| "The
Communist Manifesto" is one of the most influential pieces
of political propaganda ever written. It is a summary of the
whole Marxist vision of history and is the foundation document
of the Marxist movement. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were
aged 29 and 27 respectively when The Communist Manifesto was
published on the eve of the 1848 revolutions. The authors
had been close collaborators since 1844, and the Manifesto
is a condensed and incisive account of the world-view they
had evolved during their hectic intellectual and political
involvement of the previous few years. This edition is critically
and textually up to date, and includes the Prefaces written
by Marx and Engels subsequent to the 1848 edition.
All Customer Reviews
5 out of 5 - Sept 10, 2006
If you are interested in reading the Communist
Manifesto, it's well worth getting this one, rather than saving
yourself a few quid on an edition which just contains the
Manifesto itself. Without putting this book in its historical
context, you're likely to find yourself thinking "so
what?!". The intro is academic and dense at times, but
well worth the effort.
The most enlightening aspect of the manifesto
itself, for me, is what is NOT in it, rather than what is.
There isn't a description of how a communist society should
look, for starters. The story of this book is the story of
a pamphlet written for a specific time and place, which became
an iconic work when it was seized on by the Soviets for reasons
of political expediency. I'm sure if Marx and Engels knew
what they would turn this book into, they would have written
it very differently. No wonder Marx is quoted as saying "I
am not a Marxist".
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