The Communist League, an international workers' association, which under the conditions of the time could naturally only be secret, at the Congress held in London in November 1847, assigned the undersigned to draft a detailed theoretical and practical program of the party, intended for publication.

Thus was born the following Manifesto, the manuscript of which traveled to London to be printed, a few weeks before the February revolution.

No matter how much conditions have changed in the last twenty-five years, the general principles outlined in this Manifesto retain in general all their correctness today. Some points could perhaps be corrected here and there. The practical application of these principles, the Manifesto itself explains, will depend everywhere and always on the existing historical conditions, and therefore no particular importance is attributed to the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Part II.

[Excerpt from the text of the preface]