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MANIFESTO OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY

MANIFESTO OF THE

COMMUNIST PARTY

edited by Friedrich Engels

Transcribed by allen lutins with assistance from

Jim Tarzia

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MANIFESTO OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY

CHAPTER I. BOURGEOIS AND

PROLETARIANS

The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class

struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master

and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant

opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now

open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-

constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending

classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a

complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold

gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights,

plebeians, slaves; in the Middle 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 society has not done away with clash 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 distinctive feature: it has simplified

the class antagonisms: Society as a whole is more and 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

earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie

were developed.

The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh

ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets,

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the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the

means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to

navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the

revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production was

monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing

wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place.

The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle

class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in

the face of division of labour in each single workshop.

Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising.

Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery

revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was

taken by the giant, Modern Industry, 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 of America paved the way. This market has given an immense

development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land.

This development has, in its time, reacted on the extension of industry;

and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in

the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and

pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle

Ages.

We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of

a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of

production and of exchange.

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by

a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under

the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in

the mediaeval 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-

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feudal or 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, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive

political sway. The executive of the modern State is but a committee for

managing the common affairs 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

all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the

motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and has left

remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest,

than callous "cash payment." It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies

of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism,

in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth

into exchange value. And in place of the numberless and feasible

chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- Free

Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political

illusions, naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto

honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the

physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid

wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil,

and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal

display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists so much admire,

found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been

the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has

accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman

aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in

the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the

instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and

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with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of

production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of

existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of

production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting

uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier

ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, 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 at last compelled to face with sober

senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the

bourgeoisie 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

a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country.

To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of

industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established

national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed.

They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life

and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer

work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the

remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home,

but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by

the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their

satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. 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 intellectual creations of

individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness

and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the

numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of

production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws

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all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of

its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all

Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate

hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of

extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to

introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become

bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own

image.

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It

has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as

compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the

population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country

dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian

countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations

of bourgeois, the East on the West.

The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered

state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It

has agglomerated production, and has concentrated property in a few

hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation.

Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests,

laws, governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into

one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-

interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff. The bourgeoisie, during its

rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more

colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together.

Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry

to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs,

clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole

populations conjured out of the ground -- what earlier century had even a

presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social

labour?

We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose

foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society.

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At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of

exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and

exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing

industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer

compatible with the already developed productive 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 and

political constitution adapted to it, and by the economical and political

sway of the bourgeois class.

A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern

bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of

property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production

and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the

powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For

many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history

of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of

production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the

existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the

commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time

more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society. In these

crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the

previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these

crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have

seemed an absurdity -- the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly

finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a

famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every

means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and

why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of

subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive

forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development

of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become

too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon

as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of

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bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The

conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth

created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On

the one hand inforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the

other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough

exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more

extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means

whereby crises are prevented.

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the

ground are now turned 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 those

weapons -- the modern working class -- the proletarians.

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same

proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed -- a

class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find

work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who

must sell themselves piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article

of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of

competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the

work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently,

all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine,

and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired

knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a

workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he

requires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the

price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of

production. In proportion therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work

increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of

machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the

burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working

hours, by increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased

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speed of the machinery, etc.

Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal

master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of

labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As

privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a

perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of

the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly

enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, by the

individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this

despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more

hateful and the more embittering it is.

The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in

other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is

the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and

sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class.

All are instruments of labour, 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 an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the

other portions 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 these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their

diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry

is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists,

partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by the new

methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes

of the population.

The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its

birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is

carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory,

then by the operatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual

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bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not

against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments

of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with

their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze,

they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the

Middle Ages.

At this stage the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over

the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If

anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the

consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie,

which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the

whole proletariat in motion, 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 of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the

landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie. Thus the

whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie;

every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.

But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases

in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows,

and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of

life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in

proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly

everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing

competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises,

make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The unceasing

improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their

livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual

workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of

collisions between two classes. Thereupon the workers begin to form

combinations (Trades Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in

order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in

order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here

and there the contest breaks out into riots.

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Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real

fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-

expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the

improved means of communication that are created by modern industry

and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one

another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the

numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national

struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle.

And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their

miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarians, thanks to

railways, achieve in a few years.

This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into

a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition

between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger,

firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests

of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the

bourgeoisie itself. Thus the ten-hours' bill in England was carried.

Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in

many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie

finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later

on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have

become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the

bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles it sees itself

compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for its help, and thus, to drag

it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the

proletariat with its own instruments of political and general education, in

other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the

bourgeoisie.

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling classes

are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at

least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the

proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the

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process of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the

whole range of society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a

small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the

revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as,

therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the

bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the

proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who

have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the

historical movement as a whole.

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the

proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay

and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its

special and essential product. The lower middle class, the small

manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight

against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions

of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but

conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the

wheel of history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in

view of their impending transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not

their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to

place themselves at that of the proletariat.

The "dangerous class," the social scum, that passively rotting mass

thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be

swept into 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

already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his

relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with

the bourgeois family-relations; modern industrial labour, modern

subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in

Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law,

morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which

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lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand, sought to fortify

their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their

conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of

the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous

mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of

appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify;

their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of,

individual property.

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or

in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-

conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the

interests of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of

our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole

superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat

with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each

country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

In depicting the most general phases of the development of the

proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within

existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open

revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the

foundation for the sway of the proletariat.

Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already

seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in

order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under

which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the

period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as

the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to

develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary, instead of

rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the

conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and

pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here

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it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling

class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as

an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure

an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot 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

bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the

condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on

competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose

involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the

labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to

association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from

under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and

appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above

all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are

equally inevitable.

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CHAPTER 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-class parties.

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

as a whole.

They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to

shape and mould the proletarian movement.

The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class

parties is only: (1) In the national struggles of the proletarians of the

different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common

interests of entire proletariat, independently of nationality. (2) In the

various stages of development which the struggle of the working class

against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere

represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most

advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every

country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand,

theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage

of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate

general results of the proletarian movement.

The immediate aim of the Communist is the same as that of all the

other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class,

overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the

proletariat.

The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on

ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that

would-be universal reformer. They merely express, in general terms,

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actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical

movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing

property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of Communism.

All property relations in the past have continually been subject to

historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.

The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in

favour of bourgeois property.

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of

property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern

bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the

system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class

antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the

single sentence: Abolition of private property.

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing

the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man's own

labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal

freedom, activity and independence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the

property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property

that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the

development of industry has 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.

It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour,

and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new

supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present

form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage-labour. Let us

examine both sides of this antagonism.

To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social

status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the

united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united

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action 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

property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby

transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the

property that is changed. It loses its class-character.

Let us now take wage-labour.

The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that

quantum of the means of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite in bare

existence as a labourer. What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates

by means of his labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare

existence. We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation

of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the

maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus

wherewith to command the labour of others. All that 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 to live only in so

far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.

In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase

accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a

means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.

In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in

Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society

capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is

dependent and has no individuality.

And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois,

abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition

of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois

freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.

By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of

production, free trade, 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 "brave words" of our bourgeoisie

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about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with

restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages,

but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of

buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the

bourgeoisie itself.

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property.

But in your existing society, private property is already done away with

for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to

its non-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 for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the

immense majority of 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, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e.,

from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed

into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say

individuality vanishes.

You must, therefore, confess that by "individual" you mean no other

person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This

person must, 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 of others by means of such appropriation.

It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property all

work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.

According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to

the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work,

acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work. The whole

of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can

no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.

All objections urged against the Communistic mode of producing and

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appropriating material products, have, in the same way, been urged against

the Communistic modes of producing and appropriating intellectual

products. Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is

the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class

culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.

That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous

majority, a mere training to act as a machine.

But don't wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended

abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of

freedom, culture, law, etc. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the

conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as

your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a

will, whose essential character and direction are determined by the

economical conditions of existence of your class.

The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal

laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present

mode of production and form of property-historical relations that rise and

disappear in the progress of production -- this misconception you share

with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in

the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property,

you are of course 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

infamous proposal of the Communists.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based?

On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family

exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its

complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians,

and in public prostitution.

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its

complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by

their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

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But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we

replace home education by social.

And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the

social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or

indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have

not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to

alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the

influence of the ruling class.

The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the

hallowed co-relation of parent and child, becomes all the more disgusting,

the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all family ties among the

proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple

articles of commerce and instruments of labour.

But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams

the whole bourgeoisie in chorus.

The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He

hears that the 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 will likewise fall to the women.

He has not even a suspicion that the real point is to do away with the

status of women as mere instruments of production.

For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of

our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be

openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists

have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost

from time immemorial.

Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of

their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes,

take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives.

Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common and thus,

at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with, is

that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed,

an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident

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that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it

the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e.,

of prostitution both public and private.

The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish

countries and nationality.

The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what

they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political

supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute

itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois

sense of the word.

National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more

and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to

freedom of commerce, to the world-market, to uniformity in the mode of

production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.

The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster.

United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first

conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.

In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an

end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to.

In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation

vanishes, the hostility 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 serious examination.

Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views

and conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness, changes with every

change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations

and in his social life?

What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual

production changes its character in proportion as material production is

changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its

ruling class.

When people speak of ideas that revolutionise society, they do but

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express the fact, 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 dissolution of the old conditions of existence.

When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions

were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the

18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with

the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and

freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free

competition within the domain of knowledge.

"Undoubtedly," it will be said, "religious, moral, philosophical and

juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development.

But religion, morality philosophy, political science, and law, constantly

survived this change."

"There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc. that

are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal

truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting

them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical

experience."

What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past

society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms,

antagonisms that assumed different 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 and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms,

or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total

disappearance of class antagonisms.

The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional

property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most

radical rupture with 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

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of democracy.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all

capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in

the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class;

and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of

despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of

bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear

economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the

movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old

social order, and are unavoidable 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

pretty generally applicable.

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

land to public purposes.

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 national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport

in the hands of the State.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the

State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the

improvement of the soil generally 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

abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable

distribution of the population over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of

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children's factory labour in its present form. Combination of education

with industrial production, &c., &c.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have

disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a

vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political

character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised

power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its

contest with the bourgeoisie is 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 with these conditions, have swept away the

conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally,

and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy 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 the condition for the free development of all.

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CHAPTER III SOCIALIST AND

COMMUNIST LITERATURE

1. REACTIONARY SOCIALISM

A. Feudal Socialism

Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of the

aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against modern

bourgeois society. In the French revolution of July 1830, and in the

English reform agitation, these aristocracies again succumbed to the

hateful upstart. Thenceforth, a serious political contest was altogether out

of the question. A literary battle alone remained possible. But even in

the domain of literature the old cries of the restoration 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 against

the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus

the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new

master, and whispering in his ears sinister prophecies of coming

catastrophe.

In this way arose Feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon;

half echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty

and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart's core; but

always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the

march of modern history.

The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the

proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as it

joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms, and

deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.

One section of the French Legitimists and "Young England" exhibited

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this spectacle.

In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to that of

the bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they exploited under

circumstances and conditions that were quite different, and that are now

antiquated. In showing that, under their rule, the modern proletariat

never existed, they forget that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary

offspring of their own form of society.

For the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionary character of their

criticism that their chief accusation against the bourgeoisie amounts to this,

that under the bourgeois regime a class is being developed, which is

destined to cut up root and branch the old order of society.

What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it creates a

proletariat, as that it creates a revolutionary proletariat.

In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive measures

against the 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, and to barter truth, love, and honour for traffic in wool, beetroot-

sugar, and potato spirits.

As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has

Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism.

Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge.

Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage,

against the State? Has it not preached in the place of these, charity and

poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and Mother

Church? Christian Socialism is but the holy, water with which the priest

consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.

B. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism

The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by the

bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of existence pined and

perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society. The mediaeval

burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the

modern bourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little developed,

industrially and commercially, these two classes still vegetate side by side

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with the rising bourgeoisie.

In countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, a

new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between

proletariat and bourgeoisie and ever renewing itself as a supplementary

part of bourgeois society. The individual members of this class, however,

are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of

competition, and, as modern industry develops, they even see the moment

approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent

section of modern society, to be replaced, in manufactures, agriculture and

commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen.

In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more than

half of the population, it was natural that writers who sided with the

proletariat against the bourgeoisie, should use, in their criticism of the

bourgeois regime, the standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and

from the standpoint of these intermediate classes should take up the

cudgels for the working class. Thus arose petty-bourgeois Socialism.

Sismondi was the head of this school, not only in France but also in

England.

This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the

contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the

hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the

disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the concentration

of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed

out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the

proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the

distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations,

the dissolution of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old

nationalities.

In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to

restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the

old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern

means of production and of exchange, within the framework of the old

property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those

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means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.

Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture, patriarchal

relations in agriculture.

Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all

intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a

miserable fit of the blues.

C. German, or "True," Socialism

The Socialist and Communist literature of France, a literature that

originated under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and that was the

expression of the struggle against this power, was introduced into

Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie, in that country, had just begun its

contest with feudal absolutism.

German philosophers, would-be philosophers, and beaux esprits,

eagerly seized on this literature, only forgetting, that when these writings

immigrated from France into Germany, French social conditions had not

immigrated along with them. In contact with German social conditions,

this French literature lost all its immediate practical significance, and

assumed a purely literary aspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of

the eighteenth century, the demands of the first French Revolution were

nothing more than the demands of "Practical Reason" in general, and the

utterance of the will of the revolutionary 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 literate consisted solely in bringing the new

French ideas into harmony with their ancient philosophical conscience, or

rather, in annexing the French ideas without deserting their own

philosophic point of view.

This annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign

language is appropriated, namely, by translation.

It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints

over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom

had been written. The German literate reversed this process with the

profane French literature. They wrote their philosophical nonsense

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beneath the French original. For instance, beneath the French criticism of

the economic functions of money, they wrote "Alienation of Humanity,"

and beneath the French criticism of the bourgeois State they wrote

"dethronement of the Category of the General," and so forth.

The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of the

French historical 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 one class with the other, he felt conscious of having

overcome "French one-sidedness" and of representing, not true

requirements, but the requirements of truth; not the interests of the

proletariat, but the interests of 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, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic innocence.

The fight of the German, and especially, of the Prussian bourgeoisie,

against feudal 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, of hurling the traditional anathemas against liberalism, against

representative government, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois

freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality,

and of preaching to the masses that they had nothing to gain, and

everything to lose, by this bourgeois movement. German Socialism

forgot, in the nick of time, that the French criticism, whose silly echo it

was, presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its

corresponding economic conditions of existence, and the political

constitution adapted thereto, the very things whose attainment was the

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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 the threatening bourgeoisie.

It was a sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings and bullets with

which these same governments, just at that time, dosed the German

working-class risings.

While this "True" Socialism thus served the governments as a weapon

for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, directly

represented a reactionary interest, the interest of the German Philistines.

In Germany the petty-bourgeois class, a relic of the sixteenth century, and

since then constantly cropping up again under various forms, is the real

social basis 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 with certain destruction; on the one hand, from the

concentration of capital; on the other, from the rise of a revolutionary

proletariat. "True" Socialism appeared to kill these two birds with one

stone. It spread like an epidemic.

The robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric,

steeped in the dew of sickly sentiment, this transcendental robe in which

the German Socialists 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 as the bombastic representative of the petty- bourgeois Philistine.

It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the

German petty Philistine to be the typical man. To every villainous

meanness of this model man it gave a hidden, higher, Socialistic

interpretation, the exact contrary of its real character. It went to the

extreme length of directly opposing the "brutally destructive" tendency of

Communism, and of proclaiming its supreme and impartial contempt of all

class struggles. With very few exceptions, all the so-called Socialist and

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Communist publications that now (1847) circulate in Germany belong to

the domain of this foul and enervating literature.

2. CONSERVATIVE, OR BOURGEOIS,

SOCIALISM

A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances, in

order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.

To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians,

improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity,

members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance

fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form

of Socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems.

We may cite Proudhon's Philosophie de la Misere as an example of

this form.

The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social

conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting

therefrom. They desire the existing state of society minus its

revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie

without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in

which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this

comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In

requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march

straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that

the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but

should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.

A second and more practical, but less systematic, form of this

Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes

of the working class, by showing that no mere political reform, but only a

change in the material conditions of existence, in economic relations,

could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material

conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means

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understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition

that can be effected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based

on the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no

respect affect the

relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost,

and simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois government.

Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression, when, and only

when, it becomes a mere figure of speech.

Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for

the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the

working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word

of bourgeois Socialism.

It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois -- for the

benefit of the working class.

3. CRITICAL-UTOPIAN SOCIALISM AND

COMMUNISM

We do not here refer to that literature which, in every great modern

revolution, has always given voice to the demands of the proletariat, such

as the writings of Babeuf and others.

The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, made

in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was being

overthrown, these attempts necessarily failed, owing to the then

undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to the absence of the

economic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that had yet to be

produced, and could be produced by the impending bourgeois epoch alone.

The revolutionary literature that accompanied these first movements of the

proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character. It inculcated universal

asceticism and social levelling in 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

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undeveloped period, 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 as the action of the decomposing elements, in the prevailing form of

society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the

spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any independent

political movement.

Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the

development of industry, the economic situation, as they find it, does not

as yet offer to them the material conditions for the emancipation of the

proletariat. They therefore search after a new social science, after new

social laws, that are to create these conditions.

Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive action,

historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones, and the

gradual, spontaneous class-organisation of the proletariat to the

organisation of society specially contrived by these inventors. Future

history resolves itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the practical

carrying out of their social plans.

In the formation of their plans they are conscious of caring chiefly for

the interests of the working class, as being the most suffering class. Only

from the point of view of being the most suffering class does the

proletariat exist for 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 class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of

every member of society, even that of the most favoured. Hence, they

habitually appeal to society at large, 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 it the 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 small

experiments, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example,

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to pave the way for the new social Gospel.

Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the

proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a fantastic

conception of its own position correspond with the first instinctive

yearnings of 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 the most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the

working class. The practical measures proposed in them -- -such as the

abolition of the distinction between town and country, of the family, of the

carrying on of industries for the account of private individuals, and of the

wage system, the proclamation of social harmony, the conversion of the

functions of the State into a mere superintendence of production, all these

proposals, point solely to the disappearance of class antagonisms which

were, at that time, only just cropping up, and which, in these publications,

are recognised in their earliest, indistinct and undefined forms only.

These proposals, therefore, are of a purely Utopian character.

The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears

an inverse relation to historical development. In proportion as the

modern class struggle develops and takes definite shape, this fantastic

standing apart from the contest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all

practical value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the

originators of these systems were, in many respects, revolutionary, their

disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary sects. They hold

fast by the original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive

historical development of the proletariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and

that consistently, to deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class

antagonisms. They still dream of experimental realisation of their social

Utopias, of founding isolated "phalansteres," of establishing "Home

Colonies," of setting up a "Little Icaria" -- duodecimo editions of the

New Jerusalem -- and to realise all these castles in the air, they are

compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois. By

degrees they sink into the category of the reactionary conservative

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Socialists depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic

pedantry, and by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the miraculous

effects of their social science.

They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part of the

working class; such action, according to them, can only result from blind

unbelief in the new Gospel.

The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respectively,

oppose the Chartists and the Reformistes.

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

existing working-class parties, such as the Chartists in England and the

Agrarian Reformers in America.

The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for

the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in

the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the

future of that movement. In France the Communists ally themselves with

the Social-Democrats, against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie,

reserving, however, the right to take up a critical position in regard to

phrases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution.

In Switzerland they support the Radicals, without losing sight of the

fact that this 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 the prime condition for national emancipation, that party which

fomented the insurrection of Cracow in 1846.

In Germany they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a

revolutionary way, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy,

and the petty bourgeoisie.

But they never cease, for a single instant, to instil into the working

class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between

bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the German workers may

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straightaway use, as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social

and political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce

along with its supremacy, and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary

classes in Germany, the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may

immediately begin.

The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that

country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried

out under more advanced conditions of European civilisation, and with a

much more developed proletariat, than that of England was in the

seventeenth, and of France in the eighteenth century, and because the

bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an

immediately following proletarian revolution.

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary

movement against the existing social and political order of things.

In all these movements they bring to the front, as the leading question

in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at

the time.

Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the

democratic parties of all countries.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly

declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all

existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic

revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They

have a world to win.

WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

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