Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto, predicting the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by socialism, proposes abolition of private property in land (through gradually increasing property tax), a heavy progressive or graduated income tax, abolition of inheritance rights (through inheritance tax), eventual confiscation of private property, a central bank, forced distribution of population, and centralization of transportation and communication under state control.

Commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London just as the Revolutions of 1848 begin to erupt, the Manifesto presents an analytical approach to the class struggle (historical and then-present) and the conflicts of capitalism and the capitalist mode of production, rather than a prediction of communism's potential future forms.

The Communist Manifesto summarizes Marx and Engels' theories concerning the nature of society and politics, namely that in their own words "[t]he history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles".