Work · Marx

The Communist Manifesto

1848 · A pamphlet

All history is the history of class struggle, written to set a continent alight.

1848

Published

Sections

Marx & Engels

Authors

Read itIts ideas and famous passages, in plain English.→

The two classes of the modern age

Bourgeoisie

Proletariat

Owns the means of production

Owns only its own labour-power

Revolutionised production like no class before it

The class its own revolution called into being

"Constant revolutionising of production"

"Nothing to lose but its chains"

Piles up wealth

"Produces, above all, its own grave-diggers"

The pamphlet reads industrial society as a single great antagonism. The same bourgeoisie whose energy Marx genuinely admires (it has accomplished wonders surpassing the pyramids) creates, by massing workers in factories, the class that will end it.

The shape of the argument

I — Bourgeois and Proletarians

History as the history of class struggle; an awed account of what capitalism achieved, then the contradiction that turns it against itself.

II — Proletarians and Communists

The program: the abolition of bourgeois (not all) private property, and the answers to the objections about family, country, and eternal truths.

III — Socialist and Communist Literature

A brisk, often scornful survey of the rival socialisms of the day, clearing the ground for this one.

IV — Position Toward the Opposition

The tactics and the close, ending on the call for the workers of all countries to unite.

The cast

Marx & Engels — commissioned by the Communist League to state its aims; Engels a genuine co-author

The bourgeoisie — the revolutionary class whose achievements Marx praises before predicting its fall

The proletariat — the working class that capitalism creates and concentrates, and that will bury it

What came after — the 20th-century states built in its name, which the 1848 text neither describes nor licenses

The famous bits

A spectre is haunting EuropePreamble

The opening line that announces communism as a power the old order already fears.

All history is class struggleSection I

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

All that is solid melts into airSection I

Capitalism’s endless upheaval sweeps away every fixed, fast-frozen relation.

Its own grave-diggersSection I

What the bourgeoisie produces, above all, are the workers who will end it.

Workers of all countries, uniteSection IV

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains; they have a world to win.

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