Manifesto of the Communist Party

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Manifesto of the Communist Party 

by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels 

February 1848 

Written:

 Late 1847; 

First Published:

 February 1848; 

Source:

 Marx/Engels Selected Works, Vol. One, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp. 98-137; 

Translated:

 Samuel Moore in cooperation with Frederick Engels, 1888; 

Transcribed:

 by Zodiac and Brian Baggins;  

Proofed:

 and corrected against 1888 English Edition by Andy Blunden 2004; 

Copyleft:

 Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 1987, 2000, 2010. Permission is granted to 

distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License. 

Table of Contents 

Editorial Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 2

 

Preface to The 1872 German Edition .............................................................................................. 4

 

Preface to The 1882 Russian Edition .............................................................................................. 5

 

Preface to The 1883 German Edition .............................................................................................. 6

 

Preface to The 1888 English Edition............................................................................................... 7

 

Preface to The 1890 German Edition ............................................................................................ 10

 

Preface to The 1892 Polish Edition ............................................................................................... 12

 

Preface to The 1893 Italian Edition............................................................................................... 13

 

Manifesto of the Communist Party................................................................................................ 14

 

I. Bourgeois and Proletarians ........................................................................................................ 14

 

II. Proletarians and Communists ................................................................................................... 22

 

III. Socialist and Communist Literature ........................................................................................ 28

 

1. Reactionary Socialism ....................................................................................................... 28

 

A. Feudal Socialism ...................................................................................................... 28

 

B. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism ....................................................................................... 29

 

C. German or “True” Socialism.................................................................................... 29

 

2. Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism ............................................................................... 31

 

3. Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism.................................................................... 32

 

IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties ............. 34

 

Letter from Engels to Marx, 24 November 1847 .......................................................................... 35

 

Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith ................................................................................... 36

 

The Principles of Communism...................................................................................................... 41

 

Demands of the Communist Party in Germany............................................................................. 55

 

The Paris Commune. Address to the International Workingmen’s Association, May 1871......... 58

 

Endnotes ........................................................................................................................................ 67

 

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2 

Introduction 

Editorial Introduction 

The “Manifesto of the Communist Party” was written by Marx and Engels as the Communist 

League’s programme on the instruction of its Second Congress (London, November 29-December 8, 

1847), which signified a victory for the followers of a new proletarian line during the discussion of the 

programme questions. 

When Congress was still in preparation, Marx and Engels arrived at the conclusion that the final 

programme document should be in the form of a Party manifesto (see Engels’ letter to Marx of 

November 23-24, 1847). The catechism form usual for the secret societies of the time and retained in 

the “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith” and “Principles of Communism,” was not suitable for 

a full and substantial exposition of the new revolutionary world outlook, for a comprehensive 

formulation of the proletarian movement’s aims and tasks. See also “Demands of the Communist 

Party in Germany,” issued by Marx soon after publication of the Manifesto, which addressed the 

immediate demands of the movement. 

Marx and Engels began working together on the Manifesto while they were still in London 

immediately after the congress, and continued until about December 13 when Marx returned to 

Brussels; they resumed their work four days later (December 17) when Engels arrived there. After 

Engels’ departure for Paris at the end of December and up to his return on January 31, Marx worked 

on the Manifesto alone. 

Hurried by the Central Authority of the Communist League which provided him with certain 

documents (e.g., addresses of the People’s Chamber (Halle) of the League of the Just of November 

1846 and February 1847, and, apparently, documents of the First Congress of the Communist League 

pertaining to the discussion of the Party programme), Marx worked intensively on the Manifesto 

through almost the whole of January 1848. At the end of January the manuscript was sent on to 

London to be printed in the German Workers’ Educational Society’s print shop owned by a German 

emigrant J. E. Burghard, a member of the Communist League. 

The manuscript of the Manifesto has not survived. The only extant materials written in Marx’s hand 

are a draft plan for Section III, showing his efforts to improve the structure of the Manifesto, and a 

page of a rough copy. 

The Manifesto came off the press at the end of February 1848. On February 29, the Educational 

Society decided to cover all the printing expenses. 

The first edition of the Manifesto was a 23-page pamphlet in a dark green cover. In April-May 1848 

another edition was put out. The text took up 30 pages, some misprints of the first edition were 

corrected, and the punctuation improved. Subsequently this text was used by Marx and Engels as a 

basis for later authorised editions. Between March and July 1848 the Manifesto was printed in the 

Deutsche Londoner Zeitung, a democratic newspaper of the German emigrants. Already that same 

year numerous efforts were made to publish the Manifesto in other European languages. A Danish, a 

Polish (in Paris) and a Swedish (under a different title: “The Voice of Communism. Declaration of the 

Communist Party”) editions appeared in 1848. The translations into French, Italian and Spanish made 

at that time remained unpublished. In April 1848, Engels, then in Barmen, was translating the 

Manifesto into English, but he managed to translate only half of it, and the first English translation, 

made by Helen Macfarlane, was not published until two years later, between June and November 1850, 

in the Chartist journal The Red Republican. Its editor, Julian Harney, named the authors for the first 

time in the introduction to this publication. All earlier and many subsequent editions of the Manifesto 

were anonymous. 

The growing emancipation struggle of the proletariat in the ’60s and ’70s of the 19th century led to 

new editions of the Manifesto. The year 1872 saw a new German edition with minor corrections and a 

preface by Marx and Engels where they drew some conclusions from the experience of the Paris 

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