The Communist Manifesto is the most influential political text ever written-few other calls to action have stirred and changed the world. Now, in the wake of a punishing financial crisis, in a world built on regimes of permanent austerity, each rife with horrific disparities in wealth, this short book remains a reference point for those trying to understand the transformations being wrought by capitalism and its concomitant forms of exploitation.

This centenary edition includes a new introduction by Tariq Ali, contextualizing the period-the eve of the 1848 revolutions-in which Marx and Engels penned their masterpiece and argues that it desperately needs a successor.