The Second Communist Manifesto

"The Second Communist Manifesto" is an altogether remarkable work. To borrow a styling (but not an ideology!) from Mao Tse-Tung; this work is permeated with the Five Extraordinaries. It has extraordinary scope, extraordinary depth and extraordinary creativity, it shows extraordinary prescience and has extraordinary practical implications for the revolution. Its scope is sufficiently broad as to justify its borrowing the title of the jewel of the popular works of Marxism. It is truly a worthy successor to the "Communist Manifesto" by Marx and Engels. It is not an easy work to read, yet it is both simple and accessible. Although aimed squarely at the Russian proletariat, its scope utterly transcends its own immediate aims, which gives it an enormous significance for the international working class and their advanced detachments. It is also a work of great depth. Razlatzki's profound grasp of Marxist materialism and the dialectic of history is revealed again and again. His relentlessly proletarian perspective is coupled with a deep humanistic concern for the fate of our species. This is a work with enormous practical significance for the working class of the entire world. Not only does it answer the question "What went wrong?" but it provides the proletariat with the guidelines it needs to reestablish its dictatorship and to secure it against the degeneration which overwhelmed the entire socialist camp. It answers the question of the collapse of the Western left in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union, and, with its devastating critique of the bourgeois intelligentsia, places the tasks of the proletarian intelligentsia firmly on the agenda.