For this paper, write your own manifesto. Your manifesto, calling on the workers of the world to unite, should reflect the situation today.
What are you calling on the workers of the world to do? What do you hope to accomplish? Why is your cause different from the one that drove Marx and Engels? Use Marxian methods to construct your case, be a dialectic materialist and use economic determinism as a vehicle.
If you choose to use another methodology to construct your manifesto, define what that is and defend your choice. Your manifesto should be no longer than four, but no shorter than two single spaced pages. Your font should be no larger than 12 points.
Your manifesto will be evaluated based on the content of your argument. The instructor will evaluate how you defined your terms and how you used Marxian deterministic models or some other model of your choice to construct your manifesto.
Remember, one course objective is to make all students enrolled in this class more effective communicators. Style – the correct use of basic English grammar rules – and spelling accounts for 20% of the paper grade.
Perspective
Karl Marx and the idea of a communist manifesto that would change the world burst onto the scene in 1848 because the time was right. The Communists cry to take up arms and right the world’s wrongs made sense to a people who had faced nearly forty years of promises with little change. And the cry for revolution spread across Europe threatening kings and emperors, promising social change that would lead to “the best of times” and democracy. The spirit of liberalism drove Metternich out of Austria and demanded a unification of Italy and Germany along with a cry for recognition from ethnic groups trapped in the old empire.
Perspective, continued
But none of that would come easily, nothing would seem permanent and, while the cry for change was compelling, it also threatened the new bourgeoisie. Old workers who had risen to the middle class wanted no part of spilling blood on the barricades and revolutionary change was quickly abandoned. Let us now take a look at that period and, as we do, think about the current situation in the United States where the cry for change, so compelling in 2008, has sunk into a morass of tea partiers and others terrified that the change will be too quick and too many “new people” will be empowered.
Read: Communist Manifesto
