Customer Reviews

The Communist Manifesto

5 star:		(88)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(44)

 

 

An excellent book. It is short and to the point. It may still happen in the future. Capitalism is surely not the last economic and social order of history. Stalin was definitely not a Marxist. Please don't confuse Marxism with Stalin and his gross abuses. Highly recommended. Humans are generally too selfish to implement everything he advocates..... at least in the present time!

This is not a book on economics,it is strictly ideology palmed off as some great humanitarian tract in order to assuage one man's guilty conscience over never having worked a day in his ne'er-do-well-life.Marx may have railed at the capitalist but he sure didn't mind freeloading off the capital of others for the duration of his loafer's paradise life!His 'economic'theories have been refuted so many times,notably by Von Mises and Hayek,that only the ideological aspect of his work remains.

Amazingly,there are those who still cling to Marx and believe his ideas were 'noble' but were hijacked by bad people.To read The Communist Manifesto is to know that totalitarianism is inherent to the ideology.Where the state is the meaning and final arbiter of the value of human life then the value of an individual human life has been reduced to that of a mere slave.That Marxist governments everywhere brought about deaths by the millions,squalor,slave labor camps and despair is hardly an accident.That the people living within Marxist dystopias tried to escape their barbed-wired,concrete-walled,guard-towered prison fortresses at the first opportunity is also no accident.And as for the charges of 'imperialism'laid against Western governments,there were no worse imperialists than the Marxist governments,as the people of Poland,Hungary,South Korea,Taiwan,Afghanistan,The Czech Republic,Romania and numerous people of other places can attest to.

It is no exaggeration to say that Marxism is the most corpse-producing ideology in the history of humanity.All the religious wars throughout history didn't wipe out as many people as did Marxists governments in a short 70 years.That anyone today could ascribe some nobleness to such a deadly,anti-human,anti-life,two-bit quasi religion of guilt-ridden trust fund babies and freeloaders is nothing short of miraculous.

Lifelong college students still living at home in mama's basement at the age of 35,would-be Stalin's and Pol Pot's,amnesiacs,those who learn nothing from history,brain-fried professors holed up in the dark recesses of academic anti-reality and guilty white liberals of the world unite!

Everything that Marx and Engels expounded in the hard to read piece of garbage was wrong. If you want to read it because of its historical novelty, that's one thing; but if you are reading it to "learn" something, you are only oppressing yourself.

Everybody who read this book should read "The Road to Serfdom" afterwards. Here, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics F. Hayek takes apart the Philosophy propagated by K. Marx and other socialists, and shows that collectivism without exception must lead to the loss of personal freedom and wellbeing. Read it, it is an easy to read political (not economic) book, and it will change your outlook. It even may make you an individualist.

Yes, a specter certainly is haunting Europe... and Asia... all over the world. The specters of millions upon millions of dead, murdered by the hateful grabage contained in this vapid little book. Not worth the paper it's printed on.

Through pure honesty, I have enjoyed The Communist Manifesto very much, it speaks about how humanity can survive through peace and love, even though sometimes it must do so through revolution. This is a very general way I can describe it. For those who haven't read the book and have already begun to criticize the novel, READ THE BOOK BEFORE YOU JUDGE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just saying that it's terrible before one even reads it shows how much old world prejudice has gone in corrupting them... To make matters worse, those who not only haven't read it and still have the nerve to post hateful reviews about it... I'll be honest leave me speechless. READ THE BOOK BEFORE YOU JUDGE IT, I CAN'T EMPHASIZE THAT ENOUGH!!!!!!!!! Read first and then make your opinion, if you still don't agree, then I respect your opinion, because then you have at least taken the effort to read it. For those who think it's terrible because of what it states, well in terms of religion, yes Marx was atheist, however, I'm a Communist and yet I'm still catholic, I can agree with almost everything Marx has stated, except for atheism. I agree that capitalism has caused much suffering and still these examples can be found across the world today where there is still forced prostitution, child labor, union busting, sweatshops, all so that the consumers of europe and north america can have their clothes and toys. To make matters worse, Capitalism is the one that has hijacked religion saying how it's compatible with God's laws and the teachings of the bible. Well I don't remember any part of the bible saying that Jesus asked for profit when he healed the sick, I don't remember anything in the bible about committing assassinations on democratically elected leaders, I don't see anything that supports child labor and slavery, what I saw was how Moses freed the Israelites from slavery, and I certainly don't remember Jesus asking the temple traders to continue their business. What I see in the teachings of Marx are the end of slavery, the end of social classes, the beginning of social health care and education. The only thing about it says against religion is how it doesn't like the institution, and that's the smallest component out of the entire manifesto. All in all READ BEFORE YOU FREAKIN' JUDGE!!!!!!!!

Far too many misconceptions and urban myths about Marxism have been created and disseminated by people who lacked understanding of what Marxism is all about, or how Communism works. The Communist Manifesto is a good introduction to Marxist political theory and the first stepping stone in understanding Communism, but it is a very short read and leaves many questions unanswered. I strongly suggest you also buy other books by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, etc.

One of the most enduring myths about Communism is that it "doesn't work" because of some inherent failure in "human nature", most often greed. The endurance of this myth is living proof that "a lie told often enough becomes accepted truth".
In reality, Communism does NOT rely on people sharing their possessions out of the kindness of their hearts. It relies on people sharing their possessions because they know that they will all benefit from it. Communism does not go against "human nature" (if such a thing even exists - we certainly haven't found any greed gene in our DNA) and it does not try to fight against greed. Greedy people will know that they have more to gain by respecting the system of communal ownership than by tearing it apart. They are better off in communism than capitalism (just like the vast majority of all people).

For my Russian friend, I strongly recommend Leon Trotsky's "The Revolution Betrayed". Many Russians never had a chance to read what Stalin's opponents within the Communist movement had to say about his repressive police state. I am from Eastern Europe myself, and I know very well that what we had before 1989 was far removed from Communism and Socialism. The Soviet Union was never communist, and it never even claimed to be - it claimed to be in the process of building communism. Unfortunately for them, you cannot build communism without democracy. Both Communism and Socialism are inherently democratic systems. The Soviet Union claimed to be socialist, but socialism means economic democracy (public control over the means of production). Did the people control the means of production in the USSR? Did the people control anything in the USSR? I think not.

The USSR was as "communist" as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is "democratic". Stalin called himself a communist and a champion of democracy. He was neither.

For Christians, I recommend a more thourough read of the Bible:

"And all that believed were together, and had all things common;
And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all [men], as every man had need."
- Acts 2:44-45

Jesus Christ was, in many ways, the world's first communist.

In reading some of the reviews below, it becomes quite evident that many of the readers who gave this book a low rating have never actually read the book. People generally think they understand communism based on their knowledge of the Soviet Union, or North Korea, or China, or Vietnam, etc. Based on this "knowledge," they judge Marx's ideas to be either unrealistic or just plain bloody without reading the book itself. The reality, however, is that one cannot know communism through the experiences of 20th century history since communism as Marx and Engels envisioned it has not existed on this planet. Furthermore, one cannot understand Marx's ideas only through the reading of this book.

The Communist Manifesto was written as a political pamphlet, and thus is written like a piece of propaganda. Marx does not discuss in great deal some significant points in his theory. He doesn't discuss the dialectic in great detail, nor does he discuss his view on human nature a great deal. Most people are unaware of Marx's view on human nature, and this has led to him being labeled an "idealist," and communism labeled "utopian."

This book gets 4 stars from me for two reasons. Based on historical importance alone, this book should receive 5 stars. Given its amazing significance, it seems ridiculous to me that someone could give this book one or no stars. I may not be a Christian, but I'd give the Bible 5 stars just because of its tremendous historical importance. That being said, I only give the Manifesto 4 stars because, as a representation of Marx's ideas, it is incomplete, and I think in many ways, it contributes to the general lack of understanding of Marx that is so common today. People think they understand the philosophy of communism after reading just the Manifesto, and that false sense of knowledge only makes them seem that much more ignorant.

You are muddling up Communism and Socialism. Marx wrote in 1848, when the word 'Communism' had no unfortunate connotations. However, Stalinism came to change the meaning of the word. Currently, what Marx called Communism is closest to our word Socialism.

It is absolutely chilling to see people endorse this book or give it any praise. That people should be screaming for enslavement and collectivism is beyond me. Proud as I am to live in a free country, I do recognize that censorship of this book would be a tacit agreement of the principles in the book itself. The communistic thought and system died an ignomonious death in the Soviet Union and it's demise was long overdue. Basically this primer on slavery touts a dead political system. Yet there are those among us, no matter how few their number, who believe that their thinking and living would best be done for them by a collectivist society, instead of by themselves, and it is for that reason that all freedom loving men and women jealously defend their right to freedom of thought. May the death of communism be an oppurtunity for dancing and rejoicing in the street and may this book be always be remembered as the centerpiece of the failed and defeated political system it was.