On Literature

ON THE STYLE OF THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

It is difficult to imagine that a few fine pages can single-handedly change the world. After all, Dante's entire oeuvre was not enough to restore a Holy Roman Empire to the Italian city-states. But, in commemorating The Communist Manifesto of 1848, a text that certainly has exercised a major influence on the history of two centuries, I believe one must reread it from the point of view of its literary quality, or at least—even if one does not read it in the original German—of its extraordinary rhetorical skill and the structure of its arguments.

In 1971 a short book by a Venezuelan author was published: Ludovico Silva's Marx's Literary Style. (An Italian translation was published in 1973.) I think it is no longer available, but it would be worthwhile reprinting it. In this book Silva retraces the development of Marx's literary education (few know that he had also written poetry, albeit awful poetry, according to those who have read it), and goes on to analyze in detail Marx's entire oeuvre. Curiously, he devotes only a few lines to the Manifesto, perhaps because it was not a strictly personal work. This is a pity, for it is an astonishing text that skillfully alternates apocalyptic and ironic tones, powerful slogans and clear explanations, and (if capitalist society really does want to seek revenge for the upheavals these few pages have caused it) even today it should be read like a sacred text in advertising agencies.

It starts with a powerful drumroll, like Beethoven's Fifth: "A specter is haunting Europe" (and let us not forget that we are still close to the pre-Romantic and Romantic flowering of the gothic novel, and specters are to be taken seriously). This is followed immediately by a bird's-eye history of class struggle from ancient Rome to the birth and development of the bourgeoisie, and the pages dedicated to the conquests achieved by this new, "revolutionary" class constitute a foundation epic that is still valid today, for supporters of free-market enterprise. One sees (I really do mean "one sees," in an almost cinematographic way) this unstoppable force, which, urged on by the need for new markets for its goods, pervades the whole world on land and sea (and, as far as I am concerned, here the Jewish, Messianic Marx is thinking of the opening of Genesis), overturns and transforms distant countries because the low prices of products are its heavy artillery, which allows it to batter down any Chinese wall and force surrender on even the barbarians who are most hardened in their hatred for the foreigner; it sets up and develops cities as a symbol and as the foundation of its own power; and it becomes multinational, globalized, and even invents a literature that is no longer national but international.^*

At the end of this eulogy (which is convincing and borders on sincere admiration), suddenly we find a dramatic reversal: the wizard discovers that he is unable to control the subterranean powers he has conjured up, the victor is suffocated by his own overproduction and is forced to bring forth from his loins the digger of his own grave—the proletariat.

This new force now enters the scene: at first divided and confused, it is forged in the destruction of machinery and then used by the bourgeoisie as shock troops forced to fight its enemy's enemies (the absolute monarchies, the landed property holders, the petite bourgeoisie), until gradually it absorbs the artisans, shopkeepers, and peasant landowners who once were its adversaries but have now been turned into proletarians by the bourgeoisie. The upheaval becomes struggle as workers organize thanks to another power that the bourgeoisie developed for its own profit: communications. And here the Manifesto cites the example of the railways, but the authors are also thinking of new mass media (and let's not forget that in The Holy Family Marx and Engels were able to use the television of that age—namely, the serial novel—as a model of the collective imagination, and they criticized its ideology by using the very language and situations the serials had made popular).

At this point the Communists come onstage. Before saying in a programmatic way what they are and what they want, the Manifesto (in a superb rhetorical move) puts itself in the position of the bourgeois who fears them, and advances some terrified questions: Do you want to abolish property? Do you want common access to women? Do you want to destroy religion, the nation, the family?

Here things become more subtle, because the Manifesto seems to reply to all these questions in a reassuring way, as though to mollify its adversaries—then, in a sudden move, it hits them in the solar plexus, winning the cheers of the proletarian public ... Do we want to abolish property? Of course not. But property relations have always been subject to change: did not the French Revolution abolish feudal property in favor of bourgeois property? Do we want to abolish private property? What a crazy idea; there is no chance of that, because it is the property of a tenth of the population, which works against the other nine-tenths. Are you reproaching us for wanting to abolish "your" property? Well, yes, that is exactly what we want to do.

Common access to women? Come on, we prefer to relieve women from their role as instruments of production. Do you see us having common access to women? Possessing women in common was invented by you, since apart from using your own wives you take advantage of workers' wives, and as your ultimate sport you practice the art of seducing your peers' wives. Destroy the nation? But how can you take from the workers something they have never possessed? On the contrary, we want to turn ourselves into a nation and triumph...

And so on up to the masterpiece of reticence that is the reply to the question of religion. We can intuit that the reply is "We want to destroy this religion," but the text does not say so: just when it broaches such a delicate topic, it glides over it and lets us infer that all transformations come at a price, but for goodness' sake, let's not take up such delicate issues immediately.

There then follows the most doctrinal part, the movement's program, the critique of different kinds of socialism, but by this stage the reader is already seduced by the preceding pages. And just in case the programmatic part is too difficult, here we find a final sting in the tail, two breathtaking slogans, easy, memorable and destined (it seems to me) to have an extraordinary future: "Workers have nothing to lose but their chains," and "Workers of the world, unite!"

Even apart from its genuinely poetic capacity to invent memorable metaphors, the Manifesto remains a masterpiece of political (but not only political) oratory, and it ought to be studied at school along with Cicero's Invectives against Catiline and Mark Antony's speech over Julius Caesar's body in Shakespeare, especially as it is not impossible, given Marx's familiarity with classical culture, that he had in mind these very texts when writing it.

Article published in L'Espresso, 8 January 1998, for the 150th anniversary of The Communist Manifesto.