ABSTRACT
It is imperative to reignite the political passions that suffuse the Communist Manifesto. It is an extraordinary document full of insights, rich in meanings and bursting with political possibilities. While we have not the right, as Marx and Engels wrote in their 1872 preface to the German edition, to alter what has become a key historical document, we have not only the right but the obligation to interpret it in the light of contemporary conditions and historical-geographical experience. 'The practical application of the principles,' wrote Marx and Engels in that Preface, 'wi/l depend, as the Manifesto itself states everY1l1here and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing.' This italicized phrase precisely delineates our present task.
