The History of the Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto has always been most widely read in years where revolutionary change seemed possible. In 1914, the ideas in the Communist Manifesto did have a near-death experience with the outbreak of the First World War. The Bolshevik Revolution turned the Communist manifesto into a kind of holy text, a sort of Bible of Marxism as it came to be called. At the same time, through the 20th century, another reading of the Communist manifesto associated with the West tried not to anchor it in a vision of the future but understand it in terms of its own past and context.