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The Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto
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The Communist Manifesto

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Originally published on the eve of the 1848 European revolutions, The Communist Manifesto is a condensed and incisive account of the worldview Marx and Engels developed during their hectic intellectual and political collaboration. Formulating the principles of dialectical materialism, they believed that labor creates wealth, hence capitalism is exploitive and antithetical to freedom.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherPocket Books
Release dateJan 22, 2013
ISBN9781476734293
Author

Karl Marx

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was Prussian-born philosopher, economist, political theorist, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His collaborated with Friedrich Engels in writing The Communist Manifesto (1848). Expelled from Prussia in the same year, Marx took up residence first in Paris and then in London where, in 1867, he published his magnum opus Capital.

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Rating: 3.453083783658408 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The MacMillan Collector’s Library edition of Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto includes the 1888 Samuel Moore translation of “The Communist Manifesto,” “Wages, Price, and Profit” from 1898, and Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling’s 1887 translation of “Capital.” Hugh Griffith’s introduction offers biographical information about Marx and puts his work into its historical context, particularly after the apparent “victory” of capitalism over communism at the end of the Cold War, with Griffith arguing that, contrary to popular opinion, Marx remains as prescient as ever in light of the economics of post-industrial society. This edition reprints all three texts in their entirety and fully articulates Marx’s ideas of class and wage warfare. These remain must-reads for all students of history or economics today. Ironically, this edition makes a nice gift with its portable size, gilt edges, and classic dust jacket art.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Just finished the communist manifesto. In an ideal world communism and democracy would combine to create a form of government where the individual is represented and respected while the state takes away the burned of merely existing like men of ole. Working only to provide: food, water, shelter, clothing, and transportation. Leaving man to focus on the development of self AND state. I know the only way a society like that could ever be is with the total annihilation of capitalism (not democracy) and the social enlightenment that self-worth derived from competition is false and that self worth starts internally and THEN extends out, no costume or mask that one adorns can ever really give value because material does not last as long as self and value in material things fade soon as the "thing" fades.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    No matter what one's political point of view is, this is a must read for those who wish to be informed.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Reading this with the benefit of hindsight it is easy to see the many flaws in the communist theory. On the other hand I can see how so many could have been persuaded that it was a good idea in the 19th & early 20th centuries - if you were working all your life and getting nowhere, with no hope of an improvement of life for yourself or your children the communist ideals would have sounded attractive.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The original and still the best. Fuck Capital; my Marxism is about people. And feelings, and I challenge you to find a more inspirational, quotable piece of reductive ideological propaganda anywhere, including the Bible. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE! Yeah?
    This version comes with a bunch of prefaces to later editions, mostly by Engels, and as well as geenrally interesting also kind of a laff riot. "Polish independence! Italian Renaissance! I know one thing about each of your countries!" Good times.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Do not go looking here for a lengthy explanation about why Marx believes what he does. Rather, read the Manifesto to learn how he sold his ideas. For what it was designed to do, this book is excellent. For actually understanding Marx, the Manifesto is lacking. A closer look at some of his other works is required.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    It is an error to assume that the problem with humanity is an inability to recognize our own problems. While it's true that we constantly look outside for answers, this is just because we are unhappy with the answers we have. We know that success requires hard work and knowledge, but we want something easier. We will accept an easier answer even when it isn't true. We are not motivated by what is true or likely, but by frightening or enticing stories.We are driven away from the necessary and the difficult by our inadequacies and fears, and so rarely move ourselves any closer to fulfillment. In a perversity of justice, those who do achieve the things which we imagine would fulfill us (wealth, fame, beauty, genius) are no more fulfilled than the average man, and just as beset by inadequacy and fear. Often, more so.Transhumanism represents a hope that we can escape this pattern of ignorance and self-destruction but only by escaping the human bodies and minds that cannot control themselves.The Manifesto always seemed little more than a sad reminder of our failings, though it did motivate people and provided a test of the mettle of humanity. Beyond that, it does more to rile than to increase understanding of the economy and our role within it. It is sad that a work which is at least based on some worthwhile principles falls to the same simple fears and ideals that plague our everyday lives.The manifesto tries to take all of the economic theory of its authors and create from it a story that will excite the common man. They did not expect that most of them would pick up Das Kapital and start really thinking about their role in things. It was enough to engage their greed and sense of injustice without intruding much on their understanding.The average man does not want to understand, he would prefer to believe. It is unfortunate that the main effect proven by the Communist movement is that any and every political system simply shifts wealth and power from one group to another, and little aids the serf or the unlucky.We Americans are in little position to stand over the 'failure of Communism', since democracy has not proven any kinder to mankind, nor can it deliver justice equally to the poor and the rich.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    How does one rate a classic? If one could only change the world in 30 pages or so! What always strikes me is that, much like Dr John Hewson's Fightback! policy from the early 1990s, most of the pamphlet has been implemented already (sans the revolution, and admittedly Hewson's work was considerably longer at 650 pages!). Nevertheless, of the ten "measures" (p. 20), Australia has, over time, implemented many of the plans through what, in some ways, still displays remnants of social democracy. However, as with Fightback!, and while many like to think it was all nonsense, much of it has been done or is still in the doing. Whether the great Internationale will die with the contemporary return to nationalism is a moot point when one considers the exponential increase in growth and power of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" (not to mention India, which is quite another story). But this probably won't concern me, at least in this life.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    One reason why this book has stood the test of time and become a major talking point for a host of instructional formats is that it is written in an easily understood and comprehensive manner. I does not deviate from its intent in an attempt to justify its claims, but rather keeps to the point and finishes concisely.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I reread this book or more appropriately this pamphlet as a part of my observation of a high school World History class. I had read it many years before but found it interesting and deeper meaning looking back at it. Say what you will about communism and Marx but like it or not they are both a part of our world. The students seemed to find it confusing due to its older style of writing of the turn of the century. As we discussed what some of the more confusing paragraphs were about the students became more engaged and enjoyed this primary source. As a teacher this is a great way to introduce the rise of communism post WWII.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Compelling propaganda pamphlet, much shorter than I thought.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I found this book among a stack my daughter no longer wanted and since I had never read it, I decided to see what all the fuss has been about. I was surprised that it was written in 1848. I thought it was a 1900s document. I found it to be fascinating. The fact that Marx really saw the discovery of America and the Industrial Revolution as the beginning of the problem was something I had not known. I was also impressed at Marx's foresight in terms of the process of capitalism. Frankly, I agree with much of his interpretation of the problems of capitalism and rampant materialism, which has continued to progress as he predicted. The problem for me is that his solution does not seem viable to me. I am no great philosopher or economist, but my sense is that there will always be leaders, and as the world population grows there will just be more of them. I may just be cynical, but I think that putting any group in power, even the righteous proletariat, will eventually lead to greed and power struggle. Glad to have read this.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What to make of this slim volume that everyone has heard of but few have read? (And even fewer have read properly.) First, it's essential to dump your preconceptions, and forget world history since 1917. Marx (with the support of Engels) was describing the economic world as he saw it, based on his studies of history and economy; and then he looked forward to what he saw as the inevitable outcome of that system. Though his analysis was ultimately flawed because history turned out differently, his analysis remains incontrovertible. Even though our world and our working lives are totally changed from that of 1848, it remains true that those who do not have independent means have to sell the only thing at their disposal, that is their labour. That is true whether those people (call them workers, call them the proletariat, the names are unimportant) sell the labour of their muscles, their hands and eyes, or their brains. And if those people cannot alleviate the conditions under which they have to sell that labour, if they cannot get a fair deal or a fair price for that labour, then they will eventually revolt. When Marx wrote the Manifesto, that revolution had to take place in a physical way because the bulk of workers did not have a franchise. Now, the 'revolt' takes the form of our voting a new Government into power every five years or so - though we are now seeing, in the early years of the 21st Century, that exercising a limited vote for political groupings that offer very similar things to each other - or worse still, only offer least worst options - is a route fraught with dangers.That those who brought about socialist revolution in the 20th Century took this book as their guide has closed many minds to it. Of course, if you are starting a revolution, you can point to things in this book and claim you are acting in accordance with Marxist thought. It is more honest to acknowledge your debt to those who have gone before and stand in the name of your own ideology (as indeed Marx did); but people don't do that, because it means that they might have to take responsibility for their actions. It is far easier to say 'I only did what it said in the Manifesto/the Bible/the Qur'an/Mein Kampf/(insert other sacred text of choice)". So this book and Karl Marx gets wrongly blamed for much that happened long after he died.Do not let that colour your reading of 'The Communist Manifesto'. Rather, read it, challenge its application to our times, use what seems appropriate and disregard what seems inappropriate. And yes, cry "Working men of all countries, unite!"
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Important as a source and vividly written, though I do not agree with all of it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is my favorite book. Everyone should be required to read it in school.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Read this years ago in high school, and decided to take another look as a graduate student. As one of Marx's major works, he articulates a desire for a shift away from corporatism, familial inheritance, and other trappings of a burgeoning bourgeois society. However, he doesn't offer much of a solution or ideas to reach these ends - much to the chagrin of those who followed his ideals.

    It's also easy to not understand the position from which Marx writes this - his time period was one of revolution and appalling standards of living among most of Europe.

    If this was a ranking of the work's importance, it would rank 5/5. However, given the limitations of explanation on how to carry out his goals, 3/5.

    Even if you disagree with many of the ideas presented here (as I clearly do), it is worth reading at least once.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a classic and should be read. It is really small but powerful.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    It will never catch on :)

    Revolutionary ideas wrapped in tortured prose
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was an interesting read. It's not something I would normally pick up but I felt like it's something everyone should read because of it's historical significance. It didn't make me want to become communist, but there are some points that I felt that I could logically support. I would definitely need to reread this a few more times to get an educated opinion on what is being said.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I read this when studying political economy at the University of Glasgow. It's a very interesting read and ought to be read by everyone. Communism is one of the world's common ideologies, so whether you agree with it or not you ought ot understand what it is all about.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Marx's criticism of capitalism is still relevant today and so his work is a must-read for those interested in economics, philosophy, politics and society in general. Makes you think... This was very easy to listen to as an audiobook and short and concise.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This reading brings up more questions than it answers. Part I is really good about explaining current conditions of the "proletariat". However, Part II, which seems like an attempt to explain why Communism is in the best interest for the masses, seems to be all dogma with little supporting fact behind it. Here is where are the questions are left unanswered. Part III and IV talk about opposing forms of changing the status quo, ie socialism, etc. However, since Part II left so many unanswered questions, it's hard to reject the status quo or alternative options to the revolutation the Manifesto is urging. The writing overall was fabulous - easy to understand and follow for the most part. But more writing is needed to fully understand the concepts Mark and Engels are advocating.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    For many people through the years this book has been something similar to the Qur'an.It's a compelling and fascinating though short text, a look backward in time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I took a graduate-level literary theory class and picked socialism as my topic of choice over which to complete a semester-long project and presentation. Boy, am I ever glad I did.I remember in high school I had heard so much negativity about communism and socialism; I cracked open my textbook to the glossary to find the actual definitions, and was left only with vague impressions and more questions.Finally, I had some answers. This is a volume that I think everyone should read before they spout off misinformed ideas and opinions over communism and socialism. So many base their opinions off of fundamentalists--after all, we don't judge all Christians on the slight margin of fundamentalist Christians, don't we? (Well, we shouldn't.) And so on. Many have taken Marx's ideas and twisted and distorted them to their own agendas. This has led people to mistrust and dislike communism and socialism upon just hearing the words.However, if you read Marx's ideas, they are fundamentally logical and sound. Maybe not exactly plausible, but definitely something worth thinking about.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Ok, not that good, wouldn't reccomend, Marx is obsolete, worthless.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    interesting as a historical document.

    Excessively flawed philosophy and outlook.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Communist Manifesto presents a useful way to look at conflict: class struggle. It's easy to see why this book continues to inspire. As relevant now as in the 1800's.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Despite its intended purpose, the manifesto in practice is an utter disaster. The idea of a utopian society where all the classes are equal and all rights are shared unanimously, in writing sounds fine, but in reality given the conduct of human nature, it is a calamity waiting to happen. The critique given of capitalism reaches all aspects of society. The basis being that the exploitation of labor from the lower class workers will cause an uprising against the middle and upper class that tend to control all the assets and wealth. The difficulty with what became of this document isn’t necessarily the ideas that were stated, it is how gluttonous leaders interpreted it and took advantage of the less privileged disregarding what was ultimately intended.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I've been so accustomed to Marx being demonized that I was surprised to hear his rational, warranted concern for the working class in society. His intent seems pure. That being said, I still disagree with his ideas on communism. Marx is right that the working class of his time (what we might now see in developing countries) needed proper representation but his solution is misguided. He also justifiably decries the income gap, but again his solution is misguided. This solution is an "overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy" and the "abolition of bourgeois property" (13). The result seems ideal, the working class now have representation and there is no longer an income gap. I might have been swayed at this point if I did not have history on my side. Communism has never been fully realized, and all of its offshoots were failures. This is because man is at heart acquisitive and self-centered. Where there might have been communism, leaders and administrations formed, as seen in Eastern Europe and Russia. Even in these pseudo-communist systems, black markets formed and were the most effective means of acquiring goods and services.

    So while the conditions of developing nations may seem despicable, history has shown us that upholding private property and free markets as the goal has led to great advances in wealth and technology. While the impoverished still exist in America, Japan, England, and Australia, that number is extremely low in comparison to developing nations. Obviously we can see that the progression of private property and free markets leads to goods. Communism is an enticing idea—I actually wish it could work—but our nature does not allow it, history shows us this flaw in our character. With this evidence we should now be working to exploit this flaw for the betterment of society, not using the betterment of society as an incentive to work against mankind's character.




  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A classic. Kind of an obligation to read this sort of material.

    I’ve been hearing about “The Communist Manifesto" since middle school, so I finally decided to pick up a copy [on iBooks - it’s in open domain] and checked it out.

    It’s a short piece [52 pages], divided into four sections.

    The first section was awesome. It’s about the relationship between the working and the ruling class, and why it is as it is. It talks about such things as the dissolution of social capital into financial capital [such as in the destruction of the family for industrial means] [p7]. It talks about the fragility of the industrial economy [p8], the profit/debt cycles that drive that economy forward [p9], and globalization [p9]. It even talks about how financial capital has become a form of artificial intelligence [p12]. The inverse relationship between the repulsiveness of a job and its pay is also investigated [p13]. It talks about the homogenization of culture [p18], and the 99% [p18]. In short, it’s brilliant.

    After that though, the piece goes down hill. The second section outlines communism, which doesn’t seem to address any of the problems outlined in the first section, except for property [p26]. Instead, it looks into centralization, something I’m not a fan of. And then the third section didn’t really make sense to me, because it heavily referenced current [mid 1800s] political conditions. The fourth section is simply a final call to action.

    I’m not exactly sure why Marx understood the situation so well [his analysis is still dead on today], yet couldn’t approach meaningful application. I’d still recommend giving his work a read though.

Book preview

The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx

Cover: The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx

The Communist Manifesto

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Introduction by Francis B. Randall, Sarah Lawrence College

Translation by Samuel Moore Edited by Joseph Katz

Pocket Books

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A SPECTER IS HAUNTING EUROPE–THE SPECTER OF COMMUNISM!

Thus Marx and Engels introduce their program for social change.

More than any other political or economic work written within the last hundred years, The Communist Manifesto has influenced and reshaped the course of history, not only erupting in such cataclysmic events as the Russian Revolution, but also lurking beneath the subversive antagonism toward democracy apparent in the Cold War and the hostility of many developing nations.

Cover of the First Edition of the Manifesto

Cover of the First Edition of the Manifesto

Introduction

Marx the Romantic

COMMUNISTS in all parts of the world proclaim that all of their actions are logically derived from the teachings of Lenin, who, they believe, built in turn on the doctrines of Marx and Engels. Communists insist that communism was born in the mind of Karl Marx in the middle of the nineteenth century, and that it received its first definitive expression in 1848 when Marx, with the help of Friedrich Engels, published what has come to be the most famous pamphlet in the history of the world, The Communist Manifesto.

We tend to think of Marx and Engels as fierce old men with piles of white hair and bushy beards, whose huge disembodied heads are painted on giant red banners borne aloft by faceless thousands of marching men through the streets of a totalitarian capital, carried between tanks and missiles and pictures of the current dictator as part of some revolutionary celebration in some vast militarized state. In fact, when Marx and Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto they were unknown young men in their late twenties, whose beards were not yet bushy, whose hair was not yet in the least white, who despised soldiers, and who hated all despotic states.

Early in 1848 there were no communist states in the world and no revolutionary governments of any sort. There was no Communist party in our sense and no revolutionary organizations or even trade unions of any size. A few countries of northwest Europe and a few areas of the United States were industrializing rapidly, but there was no city in the world—even London—much bigger than two million people, and no state—even Great Britain—in which a majority of the people did not live in the country and farm for a living. Every country in the world—except the Americas and Switzerland —was a monarchy of some sort, and in most of them the king, emperor, tsar, or sultan ruled absolutely and without any formal check. Even in free America there were millions of slaves, and even in free Great Britain most men were too poor to qualify for the vote. No woman in the civilized world—save possibly Queen Victoria—was fully and legally free from control by father, husband, or some other man. Every country was what we would now call backward, and way over ninety per cent of the world’s population lived in what we would call horrible and unendurable poverty—1848 was very long ago.

Into this now vanished world Karl Marx was born in 1818, in the western German city of Treves (Trier), which still boasts of the finest Roman ruins in northern Europe. Treves then belonged to Prussia, the second most powerful of the many independent German states, and the most efficient reactionary police tyranny in Europe. Marx always detested the Prussian regime. He renounced his Prussian citizenship while still in his twenties, and spent most of his life in exile, wanted by the Prussian police.

The Marxes were a Jewish family; both father and mother had come from families of rabbis. But Marx’s father, educated in the anti-religious atmosphere of the late eighteenth-century Enlightenment, gave up Judaism and the Jewish community, and became a lawyer and a Prussian official. Eventually, when Karl Marx was six, his father had himself and his whole family baptized as Lutherans not because he admired Luther or believed in Jesus, but to save his career in what was officially Lutheran Prussia, although Treves itself was a Catholic city.

An enormous amount of nonsense has been written about Marx because he was born into a Jewish family. He was never taught much about Judaism or Jewish life, and he was proud of his ignorance. He was often twitted and sneered at in his youth for being Jewish, but he never suffered much when he was young or later from the prevailing anti-Semitism, either in his career, or, so far as we can tell, in his psyche. He had few Jewish friends. He wrote a fair amount about the Jews of Europe, always regarding Judaism as a stupid superstition, and the Jews as a community caught in the vise of capitalism from which only the revolution could free them. He adopted from his Christian neighbors the habit of calling ideas and people he did not like dirty-Jewish whether they were Jewish or not, and when he really hated someone (for instance, Ferdinand Lassalle, a man of Jewish origin who became the greatest German socialist and trade union leader in the 1860’s), Marx would call him a dirty Jew of Negro blood. Marx was not really a Jew. Hitler thought that communism was one vast Jewish plot, citing as proof the fact that Marx was Jewish. But Hitler was crazy, and other anti-Communists would do well to avoid this mode of thought.

Other kinds of nonsense are written by people who know that Marx, in spite of his family background, was not really Jewish. One often reads that Marx was cut off from European society by being Jewish, and from Jewish society by no longer being Jewish, and that he was able to fathom the future socialist society because he was thus alienated from his own. One often reads that Marx had the moral indignation of a Hebrew prophet because of his Jewish background, that he was concerned with human happiness in this world rather than in the next because of his Jewish background, and that he was given to fierce self-righteousness, absolute dogmatism, and violent abusiveness because of his Jewish background. People who believe such things are usually at a loss to explain why most denouncers of the evils of early industrialism were of Christian origin, as were most socialists, and why most Christian intellectuals of the day also expressed themselves in strong terms. Marx was far outdone in alienation, in wrathful denunciation, and in dogmatic abusiveness by such sons of Christian noblemen as Mikhail Bakunin and Vladimir Lenin. Marx’s Jewish background is not the key to Marx.

Marx’s father wanted his son to become a lawyer like himself, and sent him through the best schools in Treves, and then, in 1835, to study law at the University of Bonn. The University was something of a country club, and young Marx joined the other students in drinking, brawling, scarring each other in dueling games, piling up debts, and joining subversive (i.e., politically liberal) clubs. Old Marx in disgust transferred his son to the University of Berlin, which had a justified reputation for a more intellectual faculty and student body—much as an American father, a generation ago, might have transferred his son from Princeton or Williams to Columbia. By and large, it worked. Young Marx

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