The Communist Manifesto and Other Revolutionary Writings: Marx, Marat, Paine, Mao Tse-Tung, Gandhi and Others (Dover Thrift Editions)

This book is great for anyone interested in the development of new ideas. When all of these writings are taken as a whole you can really appreciate what each revolutionary was trying to convey. A great read and very well priced.

I had always wanted to read the Communist Manifesto. This book surrounds Marx's writing with others that show a clear development towards a new kind of freedom and government. When placed in the contex of other great writers of new thinking, all of these works have greater meaning.

This is a superb collection to buy.

For 3.50 you cannot go wrong with this Dover Anthology of revolutionary writings. Spanning the American, French, Russian and Chinese revolutions it offers a broad range from Rousseau to Paine and Mao. One of the best advantages of this edition is that it offers many speeches and small writings that normally would have to be tracked down in a library. Though there are not many completed revolutionary texts in this edition, you have to remember that it is under 5 dollars and that similar, larger anthologies also do not include that manny completed texts. So if you are interested in revolutionary writings this book would be the perfect introduction for you.

The reviewer "Scott" argues that the Communist Manifesto is "degrading", and I'd like to know exactly "for whom/what"? Sounds like Scott is either a boss who'd like to see the revival of the "Golden Age of Capitalism" (the Industrial Revolution, which included sub-living wages, child labor, forced overtime, 12-15 hour days, no worker's rights, etc.). Or, more likely, he has never read the Communist Manifesto, which contains within it nothing that is degrading for the working and poor classes, but is in fact a dignifying and uplifting rally-cry for the working class.

Only a person that has never read the Communist Manifesto, or a person belonging to the priveleged class, could argue, honestly, that the Manifesto was degrading. Scott, you should be ashamed.

(By the way, Marx was not the rabid anti-capitalist, pro-Statist, everyone thinks he was - he was in fact the rightful heir to the Paine, Smith, Mill, etc. He followed their arguments to their logical conclusions, and he could not reject history and what capitalism had become by his time. As had been said about communism time and time again, capitalism "is a great idea but doesn't work" - not in the long run, not for the working class. Rather, capitalism had went from liberating people in the 17th and 18th centuries to enslaving them in the 19th and 20th - and 21st - centuries. Marx, like the "founding fathers" of America, had realised that CERTAINLY man needs land/resources to be free, but unlike the founding fathers he was around to see that monopolies were an inevitability in capitalism, and that the population would grow too large for there to be enough land and resources to go around without SHARING. "Private property" had become, by this time, a means of forcing latecomers into service in exchange for table scraps. And of course, the capitalists had abandoned their belief in liberty and human welfare and had become dependent upon the State to protect their hordes of unused/horded wealth and property. Forget the fact that they didn't need all the land and resources they "owned legally", and forget the fact that there were people that DID need it bud didn't have it, and forget the fact that the choice between starvation and work is NOT "freedom" but coercion - forget all this. What became important for the capitalists long before socialism, anarchism, and communism became attractive alternatives to capitalism was not people, but profit. Marx simply was more of a libertarian than the capitalists of his day.)

This is revolution a great book for someone that has somewhere to be. The writings are mostly just a few pages long so you can begin and finish a thought before you have to stop reading. The only setback is that Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" isn't in the book in it's entirety. Only the appendix for "Common Sense" is in it. It is really hard to label that a setback because this book has so much packed into it for such a reasonable price.