Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

What is the Communist party's relation to the working class?

The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole. The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

In the Marxist view, what has been the course of history? What was the state of politics when the manifesto was composed?

The course of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles (freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, in a word, oppressor and oppressed). They stood in constant opposition to one another and fought that always ended in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

What is the party's goal? How will this end be achieved?

The immediate aim of the Communists is the formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

Why would the nation-state disappear under communism?

They predicted that the nation-state would disappear under communism because it would not have the power to have a government based off their small working class.

Marx and Engels scoffed at those who denounced communism as inimical to freedom. Why? What is freedom according to the Manifesto?

They scoffed at those who denounced communism as inimical to freedom because these people who did scoff at the manifesto were a part of the upper class. Communism was made to promote the working class and take away the insistent power that the upper class