The Communist Manifesto is a political pamphlet by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels pub-lished in 1848. When the revolutions began to erupt, the Manifesto came to be recognized as one of the world’s most influential political manuscripts. It presents an analytical approach to the class struggle (historical and then-present) and the problems of capitalism and the capitalist mode of production. It states, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”, and summarizes Marx and Engels’ theories about the nature of society and politics. It also briefly features their ideas about how the capitalist society of the time would eventually be replaced by socialism.
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific explains the differences between utopian socialism and scientific socialism. It states that utopian socialism is idealist, reflects the personal opinions of the authors and claims that society can be adapted based on these opinions, while scientific socialism is based on reality. It focuses on the materialist concept of history, which is based on an analysis over history, and concludes that communism will replace capitalism.
The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 is a detailed description and analysis of the appalling con-ditions of the working class in Britain and Ireland during Engels’ stay in England. It also contains many seminal thoughts on the state of socialism and its development.
The book contains the above three works and presents the core concepts of Marxism under one cover.
KARL MARX (1818-1883) was a philosopher, economist, sociologist, and revolutionary socialist. He was born in Prussia in a middle-class family, and studied political economy and Hegelian philosophy. He spent much of his life in London, England, where he continued to develop his thought in collaboration with German thinker Friedrich Engels and published various works, the most well-known being The Communist Manifesto.
Marx’s theories about society, economics and politics, collectively known as Marxism, hold that human societies develop through class struggle—a conflict between ruling classes (called the bourgeoisie) that control the means of production and working classes (called the proletariat) that work on these means by selling their labour for wages. Marx argued that capitalism facilitated social relations and ideology through commodification, inequality, and the exploitation of labour. According to him, states are run in the interests of the ruling class but are represented as being in favour of the common interest of all. He predicted that capitalism produced internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by socialism.
Marx’s work laid the basis for much of the current understanding of labour and its relation to capital, and subsequent economic thought. Many intellectuals, labour unions, artists and political parties worldwide have been influenced by Marx’s work.
Marx was influenced by many thinkers, including Friedrich Engels, Friedrich Hegel, Adam Smith, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henri de Saint-Simon, and Charles Fourier, among others.
The legacy of Marx’s thought has become contested between numerous tendencies, like Leninism, Marxism-Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism, etc. Throughout the twentieth century, revolutions in many countries labelled themselves Marxist, the most notable being the Russian Revolution. Major world leaders including Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, and Fidel Castro cited Marx as an influence.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS (1820-1895) was a German social scientist and philosopher who propounded communist theory alongside Karl Marx, co-authoring The Communist Manifesto (1848). He was born in Barmen, Rhine Province of the kingdom of Prussia to a German textile manufacturer. Due to family circumstances, Engels dropped out of high school and was sent to work in a commercial house in Bremen in 1838. During this time, he began reading the philosophy of Hegel, whose teachings had dominated German philosophy at the time. In 1841, he joined the Prussian Army as a member of the Household Artillery. This position moved him to Berlin where he attended university lectures, began to associate with groups of Young Hegelians and published several articles in the Rheinische Zeitung.
In 1842, Engels’ father sent him to Manchester, thinking that working there might make Engels reconsider the radical leanings that he had developed in high school. On his way to Manchester, Engels visited the office of the Rheinische Zeitung and met Karl Marx for the first time. He also met Mary Burns, a young woman who helped introduce Engels to the English working class. He took notes and personally observed the horrible working conditions of English workers. This formed the basis for his first book The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844.
In 1844 he went to Paris to meet Karl Marx, and the two became close friends and remained so for their entire lives. Engels helped Marx write The Holy Family which was an attack on the Young Hegelians and the Bauer brothers. After Marx’s death, Engels devoted much of his remaining years to editing Marx's unfinished volumes of Das Kapital. He also contributed significantly to other areas. He argued a future communist society that would allow people to make decisions about their relationships free from economic constraints.
