The Communist Manifesto

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Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: The Communist Manifesto (2005)

English language

Published Nov. 3, 2005

ISBN:
978-1-59986-995-7
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4 stars (3 reviews)

The Communist Manifesto, originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party (German: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei), is an 1848 pamphlet by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London just as the Revolutions of 1848 began to erupt, the Manifesto was later recognised as one of the world's most influential political documents. It presents an analytical approach to the class struggle (historical and then-present) and the conflicts of capitalism and the capitalist mode of production, rather than a prediction of communism's potential future forms. The Communist Manifesto summarises Marx and Engels' theories concerning the nature of society and politics, namely that in their own words "[t]he history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". It also briefly features their ideas for how the capitalist society of the time would eventually be replaced by socialism. In the last paragraph …

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3 stars

3.6 stars. If this were written today, people would demand research, stats, and data to support its conclusions. There were a lot of declarations where Marx and Engels just said things. “The proletariat is this,” and “The bourgeois thinks that” type of phrasing.

There also oddly seemed like there were unfinished thoughts. For example, free education and the abolishment of child labor is advocated for, and the paragraph where this is discussed ends with “etc, etc.” Really Marx? “etc, etc?” I can see Lenin now, channeling his inner Marx — “We’re going give power to the worker, and like, whatever.”

It also decried prison reform, humanitarianism, and the prevention of the cruelty to animals as “conservative bourgeois socialism.” That seems a bit cynical to me. The manifesto seems to be implying that these issues would just go away without the bourgeois, and that a society where workers are in control …

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