time, The Communist Manifesto.(Groliers encyclopedia).Although it at first had little or no impact on the widespread and varied revolutionary movements of the mid-19th century Europe, the Communist Manifesto was to become one of the most widely read and discussed documents of the 20th century. Marx sought to make their brand of socialism different from others by insisting that it was scientifically based on the objective study of history, which he saw as being a continuous process of change and transformation. Just as feudalism had naturally evolved into capitalism, so capitalism would inevitably give way to its logical successor, socialism, as the necessary result of class struggle. Marx's insistence that tough-minded realism should replace the Utopian idealism of earlier socialists had profound consequences: it enabled revolutionaries like Lenin to be put it into action, but it also tended to encourage its followers to accept ruthless means to justify what they believed were historically necessary ends. Radical politics were being much more widely discussed than the small number of radicals justified; but Marx uses this fact to his advantage by proclaiming that any ideology so feared must be important and worth explaining clearly. In the notes used in the Manifesto, "Marx" is used as shorthand for both Marx, the theoretician, and Engels who was the better writer out of the two. The Manifesto was originally issued in several languages, including an English version. (Tucker, 161-162). Marx did not make up the class, or did he discover a new way to class people in his theories, he pointed out that historians prior to his study of Englands industrial revolution defined the class systems. According to Marx a class is determined by its relationship to the means of production. By this he means that class is determined by the ownership or non-ownership of the means of production, which basically says that they mean raw material, the factory...
