A Guide to The Communist Manifesto with Phil Gasper

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

A presentation with Phil Gasper

“…All this attention to Marx’s ideas is certainly welcome. But – and of course there is a ‘but’ – with few exceptions, recent commentators have restricted their praise of the Manifesto to what it says about the nature and workings of the capitalist system. Yet Marx and Engels did not write the Manifesto as a piece of abstract economic analysis. It was intended as a revolutionary call to action – an explanation not only of what is wrong with society, but how it can be transformed to create “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” (Pt. II, ¶ 74). Central to this strategy for change is their claim that in the modern working class – the proletariat – capitalism has produced “its own gravediggers” (Pt. I, ¶ 53). That is, that capitalism itself has created the instrument of its abolition – an oppressed class with both the capacity and the interest to fight for the overthrow of the existing system, the emancipation of all humanity, and which, unlike previous oppressed classes, Twas capable of democratic self-rule…. The claim that the proletariat is a revolutionary class is the heart and soul of  The Communist Manifesto.”      —Phil Gasper, International Socialist Review, Issue 5

Here, at last, is an authoritative introduction to history’s most important political document, with the full text of The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. This beautifully organized and presented edition of The Communist Manifestois fully annotated, with clear historical references and explication, additional related texts, and a glossary that will bring the text to life for students, as well as the general reader. Since it was first written in 1848, the Manifesto has been translated into more languages than any other modern text. It has been banned, censored, burned, and declared “dead.” But year after year, the text only grows more influential, remaining required reading in courses on philosophy, politics, economics, and history.

PHIL GASPER is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame de Namur University and the editor of The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History’s Most Important Political Document (Haymarket, 2005) and Imperialism and War: Classic Writings by V.I. Lenin and Nikolai Bukarin (Haymarket, 2017). He is a co-editor of the journal New Politics and a member of DSA and of the Tempest Collective. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

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