The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx - Complete description

Read the controversial document written by the world's most influential political thinkers.

The work promotes the philosophy of communism, a "socioeconomic order structured upon common ownership of the means of production and the abolition of social classes, money, and state".

German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels state that "all existing society is the history of class struggles". It explains class struggle, critizes capitalism and its mode of production. The manifesto reveals how a few that own and control the means of production exploit the masses for profit.

The manifesto opens with a preamble and four sections: Bourgeois and Proletarians, Proletariats and Communists, Socialist and Communist Literature, and Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Opposition Parties.

The political pamphlet was written in 1848, when Europe was in political turmoil. The Communist Manifesto remains an important book for socialists today.