Book description
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DAVID AARONOVITCH
The Communist Manifesto was first published in London, by two
young men in their late twenties, in 1848. Its impact reverberated
across the globe and throughout the next century, and it has come to
be recognised as one of the most important political texts ever
written. Maintaining that the history of all societies is a history of
class struggle, the manifesto proclaims that communism is the only
route to equality, and is a call to action aimed at the proletariat.
It is an essential read for anyone seeking to understand our modern
political landscape.
Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, Prussia. While attending
university in Berlin he was influenced by the ideas of the philosopher
Hegel and his critics, the Young Hegelians, but Marx eventually
rejected both schools of thought. He quickly earned the reputation of
a revolutionary and left Germany for Paris, where he met his lifelong
friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels. Together they wrote and
published The Communist Manifesto, which was published in 1848,
just before the first wave of revolutions in France. Marx returned to
Germany but his radical activities led to expulsion, whereupon he
moved to London. There, Marx and Engels collaborated on further works
on economics and contemporary politics. Marx also wrote his major
treatise, Das Kapital, but only the first volume was published
in his lifetime. Marx died in poverty on March 14, 1883, and was
buried in Highgate Cemetery.
Friedrich Engels (1820-95) was the son of a Manchester factory
owner. He wrote several groundbreaking essays on contemporary social
and political conditions in Britain, including The Condition of the
Working Class in England (1845), in which he criticised the
working conditions and treatment of the urban poor. After Karl Marx'
death, Engels completed and published the last two volumes of Das
Kapital (1884, 1894) from his friend's surviving papers.
