As a once banned book, The Communist Manifesto is recognized as one of the world's most influential political documents. The Manifesto changed history by inspiring the political Revolution of 1848 across Europe. Referred to as the Spring of Nations, the Revolution of 1848 was a series of mostly democratic political upheavals and remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history. First published as a political pamphlet by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (an influential Freemason), the document was circulated in London just as the Revolution began to erupt. It presents an analytical approach to the historical class struggles and then capitalist mode of production, rather than a prediction of communism's potential future forms.