ABSTRACT
Writing an introduction to the 1888 English edition of the Communist Manifesto, Friedrich Engels recalled the years immediately after the failed revolutions of 1848: “Wherever independent proletarian movements continued to show signs of life, they were ruthlessly hunted down” (Marx and Engels 1958: I, 26). He contrasted that dismal time with the subsequent advance of international working-class solidarity:
Thus the history of the “Manifesto” reflects, to a great extent, the history of the modern working-class movement; at present it is undoubtedly the most widespread, the most international production of all Socialist literature, the common platform acknowledged by millions of working men from Siberia to California. (Marx and Engels 1958: I, 27)
