The 1883 German Edition

The preface to the present edition I must, alas,
sign alone. Marx, the man to whom the whole working class of Europe
and America owes more than to any one else — rests at Highgate Cemetery
and over his grave the first grass is already growing. Since his
death [March 14, 1883], there can be even less thought of revising or supplementing
the Manifesto. But I consider it all the more necessary again to state
the following expressly:

The basic thought running through the Manifesto — that economic
production, and the structure of society of every historical epoch necessarily
arising therefrom, constitute the foundation for the political and intellectual
history of that epoch; that consequently (ever since the dissolution of
the primaeval communal ownership of land) all history has been a history
of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between
dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social evolution;
that this struggle, however, has now reached a stage where the exploited
and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself from
the class which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie), without at
the same time forever freeing the whole of society from exploitation, oppression,
class struggles — this basic thought belongs solely and exclusively to
Marx. (1)

I have already stated this many times; but precisely now is it necessary
that it also stand in front of the Manifesto itself.

Frederick Engels

June 28, 1883, London