The Sound of Jacana Podcast and Mixtape, hosted by Charles Leonard, is out now!

This edition, The Manifesto Mixtape, is compiled to be listened to as you read The Communist Manifesto: The Modern South African Editio​n.

Press ‘play’ on this mixtape of red-tinted songs … by a range of lefties, Marxists, commies and socialists.

It’s all about Marx, Marxism, Communism, Socialism and class struggle.

Listen here: 

About the book

‘the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.’

• Click to purchase

The burden of capitalism’s need for unlimited profits has resulted in profound inequality, the climate crisis and the corrosion of democracy across the globe.

The manifesto, with the insights that come with the translations and the times of their writing, is a vantage point from where to view the document in a South African light, and to visit and revisit this still urgent text.

Jeremy Cronin concludes his eloquent introduction:

‘For Marx and Engels, politics is not just “the art of the possible”. It is also an ever-enquiring science of the probable, and a passionate engagement with what is desirable […]’

This volume comprises:

• Leon Trotsky’s Afrikaans introduction to the 1937 edition with an English translation
• Neville Alexander’s 2002 introduction in isiZulu and English to the isiZulu translation
• A new isiZulu translation
• An introduction to this edition by Jeremy Cronin

As the first in the new series Radical Pasts, Radical Futures, this edition of The Communist Manifesto is a vantage point from where to view the lives, work and creativity of ordinary South Africans in the years 1937, 2002 & 2022, and a prompt to visit and revisit Marx and Engels’s urgent text.

Categories International Non-fiction South Africa

Tags Charles Leonard Communism Jacana Media Jeremy Cronin Marxism Music Neville Alexander Podcasts Socialism Sound of Jacana The Communist Manifesto