All five sections — from the spectre in the opening to the summons at the close.
The Manifesto moves from historical thesis to programme to polemic in a single cumulative argument. The Preamble sets the terms. Part 1 establishes the bourgeoisie's revolutionary role and names the proletariat as its consequence. Part 2 defends communism against its critics and delivers the ten-point programme. Part 3 is the polemic against rival socialisms — feudal, petty-bourgeois, utopian. Part 4 states, in twelve paragraphs, where communists stand inside other parties. Five sections; the rhetoric tightens to the final line.
From spectre to gravedigger.
Six paragraphs, one move: communism is already a power — every government in Europe says so. High time, then, to publish the party's views openly rather than let the police write the story. The Manifesto begins.
The theoretical heart of the Manifesto. All history is class struggle; the bourgeoisie is the most revolutionary class in history; it has produced, above all, its own gravediggers. Part 1 moves from thesis to application to conclusion in fifty dense paragraphs.
Defence, property, and ten transitional measures.
Communists defined, private property dissected, objections reversed. The longest section delivers the ten-point programme — graduated income tax, abolition of inheritance, centralised credit, free public education — and closes with a vision of association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
Rival socialisms dismissed, tactics declared.
Five rival socialisms introduced and dismissed in sixty-two paragraphs: feudal, petty-bourgeois, German "true," bourgeois, and critical-utopian. A map of the European left in 1848. Each is shown to be reactionary in form or content or both.
Twelve paragraphs stating, country by country, where communists stand inside other parties. The argument closes with the Manifesto's most consequential line: workers of the world, unite.