Marx, Engels and the Manifesto: Working class, party, and proletariat

Abstract

The article explores the manner in which Marx and Engels arrived at their conception of the proletariat. The distinction between the empirically given, flawed and disunited working class, and the universal mission of the proletariat as world historical actor, is teased out in the earlier works of Marx and Engels that anticipated the publication of the Communist Manifesto. The argument presented here is that the Communists, organized as a specific Party, constituted the crucial linkage (hitherto absent) between these two, and it was uniquely in the Manifesto that this linkage was developed. In defining the role of the Communists and the Party, however, Marx and Engels succeeded in writing themselves into the constitution of the proletarian Subject.