Nhung Nguyen

The Communist Manifesto is divided into four sections. The first section discussed the theory of the history of the Communist and the relationship between proletarians and bourgeoisie. In the second section, Marx and Engel explained the relationship between the Communists and the proletarians. The next section addresses the flaws in other, previous socialist literature. The final section discusses the relationship between the Communists and other parties.

The manifesto recalled me my student life in Vietnam. This is one of the main school of thoughts, which all Vietnamese students is taught. The concepts of proletarians and bourgeoisie are something that I’ve heard thousands of times. It was somehow linked to my thinking (somewhat bias) toward Western and the capitalism. In many years, capitalism is something very dirty to me. Dirty in the way that, it exploits and pauperizes all the poor groups of the world, including Vietnamese ourselves. Capitalism was something to blame for our situation of poverty and underdeveloped.

The Communist manifesto, seems to me that, was somehow misapplied in many old communist countries. This leads to the collapse of the Soviet Union and Communism system over the world. Or in other words, the countries applying Marxism have overused all the concepts of Marx. They did not distinguish among his valuable insights and false opinions.

However, Marxism today is still valuable in a way that people can use the opinion from Marx to criticize the roles of Breton Wood organizations in the poor countries, particularly the question whether these organizations have been used to exploit the less developed ones. Moreover, Lynch (2015) also argues that Marxism is more fit to the current situation of great economic inequality and the global mobility of capital. It was a great surprised and a little bit confusing for me. Finally, the question of how should I understand the world, take things into considerations and deal with things changed in the life on Earth.

Reference

Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1848). Manifesto of the Communist Party.

Lynch, C. (2015). Stephen Hawking on the Future of Capitalism and Inequality. CounterPunch, New York City