A work born to address to the politics of a specific time and place, and yet, it will ever echo across the ages and in the imaginations of revolutionaries and workers. The vision it offered, the capital it critiqued, the questions it posed, the windows to the world it opened, the workers it educated and inspired are without equal in the annals of our movement. Its directive that ‘the workers of the world unite’ was not a platitude, an easily accomplished fact, or a naive proclamation. Rather it was a admission of the deep divisions among a class separated by race, nation, religion, gender, ethnicity, skill, and consciousness. It was a call not for solidarity among ‘brothers’, but for a common struggle of workers against a shared enemy. Here is the very first English-language U.S. publication of the Communist Manifesto, with some rather esoteric translations, published by Victoria Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly in 1871.

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Woodhull and Claflins Weekly. Vol. 4 No. 7. December 30, 1871.

Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly was a newspaper published by sisters Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin, spiritualists, suffragettes, vegetarians, radicals and Free Love advocates from May, 1870 until June, 1876. Woodhull and Claffin were, until their expulsion, members of the First International. Woodhull ran for President in 1872 with Frederick Douglass on the ticket of the Equal Rights Party. While Woodhull is often dismissed for her idiosyncratic, some would say middle class, views, she played a major role in introducing Marx and the world of European socialism to English-speaking workers and intellectuals in the United States.

PDF of full issue: iapsop.com/archive/materials/woodhull_and_claflins_weekly/woodhull_and_claflins_weekly_v4_n7_dec_30_1871.pdf