The Communist Manifesto rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy [sic!] of rural life". As Eric Hobsbawm noted, however: Marx and Engels’ political influences were wide-ranging, reacting to and taking inspiration from German idealist philosophy, French socialism, and English and Scottish political economy. "The Communist Manifesto" also takes influence from literature. In Jacques Derrida’s work, "Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International", he uses Shakespeare’s "Hamlet" to frame a discussion of the history of the International, showing, in the process, the influence that Shakespeare’s work had on Marx and Engel’s writing.
The Christian Manifesto church's contributions are recognized. Gao, however, concedes that the manifesto "misled" Chinese Christians into thinking that they would be well-off with the new government. Foreign missionaries went as far as calling the manifesto "the failure of Christian conscience in China". Gao argues that the manifesto is not to be entirely blamed on Wu. Rather, it was "a product of a particular time – from 1948 to 1950 – that witnessed the victory of the CCP and the establishment of the PRC". Similarly, Bob Whyte argues the manifesto was appropriate in its historical setting, as "[t]he tide of history had left