manifesto

of the International Working Men's Association, London, Truelove, 1871, p. 15, where this point is 

further developed.) Further, it is self-evident that the criticism of socialist literature is deficient in 

relation to the present time, because it comes down only to 1847; also, that the remarks on the 

relation of the Communists to the various opposition parties (Section IV), although in principle 

still correct, yet in practice are antiquated, because the political situation has been entirely 

changed, and the progress of history has swept from off the 

page 3 

earth the greater portion of the political parties there enumerated. 

But, then, the Manifesto has become a historical document which we have no longer any right to 

alter. A subsequent edition may perhaps appear with an introduction bridging the gap from 1847 to 

the present day; this reprint was too unexpected to leave us time for that. 

Karl Marx Frederick Engels 

London, June 24,1872 

page 4 

PREFACE TO THE RUSSIAN 

EDITION OF 1882[6] 

The first Russian edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, translated by Bakunin, was 

published early in the sixties[7] by the printing office of the Kolokol.[8] Then the West could see in 

it (the Russian edition of the Manifesto) only a literary curiosity. Such a view would be impossible 

today. 

What a limited field the proletarian movement still occupied at that time (December 1847) is 

most clearly shown by the last section of the Manifesto: the position of the Communists in relation 

to the various opposition parties in the various countries. Precisely Russia and the United States 

are missing here. It was the time when Russia constituted the last great reserve of all European 

reaction, when the United States absorbed the surplus proletarian forces of Europe through 

immigration. Both countries provided Europe with raw materials and were at the same time 

markets for the sale of its industrial products. At that time both were, therefore, in one way or 

another, pillars of the existing European order. 

page 5 

How very different today! Precisely European immigration fitted North America for a gigantic 

agricultural production, whose competition is shaking the very foundations of European landed 

property -- large and small. In addition it enabled the United States to exploit its tremendous 

industrial resources with an energy and on a scale that must shortly break the industrial monopoly 

of Western Europe, and especially of England, existing up to now. Both circumstances react in 

revolutionary manner upon America itself. Step by step the small and middle land ownership of 

the farmers, the basis of the whole political constitution, is succumbing to the competition of giant