You're going to. Hello everybody and welcome back to Red Menace. On this month's episode

we are covering the Communist Manifesto by Carl Marx and Frederick Engels and as such

Allison and I discussed it a little bit and we wanted to kind of step back from our

normal structure our sort of three-part structure when we're tackling a text and sort of have a still

a robust summary up front perhaps but more of a loosely structured organic conversation

around the text as a whole because as a manifesto it's not necessarily a work of

deep political theory although obviously there's lots of you know theory in here but it's in a

more summarized form so it's in a more summarized form.

So it will be a sort of diversion from our normal strict structure

when we're tackling text, but I don't think that should take away from this discussion at all.

If anything I think it'll add to it given the nature of what this text is and how it differs from other works of political theory.

But let's begin with a summary of the text itself. Allison, take it away.

All right, so starting off with the first chapter.

So this chapter opens and really book Proper opens with the famous line,

quote, the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of

class struggle. And Marx argues that in all great societies, class struggle has

been a defining characteristic. He writes that quote, Freeman and Slave, Patric Patricia and plebeian, Lord and Surf,

Guildmaster and journeyman, in a word oppressor and oppressed,

serving constant opposition to one another, carried an uninterrupted,

now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended

either in a revolutionary reconstruction of society at large or in the common ruin of the

contending classes."

...