Quiz: The Communist Manifesto

All 45 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. What does the Manifesto call “the heavy artillery” with which the bourgeoisie batters down all Chinese walls?

   Its navies and the threat of colonial armies Railways and steamships Its cheap commodities Christian missionaries
2. 2. What is the first step in the revolution by the working class?

   To found workers’ co-operatives that will gradually buy out the capitalists To make the proletariat the ruling class To dissolve the bourgeois family at once and establish communal households for all workers To abolish money and exchange, replacing them with labour-time certificates
3. 3. What role does the Manifesto say the bourgeoisie has played historically?

   A purely conservative part A part chiefly in religion A parasitic part with no historical effect A most revolutionary part
4. 4. What, above all, does the bourgeoisie produce, according to the end of Section I?

   Eternal prosperity A world without classes A permanent middle class Its own grave-diggers
5. 5. Complete: “In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, …”

   the past and present are equal neither dominates the present dominates the past the future dominates the present
6. 6. Which of these is not named in the preamble among the powers allied against the spectre of communism?

   The Pope Queen Victoria Metternich The German police-spies
7. 7. How does the Manifesto expect the “dangerous class”, the social scum, to behave?

   As neutral bystanders, indifferent to both bourgeoisie and proletariat As the vanguard of the revolution, since it has nothing at all to lose by it As a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue As loyal allies of the peasantry against the landed aristocracy
8. 8. Which of these is not among the ten measures proposed for the most advanced countries?

   Free education for all children in public schools A heavy progressive or graduated income tax Abolition of all right of inheritance Abolition of all taxation
9. 9. How does the Manifesto sum up the theory of the Communists “in the single sentence”?

   Workers’ control of the factories Abolition of private property Equality before the law The right to work
10. 10. According to the Manifesto, whose ideas have the ruling ideas of each age always been?

    Those of its oppressed class Those of its greatest philosophers Those revealed by religion Those of its ruling class
11. 11. When was the manuscript of the Manifesto sent to the printer?

    A few weeks before the February revolution Just after the June insurrection in Paris had been crushed in 1848 In 1872, together with the new German preface by Marx and Engels In 1850, alongside the first English translation
12. 12. Why do the Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany?

    Germany already has a socialist government that the Communists must defend against the princes Germany has already abolished its aristocracy, so the struggle there is now purely one of bourgeois and proletarian Germany has the largest and best-organised industrial proletariat anywhere in Europe Germany is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that will be the prelude to an immediate proletarian revolution
13. 13. Complete the first sentence of Section I: “The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of …”

    technological progress the human spirit class struggles great men
14. 14. For which organisation was the Manifesto written as a platform?

    The Social-Democratic Workers’ Party The International Workingmen’s Association The Communist League The Chartist National Charter Association
15. 15. Which events does the Manifesto say “opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie”?

    The invention of printing and gunpowder The Reformation and the Thirty Years’ War The fall of Constantinople and the last of the Crusades The discovery of America and the rounding of the Cape
16. 16. What does the Manifesto say the proletarians have to lose in a communist revolution?

    Their wages Their homes and families Their votes Nothing but their chains
17. 17. Whose book does the Manifesto cite as an example of Conservative, or Bourgeois, Socialism?

    Owen’s New View of Society Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misère Fourier’s Theory of the Four Movements Sismondi’s New Principles
18. 18. Which thinkers founded the systems the Manifesto calls Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism?

    Babeuf, Blanqui and Weitling Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen Smith, Ricardo and Mill Hegel, Feuerbach and Bauer
19. 19. In Poland, which party do the Communists support?

    The party that makes agrarian revolution the prime condition for national emancipation No party, since Poland has no proletariat The party allied with the Russian Tsar The party of the Polish nobility seeking to restore the old kingdom with its 1772 borders
20. 20. Which famous phrase describes the constant upheaval of the bourgeois epoch?

    “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk” “Men make their own history” “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned” “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare”
21. 21. What is the Communists’ immediate aim?

    Forming the proletariat into a class, overthrowing bourgeois rule, conquering political power Abolition of the state at once, and with it of every form of political authority whatever Founding model communities overseas, to show the world in practice how the new social system works Winning higher wages and shorter hours through arbitration with the employers
22. 22. What does the Manifesto predict for small tradespeople, shopkeepers, handicraftsmen and peasants?

    They become the new ruling class They emigrate to the colonies They grow in number as industry spreads They sink gradually into the proletariat
23. 23. What kind of association does the Manifesto say will replace bourgeois society?

    One in which property is divided equally among families One in which each works according to a plan drawn up by a central committee of the workers One governed by philosophers One in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all
24. 24. How does the Manifesto define political power, “properly so called”?

    The protection of the individual rights of every citizen The will of the majority, expressed in law and enforced by courts The authority entrusted to the best-educated and most capable citizens The organised power of one class for oppressing another
25. 25. How does the Manifesto describe the executive of the modern state?

    A committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie The organ through which the general will of the whole nation is expressed A neutral referee standing above the quarrels of the competing classes A survival of feudal monarchy
26. 26. What does the worker become under machinery and the division of labour?

    A small proprietor A skilled master craftsman with his own tools A free contractor An appendage of the machine
27. 27. How are workers crowded into the factory organised, according to the Manifesto?

    As members of one family under a patriarchal master Like soldiers in an industrial army Into self-governing guilds that elect their own masters As independent partners sharing in the profits
28. 28. Which English law does the Manifesto cite as won by exploiting divisions within the bourgeoisie?

    The repeal of the Corn Laws The Reform Act of 1832 The Ten Hours’ Bill The New Poor Law
29. 29. What does the Manifesto say capital is?

    A purely personal possession of the capitalist A natural property of tools and machines The reward of abstinence Not a personal, but a social power
30. 30. According to Engels, why did he and Marx call it a Communist rather than a Socialist manifesto in 1847?

    Socialism was then a middle-class movement, communism a working-class one The Communist League had formally forbidden its members to use the word socialism Communism was the older and more respectable term among educated people Socialism was already banned in most of Europe
31. 31. What, according to the Manifesto, distinguishes the epoch of the bourgeoisie?

    It has multiplied ranks and orders, with more gradations than ever before It has restored the guilds It has abolished class antagonisms altogether by establishing legal equality It has simplified class antagonisms, splitting society into two hostile camps
32. 32. What does the bourgeoisie leave as the only bond between people, in place of feudal ties?

    Naked self-interest, “cash payment” Loyalty to the nation and to its common laws Family obligation and the duties of kinship Religious duty and the bonds of a common faith
33. 33. What does Engels say is the “fundamental proposition” at the core of the Manifesto, which he credits to Marx?

    Labour is the sole source of all wealth, and so the worker is entitled to the whole of its product Every society must pass through exactly the same five stages of development in the same order Free competition between individuals naturally produces the greatest happiness of society as a whole, if left alone The prevailing mode of production and exchange is the basis of an epoch’s political and intellectual history
34. 34. Who made the first English translation of the Manifesto, published in 1850?

    Samuel Moore Eleanor Marx Aveling Helen Macfarlane George Julian Harney
35. 35. What “epidemic” breaks out in commercial crises, one that would have seemed absurd in all earlier epochs?

    Plague and cholera Over-production Famine Inflation
36. 36. To what does the Manifesto compare modern bourgeois society, which has conjured up gigantic means of production?

    A sorcerer no longer able to control the powers he has called up A body consuming itself in order to keep up its unnatural growth A machine that runs faster and faster until it shakes itself apart A ship’s captain who has lost his charts in the middle of a storm
37. 37. How does the Manifesto contrast the proletarian movement with all previous historical movements?

    It is led by an enlightened minority of intellectuals from the bourgeoisie It is the independent movement of the immense majority, in its interests It seeks to restore an earlier golden age It is the first movement in history to be confined within purely national limits
38. 38. What lesson of the Paris Commune does the 1872 preface (quoted in 1888) single out?

    The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery for its own purposes A revolution can hold out in a single city if the workers there are well enough armed Workers should never again take up arms, but should win power gradually through the ballot box alone The peasantry, not the industrial proletariat, is the main force of any future revolution
39. 39. Which “single, unconscionable freedom” has the bourgeoisie set up in place of the old chartered freedoms?

    Universal suffrage Freedom of the press Free Trade Freedom of religion
40. 40. What does the Manifesto say is the real fruit of the workers’ battles?

    Higher wages and shorter hours Seats in parliament The ever-expanding union of the workers The destruction of machinery
41. 41. Which statement does the Manifesto make about nationality?

    “The working men have no country.” “Each nation must find its own road to socialism.” “National differences are eternal.” “The nation is the highest form of community.”
42. 42. How does Section II describe the Communists’ relation to other working-class parties?

    They form no separate party opposed to other working-class parties They are the only legitimate workers’ party, all others being sects They are a secret society working within the trade unions and clubs They refuse all contact with other parties
43. 43. Which two existing working-class parties does Section IV name at the outset?

    The Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America The Jacobins in France and the Carbonari in Italy The Lassalleans and the Eisenachers in Germany The Fenians in Ireland and the Social Democrats in Belgium and Holland
44. 44. How does the Manifesto open?

    “Working men of all countries, unite!” “A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism.” “Philosophers have only interpreted the world.” “The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.”
45. 45. How does the Manifesto characterise Feudal Socialism?

    A German philosophers’ translation of French ideas into abstractions The most scientific form of socialism, grounded in a careful study of history and economics A purely working-class movement, born in the factories of England Half lamentation, half lampoon