Workers of the world, unite? The communist manifesto: a modern edition. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Eric Hobsbawm (introduction). New York: verso, 96 pp.
✍ Scribed by Reviewed by; John A Kelley
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2000
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 28 KB
- Volume
- 17
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 8755-4615
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The Communist Manifesto is without question the most influential and important piece of political writing produced in the past two centuries. Originally published in 1848, shortly before the outbreak of the revolutions that sprang up all across Europe that year and achieving true notoriety subsequent to the time of the Paris Commune, The Communist Manifesto has appeared in countless editions and languages. Marx and Engels would be the first to say that the popularity of their work had little to do with the text, but rather the historical milieu into which it was flung. Workers' political parties and worker unrest rose strongly in the industrialized countries in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth. Interest in and study of the Manifesto tracked that rise.
The initial success and influence of the Manifesto, however, cannot be attributed to timing alone. It is an amazing exercise in rhetorical power, combining measured cadences, vivid imagery, striking detail, Homeric catalogs, and palpable outrage into a stirring call to arms to workers everywhere. The comparisons earlier this century of the influence of the Manifesto with that of the New Testament were not misplaced. There was a time not so long ago when it was not unknown for working people on their deathbeds to ask to be buried with a copy of the Manifesto, rather than the Bible, clasped to their chests.
So what happened? How did the Manifesto tumble so suddenly from its perch of worldwide significance into the dustbin of history? The fall began fairly early, with the adoption of the Manifesto by various political movements whose understanding of the true teaching of the Manifesto troubled many, not the least Marx himself, who famously responded to a question about the "Marxist" approach to an issue by declaring himself "not a Marxist." Marxism suffered a fate in this respect not unlike Christianity-similarly invoked to support causes and positions presumably antithetical to the thinking of its founder. It is easy to imagine Christ, faced with the latest proclamation from Rome or Colorado Springs, Lynchburg or Lambeth, echoing Marx (or perhaps Peter) and denying himself.