After the conference, Marx returned to Brussels, carrying with him a declaration of socialism penned by two delegates, the lone copy of The Communist Journal, the publication of the London branch of the Communist League, and a statement of principles written by Engels. Although Marx followed Engel's principles very closely, the Manifesto is entirely of his own hand. Marx wrote furiously, but just barely made the deadline the League had set for him. The Manifesto was published in February 1848 and quickly published so as to fan the flames of revolution which smoldered on the Continent. When revolution broke out in Germany in March 1848, Marx traveled to the Rhineland to put his theory into practice. When this revolution was suppressed, Marx fled to London and the Communist League disbanded, the Manifesto its only legacy to the world.

The Manifesto has lived a long and illustrious life. While it was hardly noticed amongst the crowded field of pamphlets and treatises published in 1848, it has had a more profound effect on the intellectual and political history of the world than any single work in the past 150 years. It has inspired the communist political systems which ruled nearly half the world's population at its height and defined the chief ideological conflict of the second half of the twentieth century, altering even those countries which stood firmly against communism, e.g. Western European and American Welfare States. Intellectually, Marx's work has profoundly influenced nearly every field of study from the humanities to the social sciences to the natural sciences. It is hard to imagine an area of serious human inquiry which Marxism has not touched.

But even in the enormous body of work related to Marxism, The Manifesto is undoubtedly unique. Even at its short length (only 23 pages at its first printing), it is the only full exposition of his program that Marx wrote. And while Marx developed his views throughout his career, he never departed far from the original principles outlined therein. The Manifesto is, without a doubt, Marx's most enduring literary legacy, setting in motion a movement which has, although not in exactly the way Marx predicted, radically changed the world. As Marx famously asserted in his Theses on Feuerbach, "The philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways. What matters is changing it." No one has epitomized this as much as he.

卡尔·马克思

全世界无产阶级的伟大导师和领袖，马克思主义的创始人。生于普鲁士莱茵省特里尔城一个犹太人律师家庭。曾先后就学于波恩大学和柏林大学法律系，重点学习历史和哲学，获哲学博士位。在学期间参加青年黑格尔派，主张激进的无神论。1842年起担任《莱茵报》撰稿人，10月任主编。在此期间通过写报纸评论，对反动政府进行了深刻揭露，思想开始从唯心主义立场转向唯物主义，从革命民主主义转向共产主义。1843年《莱茵报》被查封，马克思和燕妮·威斯特华伦结婚并迁居巴黎，开始同德国、法国秘密工人社团建立联系，经常参加工人、手工业者的集会，开展对政治经济学、空想社会主义和历史的研究。1844年初创办《德法年鉴》，发表《黑格尔法哲学批判导言》《论犹太人问题》等文章，第一次指出无产阶级是唯一能消灭剥削制度的阶级，工人运动必须与科学的世界观相结合；主张“对现存的一切进行无情的批判”，尤其是“武器的批判”。这些文章和当时给阿·卢格的几封信，标志着马克思世界观的转变已经完成。liuxuepaper.com