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.
Manifesto of the 121 Manifesto of the 121 The Manifesto of the 121 (, full title: "Déclaration sur le droit à l’insoumission dans la guerre d’Algérie" or "Declaration on the right of insubordination in the Algerian War") was an open letter signed by 121 intellectuals and published on 6 September 1960 in the magazine "Vérité-Liberté". It called on the French government, then headed by the Gaullist Michel Debré, and public opinion to recognise the Algerian War as a legitimate struggle for independence, denouncing the use of torture by the French army, and calling for French conscientious objectors to the conflict to be respected by