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150 years of the Communist Manifesto

Marxist Theory · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The central thesis of this article is that the Communist Manifesto is not a historical artefact but a living document whose analysis is more accurate today than when it was written. Alan Woods argues that the fundamental tendencies Marx and Engels identified — the concentration and centralisation of capital, the creation of a world market, the immiseration of the working class, and the systemic crisis of capitalism — have been confirmed by events, particularly in the period following the end of the post-war boom. The article claims that the present conjuncture is not merely another cyclical downturn but represents capitalism having reached the limits of its capacity to develop the productive forces, and that reformist solutions (whether Keynesian or Blairite) are incapable of resolving the crisis. The only way forward, the article insists, is the socialist transformation of society, prepared by patient work to build a revolutionary party integrated into the real workers' movement.

Theoretical Grounding

The article draws on several foundational Marxist concepts:

  • Historical materialism as a scientific method: Woods explicitly contrasts Marxist "scientific socialism" with utopian socialism, arguing that socialism has a material base in the level of development of the productive forces. He quotes Engels' letter to Bloch to pre-empt the crude economic determinism caricature.

  • The tendency towards concentration and centralisation of capital: This is the article's primary empirical anchor. Woods uses data on mergers, acquisitions, and wealth inequality to argue that Marx's prediction has been vindicated.

  • The contradiction between the productive forces and the nation state: The article argues that capitalism has outgrown both private ownership and the nation state as frameworks for further development. The post-war period temporarily overcame these limits through Keynesian demand management and expanded world trade, but both have now reached their limits.

  • The reserve army of labour and structural unemployment: Woods distinguishes between cyclical unemployment (which Marx analysed as functional for capitalism) and the new phenomenon of permanent, structural unemployment that persists even during booms.

  • The relationship between base and superstructure: The article insists that consciousness does not automatically follow from economic conditions, and that there are periods of apparent stasis followed by explosive ruptures — drawing an analogy with Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium in evolutionary biology.

The article sits firmly within the Trotskyist tradition, particularly in its insistence on internationalism, its rejection of "socialism in one country," and its analysis of Stalinism as a bureaucratic degeneration rather than a socialist alternative. The method is classical Marxist orthodoxy, with a strong emphasis on the Manifesto as a programmatic document rather than a mere theoretical text.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was written in November 1997, and its conjunctural analysis is remarkably specific:

  • The Asian financial crisis: The article was written in the immediate aftermath of the October 1997 stock market crash and the collapse of Yamaichi Securities. Woods identifies this as the reverse side of "globalisation," arguing that the integration of world markets has not abolished the cycle of boom and slump but has made crises more convulsive and universal.

  • The Japanese banking crisis: The article notes that Japanese banks hold 1.5 trillion yen in bad debts and that the five biggest banks are technically insolvent. It warns that a withdrawal of Japanese funds from the US could trigger a catastrophic slump.

  • The US boom and working-class conditions: Woods cites data showing a 20% fall in real wages over 20 years, a 10% increase in the working day, and an average of 168 hours of overtime per worker per year. He uses this to argue that the US boom has been built on intensified exploitation.

  • The "Asian Tigers" crisis: The article treats the collapse of the East Asian economies not as an external shock but as an expression of the internal contradictions of global capitalism.

  • The Blair government: The article was written just months after Labour's 1997 election victory. Woods treats Blair not as a departure from Thatcherism but as its continuation, arguing that the logic of cuts, privatisation, and austerity flows from the crisis of capitalism itself, not from the whims of individual politicians.

  • Strike wave in Europe: The article references strikes in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Belgium, and the UPS strike in the US, as evidence of a rising mood of struggle.

Where the Argument Continues

This article is part of a broader corpus that develops its themes across multiple texts:

  • The question of the revolutionary party: The article gestures towards the need for patient preparatory work but does not elaborate on the concrete tasks of building a revolutionary organisation in the conditions of the late 1990s. This is developed in other IDOM articles on the Labour Party, the trade unions, and the question of the united front.

  • The analysis of "globalisation": The article treats globalisation as a contradictory process that intensifies crises rather than resolving them. This is taken up in later IDOM articles on the 2008 financial crisis, the Eurozone crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • The critique of left reformism: The article distinguishes between right-wing Labour and left reformists but argues that both accept the capitalist framework. This is a recurring theme in IDOM's analysis of Corbynism, Syriza, and other left populist movements.

  • The theory of punctuated equilibrium and revolution: The analogy between biological evolution and social revolution is suggestive but underdeveloped. It connects to broader Marxist debates about the nature of revolutionary ruptures and the relationship between reform and revolution.

  • The fate of the October Revolution: The article mentions the "liquidation of the last remaining gains of the October Revolution in Russia" but does not analyse the collapse of the USSR in detail. This is addressed in other IDOM texts on Stalinism and the nature of the Soviet Union.

Connections

This article should be read alongside:

  • The Communist Manifesto itself — the article is explicitly a commentary and defence, and the original text is essential for understanding the argument.

  • Trotsky's The Transitional Program — the article's emphasis on the need for a programme that bridges immediate demands and the socialist perspective echoes Trotsky's method.

  • Engels' letter to Bloch — quoted in the article, this is the classic statement of historical materialism as a non-reductionist method.

  • Marx's Capital, Volume 3 — particularly the chapters on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and the role of credit, which underpin the article's analysis of financial crisis.

  • Alan Woods' Reformism or Revolution — a longer treatment of the same themes, particularly the critique of Keynesianism and the analysis of the limits of trade union struggle.

  • IDOM articles on the 1997 Asian crisis — the article was written in the immediate aftermath and should be read alongside contemporaneous analyses of the crisis's trajectory.

  • Against the Stream episodes on the history of the Marxist movement — the article's treatment of the 1848 revolutions, the Paris Commune, and the October Revolution connects to broader historical analyses in the RCI's media output.

Key Quotes

  1. "In point of fact, The Communist Manifesto is even more true today than when it first appeared in 1848."

  2. "This is not cyclical unemployment, or even what Marx called the 'reserve army of labour', which, from a capitalist point of view played a useful role in the past. No. This is an entirely new phenomenon — permanent, structural, organic unemployment, which does not noticeably diminish even when there is a 'boom'."

  3. "Far from abolishing the boom-slump cycle, globalisation gives it an even more convulsive and universal character."

  4. "If all governments in the world are pursuing the same policy of cuts, that is not out of choice, but is an expression of the fact that capitalism is in a profound crisis. An attempt to return to the Keynesian policies of deficit-financing would provoke an explosion of inflation. And for the working class, the choice between inflation and deflation is the choice between death by hanging and being slowly roasted over a fire."

  5. "For Marxists, a party is in the first place programme, ideas, methods and traditions, and only afterwards an organisation to carry these ideas into the working class."

  6. "Despite all the efforts of its detractors, Marxism today retains its full validity, both as an accurate analysis of present-day society and as a fighting programme to change it. There can be this or that detail that has changed, but in all the fundamentals, the ideas of The Communist Manifesto are as relevant and true today as when they were first written. Indeed, in some respects, they are even more true."