The Communist Manifesto
By Karl Marx
()
About this ebook
Karl Marx
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German philosopher, historian, political theorist, journalist and revolutionary socialist. Born in Prussia, he received his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Jena in Germany and became an ardent follower of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Marx was already producing political and social philosophic works when he met Friedrich Engels in Paris in 1844. The two became lifelong colleagues and soon collaborated on "The Communist Manifesto," which they published in London in 1848. Expelled from Belgium and Germany, Marx moved to London in 1849 where he continued organizing workers and produced (among other works) the foundational political document Das Kapital. A hugely influential and important political philosopher and social theorist, Marx died stateless in 1883 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery in London.
Read more from Karl Marx
Das Kapital: A Critique of Political Economy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Communist Manifesto: Original Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Existential Literature Collection Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A World Without Jews Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5What is Marxism? Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Critique of the Gotha Program Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Capital: All 3 Volumes - Complete Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEconomic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wage labour and Capital Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: The Complete Works PergamonMedia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Communist Manifesto: A Modern Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Enlightenment Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Revolutionary Philosophy of Marxism. Selected Writings on Dialectical Materialism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCapital: Volumes One and Two Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Classics of Marxism: Volume Two Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related to The Communist Manifesto
Related ebooks
The Communist Manifesto Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Communist Manifesto by Marx, Karl, Engels, Friedrich New Edition [Paperback(1948)] Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Communist Manifesto by Marx, Karl, Engels, Friedrich New Edition [Paperback(1948)] Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsManifesto of the Communist Party Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Communist Manifesto (A to Z Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Communist Manifesto (Best Navigation, Active TOC) (A to Z Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Communist Manifesto: Delve into Marx and Engels' Revolutionary Classic - eBook Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Communist Manifesto: The Revolutionary Words Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsManifesto of the Communist Party: From the English Edition of 1888 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Communist Manifesto - Unabridged Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsManifesto of the Communist Party Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFour Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Communist Manifesto Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Communist Manifesto (Diversion Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCommunist Manifesto: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMarx - Engels The Communist Manifesto: original version Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Communist Manifesto in Plain and Simple English (A Modern Translation and the Original Version) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Communist Manifesto: The revolutionary text that changed the course of history Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary Of "Manifesto Of The Communist Party" By Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: UNIVERSITY SUMMARIES Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEvolution of Communism: The Coming Revolution! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Untold Slavery of Europe and The Communist's Manifesto: The Fundamental Principles of Politics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Conquest of Bread: With an Excerpt from Comrade Kropotkin by Victor Robinson Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrench and German Socialism in Modern Times Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Conquest of Bread. Illustrated Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Conquest of Bread Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWorld Socialist Revolution Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Conquest of Bread Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Communist Manifesto (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Conquest of Bread Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Short Stories For You
The Stories of Ray Bradbury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jackal, Jackal: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Finn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Years of the Best American Short Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things They Carried Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hot Blooded Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Short Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Five Tuesdays in Winter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Skeleton Crew Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Four Past Midnight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: A Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ficciones Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lovecraft Country: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Explicit Content: Red Hot Stories of Hardcore Erotica Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Two Scorched Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Tower: And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Communist Manifesto
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx
Introduction
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 Tsar, 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:
Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.
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.
Chapter 1
Bourgeois and Proletarians
The history of all hitherto existing society 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 reconstitution 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 distinct feature: it has simplified 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 colonization of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.
The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer suffices for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed aside by the manufacturing middle class; division of labor between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labor in each single workshop.
Meantime, the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturers no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionized industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.
Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance in that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association of medieval commune: here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable third estate
of the monarchy (as in France); afterward, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general — the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative state, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his natural superiors
, and has left no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous cash payment
.