On the 21st February 1848, The Communist Manifesto was anonymously published in London although the text by Karl Marx, supported by Friedrich Engels, was in German. Officially called The Manifesto of the Communist Party, the original pamphlet was just 23 pages long but went on to become a highly influential political document alongside the more substantial Das Kapital.

Marx was born in Prussia in 1818, but was living in Brussels when the Communist League's Second Congress commissioned him and Engels to write the League’s manifesto in December 1847. However, it wasn’t until the League’s Central Committee sent him an ultimatum ...