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    The Communist Manifesto
    The Communist Manifesto
    The Communist Manifesto
    Ebook90 pages1 hour

    The Communist Manifesto

    By Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Yanis Varoufakis

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    The Communist Manifesto was first published in London in 1848 by two young men in their twenties, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and its impact reverberated across the globe and through the next century. Foreshadowing globalization 150 years before it happened, the Manifesto brims with prescient insights into the crisis facing capitalism today. It is an essential read for anyone seeking to understand the modern political landscape. This edition includes a new introduction by the bestselling author of And the Weak Suffer What They Must? and Talking to My Daughter About the Economy, Yanis Varoufakis.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group
    Release dateAug 6, 2019
    ISBN9781984899675
    Author

    Karl Marx

    Karl Heinrich Marx was a philosopher, critic of political economy, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary.

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    Reviews for The Communist Manifesto

    3.5/5

    2,060 ratings46 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Jones does a great job contextualizing the Manifesto beforehand (with a whopping 184-page introduction, not to mention footnotes for the actual text of the Manifesto), and connects the reader to many other philosophers and social theorists in Marx's influential circle. In fact, this edition seems more like a history book than simply another published copy of the Manifesto. As for Marx, his opinions on the harm of capitalism are very well elucidated, but when it comes to his solutions, they are very vague and seem to be merely based on what happened in the French Revolution. His thoughts on capitalism make it all worth it, however, and thus I will move on to his other works, especially [b:Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844|85954|Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844|Karl Marx|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1521042866l/85954._SY75_.jpg|82945].
    • 4/5
      Finally got around to reading this and I can see why it's one of the most influential works of all time. It proposes a new economic system that the world had never seen before in mid 1800s. It explains a lot of class dynamics that's amazingly still relevant 170 years later, and it makes predictions that are incredibly interesting, and in a few places, amazingly accurate. Marx is also just a really good writer. I was very impressed with the quality of the writing and prose at times. He is also very good at breaking down concepts to the reader, and both over-explaining something, but also giving a blunt summary, ensuring that the reader takes away at least something, from each point he makes.
    • 3/5
      Marx, right?
    • 4/5
      I'm only giving this a four star rating because as a political science major I respect Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles' opinions but I'm also too much a believer in capitalism.

      My edition (a Penguin Classic Deluxe Edition 2011) was good but I think the manifesto itself had too many big words (which seemed odd giving that it was for the lower classes) and it constantly repeated how the bourgeois = bad and the proletarians = good. There seemed to be no middle ground for the independent thinker. I think, Marx and Engles had too much anger towards the rich; this reflected off Lenin who, in part, influenced the assassination of the Romanov family (including the innocent children).

      I don't believe Marx and/or Engles envisioned there communistic ideas as the anti-human rights nations of the modern world (i.e. China, Vietnam, Cuba, and North Korea) where "free" property can lead to mass starvation, countless international sanctions, and/or extremely moderated free speech.
    • 1/5
      interesting as a historical document.

      Excessively flawed philosophy and outlook.
    • 2/5
      The Communist Manifesto makes a good case against communism. Enough said.
    • 1/5
      How did this spark off the ruination and misery that spread across half the world? It's deranged.
    • 3/5
      glad to have read it.
    • 3/5
      It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

      What can or should be said? This screed appears both pivotal and yet fantastic. How should we proceed and parse? I found it strange that I had never read this pamphlet. It goes with out saying that I had absorbed all of its aims previously by osmosis and secondary references. I marveled at its poetry and shuddered at the displayed certainty. Such ruminations on historical inevitability are simply chiliasm.

      No one could fathom in the 19th Century how pernicious and gripping nationalism would prove nor, the ghostly strains of Islam, especially in Central Asia. The fact that capitalism could turn matter into liquid should've tipped off Karl and Fred about the nature of their foe. We have proved to be whores. We are also driven by baubles and thrive on peer recognition. Self Criticism was always going to be a hard sell. Marx and Engels announced their agenda in this manifesto. It was calmly stated that private property would be abolished. Collectivization flashed across my mind but appearing just as suddenly was the bloody strikebreaking in South Africa in 2012. Do you have a world to gain, Jacob Zuma? Oh those imps of our natures.
    • 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.
    • 4/5
      Compelling propaganda pamphlet, much shorter than I thought.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.




    • 1/5
      What a load of malarky. Merely a treatise on mediocrity and a manual on how a minority might rule the majority. I would love to dismantle this nonsense here, but I'm not sure anybody is going to read this, so I'll spare my metacarpals.
      The education rant, however, sounds oddly familiar. It sounds like the US dept. of education cut and pasted this section right into their own manifesto on how to educate American children.

      Silly commies, freedom's for capitalists.

      Rant:

      Why does everyone keep repeating "capitalists-imperialist." GOVERNMENTS create empires. Government IS empirical in nature which is what's advocated by Marx-Engels. Capitalist and imperialist are conflicting terms since governments create monopolies, a free market is politically and socially blind.

      Sorry Marxists, history supports these assertions.
    • 2/5
      It will never catch on :)

      Revolutionary ideas wrapped in tortured prose
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 2/5
      This is a short essay by Karl Marx. His ideas seem to be in response to dislike for Western capitalism. His ideas are radical and do not appear to be practical as evidenced by history. Reality and theory do not match. Interesting from a historical standpoint.
    • 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.
    • 4/5
      A thought provoking and landmark book. The Manifesto was a reaction against the industrial revolution and untethered capitalism, which resulted in extraordinarily unfair labor practices and a heavy skew between those few at the top of the economic pyramid, and those at the bottom who were shouldering the load. Perhaps that was always true throughout history, but post-Enlightenment, and in the 19th century in particular, leading thinkers and artists said, “enough.” Marx and Engels just took it a step further than others, by stating that all private property needed to be abolished and made collective.

      How could they have taken such an extreme position? As Pozner says in the introduction: “Few people today have even the remotest idea of the horrors of mid-nineteenth-century labor. … Marx was sickened by what he saw, as were many others, among them Charles Dickens. But differing from everyone else, Marx set out to discover whether there was any rhyme or reason for this situation, any basic underlying motive for this state of affairs, anything resembling a law. … Where Marx differed from Thomas Jefferson and most other thinkers was in his certainty that a decent livelihood (the pursuit of happiness) was not possible without two basic elements: political equality and economic equality. … He may have been an idealist in believing that once the conditions of human existence were changed, once private ownership of property was abolished, once exploitation disappeared, people would change as well. He believed that in a society where there were no have-nots, where one’s livelihood did not depend on struggling to make money, where instead of competing against one another people worked together…”

      In his list of ten measures to be taken by all nations, there are some that I agree with unequivocally and which you may take for granted today (progressive income tax, free education for all children in public schools), some that are arguable (abolition of inheritance, equal liability to all in labor), and some that I disagree with (abolition of private property, centralization of production by the State).

      As Capitalism was extreme in 1848, so was Marx and Engel’s counter. They swung the pendulum too far the other way, and were too idealistic in doing so. Furthermore, they could not have foreseen what perverted forms their theories were to take in practice in the following century, where private ownership was replaced by state ownership, not public, and individual liberties were crushed by totalitarianism.

      It was dangerous in its time to declare “Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!.”, and it was dangerous more than a century later. Being branded a communist during the Cold War in America led to loss of work, black balling and exportation; the communists were “the enemy”, without much thought outside of intelligentsia as to what communism actually stood for. Read it for that.

      Quotes:
      “You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.”

      “Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation.”
    • 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.
    • 4/5
      Important as a source and vividly written, though I do not agree with all of it.
    • 3/5
      I needed something to balance out "The Law" by Bastiat. Interesting reading.
    • 3/5
      The Manifesto itself, is a profound and masterful work.

      What undoes this book, however, is the pitiful introduction by A.J.P Taylor. This introduction, unlike Marx's work, is an unimportant quibble of its time (1967). He rails on and on for 47 pages (longer than the manifesto itself!) about how 2 buddies from Germany managed to fool millions of people into believing their crazy deluded message, and how these two lads, working completely and always alone, utterly misunderstood history and economics and sociology down to the core. The work itself is a classic simply because millions of people have been deluded into worshipping it, but the men themselves were self-obsessed and narcissistic and thought themselves gods among men, when in fact they were poor economists, and even poorer historians.

      A.J.P. Taylor wrote this in 1967, and one cannot understand why on earth such an introduction could be commissioned or approved to accompany the Manifesto. I can only imagine what the public opinion of communism must have been like at the time - fear and loathing of the USSR alongside complete and total faith in capitalism. In an amusing passage, Taylor takes a break from criticizing Marx to "disprove" his critique of capitalism in the light of modern history, arguing that capitalism has proven itself after the little hiccup of the '30s. Well, it's 2011, and today economists like Nouriel Roubini are questioning capitalism altogether and the world is mired in collective contemplation on how to save the world economy. It seems that despite all of Taylor's fluff, Marx and Engels turned out to be far more timeless thinkers than he was.

      Read the Manifesto, just don't read this version. It is nothing more than publishers wanting to make more pennies by pawning Marx's writings off with fluff-filler as an addendum.
    • 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.

    Book preview

    The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx

    Cover for The Communist Manifesto

    Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

    THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

    Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, political theorist, and journalist. He met his lifelong friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), in Paris. Engels was the son of a Manchester factory owner and the author of groundbreaking essays on social conditions in Britain, including The Condition of the Working Class in England. Marx and Engels wrote and published The Communist Manifesto in 1848, just before the wave of revolutions in France. Marx went on to publish the first volume of his major treatise, Das Kapital, before his death in 1883, and Engels used his friend’s papers to complete and publish the final two volumes.

    Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist and academic, is the former finance minister of Greece and the author of several internationally bestselling books, including And the Weak Suffer What They Must? and Talking to My Daughter About the Economy. Varoufakis cofounded the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, which promotes reforms aimed at making the European Union more democratic.

    Book Title, The Communist Manifesto, Author, Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels With an introduction by Yanis Varoufakis, Imprint, Vintage

    FIRST VINTAGE CLASSICS EDITION, AUGUST 2019

    Introduction copyright © 2018 by Yanis Varoufakis

    All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Great Britain in German as Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei by Communistischer Arbeiter-Bildungs-Verein, London, in 1848. This edition originally published in Great Britain by Vintage Classics, an imprint of Vintage Publishing, a division of Penguin Random House Ltd., London, in 2018.

    Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Classics and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

    Vintage Classics Trade Paperback ISBN 9780525566724

    Ebook ISBN 9781984899675

    Cover design by Linda Huang

    Cover photograph © Aukid Phumsirichat/EyeEm/Getty Images

    www.vintagebooks.com

    v5.4

    ep

    Contents

    Cover

    About the Authors

    Title Page

    Copyright

    Introduction

    Preface to the German Edition of 1872

    Preface to the Russian Edition of 1882

    Preface to the German Edition of 1883

    Preface to the English Edition of 1888

    Manifesto of the Communist Party: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

    I. Bourgeois and Proletarians

    II. Proletarians and Communists

    III. Socialist and Communist Literature

    IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties

    INTRODUCTION

    A hard spectre to silence

    For a manifesto to succeed, it must speak to our hearts like a poem while infecting the mind with images and ideas that are dazzlingly new. It needs to open our eyes to the true causes of the bewildering, disturbing, exciting changes occurring around us, exposing the possibilities our current reality is pregnant with. It should make us feel hopelessly inadequate for not having recognised these truths ourselves, and it must lift the curtain on the unsettling realisation that we have been acting as petty accomplices, reproducing a dead-end past. Lastly, it needs to have the power of a Beethoven symphony, urging us to become agents of a future that ends unnecessary mass suffering and inspire humanity to realise its potential for authentic freedom.

    No manifesto has better succeeded in doing all this than the one published in February 1848 at 46 Liverpool Street, London. Commissioned by English revolutionaries, The Communist Manifesto (or the Manifesto of the Communist Party, as it was first published) was authored by two young Germans – Karl Marx, a twenty-nine-year-old philosopher with a taste for epicurean hedonism and Hegelian rationality, and Friedrich Engels, a twenty-eight-year-old heir to a Manchester mill.

    As a work of political literature, the Manifesto remains unsurpassed. Its most infamous lines, including the opening one (‘A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism’), have a Shakespearean quality about them. Like Hamlet confronted by the spectre of his slain father, the reader is compelled to wonder:

    Should I conform to the prevailing order, suffering the slings and arrows of the outrageous fortune bestowed upon me by history’s irresistible forces? Or should I join these forces, taking up arms against the status quo and, by opposing it, usher in a brave new world?

    For Marx and Engels’ immediate readership this was not an academic dilemma, debated in the salons and cliques of Europe. The Manifesto was a call to action, and heeding this spectre’s invocation often meant persecution or, in some cases, lengthy imprisonment. Today, a similar dilemma faces millennials:

    Conform to an established order that is crumbling and incapable of reproducing itself ? Or oppose it, at considerable personal cost, in search of new ways of working, playing and living together?

    Even though Communist parties have disappeared almost entirely from the political scene, the spectre of Communism driving the Manifesto is proving hard to silence.*1

    The delicious irony

    To see beyond the horizon is any manifesto’s ambition. But to succeed as Marx and Engels did in accurately describing an era that would arrive a century and a half in the future, as well as to analyse the contradictions and choices we face today, is truly astounding. In the late 1840s Capitalism was foundering, local, fragmented, timid. And yet Marx and Engels took one long look at it and foresaw our globalised, financialised, ironclad, all-singing-all-dancing capitalism. This was the creature that came into being after 1991, at the very same moment the Establishment was proclaiming the death of Marxism and the end of History.

    Of course, the predictive failure of the Manifesto has long been exaggerated. I remember how even left-wing economists in the early 1970s challenged the pivotal Manifesto prediction that capital would ‘nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere’. Drawing upon the sad reality of what were then called ‘Third World countries’, they argued that capital had lost its fizz well before expanding beyond its ‘metropolis’ in Europe, America and Japan.

    Empirically they were correct: European, US and Japanese multinational corporations operating in the ‘peripheries’ of Africa, Asia and Latin America were confining themselves to the role of colonial resource extractors and

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