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festo" exhibits in classic form the results of the theoretical and practical work of Marx and Engels. Whilst with its keen analysis of bourgeois society it could not possibly have appeared at any earlier epoch than it did, nevertheless, unlike the numerous other systems and programmes of a future society drawn up at about the same time, which have passed into oblivion sooner or later, the "Communist Manifesto" still remains, indeed is becoming more and more a beacon of light to the workers of the world. And the fact that the programme drawn up by Marx and Engels has endured and is still true seventy years after its publication, is due to the extraordinary insight and understanding of its authors, who could trace with a sure hand the inevitable results of a system then only in its infancy.
So important is this short work for our movement, so well does it exhibit the spirit of the Marxian teaching, that it will be well worth our while to stop to analyse it.
THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.
The "Communist Manifesto" is based on historic materialism. Its fundamental idea is that the political and intellectual development of any historical epoch is based on, and can only be explained from, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange of that epoch, and the social structure resulting therefrom. The whole history of mankind, since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership (this prehistoric period of human society has been worked out by Morgan, Engels, and others, and fully supports the materialist conception of history) has been a history of class struggles, struggles between exploiter and exploited, the governing and the governed, at different stages of development in society. The history of these struggles forms a series of evolutions in which a stage has now been reached, when the oppressed and exploited class—the working class—can only attain its emancipation from the exploiting and ruling class—the capitalist class—by emancipating the whole of society once for all from all exploitation, class distinctions and class struggles.
The first section of the Manifesto deals with the bourgeoisie (capitalists) and proletarians (workers) and shows in
