On Internationalism
Channel: Jose Maria Sison
Date: 2021-04-26

Questions from the ND Online School of Anakbayan Europa
Pointers to Full Answers by Jose Maria Sison
25 April 2021


The history of the international communist movement can be told by spelling out the outcome of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, which laid down the fundamental guiding principles of the working class in the revolutionary struggle up to the present. It has inspired and guided the great revolutionary victories of the communists and the working class since it was first published in February 1848. Marx and Engels were commissioned by the Communist League in November 1847 to write the manifesto as a program. They wrote it from December 1847 to January 1948. It was published in February 1848 before the outbreak of the February Revolution in France.

The Manifesto of the Communist Party laid out the general principles of scientific communism. It challenged the bourgeoisie and other reactionary forces in Europe who intimidated the public with stories about the “ghost of communism”. It opposed the various types of unscientific  socialism, those deceptive versions sold by the feudalists, by the petty-bourgeois and German idealists, those sold by the shameless conservatives or bourgeois, and those naive and caring as socialism. The Manifesto was first published in German before the workers' uprisings of 1848 in Europe.