The Communist Manifesto Published Feb. 21 1848

[Valin]

History.com

 

On February 21, 1848, The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx with the assistance of Friedrich Engels, is published in London by a group of German-born revolutionary socialists known as the Communist League. The political pamphlet--arguably the most influential in history--proclaimed that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" and that the inevitable victory of the proletariat, or working class, would put an end to class society forever. Originally published in German as Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei ("Manifesto of the Communist Party"), the work had little immediate impact. Its ideas, however, reverberated with increasing force into the 20th century, and by 1950 nearly half the world's population lived under Marxist governments.

 

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In The Communist Manifesto, Marx predicted imminent revolution in Europe. The pamphlet had hardly cooled after coming off the presses in London when revolution broke out in France on February 22 over the banning of political meetings held by socialists and other opposition groups. Isolated riots led to popular revolt, and on February 24 King Louis-Philippe was forced to abdicate. The revolution spread like brushfire across continental Europe. Marx was in Paris on the invitation of the provincial government when the Belgian government, fearful that the revolutionary tide would soon engulf Belgium, banished him. Later that year, he went to the Rhineland, where he agitated for armed revolt.

 

The bourgeoisie of Europe soon crushed the Revolution of 1848, and Marx would have to wait longer for his revolution. He went to London to live and continued to write with Engels as they further organized the international communist movement. In 1864, Marx helped found the International Workingmen's Association--known as the First International--and in 1867 published the first volume of his monumental Das Kapital--the foundation work of communist theory. By his death in 1884, communism had become a movement to be reckoned with in Europe. Twenty-three years later, in 1917, Vladimir Lenin, a Marxist, led the world's first successful communist revolution in Russia.

 

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"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."

Ronald Reagan.....dead white guy

[Draggingtree]

June 27, 1998

For Many, Marx's 'Manifesto' Remains Relevant

 

By PAUL LEWIS

arl Marx may have been right after all.

As readers revisit "The Communist Manifesto" on its 150th anniversary, those on the left and the right have been struck by the eerie way in which its 1848 description of capitalism resembles the restless, anxious and competitive world of today's global economy.

 

Economists and political scientists note how the manifesto, written by Marx and Friedrich Engels, recognized the unstoppable wealth-creating power of capitalism, predicted it would conquer the world, and warned that this inevitable globalization of national economies and cultures would have divisive and painful consequences.

"The manifesto speaks to our time," says Dani Rodrik, professor of international political economy at Harvard University. "Marx saw capitalism as the driving force of history. But he also warns of the divisions that capitalism's spread would bring, of the social orders destroyed."

 

The British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm describes the manifesto's portrait of capitalism as "recognizably the world we live in 150 years later" in his introduction to the elegant little edition brought out by the British-based publisher Verso to mark the anniversary.

 

Marx and Engels probably would not wish to be remembered today for having predicted capitalism's success. "Marx underestimated capitalism's ability to buy proletarian support by gradually enfranchising them," Rodrik said, adding, "A series of implicit social contracts underpins capitalism, of which the most recent was probably the creation of welfare states and social security systems after the Second World War."

In "The Communist Manifesto: New Interpretations" (Edinburgh University Press),

http://myweb.liu.edu/~uroy/eco54/histlist/marx/marx2.htm