21st February 1848: Publication of the Communist Manifesto in London
The Communist Manifesto was first published, in London, but in German only, 177 years ago, on 21st February 1848. Boris Johnson is presumably marking the event today as a key moment not only in British history but in the history of Britain’s impact on the world.
The preamble of the Manifesto went as follows:
A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
Two things result from this fact:
Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.
It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.
To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.
The Manifesto was published just 4 days before revolutionary events toppled the King in France and started the revolutionary year of 1848. However it had no impact on those events, as it was not available either in France or in French.
An English translation by the female Chartist Helen Macfarlane, appeared in the Red Republican in 1850, after the revolutionary wave had subsided. Famously it replaced the word ‘spectre’ with that of ‘hobgoblin’.
The point is not that Marx and Engels had a better crystal ball than anyone else but they had correctly analysed the old order in Europe by 1848 was creaking and ready in places to change. They could do little more at the time to influence the course of events than analyse them, though Engels in particular was involved in revolutionary events in what is now Germany in 1848/9. Marx was deported and found his way to London by 1849.
The Manifesto itself however provided the beginnings of a theoretical basis, overtime, for the development of a serious left based on the revolutions of 1848 and indeed their defeat.
On the centenary of the publication in 1948 the Labour Party published a version with commentary by Harold Laski. I’m not sure Keir Starmer will be commenting today or even if he has read it- he may have done in his younger years.
Kmflett's Blog 
Helen Macfarlane did not “replace” the word ~spectre with hobgoblin”. The original first sentence of the Manifesto redas “Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa – das Gespenst des Kommunismus.” Macfarlane translated “Gespenst” as “hobgoblin”. Samuel Moore, in his later version, translated it as “spectre”.
Just because Moore was a man and Macfarlane a woman doesn’t make him right. Macfarlane was fluent in German and had read Hegel in the original. I think she was perfectly qualified to translate the Manifesto, but different translators have different preferences when it comes to translating words and expressions. There are no absolutes here.