Communist Manifesto

Marx and Engels's 1848 pamphlet declaring the history of all hitherto existing society to be the history of class struggle — and calling the workers of the world to unite.

The class struggle framework: the Manifesto's theoretical contribution is the base-superstructure model (economic relations determine social, political, and intellectual life), the historical materialism framework (history progresses through class conflict), and the prediction of capitalism's internal contradictions leading to its overthrow. Its practical contribution: it gave the 19th-century labor movement an intellectual framework and a slogan ('Workers of the world, unite!'). The most widely read political document in history after the Bible. The phrase 'spectre haunting Europe' has been called the greatest opening sentence of any political text.