Gracchus

Manifesto of the Communist Party

The original communist best-seller

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 Czar, 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 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.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I. Bourgeois and Proletarians

II. Proletarians and Communists

III. Socialist and Communist Literature

IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the Existing Opposition Parties


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1995 editor's note: This is a hypertext version (1995) of the Manifesto of the Communist Party. It reproduces the English translation of 1888 published in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works (New York, International Publishers, 1976), Volume 6, pp. 476-519.

In his article, "Karl Marx" (1877) (Marx/Engels Selected Works [New York: International Publishers, 1968, p. 370]), Engels wrote:

The transformation of the [Communist] League took place at two congresses held in 1847, the second of which resolved on the elaboration and publication of the fundamental principles of the Party in a manifesto to be drawn up by Marx and Engels. Thus arose the Manifesto of the Communist Party, which first appeared in 1848, shortly before the February Revolution [in France], and has since been translated into almost all European languages.

The Manifesto was written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels from December 1847 to January 1848. In 1888, after Marx's death, Engels published an English translation carried out by Marx's daughter, adding some important notes to the earlier editions. These notes have here been linked to hot text. The MECW printing of the 1888 edition added some additional notes, which have been assigned numbered links. Special thanks to the Communist Party U.S.A. for their permission to use their hypertext version of the Manifesto which was created in 1995.

Posted for discussion. For the rest see:
http://www.yclusa.org/readup/manread.html 1/4/03

August Spies

...

RED DAVE

RIGHT ON, BRO!

RED DAVE

August Spies

back in the day people (Paine, Marx, Engles, yada yada) wrote rabble rousing pamphlets to get crowds going. If you want to examine marx, this is a bad place to start.

Rousseau_CHN

What a letdown!

I was expecting a topic on the Book of the same title, and all I get is this: first three lines of the Communist Manifesto.

Did you know that Animal Farm was shown in China just recently?

People who watched did not understand it. How could they? Everything is confusing in China--just as confusing as distinguishing men from pigs in this story.

August Spies

I always think its funny people believe Animal Farm is some great damning of Communism and thus a pro-western book. Clearly the point is the capitalists are just as bad as the communists.

I heard in the old american version they edited out the ending where the pigs look like the people. Not sure if this is true though

Rousseau_CHN

I think the word you are looking for is "comrade". With the word Bro, you sound more like a mason than a commie.

Celsus

Everyone seems to forget that Orwell was a leftist. Same thing can be said of 1984. Ideology doesn't matter all that much, just Newspeak. That reminds me, I really have to get round to reading Homage.

Joel

Gurdur

Actually, Orwell was a social democrat, just to be precise.

His fear of Communist authoritarianism --- which is a major part of what Animal Farm and 1984 are about --- is directly traceable to his experiences in fighting for the Republicans in Spain (he got a bullet through the throat from a fascist sniper).

In Spain, the Communists started purging (i.e. killing) the Trotskyists, Anarcho-syndiclists and anyone else they thought might be a threat inside the Republican coalition; also, information on the murderous purges within Stalin's USSR was filtering out ---- the total elimination of the Old Bolsheviks being one example; the murdering of almost all of the Red Army leadership, the purging of the International etc. etc.

Orwell thought social democracy -- which includedes regulated capitalism --- was superior, far better in terms of freedom, than Soviet-style authoritarian Communism, and he saw the USSR as being quite a threat to a future post-WW2 Britain.

Possibly - possibly -- he also saw the betrayal by the "pigs" in Animal Farm --- i.e. the betrayal by the Commmunists of the working class and of ideals such as freedom --- as being even worse than the frank-from-the-start oppression of the capitalists or Tsarists. It's all a bit hypothetical, and not too worthwhile tossing the point for.

All Orwell's books are well worth reading; I've read and re-read them all, even down to the more time-limited and depressing ones like Keep The Apidastras Flying or A Clergyman's Daughter.

Burmese Days is brilliant; it chronicles Orwell's disillusion with British Imperialism and colonialism, and his start upon social democracy.

August Spies

Homage to Catalonia a very good book.

Gurdur:
Orwell, in everything ive read, described himself as an anti-bolshevik socialist that didn't have specifically defined principles like social democrat.

where did you hear otherwise?