The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto, originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party, is a political pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It was commissioned by the Communist League and published in London in 1848. The text represents the first and most systematic attempt by the two founders of scientific socialism to codify for wide consumption the historical materialist idea; namely, that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles", in which social classes are defined by the relationship of people to the means of production. Published amid the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, the manifesto has become one of the world's most influential political documents. "A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism." and "Workers of the world, unite!" stand as two iconic lines that frame the text, marking its opening and its close, respectively, with the latter being reworked and popularized into a famous slogan of working-class solidarity.