By Paul F. deLespinasse
© 1998 by Paul F. deLespinasse
Click here for details of generous permission
to reprint. Document may not print if you have not clicked here
first.
One hundred fifty years ago, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto. During the twentieth century strenuous efforts were made to implement the vision of a classless society that was expressed in that book. The results of these efforts were uniformly disastrous. As the century drew to an end Communist rule collapsed in the Soviet Union and in eastern Europe. Although still governed by a nominally Communist party, China had in fact repudiated the Marxist vision long before the Soviet Union disintegrated. At the end of the century only a few very small countries like Cuba were governed by people who still professed a commitment to Communism.
Although Marxists criticized capitalism, the demise of their vision for replacing it does not imply that "capitalist" countries are beyond criticism. It is easy to compile long lists of outrageous problems afflicting countries that never were governed by Communists.
In the following pages I am going to argue that, mixed in with all the nonsense in his ideas, Marx did get two things right:
First: To achieve an ideal society we must indeed move beyond capitalism. (Historical experience since Marx wrote, and a principled, systematic analysis of his ideas, however, indicate that the direction in which he proposed to move away from capitalism was profoundly incorrect.)
Second: An ideal society will indeed be a classless one. (However it will not be achieved by liquidating the bourgeoisie by a revolutionary process, as Marx thought. Instead, it will be reached by elevating the proletariat into the bourgeoisie by a process of reform.)
I have invented the word "Metaconstitution" to describe my concept of the ideal society, one in which bourgeois values of individual liberty, limited government, and market economics, pushed to their logical conclusions, produce a classless society. In this, the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of The Communist Manifesto, I am therefore publishing The Metaconstitutional Manifesto by making it available on the World Wide Web to all people who have access to the Internet.
I am very interested in discussing the ideas in this book with people who have questions or comments about it. Correspondence can be addressed to me by e-mail at pdelespinass@adrian.edu.
Paul F. deLespinasse
Professor of Political Science and Computer Science
Adrian College
Adrian, Michigan 49221
October 30, 1998