The Communist Manifesto | Study Guide

One of the most influential documents in modern history, The Communist Manifesto is simultaneously a theoretical treatise, a political program, and a revolutionary call to arms. Its purpose was to serve as the primary political document for the newly formed Communist League, an international party that was established in London in 1947. However, Karl Marx, the primary author, used the document to do even more. Most significantly it is a call for "workers of the world" to unite to overthrow the bourgeois (middle class) social order, for in the proletarian (working class) revolution, the workers have "nothing to lose but their chains." The Manifesto states that the exploitation of the many by the few is unjust and that the proletariat has a historic role to fulfill in bringing about the era of communism, thus ending class struggle.

The Communist Manifesto also lays out some fundamental principles of Marxist philosophy, including the following:

• historical materialism: the theory that class and material factors shape history
• alienation: the theory that workers are distanced from their products, their labor, and themselves
• class struggle: the theory that workers' and capitalists' interests are permanently antagonistic
• base-superstructure: the theory that the economic base of society determines its political, ideological, and cultural "superstructure"