The Communist Manifesto Overview

“Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries unite!” “In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” -Karl Marx

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This review is for The Communist Manifesto: A Modern Edition.

The Communist Manifesto, by Marx and Engels, is from the start an outdated work. The principles and ideas presented are either concerned with the conditions of the working class in the 19th century, where child labor, the absence of worker’s rights and the terrible living and working conditions were a miserable reality for the people of Europe, and with the predictions of Marx that the capitalist system is doomed to fail because of its own contradictions. The Manifesto presents many ideas of Marx, such as the materialistic conception of history, or the criticism of the Utopian socialists and the concept of the class struggle, but does not explain or analyze on them. Therefore, reading the Manifesto to understand Marx’s thought is hardly enough, although it is a decent foundation.
The Communism presented in the Manifesto has little to do with the Communism that the world came to know in the 20th century. Therefore, reading the Manifesto to understand political and economic systems such as the Soviet Union and today’s Cuba, again, is hardly enough. In this case, you would be interested in reading the works of Lenin, who was the thinker who influenced these political and economic systems.
So, is there any significance left in the Communist Manifesto? Certainly, its historical significance cannot be denied. In addition, it offers an alternative perspective and will make the reader agree, or disagree, but above all think for him/herself. It is however, a difficult read, with outdated terminology and passionate language which could also be described as propaganda.

Read the Manifesto, understand it, but also criticize it.

The Communist Manifesto: A Modern Edition is an excellent edition of the work of Marx and Engels. I give this work 5 stars, for the great edition of a historically significant text.

Just a small edit, for those people who constantly attack Marx. Karl Marx influenced, apart from politics, philosophy, economics, history, and is credited as one of the three main founders of Sociology. So for all those that cannot understand the significance of Marx beyond politics, have a bit of respect of an intellectual who has provided so much to the modern social sciences.

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