The Communist Manifesto | Marx & Engels | Wordsworth World Literature | BookThe Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A specter is haunting Europe (and the world). Not, in the twenty-first century, the specter of communism, but the specter of capitalism. Marx’s prediction that the state would wither away of its own accord has proved inaccurate, and he did not foresee the tyrannies which have ruled large parts of the globe in his name. Indeed, he would have been appalled if he had witnessed them. But his analysis of the evils and dangers of raw capitalism is as correct now as when it was written, and some of his suggestions (progressive income tax, abolition of child labor, free education for all children) are now accepted with little question.