the annotated communist manifesto karl marx

Therefore we must be careful in interpreting the CM, since Marx and Engels modified specific opinions over their lifetimes.

Especially, Marx had not begun his massive studies of political economy, which culminated in Capital and other writings. Engels and he had not yet gone through the 1848 European-wide revolution and its defeat, nor closely observed the 1871 Paris Commune uprising, nor participated in the First International, among various experiences. While the Manifesto outlines basic concepts of Marx’s world view, which he maintained for the rest of his life, it was written early in his career. (The only other review of the CM by an anarchist I have found is Bookchin 1998.) Revolutionary anarchists tend to agree with most of its class analysis, while rejecting much of its political and economic program. (Draper 1998) It might be useful to review the CM from an anarchist’s viewpoint. Anarchists published their own translations of the CM in the U.S., Britain, and Russia. It has one sentence referring to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the first person to identify as an anarchist (to be discussed below). There could be no discussion of not-yet-existing revolutionary anarchism in the CM. What should anarchists make of this Manifesto? The revolutionary anarchism of Mikhail Bakunin and his allies developed about two decades later, in the late 1860s and early 1870s, culminating in a split in the First International. The mainstream of anarchism is also socialist and communist (libertarian socialist or communist). Mass-murdering dictatorships have treated it as a holy text, while in Western capitalist democracies, it has been regarded as a Satanic tract.

Huge movements of hundreds of thousands of workers, peasants, and others have regarded it as a foundational text, a call for human emancipation. (In those days, “party” usually meant what we would today call a “tendency” or “movement.”) It has since become a classic for socialists and communists, translated into virtually all the languages of earth. It was written for the Communist League, composed of revolutionary Germans, mostly emigre workers living in London. The Manifesto of the Communist Party-or Communist Manifesto (CM)-was written in 1848, by Karl Marx, using material from Frederick Engels.

The annotated communist manifesto karl marx