/lit/ - Literature

Because we live in an epistemic-cultural paradigm of rationality which precludes the idea of faith having its own legitimacy. By justifying faith in rational terms, you've already undermined the truly religious. You did pinpoint the time period when the diminishment of religion started occurring (around the 16th-18th century) but i would say that liberal critiques was more an effect than a cause.

desu the communist manifesto is kind of shit. Capital is great, the 1844 manuscript is great, but the communist manifesto is really just polemics and doesn't tell you all that much about Marx's thought. You can read it just to say you read it (it's very short anyway) but "worth a read" is debatable. I'd sooner recommend something like the Critique of the Gotha Program or the aforementioned 1844 manuscripts. Sure the "there is a spectre haunting europe--the spectre of communism" and "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class conflict" are great pieces of rhetoric, but there is little substance in the actual manifesto explaining exactly what he means by this.