Karl Marx The Communist ManifestoPre-, During-, and Post-Reading Strategy Assignment

This assignment will help students to understand the Ideas of Karl Marx and his vision of Communism. Students will complete a One-Minute Read from The Communist Manifesto and will complete the Levels of Comprehension activity for the reading.

  1. Find and write the definitions of the vocabulary words
  2. Read the excerpt three times and score your level of comprehension after each reading (1 being “I know nothing after reading this” and 10 being “I am a direct descendant of Karl Marx”).
  3. Following the third scoring, write a reflection about what you believe the author is saying (“What is Marx really saying?”). You MUST write for the entire four minutes…halfway through writing, go back and re-read the excerpt and then continue writing.
  4. Read your reflection and give yourself a 4th Level of Comprehension scoring.
  5. Discuss the reading and your comprehension with a partner.
  6. Give yourself a 5th Level of Comprehension scoring.
  7. We will discuss the excerpts as a class and clarify confusions.
  8. Give yourself a FINAL, 6th Level of Comprehension

Vocabulary words

  1. Manifesto
  2. Patrician
  3. Plebian
  4. Oppression
  5. Epoch
  6. Vassals
  7. Subordinate
  8. Bourgeois(ie)
  9. Antagonism
  10. Proletariat

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat.”

Level of Comprehension 1-10

1st Read / 2nd Read / 3rd Read

Your Reflection:

After Reflection / Partner Share / Class Discussion