After all, BBA curricula are built on markets, incentives, profit, efficiency, and growth. Marx, on the other hand, is famously suspicious of all those things. Yet that tension is precisely why this book deserves a place on every BBA student’s reading list.

The Communist Manifesto is not a “how-to” guide for running a company, but it is one of the sharpest critiques ever written of how companies, capital, and power interact.

To understand capitalism deeply, one must also understand its most formidable critic. Ignoring Marx while studying business is like learning chess by memorizing only white’s opening moves. You can definitely play, but you will be strategically blind.

First published in 1848, The Communist Manifesto is one of the most influential and controversial political texts in modern history.

Written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels during a time of rapid industrial change in Europe, the book aimed to explain how society works under capitalism and why, according to the authors, it was destined to be replaced by communism. Although it is short in length, this manifesto had the power to shape entire Europe up until 1990.

Initially, The Communist Manifesto argued and shed light on the matter of human history being a history of class struggle and inequality.

Which is, to an extent, true, as in simple rationale: to the victor go the spoils. Marx and Engels tried to establish the idea of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat—the masters and the workers, lords and serfs.

In the current world scenario, one can assume that every head of a company is the bourgeoisie, and the employees are the proletariat. In academic terms, the bourgeoisie are the owners of capital, and the proletariat are the working class.

They sell their labor to survive. According to the manifesto, their relationship is inherently exploitative, as workers produce value but only a fraction of it as wages, while the rest of the profit becomes an asset for the owners/bourgeoisie.

To sum up, if you’re a BBA grad like me, you might be a potential target for those seeking to uproot the bourgeoisie. Because you and I both are part of the class that Marx so wholeheartedly wanted to eradicate.

If you see a Marxist run at you with a sickle in hand and threaten to “overthrow” you in the name of the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” how would you feel and what would you say to the would-be revolutionaries?

Some criticisms can be addressed: the common trope everyone uses against Marxist theories is that Marxism or communism would destroy family traditions, religion, and the sense of traditional morality. There is also an issue of the practicality of its implementation.

Marx often ignores the fundamental principles that may drive human behaviour and decision-making; for example, sensations such as lust, greed, and ambition to achieve success are, in his view, things that will inevitably be tamed once communism takes hold.

The manifesto famously ends with a call for unity: “Workers of the world, unite!” which is a common headache for any HR head. Whenever there is a workers’ union—they make sure it is the first order of business to break it.

However, as BBA grads, we cannot really agree with the idea of communism, but we must not curtail certain rights so eloquently argued for in the manifesto. This is a moral duty we, as potential leaders in the corporate sectors must follow.

The idea of communism will likely never see the light of day, as when you read it yourself, you may realise and see how impossible or incredibly idealistic it really is, or the opposite might also happen.

I strongly suggest not dropping out of university if Marx’s word does make sense to you.

Whether the revolution comes into fruition or not is not your concern. If it were to take place, the entire political system (democracy) may not allow it.

“The proletariat have nothing to lose but their chains; they have a world to win.”

The last lines of the manifesto utters this call.

But, as BBA students, we must understand that it is us, and our ancestors who put the chains on them in the first place.

And for the world to keep turning, someone must be chained, such is the nature of this cruel world.

In my books, a person cannot be smart and a communist at the same time.

Let the struggles continue!