The Communist Manifesto has been recognized as one of the world’s most influential political manuscripts. Commissioned by the Communist League, it laid out the League’s purposes and program. It presents an analytical approach to the class struggle (historical and present) and the problems of capitalism, rather than a prediction of communism’s potential future forms. The book contains Marx and Engels’ theories about the nature of society and politics, that in their own words, ?The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.? It also briefly features their ideas for how the capitalist society of the time would eventually be replaced by socialism and then eventually communism. Born in Westphalia in 1820, Friedrich Engels was the son of a textile manufacturer. After military training in Berlin and already a convert to communism, Engels went to Manchester in 1842 to represent the family firm. A relationship with a mill-hand, Mary Bums and friendship with local Owenites and Chartists helped to inspire his famous early work, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.