Page 60 - Expanded Media & the MediaPlex

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Friedrich Engels + Karl Marx: The Communist Manifesto 1848
“In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.” Marx and Engels primary insight into how Capitalism works, and the role of the emergent working classes in effecting a change in Capitalism, was a slow burner - really only having an impact on society at large in the 1870s. The Manifesto was published in England (though in the German language) by the Worker’s Educational Association in 1848 - coincidentally a year marked by social and political revolution throughout Europe.Of all the political manifestos ever published, this has had the most world-changing impact - completely changing global politics, giving birth to new nations, federations and unions - and Communist states in USSR, China,and many other countries, and providing constant inspiration for others.
The attempt to find practical alternatives to global free-market Capitalism is now of course, even more important than it was in 1848. The world is a finite space and ergo has finite resources. Capitalism depends upon continuous growth, therefor we have to find an alternative economic system, or modify Capitalism to fit these inevitable conditions. In the 1960s, Richard Buckminster Fuller reminded us that while our physical resources were limited, mankind’s intellect was unlimited, and that we could ‘do ever more with ever less’ - citing as an example the invention of the communications satellite - several kilograms of technology out-performing the several thousand tonnes of the Trans-Atlantic cables. And since the 1960s our awareness of the fragile ecosystem and climate of our small planet has grown in leaps and bounds, reinforced by books like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), movements like Friends of the Earth (1969) and Greenpeace (1971), and numerous local Green parties. Perhaps some kind of balanced State economics (Keynesian?) with a sustainable capitalism ‘doing ever more with ever less’, a Green planetary-management philosophy along the lines of Caroline Lucas: Green Alternatives to Globalisation: A Manifesto (2004).But one thing is clear - we can't go on like this.