The Nexus Archive
Socialism and Political Economy · Treatise
The Communist Manifesto
by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Marx and Engels's short revolutionary argument about class struggle, capitalism, bourgeois society, and communism.
- Intermediate
- 1848
- ~60 min read
- 9 chapter guides
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the Preface to the English Edition of 1888 guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
A Pamphlet Meant To Enter History
In late 1847, a clandestine international workers’ association asked Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels for a public declaration of its principles. The result was not written to sit quietly on a shelf. It was sent to the printer as Europe approached the revolutions of 1848: an explanation of the age, a declaration of sides, and a summons designed to turn recognition into action.
The pressure behind that summons is still recognizable: a world can grow richer and more interconnected while the people whose labour sustains it lose control over their lives. Marx and Engels write from a definite side in that conflict. Their compressed histories, extravagant comparisons and direct challenges to an imagined opponent give the pamphlet the heat of an argument taking place in public.
Samuel Moore's English translation was revised by Engels, whose 1888 preface stands at the entrance here. Forty years separate that retrospective voice from the declaration it introduces. The distance matters: Engels defends the principles while admitting that some practical measures and political alliances have aged. Conviction and historical change occupy the same small book.
The opening pages
The Spectre of Communism
A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
Two things result from this fact.
I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powers to be itself a Power.
II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.
To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London, and sketched the following Manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.
I. Bourgeois and Proletarians: A World Remade
I. Bourgeois and Proletarians
The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.
Read it in a Quest
A study of wealth as moral pressure, social order, labor, class, and exchange.
Chapter guides · 9
Preface to the English Edition of 1888
Engels Reads The Manifesto After Forty Years
The 1888 preface distinguishes a surviving historical document from the principles Engels still defends.
A document surviving defeat
Engels traces the Manifesto from a secret league's commission through defeat, exile, new translations, and the rise of an international workers' movement. He credits Marx with the central historical proposition, identifies Samuel Moore's translation, and restores the pamphlet to the conflicts that made it travel.
Principles and dated measures
Engels defends the general principles while acknowledging that parts of the practical program and the map of political parties have become antiquated. Quoting the 1872 preface, he points to the Paris Commune’s lesson that workers cannot simply take over the existing State machinery for their own purposes.
A change in the name
Engels explains why the authors chose ‘communist’ in 1847: the word then named a working-class movement seeking its own emancipation, whereas ‘socialist’ commonly named respectable reformers and utopian schools. Their choice followed the conviction that workers must emancipate themselves. He affirms their continued commitment to the name. The quoted 1872 preface keeps the Manifesto unchanged because it has become a historical document.
The Spectre of Communism
The Enemy Gives The Spectre A Body
The opening converts accusation and fear into a reason to speak publicly.
Accusation becomes recognition
Marx and Engels begin with a coalition of enemies: pope and czar, radicals and police, old regimes and opposition parties. If every side invokes communism as a threat, they argue, communists should stop letting opponents define the name and publish their own aims.
Public speech against the spectre
The specter is a rhetorical reversal. What looks ghostly and hidden becomes a power precisely because governments already act as though it exists. The authors answer the accusation by openly declaring the movement’s views, aims and tendencies.
A declaration with several languages
The authors announce a statement prepared by communists of several nationalities assembled in London. The planned publication in six languages answers the international reach of the accusation and gives the movement a declaration in its own name.
I. Bourgeois and Proletarians: A World Remade
Capitalism First Appears As A World-Maker
Class struggle leads into a portrait of the bourgeoisie breaking feudal bonds and reorganizing the globe.
I. Bourgeois and Proletarians: Crisis and Class
The System Produces Its Opponent
Commercial crisis and industrial discipline become the conditions from which the proletariat organizes.
II. Proletarians and Communists
Abolition Is Defined, Then Contested
The communists distinguish bourgeois property from possession in general and answer objections about freedom, family, nation, and ideas.
III. Reactionary Socialism
Three Reactions Wear Socialist Language
Feudal, petty-bourgeois, and German 'True' socialism are attacked as critiques that look backward or detach ideas from struggle.
III. Conservative, or Bourgeois, Socialism
Reform Becomes A Way To Preserve The System
Bourgeois socialism wants relief from social conflict while retaining the society that produces it.
III. Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism
Utopia Is Praised, Then Overtaken
The early system-builders expose social misery but substitute designed communities for developing class action.
IV. Communists and Opposition Parties
Strategy Ends In Open Declaration
The final section combines tactical alliances with an uncompromising statement of ends.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read The Communist Manifesto?
- About 60 min in total.
- How difficult is The Communist Manifesto?
- Intermediate. A short treatise; about 60 minutes of reading.
- Which translation is this?
- The Samuel Moore translation from the German, first published in 1848. The text follows Manifesto of the Communist Party — Authorized English Translation, Edited and Annotated by Frederick Engels (1908).
- Can I read The Communist Manifesto for free?
- The Communist Manifesto is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription. The opening above and two chapter guides on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- 9 chapter guides, written by the Nexus editors. Two open in full here; the rest show their opening line.
About Marx
Karl Marx was a German philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary theorist. His work analyzes capitalism, class conflict, alienated labor, ideology, and historical change, most famously in The Communist Manifesto and Capital.
“Who benefits from the way society is built?”
Marx gives Nexus one of modernity's most consequential critiques of economics, power, and social order.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. The Communist Manifesto is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.