The Communist Manifesto In his essay, “Big Leagues: Specters of Milton and Republican International Justice between Shakespeare and Marx,” Christopher N. Warren makes the case that English poet John Milton also had a substantial influence on Marx and Engel’s work. Historians of 19th-century reading habits have confirmed that Marx and Engels would have read these authors, and it is known that Marx loved Shakespeare, in particular. Milton, Warren argues, also shows a notable influence on "The Communist Manifesto": “Looking back on Milton’s era, Marx saw a historical dialectic founded on inspiration in which freedom of the press, republicanism, and revolution were closely joined.”
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