The Communist Manifesto: The revolutionary text that changed the course of history

By Karl Marx

This book is essential for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Comprehending the motives and actions of many of its leading figures is impossible unless one has read this key text. 'The Communist Manifesto' left its mark upon the souls of leaders and rebels alike and shaped the deeds of whole nations for the greater part of 100 years. It could also be said to have led indirectly to the violent death of hundreds of millions of people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harriman House
• Release date: Aug 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9780857190079

Karl Marx

Karl Marx (1818–1883), dessen Eltern beide aus bedeutenden Trierer Rabbinerfamilien stammten, studierte nach dem Abitur zunächst Jura in Bonn, wechselte aber ein Jahr später nach Berlin, wo er früh zu den Linkshegelianern um Bruno Bauer stieß. Nach der Promotion 1841 wurde ihm von der preußischen Regierung aus politischen Gründen der Eintritt in eine akademische Laufbahn verwehrt. Er wurde Herausgeber der liberalen Rheinischen Zeitung, musste allerdings bereits 1843 angesichts der preußischen Zensur nach Paris und später nach Brüssel emigrieren. In Paris begann Marx, sich mit politischer Ökonomie zu beschäftigen, und entwickelte in Kritik an den französischen Sozialisten einen eigenständigen politischen und philosophischen Standpunkt. Mit Friedrich Engels, der 1845 mit ihm nach Brüssel ging und ihn zeitlebens auch finanziell unterstützte, verband ihn eine lebenslange Freundschaft sowie enge politische und publizistische Zusammenarbeit. Im Revolutionsjahr 1848 verfassten Marx und Engels für den »Bund der Kommunisten« das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. Zeugnis der politisch-ökonomischen Studien der Pariser Zeit sind die aus dem Nachlass herausgegebenen Ökonomisch-philosophischen Manuskripte (PhB 559). 1849 wurde Marx als Staatenloser aus Brüssel ausgewiesen und ging nach London. Am Kapital (1. Aufl. 1867), in dem Marx aus der Kritik der klassischen politischen Ökonomie die Mehrwert- und Ausbeutungstheorie als Theorie der Akkumulation des Kapitals entwickelte, arbeitete er bis zu seinem Tod beständig weiter. Marx, der neben seiner politischen Tätigkeit ein gewaltiges publizistisches Werk verfasst hat, ist der einflussreichste Theoretiker des Kommunismus. Seine Schriften prägten die Arbeiterbewegungen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts weltweit.

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Originally published in 1848. This eBook is based on the 1888 edition edited by Friedrich Engels and was published in 2010.

Introduction and arrangement © Harriman House Ltd.

ISBN: 978-0-85719-007-9

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About the Text

This edition of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx (1818-1883) is taken from the 1888 English edition edited by Friedrich Engels and translated by Samuel Moore. It is complete and unabridged.

Editor’s Note

A preposterous screed that caused the violent death of hundreds of millions of people; a misunderstood attempt to refashion society for the better; a work of genius and vision; a work of guile and madness – opinions of Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto are as many and varied as you would expect for a text which changed the course of history and even now shapes the world around us. No one can hope to judge it, however, without reading it for themselves.

This book is also essential for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Comprehending the motives and actions of many of its leading figures is impossible unless one has read this key text, and tackled the structure of Marxist thought. For better or worse, it left its mark upon the souls of leaders and rebels alike and shaped the deeds of whole nations for the greater part of 100 years.

Written and published in London in 1848, the Manifesto was commissioned by the Communist League and distributed in English and five European languages in a turbulent year of uprisings, revolution, murder and unrest across Europe. Its relevance is not confined to history, however. Indeed, with its desire to abolish marriage and eternal truths ... all morality, to make women common sexual property, to introduce heavy and progressive taxation, universal state education allied with industrial rather than spiritual good – the list goes on – it might also be said to be key to understanding a good deal of present-day politics too.

Harriman House, 2010

Manifesto of the Communist Party

A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact.

I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powers to be itself a Power.

II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.

To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London, and sketched the following Manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.

I. Bourgeois and Proletarians

The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.

The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to