The Communist Manifesto (1848): Marx and Engels' Pamphlet

The Communist Manifesto is a political pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels for the Communist League and first published in London in February 1848. In a few dozen pages it presented a theory of history as class struggle, a dramatic portrait of capitalism and a call for workers to overthrow it. Little noticed at the time, it later became one of the most widely translated and influential political texts ever written.

Background: Marx, Engels and the Communist League

Karl Marx was born in Trier in 1818 and studied law and philosophy before becoming a radical journalist. Friedrich Engels, born in Barmen in 1820 to a family of textile manufacturers, worked in his father’s firm in Manchester and in 1845 published The Condition of the Working Class in England. The two met properly in Paris in 1844 and began a lifelong partnership. Expelled from France in 1845, Marx settled in Brussels, where he and Engels worked out the materialist conception of history in manuscripts later published as The German Ideology, and set up a Communist Correspondence Committee to link socialists in different countries.

The Communist League grew out of the League of the Just, a secret society of German emigrant craftsmen in London, Paris and Switzerland. In June 1847 it reorganised itself under its new name, and Marx and Engels joined. At its second congress, held in London from late November to early December 1847, the League asked them to write a statement of its principles.

How the Manifesto was written

Engels had already written two drafts in question-and-answer form, the second known as the Principles of Communism. He suggested abandoning the catechism format and calling the document a manifesto. Marx wrote the final text in Brussels in December 1847 and January 1848. He worked slowly, and in late January the League’s central committee in London sent a letter warning him to deliver the manuscript on time.

The finished text was printed in German in London in February 1848, at the premises of the German Workers’ Educational Association in Bishopsgate. The pamphlet had 23 pages and the title Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (Manifesto of the Communist Party). The authors’ names did not appear. Only one manuscript page in Marx’s hand is known to survive.

What the Manifesto says

The text has a short preamble and four sections. It opens with the famous claim that a spectre of communism is haunting Europe, feared by all the old powers. The first section, “Bourgeois and Proletarians”, begins with the statement: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

Marx and Engels describe how the bourgeoisie, the class that owns capital, has swept away feudal society and created productive forces greater than all previous generations combined. Capitalism, they argue, has created a world market, drawn all nations into its orbit and turned human relations into cash relations. At the same time it creates its own gravediggers: the proletariat, the class of wage workers, which grows larger and more organised as industry expands. Periodic economic crises reveal that the system cannot control the forces it has unleashed.

The second section, “Proletarians and Communists”, argues that communists seek the abolition of bourgeois private property, meaning private ownership of the means of production rather than personal belongings. It lists ten measures for the most advanced countries, including a heavily progressive income tax, abolition of inheritance, a national bank, state ownership of transport, free education for all children in public schools and the end of children’s factory labour in its existing form. The third section criticises rival kinds of socialism, from the “feudal socialism” of conservative aristocrats to the utopian schemes of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier and Robert Owen, which Marx and Engels respected but considered unrealistic. The fourth section sets out communist attitudes to other opposition parties: in Germany, for example, communists should fight alongside the bourgeoisie against absolute monarchy while preparing for the struggle that would follow. The text closes with a call usually translated as “Workers of the world, unite!”

Reception in 1848

The Manifesto appeared just as revolution broke out in Paris on 22–24 February 1848, but it had almost no influence on the Revolutions of 1848. Marx was expelled from Belgium in March, went briefly to Paris and then to Cologne, where he edited the radical Neue Rheinische Zeitung until it was suppressed in 1849. After the revolutions failed he settled in London, where he lived until his death in 1883.

The first English translation, by Helen Macfarlane, appeared in 1850 in the Red Republican, a paper edited by the former Chartist leader George Julian Harney. The Communist League itself was broken up after the Cologne Communist Trial of 1852, in which several members were convicted on evidence partly forged by the Prussian police. For the next two decades the Manifesto circulated mainly among small groups of exiles and radicals, and new editions were rare.

Later influence

Interest revived in the 1870s. The Paris Commune of 1871 made Marx’s name widely known, a new German edition with a preface by both authors appeared in 1872, and the growth of socialist parties, above all the German Social Democratic Party, created a large readership. The 1888 English translation by Samuel Moore, edited by Engels, became the standard version. By the early twentieth century the Manifesto had been published in dozens of languages.

After the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia, communist states and parties printed it in enormous numbers, and it became required reading across much of the world during the twentieth century. It is also widely read outside socialist movements, as a classic text in history, sociology and political theory. In 2013 the surviving manuscript page and Marx’s annotated copy of the first volume of Capital were added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.

Key people

Karl Marx (1818–1883) was the principal author and later wrote Capital, whose first volume appeared in 1867. Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) co-wrote the text, supported Marx financially for decades and edited later editions and translations. The Communist League commissioned the work; its members were mostly German artisans living in exile.

Myths and facts

“Marx wrote it alone.” Engels contributed drafts and ideas and is co-author, though he later said the fundamental ideas were Marx’s.

“It describes how a communist state should work.” The Manifesto says very little about a future society. Later governments that claimed to follow Marx built institutions that the text does not describe.

“It was a bestseller in 1848.” It had a small print run and limited circulation; its fame came decades later.

Timeline

• 1847, June: The League of the Just becomes the Communist League.
• 1847, October–November: Engels writes the Principles of Communism.
• 1847, 29 November – 8 December: The League’s second congress in London commissions the Manifesto.
• 1847, December – 1848, January: Marx writes the final text in Brussels.
• 1848, February: The Manifesto is printed in London.
• 1850, November: Helen Macfarlane’s English translation appears.
• 1872: A new German edition with a joint preface is published.
• 1888: Samuel Moore’s English translation is published.
• 2013: The manuscript page enters UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.

Why it matters

The Communist Manifesto gave a compact, memorable form to ideas that inspired labour movements, revolutions and governments across the world for more than a century. Whether read as a programme, a warning or a historical document, it remains essential for understanding modern political history and debates about capitalism.