The Communist Manifesto · Concepts
Concepts
Ideas that structure The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx — linked to characters, chapters, and questions.
Class struggle
Marx and Engels open with the claim that history is the history of class struggles — a lens the Manifesto applies to modern bourgeois society.
Bourgeoisie and proletariat
Modern industry creates two great hostile camps — owners of capital and workers who own only their labor power.
Abolition of bourgeois property
Communists target bourgeois private property in the means of production — not personal possessions — and the Manifesto spends pages clarifying that distinction.
Revolution and change
The Manifesto treats peaceful reform as insufficient — proletarian revolution is the political form through which class rule can be overturned.
Critique of Alternative Socialisms
The book systematically criticizes other socialist and communist movements of the time—including Feudal, Petty-Bourgeois, German 'True,' Bourgeois, and Critical-Utopian Socialism—for being reactionary, impractical, or failing to recognize class struggle.