Communist Manifesto Notes
The Communist Manifesto Notes – January 31st
Introduction I * In the spring of 1847, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels agreed to join the League of the Just (Bund der Gerechten), an offshoot of a revolutionary secret society formed in Paris in the 1830s. * The League offered to publish a Manifesto drafted by Marx and Engels as its policy document, and to modernize its organization along their lines. * In the summer of 1847, the League was renamed League of Communists, and committed to the object of “the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the ending of the old society which rests on class contradiction, and the establishment of a new society without classes or private property. * The objects and new statues were accepted in November-December 1847, and Marx and Engels were invited to draft the new Manifesto outlining the League’s aims and policies. * Although both Marx and Engels prepared drafts and represents joint views of both, it was clearly written by Marx. * The virtual absence of early drafts suggests that it was written rapidly. * The resulting document was twenty-three pages, entitled Manifesto of the Communist Party (more generally known since 1872 as The Communist Manifesto), and was published in February 1848. * It was printed in the office of the Worker’s Educational Association in London. * This small pamphlet is by far the most influential single piece of political writing since the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. * It hits the streets only a week or two before the outbreak of the revolutions of 1848. * Its initial impact was exclusively German. * Karl Marx was an editor of the newspaper Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49). * The first edition of the Manifesto was reprinted three times in a few months, serialized in the Deutsche Londoner Zeitung, corrected and resent in thirty pages in April or May 1848, but dropped out of sight with the failure of the 1848
Introduction I * In the spring of 1847, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels agreed to join the League of the Just (Bund der Gerechten), an offshoot of a revolutionary secret society formed in Paris in the 1830s. * The League offered to publish a Manifesto drafted by Marx and Engels as its policy document, and to modernize its organization along their lines. * In the summer of 1847, the League was renamed League of Communists, and committed to the object of “the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the ending of the old society which rests on class contradiction, and the establishment of a new society without classes or private property. * The objects and new statues were accepted in November-December 1847, and Marx and Engels were invited to draft the new Manifesto outlining the League’s aims and policies. * Although both Marx and Engels prepared drafts and represents joint views of both, it was clearly written by Marx. * The virtual absence of early drafts suggests that it was written rapidly. * The resulting document was twenty-three pages, entitled Manifesto of the Communist Party (more generally known since 1872 as The Communist Manifesto), and was published in February 1848. * It was printed in the office of the Worker’s Educational Association in London. * This small pamphlet is by far the most influential single piece of political writing since the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. * It hits the streets only a week or two before the outbreak of the revolutions of 1848. * Its initial impact was exclusively German. * Karl Marx was an editor of the newspaper Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49). * The first edition of the Manifesto was reprinted three times in a few months, serialized in the Deutsche Londoner Zeitung, corrected and resent in thirty pages in April or May 1848, but dropped out of sight with the failure of the 1848