The Communist Manifesto contains the seeds of Marx's more comprehensive philosophy, which continues to inspire influential economic, political, social, and literary theories. But the Manifesto is most valuable as a historical document, one that led to the greatest political upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and to the establishment of the Communist governments that until recently ruled half the globe.

"A spectre is haunting Europe--the spectre of Communism." So begins one of history"s most important documents, a work of such magnitude that it has forever changed not only the scope of world politics, but indeed the course of human civilization. The Communist Manifesto was written in Friedrich Engels"s clear,stirring prose and declared the earth-shaking ideas of Karl Marx.Upon publication in 1848, it quickly became the credo of the poor and oppressed who longed for a society "in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."

The Communist Manifesto contains the seeds of Marx"s more comprehensive philosophy, which continues to inspire influential economic, political, social, and literary theories. But the Manifesto is most valuable as a historical document, one that led to the greatest political upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and to the establishment of the Communist governments that until recently ruled half the globe.

This Bantam Classic edition of The Communist Manifesto includes Marx and Engels"s historic 1872 and 1882 prefaces, and Engels"s notes and prefaces to the 1883 and 1888 editions.

Introduction by Vladimir Pozner

Preface to the German Edition of 1872

Preface to the Russian Edition of 1882

Preface to the German Edition of 1883

Preface to the English Edition of 1888

Manifesto of the Communist Party

I. Bourgeois and Proletarians

II. Proletarians and Communists

  III. Socialist and Communist Literature

   1. Reactionary Socialism

   2. Conservative, or Bourgeois, Socialism

   3. Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism

IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various

   Existing Opposition Parties