The Communist Manifesto / The April Theses

About this book

A new beautiful edition of the Communist Manifesto combined with Lenins key revolutionary tract It was the 1917 Russian Revolution that transformed the scale of The Communist Manifesto making it the key text for socialists everywhere. On the centenary of this upheaval this volume pairs Marx and Engelss most famous work with Lenins own revolutionary manifesto The April Theses which lifts politics from the level of everyday banalities to become an art-form. The Communist Manifesto Oppressor and oppressed stood in constant opposition to one another carried on an uninterrupted now hidden now open fight a fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the common ruin of the contending classes. The Communist Manifesto is the most influential political text ever writtenfew other calls to action have stirred and changed the world. Now in the wake of a punishing financial crisis in a world built on regimes of permanent austerity each rife with horrific disparities in wealth this short book remains a reference point for those trying to understand the transformations being wrought by capitalism and its concomitant forms of exploitation. This centenary edition includes a new introduction by Tariq Ali contextualizing the periodthe eve of the 1848 revolutionsin which Marx and Engels penned their masterpiece and argues that it desperately needs a successor. The April Theses The chain breaks first at its weakest link. In Lenins April Theses written in 1917 he presented his ten analytical maxims outlining a programme to accelerate and complete the revolution that had begun in February of that year. Now on the revolutions centenary Verso presents them here alongside Lenins Letters from Afar written in exile that March and addressed to his comrades in Petrograd. In these missives he offers advice and instruction to comrades pushing ahead with their ideals in the aftermath of the February revolution. The introduction by Tariq Ali traces The Communist Manifestos influence on Lenins April Theses the text that brought the manifesto to life and made it one of the most widely read books in history. For Lenin writes Ali it was the birth of imperialism the legitimate offspring of capitalism that signalled the end of the latters progressive capacities.