The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Published：2026-07-29 19:29:00 Source: car track sets buying guide Author: Reading Week

The interactive robots for 7 year oldsCommunist Manifesto

by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

[From the English edition of 1888, edited by Friedrich Engels]

Contents

A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism. All the Powers ofold Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope andCzar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic byits opponents in power? Where is the Opposition that has not hurled back thebranding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties,as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact.

I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powers to be itself aPower.

II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the wholeworld, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nurserytale of the Spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.

To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London, andsketched the following Manifesto, to be published in the English, French,German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.

I.
BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS

The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of classstruggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master andjourneyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition toone another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fightthat each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society atlarge, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicatedarrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of socialrank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in theMiddle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices,serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal societyhas not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes,new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctivefeature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is moreand more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes,directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliesttowns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie weredeveloped.

The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground forthe rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisationof America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange andin commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, animpulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in thetottering feudal society, a rapid development.

The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production wasmonopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants ofthe new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masterswere pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labourbetween the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division oflabour in each single workshop.

Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Evenmanufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionisedindustrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, ModernIndustry, the place of the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires,the leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

Modern industry has established the world-market, for which the discovery ofAmerica paved the way. This market has given an immense development tocommerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in itstime, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry,commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisiedeveloped, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every classhanded down from the Middle Ages.

We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a longcourse of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of productionand of exchange.

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by acorresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under thesway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in themediaeval commune; here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany),there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France),afterwards, in the period of manufacture proper, serving either the semi-feudalor the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact,corner-stone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last,since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world-market, conqueredfor itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. Theexecutive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the commonaffairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to allfeudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder themotley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” andhas left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest,than callous “cash payment.” It has drowned the most heavenlyecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistinesentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolvedpersonal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless andindefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionablefreedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religiousand political illusions, naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured andlooked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, thepriest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and hasreduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display ofvigour in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists so much admire, found its fittingcomplement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show whatman’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders farsurpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it hasconducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations andcrusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instrumentsof production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the wholerelations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unalteredform, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlierindustrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupteddisturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitationdistinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozenrelations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions,are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is atlast compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and hisrelations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases thebourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere,settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given acosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To thegreat chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry thenational ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries havebeen destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by newindustries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for allcivilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous rawmaterial, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whoseproducts are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. Inplace of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we findnew wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands andclimes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency,we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations.And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectualcreations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidednessand narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerousnational and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, bythe immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the mostbarbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities arethe heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which itforces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners tocapitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt thebourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it callscivilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. Inone word, it creates a world after its own image.

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It hascreated enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as comparedwith the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population fromthe idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on thetowns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on thecivilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on theWest.

The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of thepopulation, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomeratedproduction, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessaryconsequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but looselyconnected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments and systems oftaxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one codeof laws, one national class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff. Thebourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created moremassive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generationstogether. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application ofchemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electrictelegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation ofrivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground—what earlier centuryhad even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap ofsocial labour?

We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation thebourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certainstage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, theconditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudalorganisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudalrelations of property became no longer compatible with the already developedproductive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder;they were burst asunder.

Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social andpolitical constitution adapted to it, and by the economical and political swayof the bourgeois class.

A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois societywith its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society thathas conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like thesorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whomhe has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industryand commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forcesagainst modern conditions of production, against the property relations thatare the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It isenough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put onits trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeoissociety. In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, butalso of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed.In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, wouldhave seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of over-production. Societysuddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appearsas if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of everymeans of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why?Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too muchindustry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of societyno longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeoisproperty; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions,by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, theybring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence ofbourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow tocomprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get overthese crises? On the one hand inforced destruction of a mass of productiveforces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thoroughexploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for moreextensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means wherebycrises are prevented.

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are nowturned against the bourgeoisie itself.

But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself;it has also called into existence the men who are to wield thoseweapons—the modern working class—the proletarians.

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in thesame proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed—aclass of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find workonly so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sellthemselves piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce,and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all thefluctuations of the market.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work ofthe proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charmfor the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only themost simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is requiredof him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almostentirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, andfor the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and thereforealso of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion therefore, asthe repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, inproportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in thesame proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation ofthe working hours, by increase of the work exacted in a given time or byincreased speed of the machinery, etc.

Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal masterinto the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers,crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of theindustrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy ofofficers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and ofthe bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by theover-looker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself.The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the morepetty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.

The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in otherwords, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour ofmen superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer anydistinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments oflabour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.

No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far at anend, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the otherportions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.

The lower strata of the middle class—the small tradespeople, shopkeepers,retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants—all thesesink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capitaldoes not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and isswamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because theirspecialized skill is rendered worthless by the new methods of production. Thusthe proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.

The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birthbegins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on byindividual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by theoperatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois whodirectly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeoisconditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves;they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash topieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force thevanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.

At this stage the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over thewhole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere theyunite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their ownactive union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order toattain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat inmotion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage,therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies oftheir enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, thenon-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie. Thus the whole historicalmovement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory soobtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.

But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases innumber; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and itfeels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life withinthe ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion asmachinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduceswages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, andthe resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever morefluctuating. The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidlydeveloping, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisionsbetween individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more thecharacter of collisions between two classes. Thereupon the workers begin toform combinations (Trades Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together inorder to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in orderto make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there thecontest breaks out into riots.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit oftheir battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expandingunion of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means ofcommunication that are created by modern industry and that place the workers ofdifferent localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact thatwas needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the samecharacter, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggleis a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of theMiddle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modernproletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.

This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into apolitical party, is continually being upset again by the competition betweenthe workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier.It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, bytaking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus theten-hours’ bill in England was carried.

Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in manyways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie findsitself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on,with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have becomeantagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the bourgeoisie offoreign countries. In all these battles it sees itself compelled to appeal tothe proletariat, to ask for its help, and thus, to drag it into the politicalarena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its owninstruments of political and general education, in other words, it furnishesthe proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling classes are, bythe advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at leastthreatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariatwith fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the processof dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole rangeof society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section ofthe ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, theclass that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlierperiod, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now aportion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, aportion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the levelof comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, theproletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay andfinally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is itsspecial and essential product. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer,the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against thebourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middleclass. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, theyare reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chancethey are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impending transferinto the proletariat, they thus defend not their present, but their futureinterests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of theproletariat.

The “dangerous class,” the social scum, that passively rotting massthrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be sweptinto the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however,prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large are alreadyvirtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to hiswife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeoisfamily-relations; modern industrial labour, modern subjection to capital, thesame in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him ofevery trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so manybourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeoisinterests.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand, sought to fortify theiralready acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions ofappropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forcesof society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, andthereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing oftheir own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previoussecurities for, and insurances of, individual property.

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in theinterests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious,independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immensemajority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannotstir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata ofofficial society being sprung into the air.

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with thebourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each countrymust, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, wetraced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up tothe point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violentoverthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of theproletariat.

Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on theantagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress aclass, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least,continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raisedhimself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under theyoke of feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modernlaborer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry,sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. Hebecomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population andwealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longerto be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existenceupon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it isincompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because itcannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him,instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie,in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeoisclass, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capitalis wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between thelaborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is thebourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, bytheir revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of ModernIndustry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which thebourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie,therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and thevictory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

II.
PROLETARIANS AND COMMUNISTS

In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?

The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-classparties.

They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as awhole.

They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape andmould the proletarian movement.

The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by thisonly: (1) In the national struggles of the proletarians of the differentcountries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of theentire proletariat, independently of all nationality. (2) In the various stagesof development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisiehas to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of themovement as a whole.

The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advancedand resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, thatsection which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, theyhave over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearlyunderstanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate generalresults of the proletarian movement.

The immediate aim of the Communist is the same as that of all the otherproletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow ofthe bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas orprinciples that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-beuniversal reformer. They merely express, in general terms, actual relationsspringing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going onunder our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at alla distinctive feature of Communism.

All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historicalchange consequent upon the change in historical conditions.

The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour ofbourgeois property.

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of propertygenerally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeoisprivate property is the final and most complete expression of the system ofproducing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, onthe exploitation of the many by the few.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the singlesentence: Abolition of private property.

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right ofpersonally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, whichproperty is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity andindependence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of thepetty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded thebourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industryhas to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.

Or do you mean modern bourgeois private property?

But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. Itcreates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, andwhich cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply ofwage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based onthe antagonism of capital and wage-labour. Let us examine both sides of thisantagonism.

To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a socialstatusin production. Capital is a collective product, and only by theunited action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the unitedaction of all members of society, can it be set in motion.

Capital is, therefore, not a personal, it is a social power.

When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the propertyof all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed intosocial property. It is only the social character of the property that ischanged. It loses its class-character.

Let us now take wage-labour.

The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantumof the means of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite in bare existence asa labourer. What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of hislabour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by nomeans intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour,an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of humanlife, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. Allthat we want to do away with, is the miserable character of this appropriation,under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed tolive only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.

In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulatedlabour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, toenrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.

In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communistsociety, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital isindependent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and hasno individuality.

And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolitionof individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeoisindividuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedlyaimed at.

By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, freetrade, free selling and buying.

But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also.This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other “bravewords” of our bourgeoisie about freedom in general, have a meaning, ifany, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fetteredtraders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communisticabolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, andof the bourgeoisie itself.

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But inyour existing society, private property is already done away with fornine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to itsnon-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore,with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition forwhose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majorityof society.

In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property.Precisely so; that is just what we intend.

From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, orrent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from themoment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeoisproperty, into capital, from that moment, you say individuality vanishes.

You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no otherperson than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This personmust, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.

Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society;all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour ofothers by means of such appropriation.

It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property all work willcease, and universal laziness will overtake us.

According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogsthrough sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, andthose who acquire anything, do not work. The whole of this objection is butanother expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be anywage-labour when there is no longer any capital.

All objections urged against the Communistic mode of producing andappropriating material products, have, in the same way, been urged against theCommunistic modes of producing and appropriating intellectual products. Justas, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the disappearanceof production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identicalwith the disappearance of all culture.

That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous majority, amere training to act as a machine.

But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolitionof bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom,culture, law, etc. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions ofyour bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence isbut the will of your class made into a law for all, a will, whose essentialcharacter and direction are determined by the economical conditions ofexistence of your class.

The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws ofnature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode ofproduction and form of property—historical relations that rise anddisappear in the progress of production—this misconception you share withevery ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case ofancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are ofcourse forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.

Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamousproposal of the Communists.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? Oncapital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family existsonly among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement inthe practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in publicprostitution.

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complementvanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by theirparents? To this crime we plead guilty.

But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replacehome education by social.

And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the socialconditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, ofsociety, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented theintervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the characterof that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the rulingclass.

The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowedco-relation of parent and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, bythe action of Modern Industry, all family ties among the proletarians are tornasunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce andinstruments of labour.

But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the wholebourgeoisie in chorus.

The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears thatthe instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally,can come to no other conclusion than that the lot of being common to all willlikewise fall to the women.

He has not even a suspicion that the real point is to do away with the statusof women as mere instruments of production.

For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of ourbourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly andofficially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need tointroduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of theirproletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take thegreatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.

Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common and thus, at themost, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with, is that theydesire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openlylegalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that theabolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolitionof the community of women springing from that system, i.e., ofprostitution both public and private.

The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries andnationality.

The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have notgot. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, mustrise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself thenation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense ofthe word.

National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and morevanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce,to the world-market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in theconditions of life corresponding thereto.

The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. Unitedaction, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the firstconditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.

In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an endto, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. Inproportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, thehostility of one nation to another will come to an end.

The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical, and,generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of seriousexamination.

Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views andconceptions, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every changein the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in hissocial life?

What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual productionchanges its character in proportion as material production is changed? Theruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

When people speak of ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express thefact, that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created,and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolutionof the old conditions of existence.

When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions wereovercome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century torationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the thenrevolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom ofconscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within thedomain of knowledge.

“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral,philosophical and juridical ideas have been modified in the course ofhistorical development. But religion, morality philosophy, political science,and law, constantly survived this change.”

“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc. thatare common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, itabolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a newbasis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historicalexperience.”

What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society hasconsisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumeddifferent forms at different epochs.

But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages,viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then,that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity andvariety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, whichcannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of classantagonisms.

The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional propertyrelations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupturewith traditional ideas.

But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class,is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling as to win the battle ofdemocracy.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, allcapital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production inthe hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the rulingclass; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means ofdespotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeoisproduction; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economicallyinsufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstripthemselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and areunavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

These measures will of course be different in different countries.

Nevertheless in the most advanced countries, the following will be prettygenerally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to publicpurposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a nationalbank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands ofthe State.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; thebringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soilgenerally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies,especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolitionof the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution ofthe population over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools.     Abolition ofchildren’s factory labour in its present form.     Combination ofeducation with industrial production, &c., &c.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, andall production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of thewhole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Politicalpower, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class foroppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisieis compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if,by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such,sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along withthese conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of classantagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its ownsupremacy as a class.

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms,we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is thecondition for the free development of all.

III.
SOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST LITERATURE

1. REACTIONARY SOCIALISM

A. Feudal Socialism

Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of the aristocraciesof France and England to write pamphlets against modern bourgeois society. Inthe French revolution of July 1830, and in the English reform agitation, thesearistocracies again succumbed to the hateful upstart. Thenceforth, a seriouspolitical contest was altogether out of the question. A literary battle aloneremained possible. But even in the domain of literature the old cries of therestoration period had become impossible.

In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy were obliged to lose sight,apparently, of their own interests, and to formulate their indictment againstthe bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus thearistocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new master, andwhispering in his ears sinister prophecies of coming catastrophe.

In this way arose Feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half echoof the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty andincisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart’s core;but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend themarch of modern history.

The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarianalms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, sawon their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms, and deserted with loud andirreverent laughter.

One section of the French Legitimists and “Young England” exhibitedthis spectacle.

In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to that of thebourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they exploited under circumstances andconditions that were quite different, and that are now antiquated. In showingthat, under their rule, the modern proletariat never existed, they forget thatthe modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of their own form of society.

For the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionary character of theircriticism that their chief accusation against the bourgeoisie amounts to this,that under the bourgeois regimea class is being developed, which isdestined to cut up root and branch the old order of society.

What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it creates aproletariat, as that it creates a revolutionaryproletariat.

In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive measures againstthe working class; and in ordinary life, despite their high falutin phrases,they stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped from the tree of industry, andto barter truth, love, and honour for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar, andpotato spirits.

As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has ClericalSocialism with Feudal Socialism.

Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge. Has notChristianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against theState? Has it not preached in the place of these, charity and poverty, celibacyand mortification of the flesh, monastic life and Mother Church? ChristianSocialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates theheart-burnings of the aristocrat.

B. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism

The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by thebourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of existence pined andperished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society. The mediaeval burgessesand the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modernbourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little developed, industriallyand commercially, these two classes still vegetate side by side with the risingbourgeoisie.

In countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, a new classof petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletariat andbourgeoisie and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeoissociety. The individual members of this class, however, are being constantlyhurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition, and, as modernindustry develops, they even see the moment approaching when they willcompletely disappear as an independent section of modern society, to bereplaced, in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffsand shopmen.

In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more than half ofthe population, it was natural that writers who sided with the proletariatagainst the bourgeoisie, should use, in their criticism of the bourgeoisregime, the standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and from thestandpoint of these intermediate classes should take up the cudgels for theworking class. Thus arose petty-bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi was the head ofthis school, not only in France but also in England.

This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions inthe conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies ofeconomists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machineryand division of labour; the concentration of capital and land in a few hands;overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the pettybourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy inproduction, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, theindustrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moralbonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.

In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either torestoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the oldproperty relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means ofproduction and of exchange, within the framework of the old property relationsthat have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case,it is both reactionary and Utopian.

Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture, patriarchal relations inagriculture.

Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicatingeffects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a miserable fit ofthe blues.

C. German, or “True,” Socialism

The Socialist and Communist literature of France, a literature that originatedunder the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and that was the expression ofthe struggle against this power, was introduced into Germany at a time when thebourgeoisie, in that country, had just begun its contest with feudalabsolutism.

German philosophers, would-be philosophers, and beaux esprits, eagerlyseized on this literature, only forgetting, that when these writings immigratedfrom France into Germany, French social conditions had not immigrated alongwith them. In contact with German social conditions, this French literaturelost all its immediate practical significance, and assumed a purely literaryaspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of the eighteenth century, the demandsof the first French Revolution were nothing more than the demands of“Practical Reason” in general, and the utterance of the will of therevolutionary French bourgeoisie signified in their eyes the law of pure Will,of Will as it was bound to be, of true human Will generally.

The world of the German literaticonsisted solely in bringing the newFrench ideas into harmony with their ancient philosophical conscience, orrather, in annexing the French ideas without deserting their own philosophicpoint of view.

This annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign language isappropriated, namely, by translation.

It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints overthemanuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom had beenwritten. The German literatireversed this process with the profane Frenchliterature. They wrote their philosophical nonsense beneath the Frenchoriginal. For instance, beneath the French criticism of the economic functionsof money, they wrote “Alienation of Humanity,” and beneath theFrench criticism of the bourgeois State they wrote “dethronement of theCategory of the General,” and so forth.

The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of the Frenchhistorical criticisms they dubbed “Philosophy of Action,”“True Socialism,” “German Science of Socialism,”“Philosophical Foundation of Socialism,” and so on.

The French Socialist and Communist literature was thus completely emasculated.And, since it ceased in the hands of the German to express the struggle of oneclass with the other, he felt conscious of having overcome “Frenchone-sidedness” and of representing, not true requirements, but therequirements of truth; not the interests of the proletariat, but the interestsof Human Nature, of Man in general, who belongs to no class, has no reality,who exists only in the misty realm of philosophical fantasy.

This German Socialism, which took its schoolboy task so seriously and solemnly,and extolled its poor stock-in-trade in such mountebank fashion, meanwhilegradually lost its pedantic innocence.

The fight of the German, and especially, of the Prussian bourgeoisie, againstfeudal aristocracy and absolute monarchy, in other words, the liberal movement,became more earnest.

By this, the long wished-for opportunity was offered to “True”Socialism of confronting the political movement with the Socialist demands, ofhurling the traditional anathemas against liberalism, against representativegovernment, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press,bourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to themasses that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this bourgeoismovement. German Socialism forgot, in the nick of time, that the Frenchcriticism, whose silly echo it was, presupposed the existence of modernbourgeois society, with its corresponding economic conditions of existence, andthe political constitution adapted thereto, the very things whose attainmentwas the object of the pending struggle in Germany.

To the absolute governments, with their following of parsons, professors,country squires and officials, it served as a welcome scarecrow against thethreatening bourgeoisie.

It was a sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings and bullets withwhich these same governments, just at that time, dosed the German working-classrisings.

While this “True” Socialism thus served the governments as a weaponfor fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, directly representeda reactionary interest, the interest of the German Philistines. In Germany thepetty bourgeoisclass, a reliqueof the sixteenth century, andsince then constantly cropping up again under various forms, is the real socialbasis of the existing state of things.

To preserve this class is to preserve the existing state of things in Germany.The industrial and political supremacy of the bourgeoisie threatens it withcertain destruction; on the one hand, from the concentration of capital; on theother, from the rise of a revolutionary proletariat. “True”Socialism appeared to kill these two birds with one stone. It spread like anepidemic.

The robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric, steepedin the dew of sickly sentiment, this transcendental robe in which the GermanSocialists wrapped their sorry “eternal truths,” all skin and bone,served to wonderfully increase the sale of their goods amongst such a public.And on its part, German Socialism recognised, more and more, its own calling asthe bombastic representative of the petty-bourgeois Philistine.

It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the German pettyPhilistine to be the typical man. To every villainous meanness of this modelman it gave a hidden, higher, Socialistic interpretation, the exact contrary ofits real character. It went to the extreme length of directly opposing the“brutally destructive” tendency of Communism, and of proclaimingits supreme and impartial contempt of all class struggles. With very fewexceptions, all the so-called Socialist and Communist publications that now(1847) circulate in Germany belong to the domain of this foul and enervatingliterature.

2. CONSERVATIVE, OR BOURGEOIS, SOCIALISM

A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances, in orderto secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.

To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers ofthe condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societiesfor the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-cornerreformers of every imaginable kind. This form of Socialism has, moreover, beenworked out into complete systems.

We may cite Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misèreas an example ofthis form.

The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditionswithout the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desirethe existing state of society minus its revolutionary and disintegratingelements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisienaturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; andbourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more orless complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system,and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requiresin reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existingsociety, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.

A second and more practical, but less systematic, form of this Socialism soughtto depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class, byshowing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the materialconditions of existence, in economic relations, could be of any advantage tothem. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form ofSocialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeoisrelations of production, an abolition that can be effected only by arevolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence ofthese relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relationsbetween capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify theadministrative work, of bourgeois government.

Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression, when, and only when, itbecomes a mere figure of speech.

Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for thebenefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the workingclass. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeoisSocialism.

It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois—for thebenefit of the working class.

3. CRITICAL-UTOPIAN SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM

We do not here refer to that literature which, in every great modernrevolution, has always given voice to the demands of the proletariat, such asthe writings of Babeuf and others.

The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, made intimes of universal excitement, when feudal society was being overthrown, theseattempts necessarily failed, owing to the then undeveloped state of theproletariat, as well as to the absence of the economic conditions for itsemancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, and could be produced bythe impending bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature thataccompanied these first movements of the proletariat had necessarily areactionary character. It inculcated universal asceticism and social levellingin its crudest form.

The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those of Saint-Simon,Fourier, Owen and others, spring into existence in the early undevelopedperiod, described above, of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie(see Section 1. Bourgeois and Proletarians).

The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms, as well asthe action of the decomposing elements, in the prevailing form of society. Butthe proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the spectacle of a classwithout any historical initiative or any independent political movement.

Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the developmentof industry, the economic situation, as they find it, does not as yet offer tothem the material conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat. Theytherefore search after a new social science, after new social laws, that are tocreate these conditions.

Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive action, historicallycreated conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones, and the gradual,spontaneous class-organisation of the proletariat to the organisation ofsociety specially contrived by these inventors. Future history resolves itself,in their eyes, into the propaganda and the practical carrying out of theirsocial plans.

In the formation of their plans they are conscious of caring chiefly for theinterests of the working class, as being the most suffering class. Only fromthe point of view of being the most suffering class does the proletariat existfor them.

The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings,causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all classantagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society,even that of the most favoured. Hence, they habitually appeal to society atlarge, without distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class.For how can people, when once they understand their system, fail to see in itthe best possible plan of the best possible state of society?

Hence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary, action;they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, and endeavour, by smallexperiments, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, topave the way for the new social Gospel.

Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when theproletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a fantasticconception of its own position correspond with the first instinctive yearningsof that class for a general reconstruction of society.

But these Socialist and Communist publications contain also a critical element.They attack every principle of existing society. Hence they are full of themost valuable materials for the enlightenment of the working class. Thepractical measures proposed in them—such as the abolition of thedistinction between town and country, of the family, of the carrying on ofindustries for the account of private individuals, and of the wage system, theproclamation of social harmony, the conversion of the functions of the Stateinto a mere superintendence of production, all these proposals, point solely tothe disappearance of class antagonisms which were, at that time, only justcropping up, and which, in these publications, are recognised in theirearliest, indistinct and undefined forms only. These proposals, therefore, areof a purely Utopian character.

The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an inverserelation to historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggledevelops and takes definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from thecontest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical value and alltheoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of these systemswere, in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case,formed mere reactionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of theirmasters, in opposition to the progressive historical development of theproletariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and that consistently, to deaden theclass struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dream ofexperimental realisation of their social Utopias, of founding isolated“phalansteres,” of establishing “Home Colonies,” ofsetting up a “Little Icaria”—duodecimo editions of the NewJerusalem—and to realise all these castles in the air, they are compelledto appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois. By degrees they sinkinto the category of the reactionary conservative Socialists depicted above,differing from these only by more systematic pedantry, and by their fanaticaland superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social science.

They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part of theworking class; such action, according to them, can only result from blindunbelief in the new Gospel.

The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respectively, opposethe Chartists and the “Réformistes.”

IV.
POSITION OF THE COMMUNISTS IN RELATION TO THE VARIOUS EXISTING OPPOSITION PARTIES

Section II has made clear the relations of the Communists to the existingworking-class parties, such as the Chartists in England and the AgrarianReformers in America.

The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for theenforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in themovement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future ofthat movement. In France the Communists ally themselves with theSocial-Democrats, against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving,however, the right to take up a critical position in regard to phrases andillusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution.

In Switzerland they support the Radicals, without losing sight of the fact thatthis party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of Democratic Socialists,in the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois.

In Poland they support the party that insists on an agrarian revolution as theprime condition for national emancipation, that party which fomented theinsurrection of Cracow in 1846.

In Germany they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionaryway, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the pettybourgeoisie.

But they never cease, for a single instant, to instil into the working classthe clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisieand proletariat, in order that the German workers may straightaway use, as somany weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions thatthe bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy, and inorder that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fightagainst the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin.

The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country ison the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under moreadvanced conditions of European civilisation, and with a much more developedproletariat, than that of England was in the seventeenth, and of France in theeighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be butthe prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movementagainst the existing social and political order of things.

In all these movements they bring to the front, as the leading question ineach, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at thetime.

Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democraticparties of all countries.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declarethat their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existingsocial conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world towin.

WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

Related articles