Editor's note: We're republishing this article, originally posted in 2008, in advance of the 175th anniversary of the publication of the Manifesto of the Communist Party in celebration of Red Books Day. The Communist Manifesto stands among the most well-read books of...
Revolutionary change is needed. This is clear in the exploitation of workers by bankers and corporate CEOs, the racist cops jailing and killing Black and Latino youth, the million families losing their homes to foreclosure. The starting point is that for millions of...
Since the advent of class antagonisms in human society, oppressed people and others angered by injustice have dreamed of a better world. In the face of poverty, disease, humiliation and exploitation, people have counterposed their hopes and aspirations for a life free...
What will socialist society look like? The earliest pioneers of scientific socialism—Karl Marx and Frederick Engels—did not philosophize about what socialism and communism would look like in detail. Nor did they discuss how long it would take to transform society from...
The ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ Workers around the world have instinctively understood the need for a union. In the fight against the bosses—whether it is for pay and benefits, better working conditions or to defend the gains they have already won—individual...
Between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago, human societies in different parts of the world split into classes. Social classes are defined by social and economic positions in society relative to the creation of wealth in society, as well as the interrelations among these...
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” In one sentence, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels captured the essential driving force of class society. Engels later amended the original formulation to account for the discovery of...
Millions of people in the United States understand the problems of capitalist society: poverty, unemployment, racism, war or any other of the many other social ills that working-class people face. Hundreds of thousands of those, if asked, would sincerely like to see...
In the struggle for a better world, the working-class movement often faces the question: Which way forward? It may be in a strike, where the bosses are threatening to bring in scabs. It may be in a demonstration, when the cops are preparing to disperse the crowd. Or...