Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818 at Trier in Rhineland, which was then a part of Prussia. 1 The family was of Jewish faith, but Heinrich Marx registered as a Protestant Christian because Jews were not allowed to hold public office; Karl Marx did not strictly follow his Jewish faith, nor was he proud of it.2 Marx attends law school at the University of Bonn, and transfers to the University of Berlin, where he studied law, philosophy, and history.3 In 1842, Marx meets Engels through the Rhenish Gazette newspaper, which he was the editor of. 4 He marries Jenny von Westphalen in 1843 and has three children with her.5 He and Engels joined the Communist League in 1847 and they wrote The Communist Manifesto for the League’s Second Congress.6 Because The Communist Manifesto would influence history forever, one must know what shaped and influenced Marx’s ideas.

Marx lived in a time of rapid social change in Europe. Many movements, ideas, and people helped form Marx’s development of The Communist Manifesto. The Industrial Revolution had started in Britain and spread throughout Europe.7 With the Industrial Revolution many factories were built and the factory system was established.

Section four of The Communist Manifesto concludes with writings about the role of the Communists as they work with other parties. The communists fight for the immediate aims of workers, but they should always represent the entire Communist movement.33 Marx writes, “The Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.”34 The Communists goal is always a proletariat revolution and the abolition of private property. The Manifesto ends with “Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES UNITE!”35

Profound and forbidding, an elaboration on an immense scale of the ideas of Being and Becoming, which manifest themselves through all of nature and history in a vast process of self--transcendence called the dialectic.12

Section three of The Communist Manifesto deals with Socialist and Communist Literature. In this section Marx presents and critiques three subsets of Socialist and Communist literature. This is a review of other Socialist thinkers. The first subset is Reactionary Socialism. Reactionary Socialists include the Feudal Socialists, the Petty-Bourgeois Socialists, and the German, or “True” Socialists.29 All of these groups fight against the rise of the bourgeoisie and modern industry. The second subset of Socialism is Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism. They want the advantages of the social conditions, without the struggles and dangers that accompany it. Marx states:

The third subset is Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism. This subset began with the first attempts of the proletariat to achieve its goal.31 The proletariat’s first attempts are important because “they attack every principle of existing society. Hence they are full of the most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the working class.”32 In all of these subsets, Marx argues that each approach fails because it misses a key component of Communist theory.

Marx wanted to achieve his Communist government by writing The Communist Manifesto. Unfortunately, Communism was much more complicated than Marx had predicted and the Communist society failed. There can never be a completely neutral society. There will always be class differences and class antagonism. It is interesting to see what events lead up to Marx’s creation of The Communist Manifesto, and who influenced his writings. Without these important events and people, Marx may ha

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