The Communist Manifesto is considered one of the most influential political manuscripts ever written. This important manuscript was commissioned by a Paris-based organization called the Communist League, and it was composed by German communist thinkers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto, also known as the Manifesto of the Communist Party, was published on February 21, 1848.
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was born in Trier, Prussia on May 5, 1818. He lived in a time of unrestrained capitalism. He witnessed the exploitation and misery of the working class people, and was inspired to fight for social justice. After graduating with a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Berlin in 1841, Karl went to Cologne and worked as an editor for the liberal democratic newspaper Rheinische Zeitung. Karl wrote controversial social and economic articles for the newspaper. This resulted in the banning of the newspaper by the Prussian government in 1843. After Rheinische Zeitung was banned, Karl decided to move to Paris, France with his wife, Jenny von Westphalen.
While Marx was in Paris, he met a devoted communist named Freidrich Engels, who brought the plight of the working class to Karl’s attention. He also wrote for a radical German newspaper called Vorwärts. In 1845, the newspaper published an article that expressed approval of an attempt to assassinate the King of Prussia, Frederick William IV. Marx and several of his colleagues were ordered to leave Paris. Marx settled in Brussels, and he collaborated with Engels to write the Communist Manifesto. In 1849, Karl moved to London, England. His last major work was Das Kapital, in which he revealed a new theory of human society. Karl passed away on the 14th of March, 1883.
The Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto is widely regarded as the founding documents of modern communism. It provides an analysis of the limitations of capitalism and class struggle, and it presents the main principles of communist ideology in detail. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx explains that each class of people in the society will work towards the destruction of classes that are inferior to them, and he suggested that all classes and governments should be abolished. The Communist Manifesto influenced many politicians and scholars around the world, and it inspired revolutions that resulted in the formation of communist states.
Preamble
Bourgeois and Proletarians
Proletarians and Communists
Socialist and Communist Literature
Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Opposition Parties
Social Impact