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"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”
– Nelson Mandela

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Essay 10

Essay 10

Q For your final essay I am asking you to write a close reading of the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. Remember close readings are about what is going on in the text itself. I want you to put yourself in the Rawl's original position and pretend like you've never heard the words capitalism and communism before. Read the text fresh. Focus only on what is there. What is going on? Why do you think so? Is the text convincing? If so, why? If not, why not? To be clear, your job this week is to put your entire skillset to work. I want you to read the Communist Manifesto as a philosophical text with a clear argument: a thesis, premises (reasons for believing the thesis), and evidence to support the premises. You should organize your essay to answer the following questions in approximately 900 words: • What do you think the text is arguing? • What evidence is there in the text to support your reading ? • What is the meaning of the text's argument? Why? • What implications are there if the argument is true? Why? • Could the text be read as meaning something else? • What reasons might someone give for holding this alternative reading of the text? • Why do you find your original account of the argument and meaning of the text more persuasive than alternative readings? Finish your essay by taking a position of your own. What is your thesis? What are your premises (reasons for believing the thesis is true)? What evidence do you have? Why might someone disagree with you? Why are you unpersuaded. This articulation of your own position should be approximately 600 words in length, and should refer back to the preceding philosophical analysis. Please treat this assignment as one 1500 word essay. Be organized. Consistently follow a stylesheet like MLA, APA, or Chicago. You are encouraged to reference the work of Weston in providing an analysis of what is going on in the text.

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The Communist Manifesto was a joint effort of both Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels and it lays down the authors’ materialistic conception of history. In fact, the manifesto opens with the famous words “the history of all hitherto societies has been the history of class struggles”. And it traces the trajectory of evolution of society from the age of feudalism, down to the age of capitalism. However, they believe that keeping to the laws of dialectical materialism and given the inherent contradictions within the system, it is destined to be overthrown by a worker’s society. This would result in the dictatorship of the proletariat which would eventually lead to the most perfect stage of classless communism.