The Communist Manifesto
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Author
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Publication Date
January 20, 2026 03:17 AM
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General Book Summary
The Communist Manifesto is a foundational political treatise written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, first published in 1848. The work presents a comprehensive analysis of class struggle throughout human history and argues that all societies have been shaped by conflicts between oppressing and oppressed classes—from ancient Rome's patricians and slaves to medieval feudal lords and serfs. The manifesto's central thesis is that modern industrial society has simplified class antagonisms into a struggle between two great classes: the Bourgeoisie (capitalist owners of the means of production) and the Proletariat (the working class who must sell their labor to survive). The authors trace the historical rise of the bourgeoisie from medieval burghers through the discovery of new trade routes, the industrial revolution, and the establishment of the world market. Marx and Engels acknowledge the revolutionary role the bourgeoisie played in overthrowing feudalism and transforming production through technological innovation. However, they argue that capitalism contains inherent contradictions—particularly the tendency toward periodic economic crises of overproduction—that will ultimately lead to its downfall. The very weapons the bourgeoisie used to defeat feudalism are now turned against it. The manifesto outlines how industrial development creates and expands the proletariat while simultaneously degrading working conditions, reducing workers to mere appendages of machines. The authors argue that the proletariat, unlike previous revolutionary classes, represents the interests of the vast majority and will eventually rise up to abolish private property and class distinctions altogether. The text also distinguishes Communist positions from other socialist movements of the era and responds to common objections against communism. It concludes with a call for workers of all countries to unite, as they have nothing to lose but their chains. The manifesto remains one of the most influential political documents in history, establishing the theoretical foundation for communist and socialist movements worldwide.
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Book Excerpt
I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powers to be itself a Power.
II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.
To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London, and sketched the following Manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.
I. BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS
The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.
The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and...