In the endless denunciations of totalitarianism even as neo-liberalism demolishes the achievements of a century of labor, we forget that it was the self-organization of the working class that spearheaded the real emergence of democracy and universal suffrage. This book attempts to demonstrate that Marx and Engels were the leading protagonists in that process. The book surveys the whole drama from the 1840's to the final period of Engels and German Social democracy, stressing the activist political role of Marx, whose passive British museum life as an uninvolved philosopher is exposed as the myth it is. Curiously mordant is the comparison of the reactions of Marx and Engels compared to that of Tocqueville to the period of revolution in 1848 and the coming of Napoleon. Tocqueville is seen for who he was then, not the author of his famous book, and now the democrat, Marx the svengalian. It seems hopeless to ever set any of this straight. This book presents a clear snapshot of the full sequence of events.
This reviewer has also reviewed "The Myth of the Proletariat". This commentary is a useful response to the thesis of that work.

This work is an essential history of the usage of the term 'democracy' as this crystalized in the era of the 1840's leaving Marx and Engels stranded with a series of acute but now misleading assertions and critiques of its meaning and actual content. The more is the pity since these views of Marx and Engels were at the onset far more democratic than those who fixed the word's meaning. Small wonder a legacy of bitterness festers here. To this is added the unfortunate confusion over the term, 'dictatorship of the proletariat, and the thinking of Marx is indeed ambiguous in this regard. The perceptions of those passing through the revolutions of 1848 are hard to reconstruct, as the brief alliance of classes led to the victory of one and the betrayal of the rest. This factor is what is responsible for the mistruct of 'democracy so-called'in the name of democracy in Marx and Engels, in a period before universal suffrage was an intrinsic part of the word 'democracy'.

Manifiesto Comunista (en alemán, Manifest der kommunistischen Partei), declaración de principios y objetivos de la Liga Comunista (organización secreta de artesanos e intelectuales alemanes emigrados) publicada en Londres, poco antes de la Revolución de 1848 de París, que tuvo lugar en febrero. Escrito por Karl Marx en colaboración con Friedrich Engels, el Manifiesto del Partido Comunista (su nombre completo) está dividido en cuatro partes, precedidas de una introducción.

Anthro major? You might be surprised how much and how many tools come from Engels, as in Marx and Engels of Capital fame. The same analytical tools they applied to economics (That are used every day) here are applied to anthropological study of the basis of our present day social institutions.
Relevant today, as much as for info as for seeing where the ideas discussed lead to the arguments and theories of today.

Capital, from Karl Marx,has to be respected as a book that moved all the intellectual scenario of the late past century and early twientieth century. But, altough Adam Smith's Wealth of the Nations still is a scientifically and theoretically valid work, the Capital was completelly refuted book (in that Karl Popper's sense). The Capital was based in a deterministic view of world, which was comprensible in that period of history, when the Newton's Science was the gratest scientific achievement. But that determinism was crushed with the advent of Enstein's theory of Relativity, and the most important of all, the advent of Quantum Mechanics, in the early years of this century. In a indirect way, the whole point made by Marx was destroyed: His premise which says that, studying the past, we can predict the future. Appling a method used in the Exact Sciences (inferential-deductive) Marx thought was possible to known the future (the inexorable Communism, coming from the struggle of classes)from simply analising the past, as the mathematics would do with a theorem. Marx viewed Economics as a static system(not the way Smith already viewed the Economics, a century earlier), and the free will as a illusion, since all ideologies was merely a subproduct of particular economic era (again determinism). And the worst of all, the moral fundaments of his revoluttionary ideals was: since we already known that capitalism will be replaced by Communism, one way or another, let's end it ourselves, right now, no matter how much blood we'll provocate. In other words is something like this: If you, my friend, are going to die one day, one way or another, I'll kill you right now! A interesting book, but only as a curiosity (because of his influence) and nothing else. As a economic work, its tottaly refuted for a long time.

...P>The key to grappling with Vol. 2 involves two major problems.

First, Marx took capital as irrational, and the capital-labor relation as an anatagonistic relation of domination. So part of the problem with Capital involves explaining how capitalism can even function in the first place. This helps us to grapple with Marx's discussion of circulation sans crisis.

Secondly, think of department one and department two as capital and labor respectively and it makes a lot more sense. As with Vols. 1 and 3, every aspect of Capital is steeped in a description of the antagonistic social relations (class struggle) and the forms in which they appear (form here means 'mode of existence', the way in which the antagonistic social relations make themselves apparent to us.)

The reason that Marx investigates the forms of the underlying social relations has to do with Marx's conception of science. Marx uses the term science to denote thought which critiques, which does not assume that essence and appearance (form and content) mirror each other, but are mediated and therefore distorted and not directly perceived.

As for the people who continue to insist that Marx wrote an alternate economics textbook, wake up. The book is not about economics per se, since Marx felt that the separation of the economic from the political, legal, artistic, etc. was a specific manifestation of the capital-labor relation. He critiques this separation and does so, not through a transhistorical set of 'laws' (as so many claim), but through a critique of bourgeois society's own understanding of itself (most prominently for Marx, via political economy.) For Marx, the 'laws' of capital are the forms of motion of the class struggle, not transhistorical, disembodied rules.

A complete argument can hardly be made here, but do yourself a favor if you wish to make a comment on or engage with Marx: read what Marx says. Like any other worthwhile intellectual, Marx takes a lot of effort (an acquaintance with Hegel helps a lot). Unlike most, Marx really was serious, even (especially) in relation to Das Kapital, that the point is not to understand the world, but to change it. Theory can never resolve the contradictions of the practical world, only revolutionary practice, the self-activity of the working class (most of us), can produce a society based on the 'free association of producers', in which 'the freedom of each is the precondition of the freedom of all'. Hardly the vision of a totalitarian.

The book is fascinating because it has exerted so much influence. It is frightening because very few that acted on the theories presented in the book can have properly understood them. When they had understood them they would have found them to be useless. In order to arrive at this conclusion I have read the book thoroughly, which is hard work. The influence of the book derives from the dramatic but accurate description of the way capitalism functioned at the time Marx lived. Apart from a few responsible capitalists such as the Quakers, capitalists were only chasing profit without any consideration of the health of their employees and their families. Acts of parliament to reduce labour hours from 15 hours during six days as well as the extensive use of child labour were fiercely opposed by the capitalists referring to their certain ruin if these laws were passed. Marx writes: "capital never becomes reconciled to such changes". Marx does not point out that the exploitation of farm labourers was just as bad or even worse. Exploitation is as old as civilisation. That is however not a justification for the absence of moral standards.
The economic theory is presented as if it is scientific and that the laws will lead to a replacement of the capitalist system by a superior one. Unfortunately there is no science and the description of the superior system is extremely limited.
What Marx refers to, as laws are hypotheses and effects that are the result of the hypotheses. All examples are based on the idea that a worker works for six hours for a capitalist to earn enough to pay for his subsistence and works another six hours without being paid for by he capitalist. A typical example of a "law" derived from this hypothesis is that when the labour costs of a product declines profits decline. This strange idea is based on the idea that if the total cost of raw materials and machinery depreciation and labour costs are 100 and the labour cost thereof declines from 40 to 20 that the profit also declines from 40 to 20 as paid labour time is equal to unpaid labour time. This leads to the next "law". As the profit declines with increasing investment in equipment the capitalist increases sales more rapidly than the profit percentage declines so that his absolute profit increases. It is obvious that if the volume increases more in percentage than the price declines as a percentage that the absolute profit increases. Marx devotes many pages to explaining this "law". The sentences are however very cumbersome and loaded with emotions that make it very hard work to discover that the laws are mathematical necessities. Marx does not recognise any work having value other than that of manual labour, " only the labourer is productive". He does not consider selling, product development, accounting, figuring out in what to invest, analysing risk taking as work. He therefore considers that all "profit" made is theft from the worker. Marx specifically excludes competition from his theories "actual movement of competition belongs beyond our scope". He nevertheless makes some negative comments like referring to it as " capitalism begets by its anarchical system of competition, the most outrageous squandering of labour power".
As far as the new superior system Marx only writes: "But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation". "This does not re-establish private property for the worker but will be based on co-operation and the possession in common of land and of the means of production".
The conclusion "Marxist" countries logically drew from Marxists theories were, (1) the only owner of the means of production can be the state (2) there is no needs for marketing and sales (3) profit can never be justified (4) there is something wrong with competition and that can be avoided by central state planning and (5) our success is assured as our actions are based on scientific laws. In that way they did accept his hypothesis with disastrous effect.
Some examples of emotional language, that makes the book fascinating to read. "Capital pumps the surplus-labour (unpaid working hours) directly out of the labourers", on supervision, " The place of the slave-driver's lash is taken by the overlooker's book of penalties, on profit "the profit made in selling depends on cheating, deceit and inside knowledge" and finally "If money comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek, capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt".

It is fascinating that a book that describes real problems with powerful emotional language can make many intelligent people with good intentions believers without critically analysing the proposed theories. It is frightening that many powerful political leaders applied these theories (with or without good intentions).

The fashionable revisions and reifications of Hegel (the "official" political theory of Germany) common to Marx's era filled him with such disgust that he and Engels penned an entire rhetoric-laced diatribe against them, "The German Ideology." This book served, for Marx and his sidekick, not only as a materialist attack on Hegelian idealism and its conceptions of history, but also served, in their words, as a "self-clarification" of their own stances on a number of issues. Foremost among these issues is the actual role of the political philosopher in society and in history. Indeed, Marx is directly referring to the legacy of his Hegelian contemporaries when he says that "philosophers have only interpreted the world . . . the point, however, is to change it."

Marx departs from Hegel and his latter-day followers (whether revolutionary or conservative) in both method and in goals. As far as methodology is concerned, Marx is an empiricist of a certain normatively world-changing brand, which obviously leaves him open to critiques from "pure" empiricism as being either an outright determinist (an obviously abhorrent concept to the entire Humean tradition) or else being merely a moral philosopher in scientist's clothing.

As for goals, while some of Hegel's followers might share a certain revolutionary telos with Marx, they cannot truly be his comrades because for Marx the revolutionary method (historical materialism) is inseparable from the revolutionary goal (communism); that is, communism cannot by nature be an "ideal" . . . "to which reality will have to adjust itself" (as it is for the Hegelians). Instead, the ideal of communism must adjust itself to reality (thus becoming no longer an ideal), and that is precisely Marx's project as expressed in the 11th Thesis on Feuerbach: through his writings, to "adjust" the real world to his view of the way it's going to be (by writing about the world the way that it has been, and the way that it is now).

First of all, the correct title would refer to the THESES on Feuerbach, of which there are eleven. These are terse exhortations, which Marx apparently wrote out for himself as a reminder of principles, not intended for publication. They remain brilliant and challenging to readers. The rest of the volume is taken up by *excerpts* from the vast manuscript on the German Ideology, which is an uneven early work of Marx and Engels. There are brilliant passages, crucial to Marxist thought, but there's also a lot of directionless vitriol directed at now relatively unimportant thinkers.

I disagree with the previous reviewer -- this is not an ideal intro to Marxism. Read the Communist Manifesto, then move on to the Eighteenth Brumaire, or this, or Capital, or the early works.

And by the way, get the International Publishers edition if you can find it.

the first part of this book, on feuerbach, lays out marx's conception of history, and is, for me, the best brief description of marxism available. this impacted me much more profoundly than the communist manifesto. anyway, i'd read the first part, and then skip the rest. in the latter part of the book, he does battle with forgotten german intellectuals (the part on max stirner might be worth reading), mostly upbraiding them for their idealistic view of the world. the essence of this critique, however, is dealt with in the part on feuerbach. seriously, if you'd like to know what marx is all about, but aren't sure than you're ready to commit to reading capital, read the 70 pages or so on feuerbach. if you do, feel free to e-mail me & let me know what you think.

if you hate communism or Karl Marx this book is for you, I have read some other works by Marx and Engels and I felt this book was showing what the past of Marx and Engels lived like and trying to downgrade a movement. I would recommend this book to anyone because you do need to read both sides of a view point

This book gave an interesting viewpoint into the interworkings of communism and how it became such a world phenomenon. An excellent book for students!

The Communist Manifesto was among the most feared and banned books in the 20th century. After reading it, I wondered why. What could cause so much fear in less then a hundred pages? The book, though short, is a good read, and doesn't talk above the heads or down to it's readers. But it proves the absurity of communism and why it was destined to doom. Pitting the workers (the prolitares) against the upper class in a constant struggle for a piece of the pie, it dictates that the workers will forever be the stepping stones of the elite to gain, control, and retain wealth. Some of Marx and Engels theories make sense, and many labor unions of today adopt many of the manifestos beliefs, but the authors forgot to take one very serious downfall of the human race into account: that of greed. As most of the communist countries show the people that become powerful and retain the control of the communist parties become rich and often the exact people that they claim to hate, living it great wealth while the "workers" suffer. (though it is mostly a satire of socialism, check out Animal Farm, a perfect example). This short books is a good read, and I encourge everyone (especially those that fear communism taking over the world, yet knowing nothing about it) to read it, and seeing why their fears are unfounded, and why it wouldn't (and didn't) work.

Marx's "Communist Manifesto" is a response to human cost of Industrial Revolution. It was a time when Europe was coming of age, with the development of modern industry and the potential world market. This market had an immense development to commerce, to navigation and to industry. These improvements were enacted at a cost of society as a whole divided into two hostile camps -the bourgeoise and the proletariat. Marx immersed himself into the suffrage of the new urban proletariat at the hands of bourgeoise modern capitalist. His solution lay in the abolition of private property living in a society where all are equal.

I found this document an interesting read, as this short concise book simply explains the "theory" of one economic system. It should be noted the democracy prevalent at the time of this books introduction closely resembled an oligarchy, in which the rich and powerful ruled the weak. The impact of socialist ideology on this situation was great: labor movements were created, egalitarianism became a greater part of democracy ideology and the lower classes became more significant to the political system than they had ever been before.

The greatest weakness one can note of Marx's argument, is his failure to predict the significance of the middle class in the nations. Marx's view was that the middle class would either be absorbed into the working class or proprietors. The success of the middle class in present times accounts for the failure of Marx's theory.

This classic text was not only the first but is still the bestat pointing out that people can free themselves of the capitalistsystem based on class divisions, production for profit, buying and selling, by working people - people who work for a wage or a salary but don't own enough capital to live off (most of us) - organizing as a class to establish a new moneyless and stateless society called socialism or communism. This book is all the more current because since his death so many groups especially during the 20th Century (Labor Parties, Social Democratic parties, Greens, Nazis, Leninists, Maoists, Trotskyists, the press, and so on) have distorted the words communism or socialism to mean nationalized industries or a society with a rigid state machine that is brought about by a party claiming to be socialist or communist. But The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels makes it quite clear that only the working class as a whole can capture the state machine in order to abolish it, and this distinction is still an important one in this world of starvation, poverty, war, racism and environmental destruction. This society, as Marx analyzed 150 years ago in this book, produces so many problems that it would take forever to address them as separate reforms, as we tend to do in our own political life. He was arguing for a moneyless and stateless society controlled not by private capitalists nor by the state, but by all the people, and this lesson is still a vital one in the face of all the problems we have today. We have lost the whole 20th Century to wars, poverty, and environmental problems, and geared our whole lives to just making other people rich, so philanthropic are we. Let us hope that in the 21st Century we will take heed of Marx's caution, and be a little greedy at last to bring about a society in which the means of production are own by all the people, and we can produce what we want from our resources, take freely from the common supply (an abundance possible with today's technology), not just produce for the small percentage who own capital while we live in relative scarcity. After all, as a class, we made everything and grew everthing! So Marx is arguing forcibly that we should be entitled to reaping the benefits of our own technology and labor and creative energies.

I began reading "Capital" in 1982, and having begun from scratch to read Book One, with the famous Hegelian section on the nature of the commodity as the standard form of social wealth in capitalism - a section skipped by most Anglo-Saxon abridgers, who tend to treat Marx as only a "post-Ricardian", in Samuelson's (in)famous dictum - I should say that I fear any kind of abridgment done to this work.In my view, all abridgments tend to create a more palatable view of the work abridged, therefore skipping the most intersting and controversial passages. Better to read an abridgment than forswearing reading it altogether, but I would strongly recommend anyone interested in Marx to do as I've done and tackle the Penguin complete ed., not forgetting to begin with the huge and superb introductory essay by Ernest Mandel. It won't hurt you, as it will allow one to form his/her personal view. It may be somekind of snobbery from my part, given that I read such a difficult work in a translation not to my mother-language and aided by a lenghty commentary, but after so many years, I still think it paid.

Albeit, not wholly prophetic Das Kapital holds it's own. With all the high interest rates, M&As, Enron, etc. Capitalism has appeared to be the best method but Marx reveals (though no secret) that Capitalism can easily be infested with greed and exploitation when devoid of ethics and "dehumanitization" for the economic gain of a few carried out by those order to do so for the gain of the former. A great book to not be taken lightly nor to strickly adhered to. A book which may begin to reveal (as in epiphany) a not-too-pretty picture of division within our own borders. I re-read this book during the 9-11 timframe and during the subsequent airline and other semi-demises (including the "big one" - Enron) and sent a chill up my spine. A capitalist culture without compassion and ethics is doom to fall. Read this book (choose your chapter) and see for yourself!

I really cant sum this book up in 1,000 words. I will make this real short, THIS IS A GOOD BOOK FOR COMMUNISTS" Karl Marx is considered one if not the THE founding father of Communism. A good read if you want to do a little research into what Communism is.

With the fall of Soviet Communism and the Capitalization of the remaining, obstensible, Communist states, this book is less important than it used to be...but is still a treasure trove. Want to find out what Marx was really like? Just how supremely hateful, racist and evil? Read this book.
The actual writing in not very good, but the research is impeccable; you will get the unvarnished Marx gems that American Intelligentsia has laundered.