ABSTRACT
Originally written at the request of a small group of radicals known as the Communist League, the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) has become the most famous, and perhaps the most influential, statement of Karl Marx’s views. In other writings Marx (1818–1883) delves more deeply into philosophical, economic, and social issues, but none of these is as comprehensive or as clear as the Manifesto. The clarity may be due largely to Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), Marx’s longtime friend and collaborator, but the ideas were chiefly Marx’s—as Engels himself acknowledged. Beginning with the statement “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” the Manifesto sets out Marx’s materialist conception of history in bold terms, then draws on this analysis of history and economics to offer a program for radical change. If some of Marx’s and Engels’s proposals no longer seem radical—“a heavy progressive or graduated income tax,” for example, or “free education for all children in public schools”—this is a sign of the changes since 1848. But even by today’s standards, some of their proposals—for example, “abolition of property in land” and “equal liability of all to labor”—may seem very radical indeed.
