Thoughts on reading The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Though both exist on opposite ends of the literary spectrum, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ “The Communist Manifesto”, two of the most influential works of the 19th century, revolve around the theme of debilitating alienation. In Frankenstein, Frankenstein’s Monster is alienated from the entirety of the human race due to his wretched appearance, while “The Communist Manifesto’’ addresses the complete alienation of the proletariat imposed by the oppressive social order of the bourgeoisie. Both books propose a common response to this alienation: violence. In Frankenstein, the Monster murders first William, then Henery, in hopes of spurring his creator to make him a mate that will relieve the loneliness of his alienation. In “The Communist Manifesto’’, Marx and Engels call for a revolution to overthrow the bourgeoisie supremacy, in order to instill communits ideals and transfer power to the proletariat. The relations between these two texts do not stop and the reaction to alienation. In fact, the initial cause of alienation is related. In “The Communist Manifesto’’, The alienation of the proletariat is onset by the bourgeoisie desire to accumulate ultimate capital, while in Frankenstein, the monster’s alienation is generated by Victor Frankenstein’s unbounded desire to create life. In both cases, alienation is a symptom of those in power pursuing their desires without regard for consequences. Though stemming from completely different contexts, Frankenstein and “The Communist Manifesto’’ share the immensely powerful theme of alienation, displaying that more often than not, when those who have power completely alienate those without, the oppressed have little choice but to revolt, by any means necessary.

Frankenstein’s Monster was born an orphan, his parents being science and Victor Frankenstein, the latter who abandoned the Monster at birth for he could not stand the ugliness of the being. When conceiving the Monster, Victor Frankenstein’s goal was to give the monster life, never giving a thought to what type of life the Monster would have past the point of conception. This oversight was a consequence of Frankenstein’s unconditional fixation on creating life, as he was solely fixated on marvel of his scientific achievement. Thus, Frankenstein’s monster was prescribed to live his life just as he was born: alone. After years of alienation, and a failure to form a relationship with any human, the Monster lashes out, killing Victor’s younger brother William in hopes of gaining his creators attention. This violent cry for help worked, as Frankenstein returns to his hometown for the funeral of his brother, where he is met in the mountains by the Monster that he created. There, the monster recounts his miserable life, ending his tale with the following request

I alone am miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create. (155)

The Monster is asking for nothing more than for his creator to create a being to love him and end his loneliness. Yet, even this the creator can not provide, as Victor Frankenstein recants his initial submission to the Monsters request. With nothing left to lose, the Monster surrenders to his chaotic urges, killing those that Victor holds dear and leading Victor on a chase to the ends of the earth. Alienated from birth and oppressed by his loneliness, Frankenstein’s Monster solely sought a remedy for his burden, first through the means of human acceptance, then through the means of violence. When both failed to succeed, the Monster was forced to a means from which he could not return, that of utter chaos.

While Frankenstein’s Monster is sentenced to loneliness by the actions of his creator, “The Communist Manifesto” portrays a world where an entire class, the proletariat, is alienated by the ruling class, the bourgeoisie. This alienation is onset as a byproduct of the capitalist society the bourgeoisie have constructed, an alienation derived from the reduction of the proletariat to nothing more than what they produce:

Not only are they [the proletariat] slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State, … The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is. (16)

Marx and Engles here display the oppression that the working class faces at the hands of those with power, arguing that in addition to the toil of labor and lack of personal freedom, the proletariat are subject to the senseless torture of the claim their labor is just means to and end. This such claim disregards the actual work of the proletariat, revealing the life’s work of the proletariat to that of what it ultimately is: a means for the bourgeoisie to gain capital. By stripping meaning from one’s life, the bourgeoisie dehumanize the proletariat, an ultimate form of alienation. This line of reasoning directly leads to Marx and Engles proposing an ominous omen:

What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave diggers (26).

The alienated proletariat, with all meaning deprived from their life, have nothing to restrain themselves from overthrowing the bourgeoisie and ending their social alienation. In essence, the oppression of the bourgeoisie has left the proletariat with no other means to remove the yolk of their oppression than that of total revolution.

Both “The Communist Manifesto” and Frankenstein eloquently display the consequences of utter alienation, of which being revolt, often by insatiable means. In Frankenstein, this is seen through the lens of Frankenstein’s Monster, an orphan who is shunned by the entirety of the human race. This alieantaion leads for the Monster to devalue human life just as his own life was devalued, leading the Monster to murder in hopes of achiveing an end to his alieantation. “The Communist Manifesto’’ iterates these themes through the guise of the class struggle of the proletariat, a group whose profits of labor are reaped solely by the bourgeoisie. Like Frankenstein’s Monster, the proletariat also views the chaos of revolt as the only solution to the woes of their aleantation. In both contexts, a common similarity reveals itself: the actions of the oppressors, though having the potential to not be realized at the initiation of the oppression, ultimately have dire consequences.