SOURCE: Prawer, S. S. “World Literature and Class Conflict.” In Karl Marx and World Literature, pp. 138-149. London: Oxford University Press, 1976.

In the following excerpt, Prawer details the literary devices and references present in the Communist Manifesto, while also examining the origins and intentions of the work.

National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures there arises a world literature.

(MEW [Werke] IV, 466)

(i)

‘The combination of scientific analysis with moral judgment’, Bottomore and Rubel have said, ‘is by no means uncommon in the field of social studies. Marx is unusual, and his work is exceptionally interesting, because, unlike any other major social thinker, he was the recognized leader, and subsequently the prophet, of an organized political movement.’¹ The document, however, which was to do more than any other to ensure such recognition, the Manifesto of the Communist Party...