Es un "manifiesto" en el sentido estricto: explica lo que anda mal en el mundo y propone un programa para resolverlo; su nombre "comunista" fue vindicado a unos tres lustres más adelante con la Comuna de Paris, cuando los humildes plebes crearon un Estado nuevo y equitativo.

Para quien tenga el compromiso social, es una lectura provechosa; para quienes que están enojados con la injusticia y quieren cambiar el mundo, es una lectura obligatoria.

Escrito por un par de jóvenes de menos de 30 años, da argumentos contundentes de porque no sirve el capitalismo -todos aplicables a su versión más reciente y feroz, llámese "globalización", "privatización" o cómo sea.

La semana antes de que escribo esta crítica, el presidente de México echó al presidente de Cuba de una reunión internacional de "desarrollo" por haber sacado a la luz datos como las tres personas más ricos del mundo cuentan con una riqueza que equivale a los ¡48 países! más pobres del planeta.

Este dato hace eco a mi parte favorita del Manifiesto -la segunda (sección)- donde Marx y Engels burlaron duro a la hipocresía de los burgueses. Toman los exactos argumentos con que los poderosos denunciaron a anarquistas y comunistas de la época, y los refutan mostrando que éstos son precisamente los pecados de los mismos burguesas: por ejemplo, denunciaron a los comunistas por buscar establecer una comunidad de mujeres, pero ¡es el capital que las obliga a vender sus cuerpos! Entonces son los comunistas que podemos abocar para la liberación de la mujer, no el flamante mercado libre.

Este es la edición más útil de la obra clásica de 1848 de Carlos Marx y Federico Engels, fundadores del movimiento comunista internacional. La exposición del método científico de analizar la historia y los crisis del sistema capitalista, la perspectiva de lucha de los trabajadores para tomar el poder político y forjar una nueva sociedad, el socialismo; la discusión de consignas y medidas prácticas para la organización del movimiento de los trabajadores, todos son cuestiones imprescindibles para nosotros al comienzo del siglo XXI. Incluye los prefacios de Marx y Engels a las ediciones de 1872 y 1890.
La edición de Pathfinder es la más importante porque incluye un artículo escrito en 1938 por León Trotsky, quien junto con V.I. Lenin fue dirigente principal de la revolución rusa de 1917. Trotsky explica que "el manifiesto comunista" sigue siendo de suma importancia hoy en día. También analiza los cambios en el mundo capitalista desde 1848, incluyendo el desarrollo de los monopolios económicos, el papel del estado, las relaciones entre las distintas clases sociales, y la creciente unidad de condiciones de luchas de los trabajadores y agricultores de todos los países del mundo.

El manifiesto representa la mejor manera de abrir los ojos a las generaciones futuras en pro del comunismo y en contra de este modelo neoliberal en el cual estamos inmersos. Una forma lúcida de reaccionar ante las imposiciones imperialistas del NORTE.

Was human society always overseen by a military and police force?
Was wealth and the means of producing more wealth always the private possession of individuals or a small section of society?
Were women always at the bottom of society, treated primarily as sex objects and machines for child-bearing and child-raising?

And is this humanity's destiny?
In this book published in 1884, Fredrich Engels answers the above questions in the negative. His book is based on anthropological data available in his day from societies around the globe. New discoveries since have confirmed his conclusions and the book is remarkably relevant today.

Are the father-centered family, private property, and the state necessary and inevitable part of all human societies?
Frederick Engels, coworker of Karl Marx, says no. Engels demonstrates that these three institutions arose in the fairly recent history of the human race, as a way to establish the rule of the many over the few. And, conversley, when these institutions are an obstacle to human progress, they can be dismantled.
Although this book was written about 125 years ago, the subject matter and his point of view sound surprisingly modern. Evelyn Reed, a Marxist anthropologist, writes a 1972 introduction that updates the original work from the point of view of 20th century anthropology debates abd the rise of modern women's movement. An additional short article by Engels, "The part played by labor in the transition from ape to man" is a lively piece that could be part of today's debates on human origin with almost no hint of its vintage (except maybe for his use of the term "man", instead of gender-neutral "humanity").

This is a serious, scientific and materialist analysis of development and change in human society and its institutions. Frederick Engels, who along with Karl Marx was one of the central founders of the modern communist movement, wrote this book in the late 1800s based on the latest developments in the then-new science of anthropology. Studying it can help us understand society and be better prepared to organize and work to change it.

Engels takes up the rise of the state and of the family and the oppression of women as early societies became more productive, making possible the division of groups of human beings into those who produce and those who live off them, and the need of the exploiters to perpetuate this state of affairs.

The Pathfinder Press edition also has a valuable introduction by Evelyn Reed, long-time socialist activist and author of works including "Woman's Evolution," "Sexism and Science," "Cosmetics, Fashion and the Exploitation of Women," and "Problems of Women's Liberation."

I like this edition because it's actually in pamphlet form, as it was intented to be when it was first written. It's cheap, it's simple.. what more can you ask for?

Plus there is just a delighting little preface at the beginning!

One of the all time greatest books proclaiming the communist ideas though if you really want the greatest you have to read Das Kapital (Capital)!

Engels was the engine behind Karl Marx, one that gave him all the support he could, so to permit Marx to dedicate himself almost completely to the completion of his works. Judging himself many degrees bellow Marx in terms of intelect, Engels nonetheless is capable of writting a book such as this which describes all the impoverishment of the working class in the beginning of the industrialization in England, being helped by some well porputed factories labor fiscalization agents who allowed Engels to flip trough their reports. Strong terms like "the dark satanic mills" describe fully what were the working conditions of the time in a so rich country as England. An historical document lest no one forget what can happen again if the free hand of capitalism is allowed to run free of any barriers.

In this book, Karl Marx's friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels describes the lives of England's laboring classes in the worst days of the industrial revolution. This includes dangerous working conditions, meager pay, child labor and explotation. Being the son of the owner of a textile factory, Engels knew of these conditions first hand. In these days it was said that the fastest way out of Manchester was a bottle of gin. This book contains images that are pathetic in the true sense of word, one catches glimpes of life so wretched that they are scarely belivable. Writings such as this one eventually exposed the misery of the working classes and had a profound influence on socialists and labor movement leaders. The book is a tour-de-force and truly speaks for it's self.

Engels' Condition of the Working Class in England is one of the great studies of capitalism, and initiated the early Marx into the study of political economy. These essays tell the tale of the endgame, the fate of the vehicle created by Marx so soon frittered away in the period of Engels, in the ambiguities of Hegelianism, the dialectic as science, and the dangers or blessings of revisionism. Echoes of Norman Levine's The Tragic Deception force the question of Engels betraying the fine edge of the original theoretical Marxism, fair or not, and an egregious issue to those who find the real and deeper flaws in Marx's foundations. This version, however of the seminal Marx and the reifying Engels does not quite match the deeper difficulties, among them the obvious dangers of chaotification in making crypto-Hegelianism into the principles of a mass movement, in age also beset by the worst kind of positivist scientism.
One essay, Engels, Lukacs, and Kant's Thing in Itself, unwittingly and quite poignantly suggests the prophecy of the unstable post-Hegelian philosophic orphan spawning a dialectical tragedy that befell the whole project, in the era of Bernstein,and then Lenin.

Too often Marx and Engels are reduced to philosophical caricatures in order to serve an author's own agenda. Richard Schmitt's book is noteworth for his careful analysis of the enduring issues and insights of Marx and Engels. I enjoyed this refreshing reminder of what all the fuss was about.

A must read!!

At first I became interested in this book due to my interest in Feuerbach but was immediately overwhelmed by Engels' command of the history of European philosophy from the Greeks to his present time. From what little I have read of Marx himself, it seems an irony that history has placed Engels subordinately to Marx. Engels is a first rate intellect not to be overlooked. This brief, content filled book, "Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy," is an excellent overview of continental philosophy and the brilliant zeitgeist that permeated pre-turn of the century European thought, and which has lamentably fallen into disuse in our own time. This book, published in 1888, takes us from Hegel to Feuerbach, to the most sublime manifestations of idealism and pragmatic materialism (hence Marx's dialectical materialism), conditioning for us all along the way religion and ethics; and all of this in the span of 50 pages. This book is well written, informative, and highly recommended for any student of European history, philosophy, sociology, and political science. It rather poops out at the end as Engels makes his final sales plug, but this weakness is tertiary to the overall scope and historical exegetics offered here.

The book really reads like a collection of four essays.

I). From Hegel to Feuerbach: This chapter is an overview of the failure of Hegelian thought that German philosophy was so imbued with in the mid-19th century, which also serves as a kind of marker for the beginning of modern philosophy.

II). Idealism and Materialism: This chapter is Engels version of sociology and psychological anthropology. His expectation of the emergence of a pragmatic materialism parallels that of Feuerbach's. This chapter leads through the death of idealism to the birth of materialism.

III). Feuerbach's Philosophy of Religion and Ethics: As the first chapter gives us an overview of Hegel, so this third chapter outlines the successes and failures of Feuerbach's thought. We also see the emergent thrust that led to Marxism in its organic position at the time of its advent, not as the polemics of conservative, Christian historians of today have painted it.

IV). Dialectical Materialism: Finally, chapter four outlines Engels's sociological expectations in the context of the preceeding three chapters; from feudalism to the industrial modernity of his time. Not only does Engels scetch out how Christianity became the possession of the ruling class as a means of government, but how philosophy too became a tool of their hegemony. His expectation that science would eventually meld with the worker rather than commercial interests belies the naivete that saw the failure of modern Marxism. His conclusion that philosophy too would emerge victorious along with the worker is certianly puzzling in hindsight, and can still be seen in the tenacious frustrations of post-modernism over the failure of Marxism.

Feuerbach aside, this little book is an excellent read full of vitality.

"The Marx-Engels Reader" is the best single collection of Marx's thought. What makes it doubly important, is that it is one of the few texts which contain an index. This sounds unremarkable, but believe me, it makes the text extremely more useful. This book transcends the state of being a mere anthology, and is an indespensible reference work.

Make sure you get the second edition.

Marx and Engels wrote an absolutely tremendous amount of the most diverse topics of society possible. This reader does a good job of putting together some representative readings, starting from their most famous "The Communist Manifesto", going into his analysis of revolutions and conditions in many different countries, including France, India, Russia, etc., finally reaching into topics such as family and morality (mainly addressed by Engels).

Though not a Marxist myself, I found this compilation a very comprehensive view of their thinking. It should be sufficient to anyone not seeking to write a dissertation on their thinking.

Marx and Engels wrote so much that getting a handle on their ideas can be difficult. Of course, "The Communist Manifesto" is unbeatable as an introductory text. Indeed, it was their classic work. Not to worry, it's in the reader. So start with that, and if you feel the need to delve deeper into the philosophical underpinnings of Marxism (as Marx and Engels actually formulated it), you will have everything you need in this one book. Compact, representative, and with a good translation - it is the perfect book for those of us who would chose to understand these thinkers, without spending a lifetime in the library.