ΦTHALASSAJournal of Philosophy
Books
Thalassa Editions

The Communist Manifesto

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Marxism · Beginner

A political pamphlet that became one of the most consequential texts of the modern era.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels · first circulated 1848

Main ideas

  • History read through class conflict.
  • Capitalism described as revolutionary and unstable.

Important themes

ClassHistoryRevolution

Reading context

Written as a programme for the Communist League and published weeks before the revolutions of 1848. It is a pamphlet rather than a treatise: history as class struggle, stated for people expected to act on it.

How to approach it

An hour's read. Section 1 is the analysis and still the most quoted. Read the later prefaces, where Marx and Engels themselves note what the 1848 text got wrong.