The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto, originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party, is a political pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It was commissioned by the Communist League and published in London in 1848. The text represents the first and most systematic attempt by the two founders of scientific socialism to codify for wide consumption the historical materialist idea; namely, that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles", in which social classes are defined by the relationship of people to the means of production. Published amid the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, the manifesto has become one of the world's most influential political documents. "A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism." and "Workers of the world, unite!" stand as two iconic lines that frame the text, marking its opening and its close, respectively, with the latter being reworked and popularized into a famous slogan of working-class solidarity. In the Manifesto, Marx and Engels combine philosophical materialism with the Hegelian dialectical method in order to analyze the development of European society through its modes of production, including primitive communism, antiquity, feudalism, and capitalism, noting the emergence of a new, dominant class at each stage. The text outlines the relationship between the means of production, relations of production, forces of production, and mode of production, and posits that changes in society's economic "base" affect changes in its "superstructure". The authors assert that capitalism is marked by the exploitation of the proletariat (working class of wage labourers) by the ruling bourgeoisie, which is "constantly revolutionising the instruments [and] relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society". They argue that capital's need for a flexible labour force dissolves the old relations, and that its global expansion in search of new markets creates "a world after its own image". The Manifesto concludes that capitalism does not offer humanity the possibility of self-realization, instead ensuring that human beings are perpetually stunted and alienated. It theorizes that capitalism will bring about its own destruction by polarizing and unifying the proletariat, and predicts that a revolution will lead to the emergence of communism, a classless society in which "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all". Marx and Engels propose the following transitional policies: abolition of private property in land and inheritance; introduction of a progressive income tax; confiscation of emigrants' and rebels' property; nationalisation of credit, communication, and transport; expansion and integration of industry and agriculture; enforcement of universal obligation of labour; provision of universal education; and elimination of child labour.