Today: Preamble
Sourced from Marxists.org
Click to read next part: To be added
About DCMC
This is an effort to post to Cohost the entire Manifesto of the Communist Party, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848, over the course of a handful of days. Hopefully, many people will be motivated to then read the entire text, and maybe even further communist literature! (Feel free to read ahead)I'm trying to split the chapters in reasonable places - at chapter breaks and transitions between topics in chapters. So post length will vary.
A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
- Two things result from this fact:
- I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.
- II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.
To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.
