Because The Communist Manifesto has been so traduced and so feared, many people who haven’t yet read it think Marx’s polemic was either an instruction manual for overthrowing the government (Step 1, raid the police stations. Step 2, seize the post office, etc.) or wistful schematics for a society free of want and poverty. If those misconceptions haven’t put them off, curious first-timers often approach the Manifesto with fear and suspicion that it might be too dense, that some kind of rigorous training is needed to decode its pages, or that it has to be read alongside an accompanying glossary of terms—like A Clockwork Orange or “The Waste Land.”
