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KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK

which he recommended as the theoretical basis and working programme of the organization and which was practically a rough draft of the famous Manifesto, was received with great enthusiasm. The secret organization of the League of the Just was reorganized into a propaganda society calling itself the Communist League. Marx and Engels were authorized to draw up a document setting forth the fundamental principles of the League; and at the beginning of that stormy, revolutionary year of 1848 the most remarkable and epoch-making document in the annals of history appeared, a document in which the working-class for the first time since the inception of modern capitalism proclaimed itself the deadly enemy of bourgeois society: The Communist Manifesto.

In the "Communist Manifesto" we view the concerted efforts of Marx and Engels to present to the world a concise and scientific summary of their ideas. This document can without any undue exaggeration be called the birth certificate of scientific Socialism, and was destined to become the declaration of industrial emancipation for the world's workers. In the "Communist Manifesto" for the first time scientific Socialism speaks to the world, and proudly it proclaims its distinctive difference when compared with the childish antics of Utopian Socialism or Democratic Reformism. In a masterly manner and on a grand scale historical development is here analyzed, and the causes and forces actuating this process are exposed to the reader. This also leads to a dissection and scathing criticism of the capitalist order, winding up with the convincing demonstration that capitalist society bears within its womb the material germs of Communism; also that this society at the same time rears in the working-class the might necessary to execute the inexorable dictate of historical evolution. And in order to make the workers conscious of their historic mission, this masterpiece of keen scientific analysis, conciseness and literary beauty concludes with that world-renowned battle-cry: "Proletarians of all countries, unite!"