crazy people think too.

a must-read for all sane and wise people to better understand insane and foolish people

42 persone l'hanno trovata utile

Good recording, poor selection

As a recording of the Communist Manifesto, this is excellent, if overpriced. The narrator did a fine job. However, the "Other Writings" are a somewhat esoteric selection of Marx's lesser-known articles and essays. Of some interest to the more dedicated Marx students, but of little use as a general introduction to his thinking. It would have been better to bundle the Manifesto with the introductory "Wage Labour and Capital", selections from "The 18th Brumaire", "Capital", etc.

27 persone l'hanno trovata utile

Try to remember he was only 30

As long as I remember he was only 30, I can forgive the overzealous, overeducated tone of these writings. It surprises and saddens me that he didn't outgrow some of his early ideas with the perspective of age and experience. That said, these are pieces that have stood the test of time, for whatever reason.

I confess I am at a loss to understand why Marx is still held in high regard in certain quarters. Perhaps his serious writings are more carefully structured. The pieces presented here are more in the way of periodical summations. Most of them are commentaries on current events or critiques of other writings by his contemporaries. It is difficult to properly evaluate them without a deep knowledge of the things he is critiquing. Time and again he will repeat a catch phrase without ever getting around to defining precisely what he means by it. So many of these terms have gotten muddied in the intervening 170 years that it makes the problem that much harder. Perhaps this is not a good choice for an audio book given the need for such annotations and footnoting. So many of his premises are simply taken for granted. So many of his "obvious" conclusions seem completely arbitrary. I waited for the chain of reasoning that led him to his conclusions but it never came. Occasionally, he would acknowledge an opposing viewpoint, and even offer to explore it, but after a token gesture in that direction he would say something like "but enough of that" and go back to preaching to the converted. As a newspaperman he certainly has a certain flair for rhetoric. He has a fondness for inversion formations such as "he does not say what he means, and he means what he does not say." That, by the way, is from his critique of Karl Heinzen. I have to say that most of the charges he levels at Heinzen apply to his own works as well.

Mercifully, the book is short, as otherwise it would simply be too frustrating to have so many questions left unexplained and unanswered. It is extremely ironic that someone who writes so penetratingly on the topics he addresses is somehow unable to carry that through to a logical conclusion.

One eerie aspect of this audio book is that the reader chooses to read it with a cheerful tone of voice, as though he were reading about kittens and puppies instead of hard-hitting political commentary.

21 persone l'hanno trovata utile

Historical point of view

Read it only for historical view. Can't understand why anyone would want communism in reality.

17 persone l'hanno trovata utile

Even better reasons to not want this way of life

This book makes great platitudes to why people without limitations are capable of great levels of self-elevations, that they are not capable of controlling. How people are not able to control their own lives and futures. What a sad and arrogant way of thinking. That people are just a herd of children that need to be controlled and held down. It is a wonder that this way of thinking could have ever made it anywhere. - I think that everyone should read this book to be aware of how to recognize the limiting desires of others.

13 persone l'hanno trovata utile

It's an Accurate Critique of Capitalism

It's an accurate critique of capitalism but it hands you an equally worthless solution. There is utility in understanding the critique, though.

10 persone l'hanno trovata utile

All I wanted, was to listen to it.

Where does The Communist Manifesto and Other Writings rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

6 out of 10. Only because he (Marx) makes so many quirky assumptions about humanity. Overall the manifesto is ridiculous. His assumptions are way off the mark and it amazes me that so many grasp hold as though it might be possible to achive success through his ideals. I had to listen to it and make up my own mind. Marx is a nut. Period.

Would you be willing to try another book from Karl Marx? Why or why not?

Not really. This was enough.

Any additional comments?

Not a wast of time. His utter infatuation with the bourgeoisie is apparent. A good read or in this case listen if one wishes to expand ones grasp of where communism places its origins.

10 persone l'hanno trovata utile

It's as bad as they say it is

I went into the Communist Manifesto with an open mind about what I would find inside. Perhaps, I thought, Marx preached some pretty reasonable things that have just been blown up, misinterpreted, and misapplied in violent, counter-productive, and destructive ways that he would never have endorsed. Maybe the dogma of communism really amounts to something simple and attractive like "share with your neighbors and take care of each other with your own property."

I am very disappointed to finally be able to confirm that this is not what Marx preached. It is clear from his own words (and the additional supplemental writings in this publication) that the philosophy of communism can really be summarized as the violent seizure of tools and other property from the producers and employers of the world to be handed over to a violent State monopoly in the hopes that they will, somehow, be more "fair" and "just".

Even if the reader can get behind that immoral idea, at no point that I noticed did Marx actually outline the means by which the proletariat would be able to ensure that an arbitrarily determined group of governors would treat them any better than the "exploitative" bourgeoisie that they hate so much. When such people look at massive evil and failed institutions like the Soviet Union that enslaved and murdered thousands of their own citizens for failing to fit neatly in the prescribed economic model, presumably they claim the only flaw in the system was that the State did not function the way it was supposed to. It was not benevolent. Never do they explain how one can actually and maintain a benevolent entity whose role it is to violently enforce their economic preferences on individuals, though.

The fact that this writing is not talked about in the same vein as Hitler's Mein Kampf is mind boggling. The narration was decent though.

9 persone l'hanno trovata utile

A good book for an introduction to Communism.

After listening to a day of economic theory from Smith to Keynes and now Marx, I have come to the conclusion that every form of economic theory seems to be "what the hell do we do with the people, and how do we pacify them enough to keep them from killing us?

7 persone l'hanno trovata utile

Communism Will Win

Fuedalism emerged out of a dying nomadic world. In kind, capitalism felled fuedalism, replacing the landed aristocracy with a bourgeois class. This emergent bourgeois class, however, owns not only capital and commodity production, but also human lives as labor, yet another commodity - the proletarian class. Capitalism is killing itself and has never existed in a vacuum, nor as “the best of all possible worlds.” It, too, will fall, and here Marx explains in great detail, using a dialectical materialist method, the mechanisms which will lead to its collapse. After all, any political economy premised on infinite, unregulated growth within a closed system will either lead to a revolutionary system where democracy permeates to everyone and in our workplaces, not just to a bourgeois political class... or, the worst possible outcome: total global extinction.

5 persone l'hanno trovata utile