Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser read and discuss
Marx and Engels’ Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) and Vladimir Lenin’s April Theses (1917)
in conversation with their book, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto (2019)
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
6:15 PM New York time (EDT, UTC/GMT -5)
Jerome Greene Annex, Columbia University, New York, 10027
RSVP here
What we know today as “The Communist Manifesto” is a document that was commissioned by the Communist League at its first congress, held in London in June 1847, written by Marx and Engels between November 1847 and January 1848, and printed in London anonymously in German in late February 1848 under the title “Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei” (Manifesto of the Communist Party).
The Manifesto was intended to be the platform and program of the newly formed Communist League—successor to the League of the Just founded a little more than a decade earlier by German emigrés in Paris. Its mission was to set forth the principles and beliefs of the Communist League. In draft form, written by Engels, it was a confession of faith, a credo. When first printed, it was only 23 pages long.
Few documents have had such a world historic impact.
In this seminar Marx 6/13, we read and discuss the Manifesto in conversation with another short pamphlet that both interpreted it and put it into practice: Lenin’s April Theses, delivered to Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in April 1917, at the time of Lenin’s return to Russia after the February revolution.
To study these works, we are privileged to have with us three brilliant critical philosophers, Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser, the authors of another manifesto, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto, published by Verso in 2019.
Welcome to Marx 6/13!