"The thing that gives people courage is ideas", said Clemenceau. "But these revolutionaries of yours have about as many ideas as my boots".

          How right he was – and how very wrong – may be seen from this book. Here, in their most readable original form, are the ideas that have shaken the whole world, that have generated the courage to create modern Russia and China, and even our own Welfare State. The book is made up of four texts: the Communist Manifesto, the battle-cry of socialism and the very heart of the argument; Value, Price and Profit, a simple and lucid statement of Karl Marx’s basic ideas; Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, Engels’ firm dissection of the historical background of socialist thinking; and The State and Revolution, Lenin’s analysis of what is to be destroyed by a revolution and what is to be put in its place.

          All four are rich in historical interest, and the topicality of their arguments is still very far from being exhausted.