Introduction

'A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of communism.' At the end of 1847 the Communist League commissioned Marx and Engels to draft its programme; it was published in German in London the following February, almost at the moment the revolutions of 1848 broke out. 'The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.' With astonishing power the Manifesto describes the productive forces the bourgeoisie created in scarcely a hundred years, 'more massive and more colossal than all preceding generations together'; under it 'all that is solid melts into air', and all nations are drawn into the world market. It argues too that capitalism produces its own gravediggers. It ends with the call: 'Workers of all countries, unite!' Translated into more than two hundred languages, this pamphlet of under fifty pages is among the most widely read political documents in the world.