Communist Manifesto

OK, Marx and Engles went off with this one. The text of the Manifesto itself is written in an extremely compelling, approachable way. I was surprised by how contemporary it felt. And of course, ‘you have nothing to lose but your chains’ is just iconic.

Most of this book, however, was a lengthy deep dive into the context of the Manifesto. It got dry and tedious quite often, but I did get through it all and I am glad I did.

It provided helpful context. It made me feel much better about myself for not having all the answers, because holy cow did Marx flip flop on his politics throughout his life.

One chapter in particular, about the role of monotheistic religions in our increasingly individualistic society absolutely blew my mind.

So yeah, it is slightly self-flagellating, but I think it was good to get through all of the contextual stuff beforehand.

Ca fait longtemps que je l'ai lu, et à l'époque je m'étais dit qu'il fallais le remettre a jour car peu représentatif du monde actuel avec cette classe moyenne apathique. Mais les IA vont voler les jobs de cette classe moyenne donc c'est bon dans 20 ans ça sera de nouveau d'actualité

It's incredible, and not, how little has changed in 175 years...

The manifesto is not a highly complex and detailed view of Marxism and its' concepts. It served as an easy read for people to get a simplified understanding of the oppression structures during the industrial revolution and lists a set of goals which should be achieved to establish a communist society.

This should be seen as an easy introduction to the Marxist philosophy and a potential starting point for further research into this topic.

I think it's pretty good. It's pretty polemical and lays out the political goals of communists, it doesn't really get into Marxist philosophy and the methods in which Marx comes to his conclusions though. I'd probably recommend "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" as a better introduction to Marxism.

The manifesto is mostly just interesting as a historical piece for me, especially in terms of leftist history. Ideologically it's still pretty interesting to read, however some parts of it have naturally become a bit outdated which has even been acknowledged by Marx and Engels some 25 years later.

The edition of the manifesto I read even includes multiple prefaces by Engels throughout the years which further gave an amazing insight into history and what they felt and thought at the time. Additionally the book also included Engel's The Principles of Communism which practically functioned as an FAQ to fully illustrate what exactly Communism is and it stands for.