ABSTRACT
The Communist Manifesto strikes a far more militant tone than most of Karl Marx's later writings. Subsequent communist revolutions in Russia and China have caused many people to pay most attention to the vision of 'the specter of Communism' said to be haunting Europe in the Manifesto's opening pages. Capitalism will collapse not because of the actions of revolutionaries but because it has created an ever-growing class of proletarians whose interests cannot be reconciled to those of their employers. Marx's approach to history and culture has had a considerable influence on the social sciences. Another legacy of Marx is a concern for the alienation of modern people in the increasingly large and impersonal social arrangements of the contemporary world. Marx predicted that capitalism would experience a secular trend toward falling profits, as well as an ever-increasing scale of industry and resultant decrease in the number of firms.
