The Communist Manifesto (1848)

The claim that Capitalism is subject to periodic crises, with each in turn making life worse for the proletariat, has been central to Marxist thought since 1848, when the manifesto was published more or less at the same time in French, German and English.

The document, itself, reads like a work of Victorian fiction. In English, the modern reader is reminded stylistically of the great European romantic writers, Hugo and Dumas, in original translation, which tends to somewhat obscure the authors’ intentions. This irony, no doubt, would be lost on communist radicals today, when we remember that Marx if not Engels despised both these 19th century French writers.

The analysis looks at the communist position in connection with the recent democratic elections in Germany; excerpts have been taken from the first three chapters of Marx and Engel’s Communist Manifesto. The very short fourth chapter is a call to arms based on what was posited in the second.

---

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.