Review: THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

In the mid-1800s there were a lot of manifestos. This was the height of the Industrial Revolution, and also of modernism, when it seemed science could solve all of of mankind's problems. Everybody had a way to improve the world, and everybody wanted to write about it,

Though attributed to both Marx and Engels, the majority of the Manifesto was written by Marx, which means two things. The first is that it is very well-written. Marx was a great writer 19th-century standards, though by modern standards he's very, very boring.

The second is that it was extremely wrong. Marx had a one-track mind, and that one track was Communism. Everything was subsumed to it, and anything that didn't fit was thrown aside with great disdain. This means that there are things in Marx's writings that simply aren't true. They make sense, though, if you accept the basic premises of Communism.

There's no doubt there were -- and are -- abuses that needed correcting. But this would be forgotten like all those other manifestos if someone hadn't taken it seriously.