Publication of The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels at the request of the Communist League, a small group of German exiles, and was first published in London in German. It argues that the history of society is a history of class struggle, and that the capitalist system, by creating a working class, the proletariat, would eventually be overthrown by it and replaced by a classless society. It ends with a call to workers of all countries to unite. The pamphlet appeared just as revolutions broke out across Europe in 1848, but it was little read until the 1870s. It became one of the most influential political texts ever written and the foundation of Marxism.

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