The Communist Manifesto is the most influential political call-to-arms ever written. In the century and a half since its publication the world has been shaken repeatedly by those who sought to make its declamations a reality. But the focus of this modern edition is not primarily the vivid history of Marx and Engels' most important work. Rather, with a characteristically elegant and acute introduction by the distinguished historian Eric Hobsbawm, it asserts the pertinence of the Manifesto today. Hobsbawm writes that 'the world described by Marx and Engels in 1848 in passages of dark, laconic eloquence, is recognizably the world we live in 150 years later'. He identifies the insights whish underpin the Manifesto's startling contemporary relevance: the recognition of capitalism as a world system capable of marshalling production on a global scale; its devastating impact on all aspects of human existe43nce, work, the family and the distribution of wealth; and the understanding that, far from being a stable, immutable system, it is, on the contrary, susceptible to enormous convulsions and crisis, and contains the seeds of its own destruction. For anyone sceptical of the triumphalism of the financial markets in recent years, who chooses to focus instead on the growing global divergence of rich and poor, the ravaging of the environment and the atomization of society, the manifesto will appear as a work of extraordinary prescience and power.

卡爾·馬剋思，全名卡爾·海因裏希·馬剋思（德語：Karl Heinrich Marx，1818年5月5日－1883年3月14日），馬剋思主義的創始人之一，第一國際的組織者和領導者，馬剋思主義政黨的締造者，全世界無産階級和勞動人民的革命導師，無産階級的精神領袖，國際共産主義運動的開創者。

弗裏德裏希·恩格斯（Friedrich Engels，1820年11月28日－1895年8月5日），德國思想傢、哲學傢、革命傢、教育傢，軍事理論傢，全世界無産階級和勞動人民的偉大導師，馬剋思主義創始人之一。恩格斯是卡爾·馬剋思的摯友，被譽為“第二提琴手”，他為馬剋思從事學術研究提供大量經濟支持。馬剋思逝世後，將馬剋思遺留下的大量手稿、遺著整理齣版，並眾望所歸地成為國際工人運動的領袖。