Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Communist Manifesto

Context

After the defeat of the French Revolution and Napoléon Bonapart in 1815, European governments concentrated on preserving order and preventing a new and terrifying wave of revolution. For example, in 1819 the German government enacted the Carlsbad Decrees, which outlawed nationalist groups, established press censorship, and blacklisted radicals. Advocates of liberalism and political democracy campaigned for constitutional limits on monarchs' power. Liberals also demanded that more people be allowed to vote but were generally reluctant to extend suffrage to the poorest (and presumably most ignorant) citizens. Democrats wanted the vote extended to all men, even the poorest. (“Universal” suffrage meant “men” until late in the nineteenth century.) In economically developing regions, the rise of factories raised the possibility that political change might accompany spectacular economic change.

In large areas of Europe, most of the population was ruled by governments run by people of an alien culture, language, and sometimes religion, such as the assorted Slavs, Hungarians, northern Italians, and others under the German-speaking Habsburg ruling family in the Austrian Empire. In such areas, increasing calls for national liberation threatened the existing order. Where people who shared (more or less) the same culture and language were divided into many small states, as in Italy and Germany, nationalists called for unification, which would change the map and drive from their thrones most if not all of the small-state rulers within the newly united countries. The fungus that ruined potato crops in the 1840s starved people in Ireland and Germany and raised food prices for all. Costly food made the poorest workers desperate; both advocates and enemies of change expected something major to happen soon.

Liberals, democrats, and nationalists had many supporters, and Europe's rulers regarded them, correctly, as immediate threats to the existing order. A more radical but more remote threat was presented by Communists or Socialists, who regarded political democracy and nationalism as transient issues that would have to be resolved along the way to the real issue: eliminating the inherent injustice of the capitalist system. A pair of Communist groups, made up almost entirely of Germans, merged in June 1847 as the Communist League. The league met in London and in Brussels, Belgium, to avoid German police. It published the Communist Manifesto in London because of censorship in Germany. Friedrich Engels drafted a question-and-answer summary of the group's views (“Principles of Communism”) but suggested that Marx compose a manifesto to present the position more fully and forcefully. After prodding by the group's council, Marx finished his assignment at the beginning of February 1848, and it was published (in German, in London) later that month.

The revolutions of 1848 spread across Europe after liberal demonstrations in Paris, calling for a modest increase in the number of voters, led to bloody riots that drove King Louis-Philippe from the country. Since everyone (those who wanted change and those who did not) assumed that a revolution in Paris meant revolution everywhere, as had happened after the French Revolution of 1789, changes erupted almost everywhere in Europe. In countries that already existed, like France, people struggled over liberal and democratic issues such as who could vote; in countries that did not yet exist, national liberation and unification were more prominent. All the revolutionary efforts of 1848 were crushed; as political refugees in England, Marx and Engels had plenty of company. Marx and Engels recognized that Communism would have to wait its turn; they published a radical newspaper in Germany (June 1848–May 1849) with the logo “Organ of Democracy,” and it concentrated on Germany's unification under a democratic constitution as well as commenting on revolutionary events throughout Europe. Copies of the Communist Manifesto were seized by police in various countries, but except for a public discussion of the work that led to a riot in Amsterdam in March 1848, the document had little impact until later, as Marxism attracted wide interest and the manifesto provided a convenient introduction to the theory and movement. An 1850 English translation was little noticed; the 1888 translation by Sam Moore, edited by Engels, has remained the standard English text.