The Communist Manifesto and Revolutionary Praxis

The Manifesto of the Communist Party (Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei) was written by Marx and Engels between December 1847 and January 1848, commissioned by the Communist League (Bund der Kommunisten), a small international organization of workers and radical intellectuals meeting in London, and first published in German in London in February 1848, mere weeks before the outbreak of revolutions across much of continental Europe that year, including in France, the German states, and the Austrian Empire — a coincidence of timing, rather than the Manifesto's direct cause, since the pamphlet had negligible immediate circulation or influence on the 1848 uprisings themselves and achieved its lasting fame only in later decades. Structured in four sections, the Manifesto opens with its sweeping historical claim about class struggle, proceeds to outline the historical role of the bourgeoisie — praised, remarkably, for having "played a most revolutionary part" in dissolving feudal relations and creating a genuinely global market and productive apparatus — before turning to the proletariat as the class capitalism itself creates and enlarges, and whose growing organization capitalism cannot ultimately prevent from becoming a political force.