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The Communist Manifesto and Other Revolutionary Writings: Marx, Marat, Paine, Mao, Gandhi, and Others

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This concise anthology presents a broad selection of writings by the world’s leading revolutionary figures. Spanning three centuries, the works include such milestone documents as the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789), and the Communist Manifesto (1848). It also features writings by the Russian revolutionaries Lenin and Trotsky; Marat and Danton of the French Revolution; and selections by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emma Goldman, Mohandas Gandhi, Mao Zedong, and other leading figures in revolutionary thought.
An essential collection for anyone interested in the issues, ideas, and history of the major revolutions of modern times, this book will prove an enlightening companion to students of this genre. Includes a selection from the Common Core State Standards Initiative: The Declaration of Independence.

284 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2003

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About the author

Karl Marx

2,863 books5,699 followers
With the help of Friedrich Engels, German philosopher and revolutionary Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867-1894), works, which explain historical development in terms of the interaction of contradictory economic forces, form many regimes, and profoundly influenced the social sciences.

German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in London opposed Communism of Karl Marx with his antithetical anarchy.

Works of Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941).

The Prussian kingdom introduced a prohibition on Jews, practicing law; in response, a man converted to Protestantism and shortly afterward fathered Karl Marx.

Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Philosophy of Religion of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Democritus and Epicurus), doctoral thesis, also engaged Marx, who completed it in 1841. People described the controversial essay as "a daring and original piece... in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom." Marx decided to submit his thesis not to the particularly conservative professors at the University of Berlin but instead to the more liberal faculty of University of Jena, which for his contributed key theory awarded his Philosophiae Doctor in April 1841. Marx and Bauer, both atheists, in March 1841 began plans for a journal, entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), which never came to fruition.

Marx edited the newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. The urging of the Prussian government from France banished and expelled Marx in absentia; he then studied in Brussels. He joined the league in 1847 and published.

Marx participated the failure of 1848 and afterward eventually wound in London. Marx, a foreigner, corresponded for several publications of United States.
He came in three volumes. Marx organized the International and the social democratic party.

Marx in a letter to C. Schmidt once quipped, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist," as Warren Allen Smith related in Who's Who in Hell .

People describe Marx, who most figured among humans. They typically cite Marx with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, the principal modern architects.

Bertrand Russell later remarked of non-religious Marx, "His belief that there is a cosmic ... called dialectical materialism, which governs ... independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" ( Portraits from Memory , 1956).

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bi...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic...
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...

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5 stars
135 (31%)
4 stars
151 (35%)
3 stars
109 (25%)
2 stars
26 (6%)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
Profile Image for kripsoo.
112 reviews26 followers
March 6, 2014
I had always wanted to read the Communist Manifesto This one surrounds Marx's writing with others that show a clear development towards a new kind of freedom and government and When placed in the context of other great writers of new thinking, all of these works have greater meaning and This book is great for anyone interested in the development of new ideas and When all of these writings are taken as a whole you can really appreciate what each revolutionary was trying to convey in the fact A great read and very well priced
359 reviews5 followers
June 12, 2018
I surprisingly enjoyed most of the readings in this book. It ranges from Voltaire in his explanation on how inequality arises, to the French Revolutionaries (who were pretty much all executed by the reign of terror) to the Germans like Marx to the Russians like Trotsky and Lenin to Emma Goldman to Mao to Gandhi. Many of the writings are relevant, some contains plans of action, a few are simply repetitive. But overall I'd recommend this to anyone who wants to actually explore leftism and how inequality comes about.

Hilariously, the declaration of independence is in here, which is more of a conservative reaction to the British rule. But whatever.
May 18, 2021
This is a collection of papers, speeches, articles, etc. from famous scientist, politicians and leaders, ect. it was very well done and you get a sense of what each individual writer/speaker wants to convey, it was very interesting and would recommend if anyone has taste for this sort of thing.
Profile Image for Jennifer.
201 reviews15 followers
September 15, 2017
This was a compilation of excerpts from a variety of revolutionary writings. Some of these could be quite boring but others (mostly towards the latter part of the book) peaked my interest.

"...the dread of love for a man who is not her social equal;the fear that love will rob her of her freedom and independence; the horror that love or the joy of motherhood will only hinder her in the full exercise of her profession..." -Emma Goldman

"...one cannot help but see that the higher the mental development of woman, the less possible it is for her to meet a congenial mate who will see in her, not only sex, but also the human being, the friend, the comrade and strong individuality, who cannot and ought not lose a single trait of her character." -Emma Goldman

"So long as the economically dependent peoples do not free themselves from the capitalist markets, and as a bloc with the socialist countries, impose new terms of trade between the exploited and the exploiters, there will be no sound economic development, and in certain cases there will be retrogression, in which the weak countries will fall under the political domination of imperialists and colonialists." -Che Guevara
Profile Image for Googoogjoob.
303 reviews3 followers
April 9, 2022
Basically a useful (and cheap) accumulation of "revolutionary writings," very broadly defined. Revolutionary ideologies represented within include liberalism, socialism (of the utopian, Marxist, libertarian, etc varieties), communism (of the council, Leninist, Maoist, etc varieties), anarchism, trade unionism, feminism, left-nationalism, and anti-colonialism, and the texts span from 1755 (Rousseau) to 1977 (Charter 77). They include extracts of books, essays, pamphlets, speeches, manifestos, legal acts, propaganda, and so on. There are light biographical and contextual notes for each item, but almost nothing in the way of critique or analysis- this is a sourcebook, not a history book. Reading it from cover to cover might thus be disorienting, as, while all the texts represent some form of revolutionary impulse, there isn't a smooth continuum of ideas between them, and they do not represent a continuous history.
Profile Image for Michal.
271 reviews2 followers
May 25, 2020
It was really interesting to see the development of emancipation, the progress of ideas about freedom and equal rights. I knew before that communism makes sense from some point of view, for example it's the best ideology for family. But this book helped me to see two major ideologies causing wars in the last century from different perspectives. Finally I understand that it wasn't two different ideologies, capitalism and communism. Both are based on the same idea, just slightly different focus. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand more modern history or current world. I cannot give five stars because I think it would be nice to say a little more about context for each writing.
Profile Image for Lucas Miller.
528 reviews10 followers
June 25, 2018
I'm going to call it. 35 pages from the end, missing some great revolutionary writings, but reading a primary source reader is slow going sometimes. I was most interested in the French Revolution and pre-Russian Revolution Communist readings. I find Russian authors difficult to read, whether it is the classic novelists or Trotsky and Lenin. I'm not sure what the issue is, but I muddle through it.

This is a super helpful collection. I have a dream of teaching a history revolutions course, and this would be prime candidate for a set text.
Profile Image for Mitchell Stern.
816 reviews11 followers
March 29, 2020
This is a very thorough collection of revolutionary writings, with contributions from the 18th to 20th century being present. I found some more convincing than others-Kropotkin, Goldman, Proudhon, Jefferson, Gandhi, Haclav, Rousseau and Paine were particularly strong in their rhetoric. I will say it is odd to have such disparate accounts included (Haclav in particular felt out of place given Charter 77 was written in response to authoritarian communism which Lenin, Guevara and Mao supported) but overall it is a great reference.
101 reviews1 follower
October 22, 2023
This is a great work that was fun to read when I had some time. It has the communist manifesto, yes but it also gives you an interesting pallet of political writings from some of the most influential political activists and figures over the past hundreds of years. I think that having this book exposes one to a lot of interesting ideas and good historical works. Good book that does what it set out to do.
Profile Image for Rica.
30 reviews1 follower
June 22, 2021
These book are definirely awewome
Profile Image for FiArCaMi.
40 reviews
June 22, 2022
The book is absolutelly fantastic and the caracters are very amazing.
Profile Image for Mimana.
33 reviews
June 24, 2021
The cas of secondary characters is undoutedly fantastic.
Profile Image for Levi Aguayo.
30 reviews
June 24, 2021
I think it is a great book to learn about philosophical and economic currents.
Profile Image for David Nichols.
Author 3 books84 followers
November 11, 2019
Used with care, this anthology of radical essays and manifestos would serve as an excellent primary-source reader for a world history or Great Ideas course. The editor begins, appropriately, with a long section on the French Revolution and its precursors, the highlights of which include a substantial excerpt from Rousseau's Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (spoiler alert: private property is to blame), Sieyes' “What Is the Third Estate?”, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and Marechal and Babeuf’s “first communist manifestos,” issued during the Jacobin rebellion of 1796. The Communist Manifesto, which always repays another reading (and which remains relevant in our age of capitalist triumphalism), takes up a good chunk of the collection's middle section, where it is accompanied by Kropotkin's “Appeal to the Young” and addresses on the 1905 and 1917 Russian revolutions by Lenin and Trotsky. Other noteworthy selections include Emma Goldman's “Tragedy of Women's Emancipation,” an essay reminiscent of Kate Chopin; Gandhi's 1920 speech on Satyagraha; Che Guevara's 1964 anti-colonial address to the United Nations, a fascinating counterpoint to the American Cold War master narrative; and Czech dissidents' “Charter 77,” which is like Airport '77 but with fewer submerged airplanes.
February 7, 2010
This book contains writings by philosophers Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Mohandas Gandhi, Jacques Rousseau, and others. The book is sort of long (only 300 pages, but they are long), but so far I've read Marx and Rousseau. Rousseau states how mankind has established social divisions throughout history, and how they are unfair. He tells a story of how different people put themselves in higher positions just because they were more fit or just more fortunate. Marx describes how the great powers of Europe are starting to recognize communists and socialists as a problem in 19th-century Europe. He also describes that the burgoisie controls society and how it has evolve from other higher classes in history, such as patricians in Ancient Rome or feudal lords in the Middle Ages, and how the proletariat is going to start a global worker's revolution.
Profile Image for Justin.
21 reviews
August 31, 2011
Excellent collections of writings that trully have changed the world over the last few centuries. The several revolutions may have represented different ideals, but all were great accomplishments by men and women fighting for what they believed in. The book leans more towards radical ideals such as Socialism, Communisum, Marxism, and Anarchism, and wheather you agree with these ideals is really irrelavent because its not a book to convert you to these ideals. The goal is to make you informed as to what these ideologies actually believe in by reading their own documents, rather then learning about them by an outside source that may be biased one way or anouther. Very enlightening read, i enjoyed it greatly.
Profile Image for Jenny.
1,116 reviews98 followers
February 6, 2013
I really enjoyed the essays that Blaisdell included in this anthology. It was interesting to see the progression of revolutionary thought from Rousseau to Marx to Che Guevara, especially when the authors quoted other authors included in the anthology. I especially like that Blaisdell didn't shrink from including authors that Americans consider or are taught to consider reprehensible human beings. Seeing writing from Lenin, Mao Zedong, and others makes it clear that we only get one side of the story. I recommend this anthology to anybody interested in learning more about revolutionary thought over the past 250 years or so and to anyone wishing to educate himself in areas that American education routinely overlooks.
Profile Image for Alexander.
120 reviews
September 6, 2016
Fairly useful as a textbook -- contains a lot of different revolutionary documents, although they should include more documents from the American Revolution. Perhaps they succumb to the European view (that has become regnant among many American academics as well) that the American Revolution wasn't a 'real' revolution. Rousseau's Second Discourse is included, but so much is cut from it that it becomes less useful for a philosophy class, where there is greater interest in the theory of human nature underlying the view than there might be in a history or political theory course. Still, it gathers together many documents in one place and offers them for a very inexpensive price, so it is well worth buying for anyone who wants to get a bunch of these documents together in one place.
Profile Image for Rebecca.
5 reviews
July 14, 2010
I have to say that it was an interesting read. I am thinking that it should be a mandatory read for all high school students. People need to understand exactly what dominated our world history for 50+ years. Marx's communism was nothing like what the Russian government implemented after the revolution of 1917. He would have been ashamed. Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating communism. But Marx had some good points; in an ideal world where people are fair and just.
Profile Image for Camilla.
70 reviews4 followers
October 28, 2012
As I mentioned in a blogpost last week (http://bit.ly/PdMDJd), this book opened my eyes. How much do most of us really know about revolution and socialism? I remember doing Marxist readings of media texts in university, but this begs the question 'how?' since I had never read his greatest writing?

Read the rest on my blog, if you want...
Profile Image for Rob G..
35 reviews
January 24, 2008
a good source to find revolutionary writings to share with learners.
Profile Image for untogether.
60 reviews4 followers
March 24, 2009
The Communist Manifesto and Other Revolutionary Writings: Marx, Marat, Paine, Mao Tse-Tung, Gandhi and Others (Dover Thrift Editions) by Bob Blaisdell (2003)
Profile Image for Mike Stanley.
25 reviews1 follower
May 13, 2009
This book was a little over my head although I did capture from it the communist way of thinking that the end of the line was communism and that it would bring happiness.
Profile Image for rhea.
182 reviews14 followers
September 4, 2012
Only had to read The Communist Manifesto for school, but I found this book cheaper than buying it alone.
67 reviews8 followers
November 1, 2012
Good mix of interesting writings/speeches, but not really much more to say than that/nothing you can't find elsewhere.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews

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