Manifesto of the Communist Party

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Introduction 

Commune of 1871. This and subsequent German editions (1883 and 1890) were entitled the 

Communist Manifesto. In 1872 the Manifesto was first published in America in Woodhull & Claflin’s 

Weekly. 

The first Russian edition of the Manifesto, translated by Mikhail Bakunin with some distortions, 

appeared in Geneva in 1869. The faults of this edition were removed in the 1882 edition (translation 

by Georgi Plekhanov), for which Marx and Engels, who attributed great significance to the 

dissemination of Marxism in Russia, had written a special preface. 

After Marx’s death, the Manifesto ran into several editions. Engels read through them all, wrote 

prefaces for the 1883 German edition and for the 1888 English edition in Samuel Moore’s translation, 

which he also edited and supplied with notes. This edition served as a basis for many subsequent 

editions of the Manifesto in English – in Britain, the United States and the USSR. In 1890, Engels 

prepared a further German edition, wrote a new preface to it, and added a number of notes. In 1885, 

the newspaper Le Socialiste published the French translation of the Manifesto made by Marx’s 

daughter Laura Lafargue and read by Engels. He also wrote prefaces to the 1892 Polish and 1893 

Italian editions. 

This edition includes the two earlier versions of the Manifesto, namely the draft “Communist 

Confession of Faith” and “The Principles of Communism,” both authored by Engels, as well as the 

letter from Engels to Marx which poses the idea of publishing a “manifesto,” rather than a catechism. 

The Manifesto addressed itself to a mass movement with historical significance, not a political sect. 

On the other hand, the “Demands of the Communist Party in Germany” is included to place the 

publication of the Manifesto in the context of the mass movement in Germany at the time, whose 

immediate demands are reflected by Marx in this pamphlet. Clearly the aims of the Manifesto were 

more far-reaching the movement in Germany at the time, and unlike the “Demands,” was intended to 

outlive the immediate conditions. 

The “Third Address to the International Workingmen’s Association” is included because in this 

speech Marx examines the movement of the working class manifested in the Paris Commune, and his 

observations here mark the only revisions to his social and historical vision made during his lifetime 

as a result of the development of the working class movement itself, clarifying some points and 

making others more concrete. 

 

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Preface to The 1872 German Edition  

The Communist League, an international association of workers, which could of course be only a 

secret one, under conditions obtaining at the time, commissioned us, the undersigned, at the 

Congress held in London in November 1847, to write for publication a detailed theoretical and 

practical programme for the Party. Such was the origin of the following Manifesto, the 

manuscript of which travelled to London to be printed a few weeks before the February [French] 

Revolution [in 1848]. First published in German, it has been republished in that language in at 

least twelve different editions in Germany, England, and America. It was published in English for 

the first time in 1850 in the Red Republican, London, translated by Miss Helen Macfarlane, and 

in 1871 in at least three different translations in America. The French version first appeared in 

Paris shortly before the June insurrection of 1848, and recently in Le Socialiste of New York. A 

new translation is in the course of preparation. A Polish version appeared in London shortly after 

it was first published in Germany. A Russian translation was published in Geneva in the sixties

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Into Danish, too, it was translated shortly after its appearance.  

However much that state of things may have altered during the last twenty-five years, the general 

principles laid down in the Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever. Here and there, 

some detail might be improved. The practical application of the principles will depend, as the 

Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being 

existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at 

the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today. In 

view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved 

and extended organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in 

the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the 

first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some details been 

antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that “the working class 

cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” 

(See The Civil War in France: Address of the General Council of the International Working 

Men’s Association, 1871, where this point is further developed.) Further, it is self-evident that the 

criticism of socialist literature is deficient in relation to the present time, because it comes down 

only to 1847; also that the remarks on the relation of the Communists to the various opposition 

parties (Section IV), although, in principle still correct, yet in practice are antiquated, because the 

political situation has been entirely changed, and the progress of history has swept from off the 

earth the greater portion of the political parties there enumerated.  

But then, the Manifesto has become a historical document which we have no longer any right to 

alter. A subsequent edition may perhaps appear with an introduction bridging the gap from 1847 

to the present day; but this reprint was too unexpected to leave us time for that.  

Karl Marx & Frederick Engels  

June 24, 1872, London 

  

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