The Communist Manifesto

The most consequential pamphlet of the modern era after Common Sense, and it belongs on any honest shelf about the political idea, whatever one concludes about it. Marx and Engels read history as class struggle and called the workers of the world to unite. The doctrine has been adopted, adapted, betrayed, and fought over on every continent. To understand the last century and a half of politics, including the fierce reaction against it, you have to start by reading what it actually says.

The German philosopher and exile whose analysis of capitalism reshaped the politics of the modern world, for good and ill, more than any other single thinker. The Communist Manifesto, written with Engels, is the most consequential pamphlet of the era after Common Sense, a compressed account of history as class struggle that has been adopted, adapted, and fought over on every continent. No honest shelf about the political idea can leave him off it.