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- Herausgeber: Guiding Beam
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
"Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!" A Call to Revolution First published in 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' Communist Manifesto is considered a foundational work of political theory. This political work remains pertinent today since it questions capitalism and urges the working class to overthrow the capitalist system and impose communism, a society without classes. This manifesto—with echoes of Russian history—remains essential to comprehending the forces influencing the world we live in today. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" This manifesto, deeply rooted in Marxism and relevant to the Russian Revolution and the Cold War, is an essential read for those interested in politics and history books alike. This communist manifesto book is a faithful reprint, preserving its original power and relevance. It's an essential piece of history that resonates in today's world, making it a perfect addition to any collection of political books or a thoughtful gift for anyone passionate about communism and Russian history. Order now to own a classic that still moves a global ideology today. Title Details - Original 1848 Text - Historical Context - Political Philosophy
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Seitenzahl: 72
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels
First Edition, 2024
Published by Guiding Beam
Copyright © 2024 by Guiding Beam.
All rights reserved.
This text was originally published in the United Kingdom on the year of 1848.
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Contents
Preface
The “Manifesto” was published as the platform of the “Communist League,” a workingmen's association, first exclusively German, later an international, and under the political conditions of the Continent before 1848, unavoidably a secret society. At a Congress of the League, held in London in November 1847, Marx and Engels were commissioned to prepare for publication a complete theoretical and practical party-program. Drawn up in German, in January 1848, the manuscript was sent to the printer in London a few weeks before the French revolution of February 24th. A French translation was brought out in Paris shortly before the insurrection of June 1848. The first English translation, by Miss Helen Macfarlane, appeared in George Julian Harney's “Red Republican,” London, 1850. A Danish and Polish edition had also been published.
The defeat of the Parisian insurrection of June 1848—the first great battle between Proletariat and Bourgeoisie—drove again into the background, for a time, the social and political aspirations of the European working class. Thenceforth, the struggle for supremacy was again, as it had been before the revolution of February, solely between different sections of the propertied class; the working class was reduced to a fight for political elbow-room, and to the position of the extreme wing of the Middle-class Radicals. Wherever independent proletarian movements continued to show signs of life, they were ruthlessly hunted down. Thus the Prussian police hunted out the Central Board of the Communist League, then located in Cologne. The members were arrested, and after eighteen months' imprisonment, they were tried in October 1852. This celebrated “Cologne Communist trial” lasted from October 4th till November 12th; seven of the prisoners were sentenced to terms of imprisonment in a fortress, varying from three to six years. Immediately after the sentence, the League was formally dissolved by the remaining members. As to the “Manifesto,” it seemed thenceforth to be doomed to oblivion.
When the European working class had recovered sufficient strength for another attack on the ruling classes, the International Working Men's Association sprang up. But this association, formed with the express aim of welding into one body the whole militant proletariat of Europe and America, could not at once proclaim the principles laid down in the “Manifesto.” The International was bound to have a program broad enough to be acceptable to the English Trades' Unions, to the followers of Proudhon in France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain, and to the Lassalleans in Germany. Marx, who drew up this program to the satisfaction of all parties, entirely trusted the intellectual development of the working class, which was sure to result from combined action and mutual discussion. The very events and vicissitudes of the struggle against Capital, the defeats even more than the victories, could not help bringing home to men’s minds the insufficiency of their various favorite nostrums and preparing the way for a more complete insight into the true conditions of working-class emancipation. And Marx was right. The International, on its breaking up in 1874, left the workers quite different men from what it had found them in 1864. Proudhonism in France, Lasalleanism in Germany were dying out, even the Conservative English Trades' Unions, though most of them had long since severed their connection with the International, were gradually advancing towards that point at which, last year at Swansea, their president could say in their name, “Continental Socialism has lost its terrors for us.” In fact, the principles of the “Manifesto" had made considerable headway among the working men of all countries.
The Manifesto itself thus came to the front again. The German text had been, since 1850, reprinted several times in Switzerland, England, and America. In 1872, it was translated into English in New York, where the translation was published in “Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly." From this English version, a French one was made in “Le Socialiste” of New York. Since then, at least two more English translations, more or less mutilated, have been brought out in America, and one of them has been reprinted in England. The first Russian translation made, by Bakounine, was published at Herzen's “Kolokol" office in Geneva, about 1863; a second one, by the heroic Vera Zasulitch, also in Geneva, 1882. A new Danish edition is to be found in “Socialdemokratisk Bibliothek," Copenhagen, 1885; a fresh French translation in “Le Socialiste,” Paris, 1886. From this latter, a Spanish version was prepared and published in Madrid, 1886. The German reprints are not to be counted, there have been twelve altogether at the least. An Armenian translation, which was to be published in Constantinople some months ago, did not see the light, I am told, because the publisher was afraid of bringing out a book with the name of Marx on it, while the translator declined to call it his own production. Of further translations into other languages, I have heard but have not seen them. Thus the history of the Manifesto reflects, to a great extent, the history of the modern working-class movement; at present, it is undoubtedly the most widespread, the most international production of all Socialist literature, the common platform acknowledged by millions of working men from Siberia to California.
Yet, when it was written, we could not have called it a Socialist Manifesto. By Socialists, in 1847, were understood, on the one hand, the adherents of the various Utopian systems: Owenites in England, Fourierists in France, both of them already reduced to the position of mere sects, and gradually dying out; on the other hand, the most multifarious social quacks, who, by all manners of tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to capital and profit, all sorts of social grievances, in both cases men outside the working class movement, and looking rather to the “educated” classes for support. Whatever portion of the working class had become convinced of the insufficiency of mere political revolutions and had proclaimed the necessity of a total social change, that portion, then, called itself Communist. It was a crude, rough-hewn, purely instinctive sort of Communism; still, it touched the cardinal point and was powerful enough amongst the working class to produce the Utopian Communism, in France, of Cabet, and in Germany, of Weitling. Thus, Socialism was, in 1847, a middle-class movement, Communism a working class movement. Socialism was, on the Continent at least, “respectable”; Communism was the very opposite. And as our notion, from the very beginning, was that “the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself,” there could be no doubt as to which of the two names we must take. Moreover, we have ever since been far from repudiating it.
