The Communist Manifesto: Students of the World Unite

Today, three students from the Bard Sequence program discuss Marx and Engels' seminal text: The Communist Manifesto. 

Anderson Morocho is from Orange High School in Orange, NJ. Dominick Cruz attends Bronx Envision Academy in Bronx, NY. David Ixcuna hails from Plainfield High School in Plainfield, NJ. 

Transcript

Matt
All fixed, fast, frozen relations with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions are swept away. All new formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned. And man at last is compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind.

Welcome to the Bard Sequence Seminar podcast. Today, it's the Communist Manifesto. 

I'm Matt Park, Director of the Bard Sequence, and today I'll be your friendly moderator. And I'm joined by Dominick Cruz, Anderson Morocho, and David Ixcuna. David, can you start by briefly introducing yourself and letting us know what school you are currently attending?

David Ixcuna 
Good evening, my name is David Ixcuna and I am from Plainfield High School in Plainfield, New Jersey.

Matt 
Thank you, David. Dominick?

Dominick Cruz 
Good evening, my name is Dominick Cruz and I am part of Bronx Envision Academy in Bronx, New York.

Matt 
Thank you, Dominick. And Anderson?

Anderson Morocho 
My name is Anderson and I go to Orange High School in Orange, NJ. 

Matt 
Great. Thank you, Anderson. Thanks, everyone. 

So full disclaimer, we are not here as experts and we are not here to have the final say on the Communist Manifesto. Instead, we are going to talk about what the Communist Manifesto is to us. We are going to ground our readings and evidence from the text, but if we do a decent job, you should be walking away with this with more questions than answers.

And we're going to start with one more round of introductions, this time to the text itself. What, if anything, had you heard about the Communist Manifesto or about communism or Karl Marx before reading this text? How were these original thoughts either confirmed or refuted by your reading of the text? And if you'd heard nothing about this at all, if you knew nothing about the manifesto or communism, tell the story about how you met this text and what you think about it.

Dominick
So for me, I had heard about the Communist Manifesto in my US history class. I had an idea of what it was in my head. And to me, it was like a guidebook to communism and like, in a sense, its rules or its followings. After reading the book, my idea was somewhat confirmed as the manifesto to me, held ideas on how society has been ran and also found that the Communist Manifesto is what I considered to still be the same guidebook as to party as well as how other governments and other countries saw communism and the reality of what communism is and its other views.

David 
Same as Dominic, I also knew a little bit about it because of my US history class, but I didn't know how much of it was like a guidebook and going into this, like while reading it, I was able to see why these ideas were spread and how stuff like the Russian Revolution occurred as people began to realize that

their kind of government wasn't functioning well.

Matt 
Great, thank you David and Anderson.

Anderson
Okay, so my opinion, before I read the Communist Manifesto, I thought that it was actually associated with war... It was like a complaint against the regime of the United States. In my history class, knew that Karl Marx was actually a revolutionary thinker and someone who protected the rights of people.

But after reading the actual communism text in my Bard seminar, I was surprised at how expressive it is, like, Marx is direct and clear when he critiques how the system is like, how capitalism exploits the working class, and how the capitalist system is like, kinda bad in his opinion.

Matt 
So one thing that's coming across here is you all have kind of heard of it before, mostly from US history class, if not from other things. So I'm gonna throw it open to everyone and hopefully you guys can kind of talk to each other about this. How is it different covering it in, say, US history versus reading the actual manifesto in seminar? What are some of the differences there in terms of what you expected or what you heard from history versus the actual reading of the text itself? 

Dominick 
I would say that in US history, it was really brushed over. Communism is just a short part of what I learned. And we never really went in depth as to what it was. was just, this country wants communism, the US didn't want communism. So we had to fight a war so that we didn't have communism because it was apparently a bad thing. But one thing that I realized about one, education in the US and two, education in general is that every different country is going to have a different story based on their situation. So for us, it was a war that we won because communism was supposed to be bad, but it was only bad to us because of our society and the kind of society that we had. But then in other countries, communism wasn't such a bad thing. It was like actually supportive because, at that time, their society and their political views weren't really the best. So communism was there to fix that and like, you know, give them something better. So that's like the realization I had that for us, yeah, it could have been a bad thing at the time, but in other places it was explained differently and it was a different story that was told compared to what we are learning in US history.

David 
I also agree with Dominic that it was kind of brushed over because a lot of it was that communism is bad and that it should be contained, shouldn't be spread out in the world and like things like the Red Scare were happening, but when reading the actual manifesto there were actually some points that I was able to like sort of agree with like the top elites should not be able to lead the majority which are the proletarians and that's not something that like Red Scare would cover and stuff like that was able to be more solidified if he actually read the Communist Manifesto.

Dominick
I would say I agree, like there are a lot of things in the manifesto where I would agree. And I feel like in my head, I would sometimes think like if communism were a thing right now, would that be better for the US because of all the negative things happening? So yeah, like how you said, I would agree with a lot of things in the manifesto.

Matt 
Yeah, so we're definitely going to get into that, right, and we do have a prompt at the end, which is basically, you know, if communism were to be enacted in the way Marx wants it to be, right, would the world be better or worse? So let's hold off on some of that, right? Let's hold off on the better or worse question. We can definitely talk about it. 

Both of you mentioned kind of perspective, right? And from our perspective, it might have been this, but from other folks, you know, perspective that was different. That's kind of interesting. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about this idea of perspective and from whose perspective is the manifesto written, right? Is it the perspective of Karl Marx? Is it the proletariat? Who is it meant to speak for? Who is it meant to be speaking there? And then some of the different ways of viewing it, different perspectives you can use to look at it.

David 
Well, I think it's from the perspective of Marx speaking from like an outsider looking into what people are feeling like what the proletariats are are dealing with and basically trying to encourage them that their system isn't working that they should do something about their system that it is flawed and Communism could be a way to actually get them to gain this power over the bourgeoisie

Anderson 
I have the same idea. I feel like it is in the perspective of Marx. He was like a thinker who liked to share his ideas. He was talking for the society. He was talking for the proletariat. He wanted to help them to get out from the control of the bourgeoisie.

Dominick
I would argue that he's writing in three different perspectives. So his own outside perspective, also from the proletariat's perspective, but also as a leader, because for you to be able to see what's wrong, you have to have one of two different perspectives. One, an outside view. You have to be able to be in the outside to understand, ok, that's what's happening between these two.

But also you have to be in the party that's being oppressed for you to understand like, oh, this this isn't working for me. But I also say that he's writing from a leader's point of view because he states all the things that should be like, it should be this way. It should be that way. And the only way it can be, he can be like somewhat accurate in what he's saying is if he's thinking in the leader's perspective as, how are these things going to work? How are we gonna enforce this rule or this law or whatever, or how are we gonna make sure that everyone gets affordable housing or like everything's equal to everyone. So I would argue he's writing from like all three perspectives in his understanding.

Matt 
Do you all feel that Marx is within his rights to write from the perspective of the proletariat? He is a he is a person who's saying I have the outline, I have the blueprint. This is how we need to do it. And he's speaking for the proletariat, which he says is the majority of people. But the majority of people who may not have read all the books that he's read, and they may not have the same vocabulary, right? They they may not be able to write a manifesto in the way that he has. So, what is it that grants someone the ability to speak on behalf of someone else, to speak on behalf of a great mass of people, right? If the proletariat is the majority, what right does someone like Marx have to speak for them or on behalf of them? And how do we judge when someone has that right versus when someone doesn't have the right to speak for a group of people?

Dominick 
I would say for someone to have the right to speak for someone, they have to either have been there with those people. One, be in the same position as them at some point, but also at the same exact time as them. So for example, if two people were in poverty at the same exact time, but one of them made it out before the other one, then I would say that person has the ability or like the right to be like, okay, this is what we need.

But if it was someone, let's say people from two different generations, like an older generation or younger generation, and they came out of poverty when they were in their generation, I don't feel like they have the right to say, oh, this new generation needs this because it's two different time periods where they're growing with different, not necessarily different problems, but everything that they had to do to get out of their poverty is different from what this new generation has to do to get out of their poverty. So I feel like for them, for someone to be able to say, this is what they need, they have to be in the same position as them and understand what they did to get out of that position as well as what could happen for them. 

And for Marx, I'm not too sure on his like life in the sense like what he went through. Like if he was someone who was in poverty or like was in the situation where he was the proletariat and then he became someone who can you know speak on everyone's behalf I'm not too sure about what he went through so I'm not sure if he really has the power to say but based off of what he does say it makes sense to me as to like where he's coming from and i feel like what he's saying does vouch for the proletariat in a good, in a positive way.

David
I also agree with Dominic that experience does go a long way because Marx might not know what the proletariats are actually going through. Maybe the proletariats had the idea of this kind of revolution, but maybe due to factors like threats or some other factor, they might not be encouraged to go through the revolution. So, I feel like Marx isn't really in that great position, but he was, I believe, like involved in political articles during his time and he was a kind of, I think he was exiled as well, and I think his experience with different political parties all over the world might have given him some ideas over what a revolution could look like.


Matt 
So let's keep getting into it. At this point, I'm going to ask you all for your unique take on the text. What do you think about this text? What matters about it to you? When you read this text, what are your big takeaways? What are the most important things that you get from this text? Again, let's hold off a bit on the discussion or debate about communism versus capitalism, whether one system is better or worse. We'll get into that later. But just tell me, what's your takeaways from this text? What moved you about it? Why does it matter to you?

Dominick
I'll start it off one specific part of the text that mattered to me was on page 9 and the stated "Freeman and slave patrician and plebeian lord and serf guild master and journeyman oppressor and oppressed stood in constant opposition to one another carried on an uninterrupted now hidden now open fight. A fight that each time ended either in revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the common ruin of contending classes." 

This part specifically matters to me because of the many connections I can make to this and how specific parts each like gave me a better understanding of what the goal of communism was. The first part of the sentence, it shows different examples of bourgeoisie and the proletarians. When the example of slave and master arose, like the first one, it made me think back on what I learned about slavery, as well as I connected it to when I read Kindred in Bard. 

I thought about how the slaves were treated, like how they were used for tools as work and received nothing out of it except more labor. And a quote in Kindred that I'm not too sure of what exactly it was, but it was somewhere along the lines that said, if you kill yourself today, they'll expect it out of you every single day. This shows how, just shows how aware the slaves were of just how bad things were for them and how they could not do it. They could not do much except protect themselves to that little extent in the sense like they know what they should and shouldn't do to make it even just a tiny bit easier on themselves. 

As well as the example of Guild Master and Journeyman, it reminded me of something completely outside of this, but I watch anime on my free time and a lot of the anime would show that same like relationship. So it would be a guild master and someone who does jobs for them. So what the guild master would do was post jobs for the journeyman to take and they would send them out to do those jobs. And oftentimes the jobs were very like violent and deadly. So they would like, they're risking their lives to do this job and the guild masters never did anything to protect them. They just continued to send out more journeymen on the jobs. 

This connects to how civilization is now, but in a completely different way. So the owners of factories or businesses in general, they don't do the manual labor to make the business prosper. They don't go into the field and do the work themselves to risk their lives inside the factories, but they hire people who will risk their lives. And those same workers do not get the protection they need from the boss. So they're out here like working hours on end while the boss is just in their office, you know, relaxing. Granted, some of them do the paperwork and stuff like that, but they're not there risking their lives or like their mental health and stuff like that, where they could easily lose that. And they're being protected from it, while the workers aren't. 

This also made me realize how the same relationship has been going on for generations and many eras and how it's true that the only way it can change is if whoever's leading is replaced, as in the working class becomes the bosses or the bosses themselves decide to punish the working class because their revolution didn't work. This also connects to what is going on currently in the sense of politics. So if we don't gain control, being we being the lower class citizens, the working class and the bougie being, you know, Trump and the rich people who are on his side, if we don't gain control over the politics, then we're gonna basically have everything going to ruin and destroy us because we failed to overcome their control.

Matt 
Okay, you watching some isekai? Is that what we got?

Dominick 
Yeah, that's a lot of what I watch often.

Matt 
So me too, me too. I watch a good amount of anime myself and I like a good isekai. The guild stuff is always a lot of fun. Not to take away from the seriousness of your comments there, but I did want to acknowledge, tip my hat to a fellow man of culture.

Dominick
Thank you.

Matt                                                                                                          David, what's your take on the text?

David 
What really struck me lot about this is that it's a lot about like class antagonisms like you have the lower class and then like the higher class and it's starting to be something that's occurring a lot in today's world, like the gap between the high wealthy and like the poorest, the gap is expanding and it really helps to explain how like there should be something that the proletariat should do considering that they make up the large majority of the population and the fact that they are being abused and not given the same rights as the wealthy. It really hurts society as a whole because the wealthy are abusing from the lower class and that there really isn't this sort of like connection between these two classes in which that they could work together to create the society in which the wealthy would help the poor because the poor are already helping the rich.

Anderson 
So, what does actually matter to me is it's a small passage that says, "All that is solid melts into the air."  In my opinion, it's meaning critiques all capitalism breaks and disrobes traditions and destroys communities. Actually in capitalism every relationship, relationship or friendship is literally reduced to market relations and just business. And that's all like actually what I have.

Matt
Great, thank you Anderson and David. So I just have one two-part follow-up question. So a lot of what you all were talking about there was about class, right? And Marx has this idea that all history is the history of class relations. So if you look at the means of production, who owns it and who doesn't? What are the classes in that society? I'm curious what you think about that idea of history. Can history be reduced to class relations? Is that really... When you're studying history, is the most important thing to look at class? Is it who has the means of production and who doesn't? Who has the wealth and who doesn't? Do you think that that is the driver of history, as Marx says that is? 

And then my second question is more personal. Have any of you worked? Have you worked a job? Have you worked jobs? And I'm curious, you know, if you have worked a job, does that make you think differently about the manifesto and when Marx is talking about class and workers and owners and who has and who does not have?

Dominick
So I don't think that class necessarily drives history, but I also think that it really depends on what time in history you're looking at. So if you're looking at like prehistoric when it was like cavemen, for example, they didn't really have class. They just had, these are the hunters, these are the gatherers, so and so, and they're all working together because they all need to survive. But then once we start bringing in class, like in Greece and all that like Roman era and stuff like that they had class to like lead each other. So like there was the king who led the country to make sure that they can like defend their themselves against other countries so that's how they use class but nowadays class is more like, okay this person has money this person doesn't, they need this we have that so like let's give it to them, but back then it didn't really matter the class it was just or like that wasn't really leading the relationships of like what was going on in the sense like oh this person has power this person doesn't. They weren't belittled as much because everyone had value in a sense yes there was still like tyranny and stuff like that but you know it didn't really lead the the research at least in my opinion I could be wrong.

For the second question, I have worked, but the only thing is I've worked in different environments in the sense that it's not where I'm just going out looking for a job. I've always had some sort of connection or a job that was given to me. So I've worked with SYP (New York Summer Youth Employment) and there I'm protected now because it's like I'm a student and they're like giving me the job. It's not like I'm going out and looking for it. 

So what I feel the difference in that is that if I'm going out for a job, it's not like I know the person. They can easily do whatever they want to me. SYP, for example, they're going to protect the students because that's their whole idea, empowering the students and giving them what they need to be better in the future, as well as working with my friend. A friend of mine isn't going to like backstab me and treat me horribly while I'm working for them because we're closer. So I feel like my work experience doesn't really speak for what there really is because of those connections. So I can't really say that I've like felt the same thing that I've seen in history. Like, yeah, like the workers are treated horribly. There's no like protection or anything. So I can't really speak on that.

David 
I'm going to take the other side and sort of disagree, well no, sort of agree that history is ran by, is pushed by class, because if you look throughout United States history, you're going to see that there's always someone on top and someone at the bottom, that there's always this fight between these two over the fact that there shouldn't be this division over class.

Native Americans and the English. The Native Americans were seen as like the lower class and the English as the top class because The English had better resources, they had better technology, but there were constant fights over them because the English weren't supposed to be in Native American land. So it's like this fight is occurring because they can't agree with each other. But let's say they were able to agree on like buying land, purchasing land, then they would be better off working together. 

And if we go on to later United States history in the progressive era and the comparing it to the Gilded Age, there's a lot of the workers being abused by the robber barons and how it was later fixed in the progressive era. And I see the progressive era as like a moment where the higher class was actually not to the same level, but closer, closing the gap between the wealthy and the workers from the Gilded Age because in the Gilded Age the workers were being treated poorly, getting horrible wages, putting in dangerous positions, and the wealthy were just getting wealthy and wealthy. And even today, there are many debates over these major corporations increasing their prices to increase the profits that these owners get, while not changing the wages of the workers despite everything in costs going up. 

And on work experience, I haven't gotten in the outside world work, only internal family work. I'd go work with my cousins sometimes. They do party stuff. And I haven't really seen anything in my experience of other people being abused, like wages or being mistreated. So I can't really speak on that.

Matt 
Thanks, David. Anderson, anything from your perspective? Have you held a job?

Anderson
Yeah, so I actually have held a job and I work as a barber now. And in my experience, what I have to do is I have to pay for the chair. It's like, I will add to the numbers of it, like it's 200. And depending on how many people like comes to get his hair done, I get like 60 % of it. So I feel like it actually like is affecting me because the owner is actually getting richer and I'm just getting less money than I should have, you know? So I feel like it's like it connects with what we're saying right now.

Matt
So the person that owns the chair, right, or the building that the chair is situated in, right, that's capital. They own that, and that allows them to take a cut, right, from your labor, right? Your labor is the actual cutting of the hair, but they get profit from that.

Thank you all. Let's move on for close reading. So in this one, I asked everyone to pick a passage from the text, read or summarize it if it's too long to read it, and tell us what you take away from it. 

David
Mine is on page 83 of my version. It says, "In bourgeoisie society, capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality. And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeoisie, abolition of individuality and freedom."

 And basically what I'm getting from this is that the bourgeoisie in an attempt to get like the proletariats to comply they're basically saying that by abolishing the bourgeoisie or like the top class you're losing yourself or you're losing society you won't be free anymore you won't have this society to run off because the bourgeoisie they owned the property that you work on and without it you won't have any property to work on. won't have any work. And it matters because it shows that the bourgeoisie is like manipulating the proletariats to be understanding of why the bourgeoisie should be in place.

Matt 
Thank you, David. Dominic?

Dominick
For my quote, it is on page eight, and it says, "It is high time that communists should openly face the world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the specter of communism with a manifesto of the party itself." 

The reason I chose this was because to me, it matters in the sense that communists are taking a stand for themselves. They chose not only to let their actions speak for who they are, also their manifesto. The way it is written is in a way to enforce and empower themselves. When reading the lines published their views, their aims, their tendencies, it makes me think of themselves advocating and telling their own truth. They're saying, this is who we are, regardless of your view on us or your speculations or your theories, everything written here is who we are and what we want so that it is not confused to anyone else. I see this as powerful and it makes me think of a politician or a leader who decides to speak openly on what their goal is so that their words and actions cannot be manipulated by opposing parties or anyone against them. 

And I can also connect it to like our mayor that we're electing here in New York, like one of the mayoral election. I don't know. I'm not really big on politics, I've just been seeing a few videos, but there's this Muslim American, I think. And there was a few videos that I was watching and the way that he would speak is he's saying the exact things that he wants. Even when he's being asked questions that have no meaning towards whatever his goals are. I think the question was like, oh, are you ever going to visit Israel? And he's like, I don't have any intention in visiting Israel because what I want to do is here in New York. I'm focused on New York. And they kept pressuring him with questions like, oh, What about something else,  somewhere else, just to see his like his own views. But he stood on like his ground saying, this is what I want. This is who I am. And I kind of made that connection because that's kind of that's the same thing that was being done with the manifesto. They're saying this is who we are. This is what we stand for. This is what we're going to do. But these are like what we're trying to do to make our our world, not the world, but their world of the proletariat, I would say better for them.

And I also feel that it's like, it's in a sense, their first step in showing their identity to the world because they're saying, okay, this is who we are. This is what we want. And they're showing it to everyone. And they're like, okay, whatever you're seeing, whatever you're doing, this is what it is. You know, don't confuse it with anything else. This is what we're trying to do. If you're going to join us, if you're going to come support us, now you know what we stand for. If you're going to come like opposing us, you already know what we stand for, we're still gonna keep going for it.

Matt 
Well, all of that might be true or maybe not. It's time for believing and doubting. So I asked everyone to find a passage from the manifesto that could be both believed and doubted and just kind of think through both sides here. 

There are few texts in history which have really passionate believers and really, really passionate doubters as well as the Communist Manifesto. It is not a text where people tend to kind of be neutral about it. They tend to either really believe or really doubt a lot of the aspects of what Marx has said. So this text makes for a really good exercise in terms of both believing and doubting the same statement. 

So let's get into it. What is a statement from the manifesto that can be both believed and doubted and kind of talk us through how you can argue both sides of that.

Anderson 
So I'll go first. So the passage that I chose is the, "The Proletarians have nothing to lose, but their chains. They have a world to win, working men of all countries unite." 

So I believe that this quote inspires freedom and speaks directly to the power of people and says to them to be like solidarity. This quote is actually tries to call the workers who are often being exploited by the capitalist system. It's trying to make them come together and challenge the system of the capitalism that benefits only a few people. 

Actually, Marx says that the Proletarians have nothing to lose so they can unite and fight back over a world where the wealth inequality is growing. Marx describes the working class as a people who can make a change by themselves and bring down an unfair order. 

And like in the case of doubting, I feel like Marx is like idealistic. He's not actually thinking about others. Like he's not actually thinking about what will people think. Because people cannot like simply unite and unite different cultures, different ideologies, and beliefs because we know that in history it didn't work. Like in history like putting evidence, like some like cases in war where people is not like actually like uniting to end war because they're not like working together and adding to this I don't think like every worker feels oppressed or actually sees revolution as a solution because they think that they can do something else to fix their problems and get you there.

Matt 
Great, thank you, Anderson. David, do want to pick up?

David 
The passage that I chose says, "In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end."

And, I believe that this part is true because if we were to fix, like, the root of the problem, which is the exploitation of people, then there wouldn't be any antagonisms in class. But also, if one revolution were to happen in one place, it would encourage revolutions all over the place, seeing their success. If they succeed in one place, then they'll be also encouraged to expand themselves. So if they're just a small group, and like, let's say a small town, and they see success in finding a revolution, then they'll be able to put that to a higher level, maybe the state or even the country put it down under a revolution. 

But where I doubt it is where I see if it's fails, we can see the worsening of the exploitation, whether that be like through the retaliations of the elite class, or maybe they see it as like a threat. So they bring down all these revolutions and strengthen their like, the bourgeoisie strengthens their opposition to the proletariats. And another reason why I see if the exploitation were to end in one area, then it would also weaken the groups, demotivate them, seeing like basically telling them that this isn't going to work.

Matt 
Dominick?

Dominick
Before I make my statement, I kind of want to disagree with a little bit of what David said. So when you were saying that revolutions in one place are going to bring up another revolution in another place, I disagree with that because that's not always the case. For example, when it was the U.S. was divided between the South and the North, when the South was a slave territory and then the North was like more free, in a slave's perspective, not that I was a slave and not that I know what they were thinking, but the way I see it from their perspective, yes, there's hope because in the North it's free so they can hope in the South that is going to become free. But, I don't think that gave rise to revolution in the same way that, you know, it could have. And granted there were slaves that were still trying to escape and, you know, go to the North to be safe.

I don't feel like it was big enough to change everything. So I understand, like, yes, one thing could, you know, inspire other people. But I would also argue that it's really hard to do that, to give that inspiration, because if one side is so set on their ways and like how things are, if it's so deeply rooted, regardless of what some, what other action there is somewhere else in the world it's not really going to cause anything anywhere else. 

I feel like there's a fine line between revolutions, bringing up other revolutions and not bringing up revolutions. And then to my quote, I went on page 11 and the quote says, "The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to the reverend and all. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, and the man of science into its paid wage labor."

I believe this because in our society, everything is based on if it can continue to sell. For example, medicine and treatment in hospitals. The way a hospital works is if people continue coming to the hospital for help, for support. If a doctor healed a patient from what they're suffering from, then the patient is no longer going to come to the hospital. For the hospital to continue to benefit from the patients, the doctors medicine has to support them, but also be reduced to where it does not fully cure them and it could continue to harm them and the patient can continue to return. This made the doctor rather a businessman rather than, you know, someone to support people because they're, they're focused on if they could continue to so-and-so help people. But they're not really trying to help people. Now they're just trying to continue to say, oh yeah, we do help people and bring in that money. 

But I also doubt this because if the doctors cured every illness, then there will no longer be a need for them. Same as the poet, if his job were completed, there will no longer be a need for a poet. If scientists were to continue developing our technology, then there will no longer be any need to develop like after a certain time. So it's like, we can only get so far with what we need and what we have. And it's similar to the creation of AI. Humans will no longer need to do things since AI will take over all of our jobs and every necessary labor for us to survive and for everything that we're interested in. 

For example, I connected this to a film called Wall-E and humans in that movie, humans became dependent on technology and no longer had the freedom of will. They no longer had to make decisions or work towards something. In a sense, that's how we would become, just like vegetables in a world ran by computers and codes, thus destroying the importance of human life. Since there's no need to make decisions, there's no need to work towards a goal and like continue to live and, you know, look towards something, then the value of life is like, there's no real value in it. There's no importance of a human existing if we're not really doing anything. Same as an animal. For animals, they continue to survive and just, you know, exist. Because, well, we don't really know what's on their minds, but their goal really is to exist. If they don't have to exist anymore, then it's like, they don't have to continue to try and survive. Everything is just given to them. They really don't have a purpose. that's where I disagree to that.

Matt
AI is definitely an interesting topic. Marx certainly had a lot to say about technology and labor and how those things interact. And in Marx's day, he's talking about the early factory system and how factory labor changes human beings because they now become part of that factory machine. And AI certainly in the future looks like it's going to displace a lot of workers. And so instead of exploited workers working terrible jobs, we may have a different future in which what jobs are even available and what does that look like, right? And so instead of Anderson being exploited by the person that owns the barber shop and is taking a cut of his labor, what happens if the Android is cutting hair, right? There's some kind of hair cutting machine that you sit down and you tell it what you want and it's like, I got you. 

And it's able to do that. Or me, mean, you know, certainly an AI could host a podcast and, you know, one day they will probably be able to teach, right? And then what do the teachers do? That's a whole really kind of interesting, you know, of worms to tackle there, what that's going to look like.

Dominick
I would also, I had a conversation with a teacher of mine about baseball, how there's all these sensors and cameras. And he had told me that in baseball in general, that there has been like a lot of like debate whether the cameras should be used, like for playback to see if like what was in the play. And his argument was that having all that technology in a sense takes away the human aspect of the sport. Like there's no room for failure because of the robots. They're going to, in a sense, perfect everything. So I was arguing to him, like, there should be a limit on to how much technology there is. Because like he said, there should be that human aspect. Like there should be mistakes. Like how you mentioned, if there was a robot to do our hair, it's like, there's no need to really tell them what we want because they're just going to do it for us because they know what we want. And it's like, so-and-so perfect because that's what they're programmed to do. But a real barber, for example, they can mess up and you're like, they messed up. This is a human of them. You know, they're allowed to mess up. Same in the baseball. They're allowed to, you know, make those mistakes like the referees or the umpires. They're allowed, they call this player, they call that player. 

I had mentioned that I think, like I said, there should be a limit and the cameras are good because the way it works is like, if the umpire says one thing and they do make the mistake and let's say, it's the championship, you know, the very last point that's needed. If there's a mistake made there, it's going to affect everyone. And the loop, the team that could have, you know, potentially been the one that lost in reality, they end up winning because of that human mistake. So I feel like there should be like, a limit to where the technology is used. If it's just used in a sense where it's like is doing everything for us, I don't agree with that, but if it's just limits, like supporting humanity, then yeah, I feel like that is a good thing.

Matt 
Great. David? Anderson? A lot has been said. Anything that you all want to jump in on, reply to, to?

David
Yeah, going into sports as Dominic also did, there's like this sort of debate in soccer over VAR, how involved should virtual assistant referees be in the game, because these small mistakes might not be seen by humans. So if humans were able to see the same replay, they wouldn't call it as a foul. But if it were like a virtual assistant referee, then they would be able to call these very minute fouls that would change the course of the game. So I do agree that there should be a limit on what technology should, where technology should be able to cross the line.

Matt 
Yeah, I mean, that's interesting, right? And again, in Marx's day, was, you know, a machine can do this particular task more precisely than a human can and do it the same every time, you know, assuming it doesn't break down and things like that. What does it look like when that kind of minute precision is required of everyone all the time? Right. People can't do that. People can't hold up under those circumstances. And then what happens to people is really interesting. 

On a side note, I was in England recently and there was a particular chant that they use whenever the VAR was used. And I'm not allowed to say that chant on this podcast or it will definitely be like R rated and I will have to flag it inappropriate comments. So I'm not going to say the chant, but they didn't appreciate it, let me say, when the VAR was used. 

Anderson, any thoughts on your end? Do want to jump in on anything?

Anderson
Yeah, I will actually talk about like what Dominic says about perfection. So I think he's right about what he says that he acknowledges that it should be limited at one point because the mistakes that we do as humans, the small mistakes we do is what a human is, right? Without mistakes, there's a point where we stop being humans if we don't commit like mistakes, if we don't do mistakes, that's not human. We're becoming robots, Like machines. So that's my point about what I think. Without mistakes, we stop being humans, because that's human nature.
That's what we are and what we actually like do because humans are not perfect.

Matt 
Thanks Anderson. And again, Marx basically says this, right? There is an essay in which Marx talks about estranged labor or alienated labor. And he talks about how machine labor and the factory labor system dehumanizes people and you lose your humanity in the process of having to do that kind of labor. Okay, all right, now we have come to it. This is the time to talk about what if...

Marx's vision for communism were to become reality, right? So at the end of the manifesto, Marx and Engels outline a number of steps that should be taken to create a communist society. If those steps were in fact implemented, what do you think would happen? Would the world become a better place, a worse place? Would a virtuous communist society rise or not?

What do you all think would happen if in fact Marx and Engels' outline for communism were to become reality?

Dominick
As someone who's not really, you know, that informed on politics, the little bit that I do know about our current system is that it's not working specifically for like the lower class, proletariat. So I feel like we should have that, like we should have a communistic society, because I feel like that would bring everything to a balance. The way I see it happening would be that like it would be communistic society for let's say 5 to 10 years so that everything could be balanced out and then we could return back to, what's the word, to our current system, whatever the system we are. And the reason I say this is because I feel like it's very unfair the way things are, like the huge gap between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. 

Like it's basically unlivable to be in the proletariat side because all the taxes, the low income that we get, like all those different things, I feel like all of that makes it hard to barely even stay above water. So, how Anderson mentioned earlier, like he gets a 60% cut of what he's making and that's not as much as he needs. And the way I saw it is like, he's only getting enough just to stay above the water. He's not getting enough to become any richer. He's just living day to day in a sense. That's my understanding. So I feel like if we were to be, if it were to be communism, everyone would be equal and that gap would, you know, balance out. Once it's balanced out, then it can be competitive. Now we can be okay. Now that everyone has what they need to become bigger, let's leave it open for people to become bigger. Now if people lose, you know, if they lose what they had, then in a sense that's their fault, I guess, because they weren't able to make more, because everyone started off equally. 

For example, like black history, we were, you know, the whole 70 acres and a mule. We never really got any of that. After slavery ended, all the black Americans were left with, in a sense, nothing to build. They didn't have anything. But all the white people and all the, yeah, all the white people, let's say, and the people who had the money, they were already well off. They didn't really have to focus on building something that they didn't have. They just had to continue what they had. So that's what led to this huge gap. If we all had that same, for example, that 70 acres of the mule, like everyone started with that. Anyone could build whatever kind of house they want. They could do this, do whatever. And they're making their own benefit, but everyone had their own ideas. So I feel like we should, in a sense, go into having a communist society. then, and then after a while, like we could switch back to like a competitive economy where we're all doing what we want, then it'll be more fair and people will have more of a chance to become bigger than what they already have compared to now.

David
The 10 points that Marx and Engels have in the manifesto Something really stuck out to me is that there are like a couple of points that are actually in our society now, like the graduated income tax and the free education of our children in public schools. And I feel like if we were to use these other points as well, maybe we could be a more fairer society in a way. The way that I see communism now is that it's taking these points but like not really putting them to the way that I see Marxism meant.

So you have like a dictator in like Russia, Putin. That's not what Marx really wanted. He wanted to have like a central government, but also like have the proletariats be equal to each other. And if we were to do this, in a way that Marx really wanted to, then maybe we could be a society in which we could all have like the same amount of wealth, same amount of benefits, but also have this opportunity to like merit. Like if we have the skills, then maybe we should be able to increase our wealth just slightly. But it becomes a problem when you have like, when you're increasing your wealth and taking advantage of others.

There's this quote that... let me find it...  It says, "All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation under which the laborer lives merely to increase capital and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it. In bourgeoisie society, living labor is but a means to increase accumulated labor. In communist society, accumulated labor is but a means to widen to enrich to promote the existence of the laborer."  So, what a communist society wants to do is to get rid of the laborers not increasing their wealth in a way.

Matt 
Thanks David. Anderson?

Anderson
So yeah, my opinion, so if society like implemented the all 10 points of Marx, I would say then first of all, society will be in chaos and like in the chaos because people will not be able to like agree with it because like the more like there's like one point where it says that the more rich you get, the more taxes you pay.

And like people is always trying to find like a breakpoint like a gap in the system and I feel like people will be like trying to disobey the law and try to like do something so they can like break the law.

Matt 
Meaning the rich have gotten really, really good at evading taxes. It's actually not that easy to tax people who have a lot of money. It's a lot easier to tax people who don't have much money, but the more money that you have, the harder it is actually to tax that people seems to be. Anderson, is that what you're getting at there? 

Anderson 
Yes.

Matt 
So Anderson is saying, whether it's a good idea or not, it seems hard to implement. It seems like it's not going to be able to actually be implemented. I'm wondering, David and Dominic, what do you think about that idea?

Dominick
I kind of agree that it would be hard to, you know, implement that. That's kind of why I was mentioning that it would be for a time period because the same way, reconstruction era, how it took a certain amount of time to, you know, make things better. And even though it like, it was very progressive at the time, like, especially for black people, giving them all the support they need, but also just in general, how we got all of our amendments, I think that was the same time, but our amendments and like all the labor laws, all that stuff, because of how much time they had, they were able to slowly implement these things. But if, like I said, had gone, if we try to, you know, go into communism right now, it would take a while for it to 1: be implemented and be the norm, but also 2: for it to be, to work.

Like it would take a certain amount of time for it to even work. So yeah, that's why I had mentioned like it would be like this for a while before we would go back to whatever other, you know, kind of society we want to be. That's like not just better for people to be fair, but also better for like the continuation of like development, you know?

Matt 

So David, you did bring up the point that there are some things in those 10 points of the manifesto that have actually been created. To you, is that evidence that this is doable or do you feel or do you agree that it would actually be very difficult to implement these 10 points in total? Do you feel that society could create something like communism in the way that Marx envisions it?

David 
I think that it could not. We can't create this kind of society because a lot of it is very restricting. You're restricting a lot of freedoms. You're restricting what America stands for, which is you compete, competition, and capitalism. 

And so another thing is greed. If you were to implement all of these points, there's always going to be a group of people that
want to go ahead of people. They have this vision to be better than people and this is if this group continues to grow then they would be able to basically create their own revolution that would go against the the points of their society. So I feel like if you were to do this communist society then there should be other measures put in place to prevent these sort of types, but eventually it's going to lead to that point.

Anderson 
I actually agree with him because actually greed is a big reason why we cannot like progress as a society. Because who does not want to be better than others? Like... I actually want to be better than others. I actually want to be better than my friends and everyone. So I feel like yeah, everyone has like that mindset like it's like a human nature to think like that. It's like human nature and greed is like the reason why we cannot like progress as a society.

Matt 
That's really interesting. For Marx, I think, in the manifesto, Marx argues that the evils of society are specifically brought about by capitalism, right? Our current economic system, which encourages greed and competition. What I'm hearing from you all is you seem to be arguing that that is not necessarily, although capitalism may do that, that that is human nature, right? it is human nature, regardless of the system, to be greedy, to want more than others to seek power and things like that. Is that what you're saying and do you kind of, where do you fall? Do you agree more with Marx that our current society is really about capitalism driving greed? Or is it human nature that's driving greed? Is it both? Where do you land on that?

Dominick
I want to say it's a mixture of both but more towards capitalism because I use this analogy a lot where, for example, racism, it's something that's learned. So if you look at how like most people are, I'm not going to say all, but if you look at two little kids, for example, one's black, one's white, they typically don't really care about their skin color or their race, or like if one has more than the other, until they learn about it. Like their parents tell them, you can't hang out with so-and-so because they're this or that. That's when racism would continue to grow. But if you look at it from like people who were, the kids who were just born, they don't really care about those like that. 

So, same way with greed. Most kids, they're fine with sharing their things until, you know, they're shown greed like they see this person has everything this person doesn't typically they will you know play with each other, so over time that grows into you know who they become as a person same with capitalism because it's something that's the norm and it's continuously being shown i feel like that's where greed like really develops like that's where it comes from the most so yeah i feel i would say it's possible if we ruled out that greed.

And the way that that could happen was in the future. So the same way I was saying like the analogy with the kids, if we were to implement all these new things for the new generations, not for the current generations. So it would have to be something that starts small and like builds in its own like part of the world, I guess, you know, like isolated and then it continues to grow from there. Not something that's changed for everything that's going on right now. We don't change our whole society, we just make a new society, if that makes sense. I feel like that's one way that we could make it work.

David 
The way that I see it is that it's also a mixture between the system of capitalism and human nature. Capitalism is basically encouraging people to express their human nature of wanting to be better than others. You see all of these wealthy people with amazing cars or other luxuries that catches your eye. And as you grow up, see all these people with all these luxuries, you want to be like them. And that's what capitalism is encouraging if you make more money, you're going to be able to afford all of these and I also agree that if you were to restrict these I have an early eight earlier age then you could grow up and have all of these luxuries be less appealing to you and so you'd be in society not to be better than others, just to contribute to society, sort of.

Matt 
And so that brings us to our final prompt. Bard Sequence Seminar was conceived of as a sequence of texts that would take students on an intellectual journey. So what other texts would you pair with the Communist Manifesto and what journey would you like to take your readers on by putting these different texts together?

Dominick
I would put this text next to The Prince by Nicholas Machiavelli, think. I was actually confusing the two texts together at some point when I was trying to analyze what I was reading and think about evidence. In my head, was putting them together. They were the same text because from what I remember about The Prince, it was basically how to be a leader and how to have like a proper country, how to be the prince or the king. So I feel like when you're talking about the proletariat, overcoming the wealthy and like the bourgeoisie, it's kind of like how do the normal citizens become that prince, become that king to make sure they can have something stable. 

And then it can also, not necessarily be as big as that. It can just be something very middle school. Like, how do you take care of what you have in a sense like, your family, like how do you make sure you're the, like the man in the house of the family, for example, or a woman, whichever. So I would pair those two together because I did it by accident already. So I feel like it's just like, at least in my perspective, it was really easy to connect them together.

Matt
They certainly are two classic texts of philosophy, right? So, and again, you know, the idea behind this prompt is you can really pair anything with another text. There's no rules here. And so if you find a connection or any kind of meaningful dialogue between texts, then that's a great pairing. Anderson, what would you pair with the manifesto?

Anderson 
Okay, so I will pair the Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and also the Black Panther Party, the 10 points. Why? Because in Frankenstein, Shelley shows how the dangers of scientific ambition and how controlling others is bad. So Frankenstein first and when you start the book, Frankenstein wants to dominate how to create humans and wants to dominate that, control the nature of that. Then he ended up creating this creature he's denied freedom and he's denied identity.

And I think that the creature is like born into that world that rejects him and he's not actually like aware of it because he was just created. He was just like born without knowing because he's been like rejected because of how he lived and how he was created. He's condemned to isolation and suffering. He's constantly suffering through the book. And I will say that this tries to highlight the way like some groups were marginalized, marginalized historically. And in the case of the Black Panther Party, it's like a systematic oppression against others, like organized to reclaim the control over the communities and how they expose the fantasy of American freedom by highlighting how it excluded black people, you know.

Matt 
Thank you Anderson and David.

David 
I can connect the man be communist manifesto to Freud's sigma Freud's Civilization and its Discontents. Freud claims that humans are innately aggressive. So it would lead to the question That if we were to be in a communist society... There's since we're innately aggressive We are bound to be aggressive against each other. So this is going to break our bonds, our relationships in civilization and make civilization overall unhappy despite civilization being something that would make all of us happy. And using these two books, I can better explain why these theories were made based on how society treats these people. Freud states that since it's meant to make you feel happy and it doesn't succeed in that, then there should be, using the Communist Manifesto, then there should be this revolution that would create society into something that would actually satisfy your happiness and using these books act as evidence as to why people feel this way as well, based on what they experience as well. And it can help us understand why society is the way it is and what we could do to better fix it, whether that be maybe a revolution or maybe just better laws to fix like some root causes of a huge problem.

Matt 
Thanks, David. That was actually what I had in mind when I asked you all that question about human nature versus the system. Because I mean, that is essentially Sigmund Freud's critique of Marx, right? Is that Marx says the evils are due to capitalism. Freud, however, thinks that it's just baked into our DNA. And we are animals, and we are animals that have evolved with a certain competition and desire to conquer others and things like that. I didn't want to drop Freud if you hadn't read him, but since you read Freud, that actually works really well. Thank you, David. 

All right, folks, that's it. That's a wrap. Thank you so much, David, Anderson, and Dominic. This was incredible. You all did really super well. Lots of credit to all your professors. And you may not know this, but some of your professors will actually be doing the professor version of this podcast. So they will be talking about the Communist Manifesto. 

So that's not happening for about a month, but the professors are gonna take their own shot at it. But you all did incredibly well. It was really, really great. Thank you so much for showing up on a late week night and just hopping on the internet with me to talk about a great and important book.