The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto was first published in 1848, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Its original German title was Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, or Manifesto of the Communist Party. The text was produced as a statement of aims for the Communist League, a political organization active in 19th-century Europe. At fewer than fifty pages in most editions, it is a notably compact work for the scale of argument it attempts.

Marx and Engels present a theory of history organized around conflict between social classes. In their account, economic systems produce groups with opposing interests, and political change follows from that opposition. The book outlines how industrial capitalism shaped a working class whose conditions, the authors argue, would drive collective action. It also addresses competing socialist and communist movements of the period, distinguishing its own position from theirs.

The text was written in German and published in London in February 1848, a year of widespread political upheaval across Europe. It has since been translated into most of the world's major languages and remains one of the most widely circulated political documents from that century.