The Communist Manifesto

It could be argued that few documents have had such a considerable effect on the course of world social and political history as the manifesto of the Communist Party written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and published in 1848. The social structures of the 19th century were undergoing considerable change yet even so it was over half a century before Communism claimed its first scalp with the 1917 Russian Revolution. This demonstrates that it was not the Manifesto alone that caused the upheaval, but the constant demand for change and constant activism that kept the clarion call of Communism alive. The first volume of Marx’s immense work Capital appeared 20 years later, and Engels ensured that volumes 2 and 3 were published after Marx’s death, maintaining the impetus of the economic message. But the manifesto - effectively just a pamphlet - was the rallying point, kept alive by repeated publication in numerous languages with Engels each time adding new ‘prefaces’; and around this was