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The first, automatic reaction of today's enlightened [[liberal ]] reader to The [[Communist ]] Manifesto is: isn't the [[text ]] simply wrong on so many empirical accounts, with [[regard ]] to the picture it gives of the [[social ]] [[situation]], as well as with regard to the revolutionary perspective it sustains and propagates? Was there ever a [[political ]] manifesto that was more clearly falsified by subsequent historical [[reality]]? Isn't [[The Communist Manifesto]], at best, an exaggerated extrapolation of certain tendencies discernible in the 19th century?

So let us approach The Communist Manifesto from the opposite end: where do we live today, in our [[global ]] "post…" ([[postmodern]], postindustrial) [[society]]? The slogan that is imposing itself more and more is that of "[[globalization]]": the brutal imposition of a [[unified ]] [[world ]] [[market ]] that threatens all local ethnic traditions, including the very [[form ]] of [[Nation]]-[[State]]. And, in this situation, is not the description in The Manifesto of the social impact of the [[bourgeoisie ]] more actual than ever? -

"The bourgeoisie cannot [[exist ]] without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with [[them ]] the [[whole ]] relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of [[existence ]] for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninter rupted [[disturbance ]] of all social [[conditions]], everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. 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 is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his [[real ]] conditions of [[life]], and his relations with his kind.

The [[need ]] of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan [[character ]] to production and con sumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily [[being ]] destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and [[death ]] question for all [[civilized ]] nations, by industries that no longer [[work ]] up indigenous raw [[material]], but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In [[place ]] of the old wants, [[satisfied ]] by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their [[satisfaction ]] the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and [[self]]-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, [[universal ]] interdependence of nations. And as in material, so also in [[intellectual ]] production. The intellectual creations of [[individual ]] nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more [[impossible]], and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world [[literature]]."

Is this not, more than ever, our reality today? [[Think ]] [[about ]] Ericsson phones which are no longer Swedish, about Toyota cars manufactured 60% in the usa, about Hollywood [[culture ]] that pervades the remotest parts of the globe… Yes, this is our reality — on condition that we do not forget to [[supplement ]] this [[image ]] from the manifesto with its inherent [[dialectical ]] opposite, the "spiritualization" of the very material [[process ]] of production. That is to say, on the one hand, [[capitalism ]] entails the radical secularization of social life — it mercilessly tears apart all aura of authentic nobility, sacredness, honour, etc.:

"It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of [[religious ]] fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into [[exchange ]] [[value]], and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable [[freedom ]] — Free Trade. In one [[word]], for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation."

However, the fundamental lesson of the "critique of political [[economy]]" elaborated by the mature [[Marx ]] in the years after The Manifesto is that this reduction of all heavenly chimeras to the brutal [[economic ]] reality generates a spectrality of its own. When Marx describes the mad self-enhancing [[circulation ]] of [[capital]], whose solipsistic path of self-fecundation reaches its apogee in today's meta-reflexive speculations on futures, it is far too simplistic to [[claim ]] that the [[spectre ]] of this self-engendering monster that pursues its path disregarding any [[human ]] or environmental concern is an [[ideological ]] abstraction, and that one should never forget that, behind this abstraction, there are real [[people ]] and [[natural ]] [[objects ]] on whose productive capacities and resources the capital's circulation is based and on which it feeds like a gigantic parasite. The problem is that this "abstraction" is not only in our (financial speculator's) misperception of [[social reality]], but that it is "real" in the precise [[sense ]] of determining the [[structure ]] of the very material social [[processes]]: the fate of whole strata of the population and sometimes of whole countries can be decided by the "solipsistic" speculative dance of Capital, which pursues its [[goal ]] of profitability in a blessed indifference to how its movement will [[affect ]] social reality. Therein resides the fundamental systemic [[violence ]] of capitalism, much more [[uncanny ]] than the direct pre-[[capitalist ]] socio-ideological violence: this violence is no longer attributable to [[concrete ]] individuals and their "[[evil]]" intentions, but is purely "[[objective]]", systemic, anonymous. Here we should [[recall ]] Etienne [[Balibar ]] who distinguishes two opposite but complementary modes of excessive violence in today's world 3: the "ultra-objective" ("[[structural]]") violence that is inherent in the social conditions of global capitalism (the "automatic" creation of excluded and dispensable individuals, from the homeless to the unemployed), and the "ultra -[[subjective]]" violence of newly emerging ethnic and/or religious (in short: racist) "fundamentalisms" — this second "excessive" and "groundless" violence is just a [[counterpart ]] to the first violence.

The fact of this "anonymous" violence also allows us to make a more general point about anti-[[Communism]]. The [[pleasure ]] provided by anti-Communist reasoning was that Communism made it so easy to play the [[game ]] of finding the culprit, blaming the Party, [[Stalin]], [[Lenin]], ultimately Marx himself, for the millions of [[dead]], for [[terror ]] and [[gulag]], while in capitalism, there is nobody on whom one can pin [[guilt ]] or [[responsibility]], things just happened that way, through anonymous mechanisms, although capitalism has been no less destructive in [[terms ]] of human and environmental costs, destroying aboriginal cultures… In short, the [[difference ]] between capitalism and Communism is that Communism was perceived as an [[Idea ]] which then failed in its realization, while capitalism functioned "spontaneously". There is no Capitalist Manifesto.