The Communist Manifesto

This modern edition of the political call-to-arms whose “influence has been surpassed only by the Bible” highlights Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ prescient insights on capitalism (Guardian).

A Communist Manifesto for the 21st-century reader concerned by the ever-widening wealth gap, the instability of financial markets, and the gradual destruction of the environment.

In the two decades following the fall of the Berlin Wall, global capitalism became entrenched in its modern, neoliberal form. Its triumph was so complete that the word “capitalism” itself fell out of use in the absence of credible political alternatives. But with the outbreak of financial crisis and global recession in the twenty-first century, capitalism is once again up for discussion. The status quo can no longer be taken for granted.

As Eric Hobsbawm argues in his acute and elegant introduction to this modern edition, in such times The Communist Manifesto emerges as a work of great prescience and power despite being written over a century and a half ago. He highlights Marx and Engels’s enduring insights into the capitalist system: its devastating impact on all aspects of human existence; its susceptibility to enormous convulsions and crises; and its fundamental weakness.