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Theme about Marx and Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto 1848

“A spectre is passing through Europe – the spectre of Communism…”

Thus began “The Communist Manifesto”, considered one of the most important writings in the history of socialism.

The manifesto was written by two of the pioneers of the socialist movement, the two German social theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It was actually a manifesto for a group of German political refugees who had gathered in England under the name of the Communist League, but its significance went far beyond that. Not least because it was published in London in February 1848, just before the February Revolution in Paris, which sparked a series of revolutions across Europe (in Denmark, the unrest peacefully led to the end of absolute monarchy).

It became a founding document in the building of the international labor movement and is one of the most widely read documents in history.

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In the famous manifesto, the authors state that “All previous history is the history of class struggle”. In it, they review the contradictions between the different classes throughout time, reject the solutions of previous reformers and utopians to the hardships of the oppressed classes (referred to as the proletariat), and finally call for the overthrow of existing society through international cooperation between workers. From this follows the famous call at the end:

“Proletarians of all countries, unite!”

From the first edition of the Communist Manifesto.

The only remaining page from the first draft of the manifesto. Handwritten by Karl Marx