THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO BOOK 1

so if you didn't understand this class, join the club because neither did I. There were a lot of questions posed, I'll try to answer them but no promises.

TO START:

lol

ANYWAY

So we first started out with what surprised us most about communism. Lily (I think?) said that she was surprised he compared serfdom to modern society and said that the serfs were better off.

upon further reflection we decided (or Lily smartly said) that before serfs were sort of humans, sort of viewed as people, but in today's industrial revolution, people were viewed as money and work hours.

Which begs the question, is modern society more oppressive than serfdom? 

Is Marx trying to say that the feudal society was better than what we have now? No. 

He may just be bringing up an example of class struggle to prove his first line (one of the most famous lines I guess) 

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

So, is this true?

I mean for most of human history, civilization wasn't a thing. People were nomadic and they didn't deal with people the way that we deal with people nowadays. so there wasn't really competition between people so MARX YOU'RE WRONG!

It is true that class struggle and status were on a lot of peoples minds because of the Industrial Revolution. Machines were replacing people and workers became equivalent to money. People were worried about the economy. 

SO for Marx to say that history is a economic class struggle would have caught a lot of people's attentions, which is one of the reasons why people liked it so much.

But it is a very big generalization to comprise all of history into one statement that can only be understand with economic terms. History does involve culture, government, etc. But economics were definitely a part of it. 

So what is wrong with giving benefits to the people who do all the work?

which one is marx giving people???? idk

This is where we all got a little hazy... because what benefits are really being given? 

I'm not gonna be happy when I finish this because he doesn't actually give a plan on eliminating classes and giving benefits to the proletariats, he just sort of says that we should. 

My problem was that lowering the rich people doesn't give the poor people anything, it just makes everyone worse. But the response to that is that they are no longer being subjugated or oppressed by an upper class, which I guess is a win. 

Mr. Yarnall posed the rhetorical question, "How would giving the proletariats power make them worse?" 

So I suppose that giving them power would help them out a little. 

Basically,  HOW DO YOU GET RID OF CLASSES?

which posed the next questions:

1. If there are no classes, is there a government? Who is the leader?

2. Does no class system/hierarchy mean that everyone is equal? 

3. If everyone is equal, does that mean everyone's wages are the same?

4. If everyone isn't equal, doesn't that create a new class system? 

AND THERE'S THE FINAL POINT OF LAZINESS AMONG PEOPLE... making everyone of the same class would take away the incentive to work well right? well that is discussed more in the second book.

in fact most of the stuff we talked about will be discussed more in the next couple books. We don't really have a lot of information right now, so we'll revisit this I guess??