THOUGHTS ON COMMUNIST MANIFESTO 71 today's context vis-a-vis the analysis of capital and its evolution in historical time and two vis-a-vis the historical agent of the revolution, the proletarian movement and seek to establish the contemporary relevance of the Manifesto. I would conclude with a critique of Javeed Alam's theorization about 'the problem of revolution as a tension within the intersection of dialectics and science'.4 Even a cursory analysis of modern day capitalism would not fail to underscore its global character. 'Globalization' has become the catchword today from the most advanced to the least developed countries of the world. However, it needs to be understood that capitalism has always been a 'global' system. What has been signified by 'globalization' is an unprecedented enhancement of the reach of the bourgeois mode of production as well as the unfolding of some new tendencies. But the fact that this would eventually occur was envisioned in the Manifesto itself: The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, established connections everywhere'.5 And it was not only the need for a constantly expanding market but for the entire process of capital accumulation to continue at an ever expanding scale that all nations were compelled to 'adopt the bourgeois mode of production.' The Manifesto did not fail to note that this process was making 'barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West'.6 The eventuality of centralization of the means of production and concentration of property in a few hands as an outcome of this process was also underscored. The trajectory of capitalist development has to a great extent followed the predicted path and here one cannot but agree with Aijaz Ahmad in the importance of the 'firmness and accuracy with which Marx was able to perceive the future development of capitalism by grasping its inexorable operative laws'.7 Written at a time when even France or Germany were yet to experience modern industrialization let alone the "barbarian and semi-barbarian countries', the vision of capitalism developing as a global system was well entrenched in the ideas of the Manifesto. This also implies that Marxists need not get either carried away or overawed by the current euphoria over "globalization' or "technological revolution' since the "bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of