In early 1848, Karl Marx finished The Communist Manifesto while Europe seethed with class conflict. As the manifesto famously intoned, the "specter of communism" was haunting Europe—a perfect expression of the Zeitgeist—culminating in continent-wide workers' revolutions later that year. What the landmark document got wrong, however, was its optimism those revolutions would succeed—they did not—and underlying this, its still incomplete understanding of the relationship between politics and economics. This is to say, despite the manifesto insisting so clearly as it did on its rendition of scientific socialism, despite working so hard to resist criticisms of utopianism, its idealism ultimately fell short of reality. Marx then spent the next decade-plus figuring out what he got wrong, ultimately finding both the theoretical and practical means for grounding his theories more deeply in reality, thereby offering those who followed a better foothold as they struggled to create socialism.

Josef Gregory Mahoney

East China Normal University

北京周报（英文版）

[1]Josef Gregory Mahoney-.What Is Socialism With Chinese Characteristics?)[J].北京周报（英文版）,2022(32):22-23

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