliberalism in less than 6 minutes.

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The Not-Radical “Socialist” From Vermont by Paul Street

Bernie Sanders - Painting

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by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street, Oct. 23, 2017
Previously published at Counterpunch, Oct. 20, 2017
October 29, 2017

Time as a Democracy and Socialist Movement Issue

Working-class and pro-working-class socialists and left anarchists have long fought for shorter working hours (with no reductions in pay) for some very good radically democratic reasons. It isn’t just that workers’ everyday lives and collective marketplace and workplace bargaining power are enhanced when they are freed from the scourge of over-work and when working hours are spread more evenly across the workforce. Beyond these real and meaningful gains, rank-and-file socialists and left anarchists have long supported decent working hours so that workers can have enough time to develop tastes and build knowledge and organizations to fight for a world beyond the rule of capitalism, the profit- and accumulation-addicted system that, in Karl Marx’s famous 1848 words, “resolve[s] personal worth into exchange value” and “le[aves] no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment.’”

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The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx Bookcover

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

Greatest AudioBooks on Nov 2, 2012

The Communist Manifesto was conceived as an outline of the basic beliefs of the Communist movement. The authors believed that the European Powers were universally afraid of the nascent movement, and were condemning as “communist,” people or activities that did not actually conform to what the Communists believed. This Manifesto, then, became a manual for their beliefs.

Continue reading

Multidimensional and Complex Nature and Effects of Imperialism On Democracy, Society, Nature, and Human Nature by Fazal Rahman, Ph.D.

THE FACE OF IMPERIALISM

Image via vaticanus

This is an updated version of The Nature and Effects of Imperialism.

by Fazal Rahman, Ph.D.
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Originally published on imperialismandthethirdworld, updated on March 29, 2015
April 1, 2015

“At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force.” Karl Marx. Selected Works, Vol. 1, p. 500. Continue reading

Understanding Marx by William T. Hathaway

what is marxism?

Image by Deepwarren via Flickr

by William T. Hathaway
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Germany
April 7, 2014

Review of Crisis and Change Today
By Peter Knapp and Alan J. Spector

Knapp and Spector have written a superb introduction to Marxist thought, a much-needed one, since reading Marx can be a daunting task. The grand old man’s prose is often ponderous, abstract, and complex, so many readers can’t discern his full meaning. Continue reading

M for Marginalism by Michael Hudson

M

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by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
michael-hudson.com
January 22, 2014

Part M in the .

Malthus, Thomas Robert (1766-1834): British economist and spokesman for its landlord class. His Principles of Political Economy (1820) countered Ricardo’s critique of groundrent by pointing out that landlords spent part of it on hiring coachmen and other servants and buying luxury products (coaches, fine clothes and so forth), thus providing a source of demand for British industry, and part capital improvements to raise farm productivity. Continue reading