the penguin classics edition of The Communist Manifesto is very well worth it for the preface alone
@aescling my university recommended Karl Marx: Selected Writings ed. Lawrence H. Simon pub. Hackett, which begins with the sentences « Karl Marx is the most influential thinker of the modern period. Indeed, one could go further and claim that, in terms of sheer numbers, Marx’s ideas have had a greater impact on more people than those of anyone else in history, with Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad his closest rivals. »
@Lady i have no idea how one would either rigorously defend or rigorously refute that claim
@aescling i mean, doodling on the back of the envelope, i don’t think it is difficult to claim that Marxism has had a significant measurable impact both on China and most of the Christian world, so the question is just if there is a thinker with a larger impact than that
author seems anti-Communist but i still find [their] history of the ideas leading up to the Manifesto useful, even if only really for its own sake