The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx
The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx
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The Communist Manifesto

Author: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels

Narrator: Kevin Thies

Unabridged: 1 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/16/2020

Synopsis

The Communist Manifesto is an 1848 political document by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London just as the Revolutions of 1848 began to erupt, the Manifesto was later recognized as one of the world's most influential political documents. It presents an analytical approach to the class struggle (historical and then-present) and the conflicts of capitalism and the capitalist mode of production, rather than a prediction of communism's potential future forms.
The Communist Manifesto summarizes Marx and Engels' theories concerning the nature of society and politics, namely that in their own words "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". It also briefly features their ideas for how the capitalist society of the time would eventually be replaced by socialism. In the last paragraph of the Manifesto, the authors call for a "forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions", which served as a call for communist revolutions around the world.

About Karl Marx

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German philosopher and political theorist whose ideas made major contributions to the development of communism and socialism. Born in Trier in the Kingdom of Prussia (present-day Germany), Marx attended the University of Bonn and the University of Berlin. While living in Paris, he met and became a close friend of Friedrich Engels, with whom he collaborated on a number of works, including The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848. His other notable writings include A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and Das Kapital, in addition to many essays. Though largely ignored by scholars during his lifetime, Marx's theories gained rapid acceptance in the socialist movement after his death and had an incomparable influence on the political discourse and events of the twentieth century.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Niklas Braun on June 12, 2018

I surprisingly enjoyed most of the readings in this book. It ranges from Voltaire in his explanation on how inequality arises, to the French Revolutionaries (who were pretty much all executed by the reign of terror) to the Germans like Marx to the Russians like Trotsky and Lenin to Emma Goldman to M......more

Goodreads review by Googoogjoob on April 09, 2022

Basically a useful (and cheap) accumulation of "revolutionary writings," very broadly defined. Revolutionary ideologies represented within include liberalism, socialism (of the utopian, Marxist, libertarian, etc varieties), communism (of the council, Leninist, Maoist, etc varieties), anarchism, trad......more

Goodreads review by Mitchell on March 28, 2020

This is a very thorough collection of revolutionary writings, with contributions from the 18th to 20th century being present. I found some more convincing than others-Kropotkin, Goldman, Proudhon, Jefferson, Gandhi, Haclav, Rousseau and Paine were particularly strong in their rhetoric. I will say it......more

Goodreads review by Lucas on June 24, 2018

I'm going to call it. 35 pages from the end, missing some great revolutionary writings, but reading a primary source reader is slow going sometimes. I was most interested in the French Revolution and pre-Russian Revolution Communist readings. I find Russian authors difficult to read, whether it is t......more

Goodreads review by Diego on October 21, 2023

This is a great work that was fun to read when I had some time. It has the communist manifesto, yes but it also gives you an interesting pallet of political writings from some of the most influential political activists and figures over the past hundreds of years. I think that having this book expos......more

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