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the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. What the bourgeoisie

therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the
proletariat are equally inevitable.”

What are we to make this very distinctive language?
• spectres
• hauntings

• gigantic powers
• conjured up
• sorcerers
• nether worlds

• spells
• grave-diggers.

This is surely the language of Romantic- even Gothic - literature, which is preoccupied
with the irrational, the dark, the unconscious and the terrifying. These passages make
clear that The Communist Manifesto was strongly influenced by Romanticism.

This is surprising because Marx is usually seen as a child of Enlightenment reason and

science, using his studies of history and economics to uncover the laws of history and
point the way to a rational future of communist equality. Yet as a young man he had
composed Byronic poetry, studied theology and the idealist philosophy of Hegel,
before becoming a politically outspoken and radical journalist and getting himself
thrown out of Prussia for good. He fled to Paris, then settled in London and lived as
an exile, journalist, writer and revolutionary activist. And as is also now clear, was

strongly influenced by Romanticism, both in his critique of capitalism and the
language in which he expressed it.

Why is The Communist Manifesto so important?
!848 was the year of Revolutions in Europe and Marx was writing to sway European
opinion. As he says at the start,

“A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism. It is high time that

Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their
aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with
a manifesto of the party itself. To this end, Communists of various nationalities have
assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the
English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.”