a network of Canadian socialists

Is Populism a descriptor for someone else’s class politics, an adjective, or is it a noun, a political alternative in and for itself?

The Communist Manifesto is the founding statement of the revolutionary socialist tradition. In it, Engels and Marx set out a political method that emphasizes capitalism's dynamism and volatility; the need to relate to the exploited and oppressed in the struggle for socialism; to differentiate revolutionary socialists from other political alternatives; and to inspire a struggle for a socially just and fully democratic world. In the following essay, we examine how Marx and Engels saw the evolution of the Manifesto and its various uses in the struggle against capitalism in the last 160 years.

The delegates were gripped with immense enthusiasm at the birth of the first workers’ republic in the history of humanity. In the words of American journalist John Reed: “by common impulse we found ourselves on our feet, mumbling together into the smooth unison of the Internationale.” Arise ye workers from your slumbers! Arise ye prisoners of want!

For Marx social class is at the centre of understanding and organizing social change. As interpreted by Lenin, the working class, organized by its politically advanced vanguard, constituted the path toward emancipation and the realization of human potential. Rosa Luxemburg emphasized—among other things—the critical power of the combined force of the working class, engaged in a general strike, in overthrowing capitalism.