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A review by babblingbooks
The Communist Manifesto and Other Writings by Karl Marx, Martin Puchner, Friedrich Engels
3.0
I honestly don't know how to rate this. I'm giving it 3 stars as a placeholder until I can figure out how I could articulate this better. This isn't a review, simply a list of pros and cons about the text. I definitely think it's worth reading, but I don't think that it will appeal to most readers unless they have a particular interest in political history or political theory.
Pros:
- Fascinating insight into the early development of a new framework of political thought
- Insight into mid 1800's political and social life
- Very short (50 pages in my tiny Penguin edition)
- I learnt that the central tenet of Communism is the abolition of private property
- I also learnt that one of the movement's core demands was free public schooling for all children
Cons:
- It was written in response to a specific set of situations, and thus without knowledge of the political tensions in the 1840's I was making guesses as to what some of the implications and references were about.
- The language is not at all direct, and uses many terms/words that are not in common use today.
- A lot has changed in the world since it was written, and without an introduction to give greater context I found it difficult to evaluate some of the assumptions, and predictions made in the text.
Pros:
- Fascinating insight into the early development of a new framework of political thought
- Insight into mid 1800's political and social life
- Very short (50 pages in my tiny Penguin edition)
- I learnt that the central tenet of Communism is the abolition of private property
- I also learnt that one of the movement's core demands was free public schooling for all children
Cons:
- It was written in response to a specific set of situations, and thus without knowledge of the political tensions in the 1840's I was making guesses as to what some of the implications and references were about.
- The language is not at all direct, and uses many terms/words that are not in common use today.
- A lot has changed in the world since it was written, and without an introduction to give greater context I found it difficult to evaluate some of the assumptions, and predictions made in the text.