卡爾·馬剋思，全名卡爾·海因裏希·馬剋思（德語：Karl Heinrich Marx，1818年5月5日－1883年3月14日），馬剋思主義的創始人之一，第一國際的組織者和領導者，馬剋思主義政黨的締造者，全世界無産階級和勞動人民的革命導師，無産階級的精神領袖，國際共産主義運動的開創者。

弗裏德裏希·恩格斯（Friedrich Engels，1820年11月28日－1895年8月5日），德國思想傢、哲學傢、革命傢、教育傢，軍事理論傢，全世界無産階級和勞動人民的偉大導師，馬剋思主義創始人之一。恩格斯是卡爾·馬剋思的摯友，被譽為“第二提琴手”，他為馬剋思從事學術研究提供大量經濟支持。馬剋思逝世後，將馬剋思遺留下的大量手稿、遺著整理齣版，並眾望所歸地成為國際工人運動的領袖。

"A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism." So begins one of history's most important documents, a work of such magnitude that it has forever changed not only the scope of world politics, but indeed the course of human civilization. The Communist Manifesto was written in Friedrich Engels's clear, striking prose and declared the earth-shaking ideas of Karl Marx. Upon publication in 1848, it quickly became the credo of the poor and oppressed who longed for a society "in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."

The Communist Manifesto contains the seeds of Marx's more comprehensive philosophy, which continues to inspire influential economic, political, social, and literary theories. But the Manifesto is most valuable as an historical document, one that led to the greatest political upheaveals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and to the establishment of the Communist governments that until recently ruled half the globe.

This Bantam Classic edition of The Communist Manifesto includes Marx and Engels's historic 1872 and 1882 prefaces, and Engels's notes and prefaces to the 1883 and 1888 editions.