Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“At a very simple level, that means one of the pleasures of reading the  Manifesto  is that it’s beautiful. It’s remarkable. Whether one agrees or not with some of its claims and its positions, it is just a joy to read this incantatory prose. Marshall Berman famously really stresses this, and it’s something that even critics of Marx will often allow. This is a remarkable piece of almost apocalyptic literature. If you read it critically, of course, but also generously and thoughtfully, you may gain, as I did, a great deal more out of it politically and intellectually than you might assume if you only think of it as an introductory text.” China Miéville’s stimulating reading of The Manifesto and its authors

If this article is supposed to stress the contradictions of capitalism yet its progress to an ever better world, it is a mediocre attempt. Quoting Marx and Engels is meant to support the bourgeoisie's  violence, not to condemn it. Thus when the author speaks about how progress has come at a cost, he minimises the scope and depth of that cost. He could have added that the existing system with a cost is better than any alternative. The author has ignored too many negative effects from waste to exploitation, from persisting poverty to wars and proxy-wars, to creating the conditions of more wars, from stress, depression, precarity to insecurity, inequality, and stagnating wages, from monopolies to corruption, from the rise of neo-fascists, nationalism, xenophobia, racism and hate crimes, building more borders to persisting slums, oppression of women, child labour and human trafficking, from proliferation of narcissism and indifference to commodification of everything, normalising po...

In a world ridden with a crisis This is not the first time the Financial Times , a leading paper in denfence of the system, writes about Marxist ideas. In order to save the system a few things have to be done, including a warning on inequality and the "excesses of the free market", and co-opting any potential movement that might threaten the existing power relations. In fact, what the bourgeoisie fear most not the "Activism", or even socialism, but the slipping away of their power to the far-right, or worse, to barabrism. Thus comes this reading of the Communist Manifesto Note: You can read the article only once if you don't have a subscription.