The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx and Engels's revolutionary summons to the working classes, is one of the most important and influential political polemics ever written. After some four years of collaboration Marx and Engels produced this incisive account of their conception of Communism, in which they envisage a society without classes, private property or a state. The Manifesto claims that the increasing exploitation of industrial workers will produce a global economic crisis, leading to a revolution in which Capitalism is overthrown by the new working class. This vision of Communism provided the theoretical basis of the political systems in Russia, China, Cuba and Eastern Europe, affecting the lives of millions throughout most of the last century. Yet even in today's post-Cold War political landscape, The Communist Manifesto remains a classic text- as a powerful work of literature, as a fundamental historical document, and, most importantly, as an unrivalled depiction of the limitless power of global Capitalism.