The Communist Manifesto (Signet Classics)

Description

Featuring an extensive, provocative introduction by historian Martin Malia, this authorized English translation of The Communist Manifesto, edited and annotated by Engels, with prefaces to editions published between 1872 and 1888, provides a new opportunity to examine the document that shook the world.

In 1848, two young men published what would become one of the defining documents of modern history, The Communist Manifesto. It rapidly realigned political faultlines all over the world and its aftershock resonates to this day. In the many years since its publication, no other social program has inspired such divisive and violent debate. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world’s first regime to adopt the Manifesto’s tenets, historians have debated its intent and its impact. In the current era of market democracy in Russia and Eastern Europe, nationalism on every continent, and an ever tightening global economy, does the specter of Communism still haunt the world? Were the seeds of Communism’s ultimate destruction already planted in 1848? Is there anything to be learned from Marx’s envisioned utopia?
 
With an Introduction by Martin Malia
and an Afterword by Stephen Kotkin "A spectre is haunting Europe," Karl Marx and Frederic Engels wrote in 1848, "the spectre of Communism." This new edition of The Communist Manifesto, commemorating the 150th anniversary of its publication, includes an introduction by renowned historian Eric Hobsbawm which reminds us of the document s continued relevance. Marx and Engels s critique of capitalism and its deleterious effect on all aspects of life, from the increasing rift between the classes to the destruction of the nuclear family, has proven remarkably prescient. Their spectre, manifested in the Manifesto s vivid prose, continues to haunt the capitalist world, lingering as a ghostly apparition even after the collapse of those governments which claimed to be enacting its principles.