jussi reviewed The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
Historically fascinating
4 stars
Interesting read
paperback, 56 pages
English language
Published Feb. 1, 2008 by Wildside Press.
Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License: www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/
One of the most influential political tracts ever published this short book succinctly explains the aims and purpose of the Communist League of the 19th century, giving the author’s theories of the class struggle which they assumed would inevitably lead to world wide communism.
Full text available at Project Gutenberg too: www.gutenberg.org/files/61/61.txt
Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License: www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/
One of the most influential political tracts ever published this short book succinctly explains the aims and purpose of the Communist League of the 19th century, giving the author’s theories of the class struggle which they assumed would inevitably lead to world wide communism.
Full text available at Project Gutenberg too: www.gutenberg.org/files/61/61.txt
Interesting read
The manifesto is not a highly complex and detailed view of Marxism and its' concepts. It served as an easy read for people to get a simplified understanding of the oppression structures during the industrial revolution and lists a set of goals which should be achieved to establish a communist society.
This should be seen as an easy introduction to the Marxist philosophy and a potential starting point for further research into this topic.
I think it's pretty good. It's pretty polemical and lays out the political goals of communists, it doesn't really get into Marxist philosophy and the methods in which Marx comes to his conclusions though. I'd probably recommend "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" as a better introduction to Marxism.
The manifesto is mostly just interesting as a historical piece for me, especially in terms of leftist history. Ideologically it's still pretty interesting to read, however some parts of it have naturally become a bit outdated which has even been acknowledged by Marx and Engels some 25 years later.
The edition of the manifesto I read even includes multiple prefaces by Engels throughout the years which further gave an amazing insight into history and what they felt and thought at the time. Additionally the book also included Engel's The Principles of Communism which practically functioned as an FAQ to fully illustrate what exactly Communism is and it stands for.