Jack Fitzgerald
Source: Socialist Standard, March 1913.
Transcription: Socialist Party of Great Britain.
HTML Markup: Adam Buick
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2016). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit "Marxists Internet Archive" as your source.
W. Austin (Small Heath) asks us to explain the meaning of the passage in the Communist Manifesto:—
"In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present. In communist society the present dominates the past."
Under capitalism the past dominates the present because the means of production, developed from the past, and possessed to-day by the few, dominate the lives of the producers, and forms the general structure sod relations of society.
Under communism the means of production would be consciously manipulated for the benefit and happiness of the members of society. The past development and experience would then be used knowingly by the members of the communist society for their well being. This would be the domination of the past by the present as, instead of the members being dominated by a method of production, the method of production would be controlled by them.