Manifesto of the Communist Party
{"WorkMasterId":5775,"WpPageId":270960,"ParentWpPageId":193817,"Slug":"manifesto-of-the-communist-party","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/friedrich-engels/manifesto-of-the-communist-party/","RelativeUrl":"theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/friedrich-engels/manifesto-of-the-communist-party/","HasFullText":true,"RawHtmlLength":150808,"CleanHtmlLength":94698,"Kicker":"Philosophy Work","Title":"Manifesto of the Communist Party","Deck":"Marx and Engels describe capitalism, class struggle, proletarian revolution, and communism as historically produced social transformations.","BackLink":{"Text":"Back to Friedrich Engels","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/friedrich-engels/"},"AuthorCard":{"Label":"Author","Title":"Friedrich Engels","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/friedrich-engels/","MediaHref":"","ImageSrc":"https://chrisdeasy.com/wp-content/uploads/friedrich-engels-01-mi-young-pencil-portrait.jpg","ImageAlt":"Friedrich Engels young pencil portrait","FilterTerra":"Western Europe","ClickText":"Friedrich Engels","ClickHref":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/friedrich-engels/","Copies":["1820 CE – 1895 CE","Barmen, Rhine Province, Prussia","German socialist philosopher, political economist, and cofounder of Marxism whose historical materialism, capitalism critique, dialectics, class analysis, and later editorial work shaped modern socialist theory."]},"ContextCards":[{"Label":"Period","Key":"Period:4","Title":"Modern History","DateText":"1800 CE – 1944 CE","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/eras-of-thought/philosophers-of-modern-history/"},{"Label":"Era","Key":"Era:11","Title":"Long 19th Century","DateText":"1870 CE – 1913 CE","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/eras-of-thought/philosophers-of-modern-history/philosophers-of-the-long-19th-century/"},{"Label":"Composition","Title":"1848 CE","Url":"","DateText":""}],"DateNote":"Coauthored with Karl Marx and published in 1848 CE; visible coauthorship status required.","GeoCards":[{"Label":"Region","Key":"Region:1"},{"Label":"Terra Avita","Key":"TerraAvita:1"},{"Label":"Terra Avita Region","Key":"TerraAvitaRegion:3"},{"Label":"Modern Country","Key":"Country:DEU:1"}],"OriginalTitle":"Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei","Language":"German / English","DisciplineCards":[{"Label":"Primary Discipline","Key":"Discipline:political-philosophy"},{"Label":"Secondary Discipline","Key":"Discipline:metaphysics"}],"Tradition":"Marxism / historical materialism","FullText":{"Title":"Full Text","Copy":"Public-domain full text from Project Gutenberg eBook #61 .","Url":"","Label":"","Kicker":"","Cards":[]},"CoreThesis":["Marx and Engels describe capitalism, class struggle, proletarian revolution, and communism as historically produced social transformations."],"Classification":{"AlternateTitles":"The Communist Manifesto; Communist Manifesto","KeyConcepts":"Friedrich Engels; Karl Marx; historical materialism; dialectics; class struggle; capitalism; socialism; communism; political economy; ideology; state; family; science; nature; religion; Manchester; Barmen","Methodology":"Historical analysis, political economy, social investigation, polemic, dialectical materialist reconstruction, journalism, and collaborative Marxist theory.","Structure":"The page records an approved Engels work with visible date, coauthorship, posthumous, unfinished, essay, or transmission notes where needed."},"Arguments":["Marx and Engels describe capitalism, class struggle, proletarian revolution, and communism as historically produced social transformations."],"Influence":{"InfluencedBy":"Karl Marx, Hegel, Feuerbach, Moses Hess, British political economy, Manchester industrial capitalism, Chartism, and German radical criticism.","InfluenceOn":""},"Significance":["Included as one of the direct or coauthored Engels work pages approved for the Friedrich Engels full-process update.","The work documents Engels\u0027s role in historical materialism, political economy, socialism, class analysis, science, religion critique, family theory, and Marxist reception."],"EvidenceNote":["Direct or coauthored work page approved in the Friedrich Engels update. Marx-only works, Engels-edited Marx volumes, collected editions, correspondence, individual letters, journalism fragments, military articles, modern translations, anthologies, catalog rows, biographies, and scholarship remain evidence/Other Voices."],"MainSections":[{"Kind":"RawSection","Title":"Full Versions","BodyHtml":"\u003cdiv class=\"dz-philo__full-version-grid\"\u003e\n \u003carticle class=\"dz-philo__full-version-card\"\u003e\n \u003cp class=\"dz-philo__full-version-provider\"\u003eProject Gutenberg\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003ch3 class=\"dz-philo__full-version-title\"\u003eProject Gutenberg eBook #61\u003c/h3\u003e\n \u003cp class=\"dz-philo__full-version-meta\"\u003eHtmlText · Imported\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003ca class=\"dz-philo__full-version-link\" href=\"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61\"\u003eOpen full version\u003c/a\u003e\n \u003c/article\u003e\n \u003c/div\u003e"},{"Kind":"TextSection","Title":"Core Thesis","Paragraphs":["Marx and Engels describe capitalism, class struggle, proletarian revolution, and communism as historically produced social transformations."]},{"Kind":"FieldSection","Title":"Classification","Fields":[{"Label":"Alternate Titles","Value":"The Communist Manifesto; Communist Manifesto"},{"Label":"Key Concepts","Value":"Friedrich Engels; Karl Marx; historical materialism; dialectics; class struggle; capitalism; socialism; communism; political economy; ideology; state; family; science; nature; religion; Manchester; Barmen"},{"Label":"Methodology","Value":"Historical analysis, political economy, social investigation, polemic, dialectical materialist reconstruction, journalism, and collaborative Marxist theory."},{"Label":"Structure","Value":"The page records an approved Engels work with visible date, coauthorship, posthumous, unfinished, essay, or transmission notes where needed."}]},{"Kind":"TextSection","Title":"Arguments","Paragraphs":["Marx and Engels describe capitalism, class struggle, proletarian revolution, and communism as historically produced social transformations."]},{"Kind":"FieldSection","Title":"Influence","Fields":[{"Label":"Influenced By","Value":"Karl Marx, Hegel, Feuerbach, Moses Hess, British political economy, Manchester industrial capitalism, Chartism, and German radical criticism."},{"Label":"Influence On","Value":"Marxism, social democracy, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Western Marxism, socialist historiography, materialist social theory, and philosophy of science debates."}]},{"Kind":"TextSection","Title":"Significance","Paragraphs":["Included as one of the direct or coauthored Engels work pages approved for the Friedrich Engels full-process update.","The work documents Engels\u0027s role in historical materialism, political economy, socialism, class analysis, science, religion critique, family theory, and Marxist reception."]},{"Kind":"TextSection","Title":"Evidence Note","Paragraphs":["Direct or coauthored work page approved in the Friedrich Engels update. Marx-only works, Engels-edited Marx volumes, collected editions, correspondence, individual letters, journalism fragments, military articles, modern translations, anthologies, catalog rows, biographies, and scholarship remain evidence/Other Voices."]},{"Kind":"RawSection","Title":"Full Text","BodyHtml":"\u003cp class=\"dz-philo__section-copy dz-philo__full-text-source\"\u003ePublic-domain full text from \u003ca href=\"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61\"\u003eProject Gutenberg eBook #61\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003carticle class=\"dz-philo__full-text-body\"\u003e\r\n\u003ch1\u003eThe Communist Manifesto\u003c/h1\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch2 class=\"no-break\"\u003eby Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels\u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp class=\"center\"\u003e\r\n[From the English edition of 1888, edited by Friedrich Engels]\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003chr /\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch2\u003eContents\u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ctable summary=\"\" style=\"\"\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ctr\u003e\r\n\u003ctd\u003e \u003ca href=\"#chap01\"\u003eI. BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\r\n\u003c/tr\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ctr\u003e\r\n\u003ctd\u003e \u003ca href=\"#chap02\"\u003eII. PROLETARIANS AND COMMUNISTS\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\r\n\u003c/tr\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ctr\u003e\r\n\u003ctd\u003e \u003ca href=\"#chap03\"\u003eIII. SOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST LITERATURE\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\r\n\u003c/tr\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ctr\u003e\r\n\u003ctd\u003e \u003ca href=\"#chap04\"\u003eIV. POSITION OF THE COMMUNISTS IN RELATION TO THE VARIOUS EXISTING OPPOSITION PARTIES\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\r\n\u003c/tr\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c/table\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cdiv class=\"chapter\"\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nA spectre is haunting Europe\u0026mdash;the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of\r\nold Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and\r\nCzar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nWhere is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by\r\nits opponents in power? Where is the Opposition that has not hurled back the\r\nbranding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties,\r\nas well as against its reactionary adversaries?\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nTwo things result from this fact.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nI. Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powers to be itself a\r\nPower.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nII. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole\r\nworld, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery\r\ntale of the Spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nTo this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London, and\r\nsketched the following Manifesto, to be published in the English, French,\r\nGerman, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c/div\u003e\u003c!–end chapter–\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cdiv class=\"chapter\"\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch2\u003e\u003ca name=\"chap01\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eI.\u003cbr /\u003e\r\nBOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS\u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class\r\nstruggles.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nFreeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and\r\njourneyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to\r\none another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight\r\nthat each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at\r\nlarge, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated\r\narrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social\r\nrank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the\r\nMiddle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices,\r\nserfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society\r\nhas not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes,\r\nnew conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.\r\nOur epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive\r\nfeature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more\r\nand more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes,\r\ndirectly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nFrom the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest\r\ntowns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were\r\ndeveloped.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for\r\nthe rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation\r\nof America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and\r\nin commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an\r\nimpulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the\r\ntottering feudal society, a rapid development.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe feudal system of industry, under which industrial production was\r\nmonopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of\r\nthe new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters\r\nwere pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour\r\nbetween the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of\r\nlabour in each single workshop.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nMeantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even\r\nmanufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised\r\nindustrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern\r\nIndustry, the place of the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires,\r\nthe leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nModern industry has established the world-market, for which the discovery of\r\nAmerica paved the way. This market has given an immense development to\r\ncommerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its\r\ntime, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry,\r\ncommerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie\r\ndeveloped, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class\r\nhanded down from the Middle Ages.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nWe see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long\r\ncourse of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production\r\nand of exchange.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nEach step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a\r\ncorresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the\r\nsway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the\r\nmediaeval commune; here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany),\r\nthere taxable \u0026ldquo;third estate\u0026rdquo; of the monarchy (as in France),\r\nafterwards, in the period of manufacture proper, serving either the semi-feudal\r\nor the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact,\r\ncorner-stone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last,\r\nsince the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world-market, conquered\r\nfor itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The\r\nexecutive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common\r\naffairs of the whole bourgeoisie.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all\r\nfeudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the\r\nmotley feudal ties that bound man to his \u0026ldquo;natural superiors,\u0026rdquo; and\r\nhas left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest,\r\nthan callous \u0026ldquo;cash payment.\u0026rdquo; It has drowned the most heavenly\r\necstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine\r\nsentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved\r\npersonal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless and\r\nindefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable\r\nfreedom\u0026mdash;Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious\r\nand political illusions, naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and\r\nlooked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the\r\npriest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has\r\nreduced the family relation to a mere money relation.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of\r\nvigour in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists so much admire, found its fitting\r\ncomplement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what\r\nman\u0026rsquo;s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far\r\nsurpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has\r\nconducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and\r\ncrusades.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments\r\nof production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole\r\nrelations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered\r\nform, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier\r\nindustrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted\r\ndisturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation\r\ndistinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen\r\nrelations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions,\r\nare swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.\r\nAll that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at\r\nlast compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his\r\nrelations with his kind.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the\r\nbourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere,\r\nsettle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given a\r\ncosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the\r\ngreat chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the\r\nnational ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have\r\nbeen destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new\r\nindustries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all\r\ncivilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw\r\nmaterial, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose\r\nproducts are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In\r\nplace of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find\r\nnew wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and\r\nclimes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency,\r\nwe have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations.\r\nAnd as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual\r\ncreations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness\r\nand narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous\r\nnational and local literatures, there arises a world literature.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by\r\nthe immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most\r\nbarbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities are\r\nthe heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it\r\nforces the barbarians\u0026rsquo; intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to\r\ncapitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the\r\nbourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls\r\ncivilisation into their midst, \u003ci\u003ei.e\u003c/i\u003e., to become bourgeois themselves. In\r\none word, it creates a world after its own image.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has\r\ncreated enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared\r\nwith the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from\r\nthe idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the\r\ntowns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the\r\ncivilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the\r\nWest.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the\r\npopulation, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated\r\nproduction, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary\r\nconsequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely\r\nconnected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments and systems of\r\ntaxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code\r\nof laws, one national class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff. The\r\nbourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more\r\nmassive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations\r\ntogether. Subjection of Nature\u0026rsquo;s forces to man, machinery, application of\r\nchemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric\r\ntelegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of\r\nrivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground\u0026mdash;what earlier century\r\nhad even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of\r\nsocial labour?\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nWe see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the\r\nbourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain\r\nstage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the\r\nconditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal\r\norganisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal\r\nrelations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed\r\nproductive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder;\r\nthey were burst asunder.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nInto their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and\r\npolitical constitution adapted to it, and by the economical and political sway\r\nof the bourgeois class.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nA similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society\r\nwith its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that\r\nhas conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the\r\nsorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom\r\nhe has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry\r\nand commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces\r\nagainst modern conditions of production, against the property relations that\r\nare the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is\r\nenough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on\r\nits trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois\r\nsociety. In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but\r\nalso of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed.\r\nIn these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would\r\nhave seemed an absurdity\u0026mdash;the epidemic of over-production. Society\r\nsuddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears\r\nas if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every\r\nmeans of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why?\r\nBecause there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much\r\nindustry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society\r\nno longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois\r\nproperty; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions,\r\nby which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they\r\nbring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of\r\nbourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to\r\ncomprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over\r\nthese crises? On the one hand inforced destruction of a mass of productive\r\nforces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough\r\nexploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more\r\nextensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby\r\ncrises are prevented.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now\r\nturned against the bourgeoisie itself.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nBut not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself;\r\nit has also called into existence the men who are to wield those\r\nweapons\u0026mdash;the modern working class\u0026mdash;the proletarians.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn proportion as the bourgeoisie, \u003ci\u003ei.e\u003c/i\u003e., capital, is developed, in the\r\nsame proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed\u0026mdash;a\r\nclass of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work\r\nonly so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell\r\nthemselves piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce,\r\nand are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the\r\nfluctuations of the market.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nOwing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of\r\nthe proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm\r\nfor the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the\r\nmost simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required\r\nof him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost\r\nentirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and\r\nfor the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore\r\nalso of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion therefore, as\r\nthe repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in\r\nproportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the\r\nsame proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of\r\nthe working hours, by increase of the work exacted in a given time or by\r\nincreased speed of the machinery, etc.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nModern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master\r\ninto the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers,\r\ncrowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the\r\nindustrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of\r\nofficers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of\r\nthe bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the\r\nover-looker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself.\r\nThe more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more\r\npetty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other\r\nwords, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of\r\nmen superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any\r\ndistinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of\r\nlabour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nNo sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far at an\r\nend, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other\r\nportions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe lower strata of the middle class\u0026mdash;the small tradespeople, shopkeepers,\r\nretired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants\u0026mdash;all these\r\nsink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital\r\ndoes not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is\r\nswamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their\r\nspecialized skill is rendered worthless by the new methods of production. Thus\r\nthe proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth\r\nbegins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by\r\nindividual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the\r\noperatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who\r\ndirectly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois\r\nconditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves;\r\nthey destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to\r\npieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the\r\nvanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nAt this stage the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the\r\nwhole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they\r\nunite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own\r\nactive union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to\r\nattain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in\r\nmotion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage,\r\ntherefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of\r\ntheir enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the\r\nnon-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie. Thus the whole historical\r\nmovement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so\r\nobtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nBut with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in\r\nnumber; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it\r\nfeels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within\r\nthe ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as\r\nmachinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces\r\nwages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and\r\nthe resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more\r\nfluctuating. The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly\r\ndeveloping, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions\r\nbetween individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the\r\ncharacter of collisions between two classes. Thereupon the workers begin to\r\nform combinations (Trades Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in\r\norder to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order\r\nto make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there the\r\ncontest breaks out into riots.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nNow and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of\r\ntheir battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding\r\nunion of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of\r\ncommunication that are created by modern industry and that place the workers of\r\ndifferent localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that\r\nwas needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same\r\ncharacter, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle\r\nis a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the\r\nMiddle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern\r\nproletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThis organisation of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a\r\npolitical party, is continually being upset again by the competition between\r\nthe workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier.\r\nIt compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by\r\ntaking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus the\r\nten-hours\u0026rsquo; bill in England was carried.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nAltogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many\r\nways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds\r\nitself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on,\r\nwith those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become\r\nantagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the bourgeoisie of\r\nforeign countries. In all these battles it sees itself compelled to appeal to\r\nthe proletariat, to ask for its help, and thus, to drag it into the political\r\narena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own\r\ninstruments of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes\r\nthe proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nFurther, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling classes are, by\r\nthe advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least\r\nthreatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat\r\nwith fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nFinally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the process\r\nof dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range\r\nof society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of\r\nthe ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the\r\nclass that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier\r\nperiod, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a\r\nportion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a\r\nportion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level\r\nof comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nOf all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the\r\nproletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and\r\nfinally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its\r\nspecial and essential product. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer,\r\nthe shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the\r\nbourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle\r\nclass. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they\r\nare reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance\r\nthey are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impending transfer\r\ninto the proletariat, they thus defend not their present, but their future\r\ninterests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the\r\nproletariat.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe \u0026ldquo;dangerous class,\u0026rdquo; the social scum, that passively rotting mass\r\nthrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept\r\ninto the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however,\r\nprepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already\r\nvirtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his\r\nwife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois\r\nfamily-relations; modern industrial labour, modern subjection to capital, the\r\nsame in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of\r\nevery trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many\r\nbourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois\r\ninterests.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nAll the preceding classes that got the upper hand, sought to fortify their\r\nalready acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of\r\nappropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces\r\nof society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and\r\nthereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of\r\ntheir own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous\r\nsecurities for, and insurances of, individual property.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nAll previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the\r\ninterests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious,\r\nindependent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense\r\nmajority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot\r\nstir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of\r\nofficial society being sprung into the air.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThough not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the\r\nbourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country\r\nmust, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we\r\ntraced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to\r\nthe point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent\r\noverthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the\r\nproletariat.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nHitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the\r\nantagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a\r\nclass, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least,\r\ncontinue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised\r\nhimself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the\r\nyoke of feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern\r\nlaborer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry,\r\nsinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He\r\nbecomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and\r\nwealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer\r\nto be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence\r\nupon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is\r\nincompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it\r\ncannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him,\r\ninstead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie,\r\nin other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois\r\nclass, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital\r\nis wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the\r\nlaborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the\r\nbourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by\r\ntheir revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern\r\nIndustry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the\r\nbourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie,\r\ntherefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the\r\nvictory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c/div\u003e\u003c!–end chapter–\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cdiv class=\"chapter\"\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch2\u003e\u003ca name=\"chap02\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eII.\u003cbr /\u003e\r\nPROLETARIANS AND COMMUNISTS\u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class\r\nparties.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThey have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a\r\nwhole.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThey do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and\r\nmould the proletarian movement.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this\r\nonly: (1) In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different\r\ncountries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the\r\nentire proletariat, independently of all nationality. (2) In the various stages\r\nof development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie\r\nhas to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the\r\nmovement as a whole.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced\r\nand resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that\r\nsection which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they\r\nhave over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly\r\nunderstanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general\r\nresults of the proletarian movement.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe immediate aim of the Communist is the same as that of all the other\r\nproletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of\r\nthe bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or\r\nprinciples that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be\r\nuniversal reformer. They merely express, in general terms, actual relations\r\nspringing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on\r\nunder our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all\r\na distinctive feature of Communism.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nAll property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical\r\nchange consequent upon the change in historical conditions.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of\r\nbourgeois property.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property\r\ngenerally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois\r\nprivate property is the final and most complete expression of the system of\r\nproducing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on\r\nthe exploitation of the many by the few.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single\r\nsentence: Abolition of private property.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nWe Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of\r\npersonally acquiring property as the fruit of a man\u0026rsquo;s own labour, which\r\nproperty is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and\r\nindependence.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nHard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of the\r\npetty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the\r\nbourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry\r\nhas to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nOr do you mean modern bourgeois private property?\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nBut does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It\r\ncreates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and\r\nwhich cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of\r\nwage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on\r\nthe antagonism of capital and wage-labour. Let us examine both sides of this\r\nantagonism.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nTo be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social\r\n\u003ci\u003estatus\u003c/i\u003e in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the\r\nunited action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united\r\naction of all members of society, can it be set in motion.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nCapital is, therefore, not a personal, it is a social power.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nWhen, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property\r\nof all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into\r\nsocial property. It is only the social character of the property that is\r\nchanged. It loses its class-character.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nLet us now take wage-labour.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, \u003ci\u003ei.e\u003c/i\u003e., that quantum\r\nof the means of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite in bare existence as\r\na labourer. What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his\r\nlabour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no\r\nmeans intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour,\r\nan appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human\r\nlife, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All\r\nthat we want to do away with, is the miserable character of this appropriation,\r\nunder which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to\r\nlive only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated\r\nlabour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to\r\nenrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist\r\nsociety, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is\r\nindependent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has\r\nno individuality.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nAnd the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition\r\nof individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois\r\nindividuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly\r\naimed at.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nBy freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free\r\ntrade, free selling and buying.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nBut if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also.\r\nThis talk about free selling and buying, and all the other \u0026ldquo;brave\r\nwords\u0026rdquo; of our bourgeoisie about freedom in general, have a meaning, if\r\nany, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered\r\ntraders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic\r\nabolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and\r\nof the bourgeoisie itself.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nYou are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in\r\nyour existing society, private property is already done away with for\r\nnine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its\r\nnon-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore,\r\nwith intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for\r\nwhose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority\r\nof society.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property.\r\nPrecisely so; that is just what we intend.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nFrom the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or\r\nrent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, \u003ci\u003ei.e\u003c/i\u003e., from the\r\nmoment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois\r\nproperty, into capital, from that moment, you say individuality vanishes.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nYou must, therefore, confess that by \u0026ldquo;individual\u0026rdquo; you mean no other\r\nperson than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person\r\nmust, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nCommunism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society;\r\nall that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of\r\nothers by means of such appropriation.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIt has been objected that upon the abolition of private property all work will\r\ncease, and universal laziness will overtake us.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nAccording to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs\r\nthrough sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and\r\nthose who acquire anything, do not work. The whole of this objection is but\r\nanother expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any\r\nwage-labour when there is no longer any capital.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nAll objections urged against the Communistic mode of producing and\r\nappropriating material products, have, in the same way, been urged against the\r\nCommunistic modes of producing and appropriating intellectual products. Just\r\nas, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the disappearance\r\nof production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identical\r\nwith the disappearance of all culture.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThat culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous majority, a\r\nmere training to act as a machine.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nBut don\u0026rsquo;t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition\r\nof bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom,\r\nculture, law, etc. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of\r\nyour bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is\r\nbut the will of your class made into a law for all, a will, whose essential\r\ncharacter and direction are determined by the economical conditions of\r\nexistence of your class.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of\r\nnature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of\r\nproduction and form of property\u0026mdash;historical relations that rise and\r\ndisappear in the progress of production\u0026mdash;this misconception you share with\r\nevery ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of\r\nancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of\r\ncourse forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nAbolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous\r\nproposal of the Communists.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nOn what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On\r\ncapital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists\r\nonly among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in\r\nthe practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public\r\nprostitution.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement\r\nvanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nDo you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their\r\nparents? To this crime we plead guilty.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nBut, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace\r\nhome education by social.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nAnd your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social\r\nconditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of\r\nsociety, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the\r\nintervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character\r\nof that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling\r\nclass.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed\r\nco-relation of parent and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by\r\nthe action of Modern Industry, all family ties among the proletarians are torn\r\nasunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and\r\ninstruments of labour.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nBut you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the whole\r\nbourgeoisie in chorus.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that\r\nthe instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally,\r\ncan come to no other conclusion than that the lot of being common to all will\r\nlikewise fall to the women.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nHe has not even a suspicion that the real point is to do away with the status\r\nof women as mere instruments of production.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nFor the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our\r\nbourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and\r\nofficially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to\r\nintroduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nOur bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of their\r\nproletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the\r\ngreatest pleasure in seducing each other\u0026rsquo;s wives.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nBourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common and thus, at the\r\nmost, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with, is that they\r\ndesire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly\r\nlegalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the\r\nabolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition\r\nof the community of women springing from that system, \u003ci\u003ei.e\u003c/i\u003e., of\r\nprostitution both public and private.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and\r\nnationality.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not\r\ngot. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must\r\nrise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself \u003ci\u003ethe\u003c/i\u003e\r\nnation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of\r\nthe word.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nNational differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more\r\nvanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce,\r\nto the world-market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the\r\nconditions of life corresponding thereto.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United\r\naction, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first\r\nconditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an end\r\nto, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In\r\nproportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the\r\nhostility of one nation to another will come to an end.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical, and,\r\ngenerally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious\r\nexamination.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nDoes it require deep intuition to comprehend that man\u0026rsquo;s ideas, views and\r\nconceptions, in one word, man\u0026rsquo;s consciousness, changes with every change\r\nin the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his\r\nsocial life?\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nWhat else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production\r\nchanges its character in proportion as material production is changed? The\r\nruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nWhen people speak of ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express the\r\nfact, that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created,\r\nand that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution\r\nof the old conditions of existence.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nWhen the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were\r\novercome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to\r\nrationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then\r\nrevolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of\r\nconscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the\r\ndomain of knowledge.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\u0026ldquo;Undoubtedly,\u0026rdquo; it will be said, \u0026ldquo;religious, moral,\r\nphilosophical and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of\r\nhistorical development. But religion, morality philosophy, political science,\r\nand law, constantly survived this change.\u0026rdquo;\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\u0026ldquo;There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc. that\r\nare common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it\r\nabolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new\r\nbasis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical\r\nexperience.\u0026rdquo;\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nWhat does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has\r\nconsisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed\r\ndifferent forms at different epochs.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nBut whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages,\r\nviz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then,\r\nthat the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and\r\nvariety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which\r\ncannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class\r\nantagonisms.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property\r\nrelations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture\r\nwith traditional ideas.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nBut let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nWe have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class,\r\nis to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling as to win the battle of\r\ndemocracy.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all\r\ncapital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in\r\nthe hands of the State, \u003ci\u003ei.e\u003c/i\u003e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling\r\nclass; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nOf course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of\r\ndespotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois\r\nproduction; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically\r\ninsufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip\r\nthemselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are\r\nunavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThese measures will of course be different in different countries.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nNevertheless in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty\r\ngenerally applicable.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public\r\npurposes.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national\r\nbank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of\r\nthe State.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the\r\nbringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil\r\ngenerally in accordance with a common plan.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies,\r\nespecially for agriculture.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition\r\nof the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of\r\nthe population over the country.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of\r\nchildren\u0026rsquo;s factory labour in its present form. Combination of\r\neducation with industrial production, \u0026amp;c., \u0026amp;c.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nWhen, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and\r\nall production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the\r\nwhole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political\r\npower, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for\r\noppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie\r\nis compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if,\r\nby means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such,\r\nsweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with\r\nthese conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class\r\nantagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own\r\nsupremacy as a class.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms,\r\nwe shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the\r\ncondition for the free development of all.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c/div\u003e\u003c!–end chapter–\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cdiv class=\"chapter\"\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch2\u003e\u003ca name=\"chap03\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eIII.\u003cbr /\u003e\r\nSOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST LITERATURE\u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch3\u003e1. REACTIONARY SOCIALISM\u003c/h3\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp class=\"center\"\u003e\r\n\u003ci\u003eA. Feudal Socialism\u003c/i\u003e\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nOwing to their historical position, it became the vocation of the aristocracies\r\nof France and England to write pamphlets against modern bourgeois society. In\r\nthe French revolution of July 1830, and in the English reform agitation, these\r\naristocracies again succumbed to the hateful upstart. Thenceforth, a serious\r\npolitical contest was altogether out of the question. A literary battle alone\r\nremained possible. But even in the domain of literature the old cries of the\r\nrestoration period had become impossible.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy were obliged to lose sight,\r\napparently, of their own interests, and to formulate their indictment against\r\nthe bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus the\r\naristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new master, and\r\nwhispering in his ears sinister prophecies of coming catastrophe.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn this way arose Feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo\r\nof the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and\r\nincisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart\u0026rsquo;s core;\r\nbut always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the\r\nmarch of modern history.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarian\r\nalms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw\r\non their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms, and deserted with loud and\r\nirreverent laughter.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nOne section of the French Legitimists and \u0026ldquo;Young England\u0026rdquo; exhibited\r\nthis spectacle.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to that of the\r\nbourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they exploited under circumstances and\r\nconditions that were quite different, and that are now antiquated. In showing\r\nthat, under their rule, the modern proletariat never existed, they forget that\r\nthe modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of their own form of society.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nFor the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionary character of their\r\ncriticism that their chief accusation against the bourgeoisie amounts to this,\r\nthat under the bourgeois \u003ci\u003eregime\u003c/i\u003e a class is being developed, which is\r\ndestined to cut up root and branch the old order of society.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nWhat they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it creates a\r\nproletariat, as that it creates a \u003ci\u003erevolutionary\u003c/i\u003e proletariat.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive measures against\r\nthe working class; and in ordinary life, despite their high falutin phrases,\r\nthey stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped from the tree of industry, and\r\nto barter truth, love, and honour for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar, and\r\npotato spirits.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nAs the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has Clerical\r\nSocialism with Feudal Socialism.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nNothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge. Has not\r\nChristianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the\r\nState? Has it not preached in the place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy\r\nand mortification of the flesh, monastic life and Mother Church? Christian\r\nSocialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the\r\nheart-burnings of the aristocrat.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp class=\"center\"\u003e\r\n\u003ci\u003eB. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism\u003c/i\u003e\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by the\r\nbourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of existence pined and\r\nperished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society. The mediaeval burgesses\r\nand the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modern\r\nbourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little developed, industrially\r\nand commercially, these two classes still vegetate side by side with the rising\r\nbourgeoisie.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, a new class\r\nof petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletariat and\r\nbourgeoisie and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois\r\nsociety. The individual members of this class, however, are being constantly\r\nhurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition, and, as modern\r\nindustry develops, they even see the moment approaching when they will\r\ncompletely disappear as an independent section of modern society, to be\r\nreplaced, in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs\r\nand shopmen.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more than half of\r\nthe population, it was natural that writers who sided with the proletariat\r\nagainst the bourgeoisie, should use, in their criticism of the bourgeois\r\n\u003ci\u003eregime\u003c/i\u003e, the standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and from the\r\nstandpoint of these intermediate classes should take up the cudgels for the\r\nworking class. Thus arose petty-bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi was the head of\r\nthis school, not only in France but also in England.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThis school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in\r\nthe conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of\r\neconomists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery\r\nand division of labour; the concentration of capital and land in a few hands;\r\noverproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty\r\nbourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in\r\nproduction, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the\r\nindustrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral\r\nbonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to\r\nrestoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old\r\nproperty relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of\r\nproduction and of exchange, within the framework of the old property relations\r\nthat have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case,\r\nit is both reactionary and Utopian.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIts last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture, patriarchal relations in\r\nagriculture.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nUltimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating\r\neffects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a miserable fit of\r\nthe blues.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp class=\"center\"\u003e\r\n\u003ci\u003eC. German, or \u0026ldquo;True,\u0026rdquo; Socialism\u003c/i\u003e\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe Socialist and Communist literature of France, a literature that originated\r\nunder the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and that was the expression of\r\nthe struggle against this power, was introduced into Germany at a time when the\r\nbourgeoisie, in that country, had just begun its contest with feudal\r\nabsolutism.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nGerman philosophers, would-be philosophers, and \u003ci\u003ebeaux esprits\u003c/i\u003e, eagerly\r\nseized on this literature, only forgetting, that when these writings immigrated\r\nfrom France into Germany, French social conditions had not immigrated along\r\nwith them. In contact with German social conditions, this French literature\r\nlost all its immediate practical significance, and assumed a purely literary\r\naspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of the eighteenth century, the demands\r\nof the first French Revolution were nothing more than the demands of\r\n\u0026ldquo;Practical Reason\u0026rdquo; in general, and the utterance of the will of the\r\nrevolutionary French bourgeoisie signified in their eyes the law of pure Will,\r\nof Will as it was bound to be, of true human Will generally.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe world of the German \u003ci\u003eliterati\u003c/i\u003e consisted solely in bringing the new\r\nFrench ideas into harmony with their ancient philosophical conscience, or\r\nrather, in annexing the French ideas without deserting their own philosophic\r\npoint of view.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThis annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign language is\r\nappropriated, namely, by translation.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIt is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints \u003ci\u003eover\u003c/i\u003e the\r\nmanuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom had been\r\nwritten. The German \u003ci\u003eliterati\u003c/i\u003e reversed this process with the profane French\r\nliterature. They wrote their philosophical nonsense beneath the French\r\noriginal. For instance, beneath the French criticism of the economic functions\r\nof money, they wrote \u0026ldquo;Alienation of Humanity,\u0026rdquo; and beneath the\r\nFrench criticism of the bourgeois State they wrote \u0026ldquo;dethronement of the\r\nCategory of the General,\u0026rdquo; and so forth.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of the French\r\nhistorical criticisms they dubbed \u0026ldquo;Philosophy of Action,\u0026rdquo;\r\n\u0026ldquo;True Socialism,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;German Science of Socialism,\u0026rdquo;\r\n\u0026ldquo;Philosophical Foundation of Socialism,\u0026rdquo; and so on.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe French Socialist and Communist literature was thus completely emasculated.\r\nAnd, since it ceased in the hands of the German to express the struggle of one\r\nclass with the other, he felt conscious of having overcome \u0026ldquo;French\r\none-sidedness\u0026rdquo; and of representing, not true requirements, but the\r\nrequirements of truth; not the interests of the proletariat, but the interests\r\nof Human Nature, of Man in general, who belongs to no class, has no reality,\r\nwho exists only in the misty realm of philosophical fantasy.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThis German Socialism, which took its schoolboy task so seriously and solemnly,\r\nand extolled its poor stock-in-trade in such mountebank fashion, meanwhile\r\ngradually lost its pedantic innocence.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe fight of the German, and especially, of the Prussian bourgeoisie, against\r\nfeudal aristocracy and absolute monarchy, in other words, the liberal movement,\r\nbecame more earnest.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nBy this, the long wished-for opportunity was offered to \u0026ldquo;True\u0026rdquo;\r\nSocialism of confronting the political movement with the Socialist demands, of\r\nhurling the traditional anathemas against liberalism, against representative\r\ngovernment, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press,\r\nbourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to the\r\nmasses that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this bourgeois\r\nmovement. German Socialism forgot, in the nick of time, that the French\r\ncriticism, whose silly echo it was, presupposed the existence of modern\r\nbourgeois society, with its corresponding economic conditions of existence, and\r\nthe political constitution adapted thereto, the very things whose attainment\r\nwas the object of the pending struggle in Germany.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nTo the absolute governments, with their following of parsons, professors,\r\ncountry squires and officials, it served as a welcome scarecrow against the\r\nthreatening bourgeoisie.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIt was a sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings and bullets with\r\nwhich these same governments, just at that time, dosed the German working-class\r\nrisings.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nWhile this \u0026ldquo;True\u0026rdquo; Socialism thus served the governments as a weapon\r\nfor fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, directly represented\r\na reactionary interest, the interest of the German Philistines. In Germany the\r\n\u003ci\u003epetty bourgeois\u003c/i\u003e class, a \u003ci\u003erelique\u003c/i\u003e of the sixteenth century, and\r\nsince then constantly cropping up again under various forms, is the real social\r\nbasis of the existing state of things.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nTo preserve this class is to preserve the existing state of things in Germany.\r\nThe industrial and political supremacy of the bourgeoisie threatens it with\r\ncertain destruction; on the one hand, from the concentration of capital; on the\r\nother, from the rise of a revolutionary proletariat. \u0026ldquo;True\u0026rdquo;\r\nSocialism appeared to kill these two birds with one stone. It spread like an\r\nepidemic.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric, steeped\r\nin the dew of sickly sentiment, this transcendental robe in which the German\r\nSocialists wrapped their sorry \u0026ldquo;eternal truths,\u0026rdquo; all skin and bone,\r\nserved to wonderfully increase the sale of their goods amongst such a public.\r\nAnd on its part, German Socialism recognised, more and more, its own calling as\r\nthe bombastic representative of the petty-bourgeois Philistine.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIt proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the German petty\r\nPhilistine to be the typical man. To every villainous meanness of this model\r\nman it gave a hidden, higher, Socialistic interpretation, the exact contrary of\r\nits real character. It went to the extreme length of directly opposing the\r\n\u0026ldquo;brutally destructive\u0026rdquo; tendency of Communism, and of proclaiming\r\nits supreme and impartial contempt of all class struggles. With very few\r\nexceptions, all the so-called Socialist and Communist publications that now\r\n(1847) circulate in Germany belong to the domain of this foul and enervating\r\nliterature.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch3\u003e2. CONSERVATIVE, OR BOURGEOIS, SOCIALISM\u003c/h3\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nA part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances, in order\r\nto secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nTo this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of\r\nthe condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies\r\nfor the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner\r\nreformers of every imaginable kind. This form of Socialism has, moreover, been\r\nworked out into complete systems.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nWe may cite Proudhon\u0026rsquo;s \u003ci\u003ePhilosophie de la Misère\u003c/i\u003e as an example of\r\nthis form.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions\r\nwithout the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire\r\nthe existing state of society minus its revolutionary and disintegrating\r\nelements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie\r\nnaturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and\r\nbourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or\r\nless complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system,\r\nand thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires\r\nin reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing\r\nsociety, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nA second and more practical, but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought\r\nto depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class, by\r\nshowing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material\r\nconditions of existence, in economic relations, could be of any advantage to\r\nthem. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of\r\nSocialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois\r\nrelations of production, an abolition that can be effected only by a\r\nrevolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of\r\nthese relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations\r\nbetween capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify the\r\nadministrative work, of bourgeois government.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nBourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression, when, and only when, it\r\nbecomes a mere figure of speech.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nFree trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for the\r\nbenefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working\r\nclass. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois\r\nSocialism.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIt is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois\u0026mdash;for the\r\nbenefit of the working class.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch3\u003e3. CRITICAL-UTOPIAN SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM\u003c/h3\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nWe do not here refer to that literature which, in every great modern\r\nrevolution, has always given voice to the demands of the proletariat, such as\r\nthe writings of Babeuf and others.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, made in\r\ntimes of universal excitement, when feudal society was being overthrown, these\r\nattempts necessarily failed, owing to the then undeveloped state of the\r\nproletariat, as well as to the absence of the economic conditions for its\r\nemancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, and could be produced by\r\nthe impending bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that\r\naccompanied these first movements of the proletariat had necessarily a\r\nreactionary character. It inculcated universal asceticism and social levelling\r\nin its crudest form.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those of Saint-Simon,\r\nFourier, Owen and others, spring into existence in the early undeveloped\r\nperiod, described above, of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie\r\n(see Section 1. Bourgeois and Proletarians).\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms, as well as\r\nthe action of the decomposing elements, in the prevailing form of society. But\r\nthe proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the spectacle of a class\r\nwithout any historical initiative or any independent political movement.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nSince the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the development\r\nof industry, the economic situation, as they find it, does not as yet offer to\r\nthem the material conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat. They\r\ntherefore search after a new social science, after new social laws, that are to\r\ncreate these conditions.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nHistorical action is to yield to their personal inventive action, historically\r\ncreated conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones, and the gradual,\r\nspontaneous class-organisation of the proletariat to the organisation of\r\nsociety specially contrived by these inventors. Future history resolves itself,\r\nin their eyes, into the propaganda and the practical carrying out of their\r\nsocial plans.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn the formation of their plans they are conscious of caring chiefly for the\r\ninterests of the working class, as being the most suffering class. Only from\r\nthe point of view of being the most suffering class does the proletariat exist\r\nfor them.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings,\r\ncauses Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class\r\nantagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society,\r\neven that of the most favoured. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at\r\nlarge, without distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class.\r\nFor how can people, when once they understand their system, fail to see in it\r\nthe best possible plan of the best possible state of society?\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nHence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary, action;\r\nthey wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, and endeavour, by small\r\nexperiments, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to\r\npave the way for the new social Gospel.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nSuch fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the\r\nproletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a fantastic\r\nconception of its own position correspond with the first instinctive yearnings\r\nof that class for a general reconstruction of society.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nBut these Socialist and Communist publications contain also a critical element.\r\nThey attack every principle of existing society. Hence they are full of the\r\nmost valuable materials for the enlightenment of the working class. The\r\npractical measures proposed in them\u0026mdash;such as the abolition of the\r\ndistinction between town and country, of the family, of the carrying on of\r\nindustries for the account of private individuals, and of the wage system, the\r\nproclamation of social harmony, the conversion of the functions of the State\r\ninto a mere superintendence of production, all these proposals, point solely to\r\nthe disappearance of class antagonisms which were, at that time, only just\r\ncropping up, and which, in these publications, are recognised in their\r\nearliest, indistinct and undefined forms only. These proposals, therefore, are\r\nof a purely Utopian character.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an inverse\r\nrelation to historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle\r\ndevelops and takes definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from the\r\ncontest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical value and all\r\ntheoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of these systems\r\nwere, in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case,\r\nformed mere reactionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of their\r\nmasters, in opposition to the progressive historical development of the\r\nproletariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and that consistently, to deaden the\r\nclass struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dream of\r\nexperimental realisation of their social Utopias, of founding isolated\r\n\u0026ldquo;phalansteres,\u0026rdquo; of establishing \u0026ldquo;Home Colonies,\u0026rdquo; of\r\nsetting up a \u0026ldquo;Little Icaria\u0026rdquo;\u0026mdash;duodecimo editions of the New\r\nJerusalem\u0026mdash;and to realise all these castles in the air, they are compelled\r\nto appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois. By degrees they sink\r\ninto the category of the reactionary conservative Socialists depicted above,\r\ndiffering from these only by more systematic pedantry, and by their fanatical\r\nand superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social science.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThey, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part of the\r\nworking class; such action, according to them, can only result from blind\r\nunbelief in the new Gospel.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respectively, oppose\r\nthe Chartists and the \u0026ldquo;Réformistes.\u0026rdquo;\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c/div\u003e\u003c!–end chapter–\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cdiv class=\"chapter\"\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003ch2\u003e\u003ca name=\"chap04\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eIV.\u003cbr /\u003e\r\nPOSITION OF THE COMMUNISTS IN RELATION TO THE VARIOUS EXISTING OPPOSITION PARTIES\u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nSection II has made clear the relations of the Communists to the existing\r\nworking-class parties, such as the Chartists in England and the Agrarian\r\nReformers in America.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the\r\nenforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the\r\nmovement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of\r\nthat movement. In France the Communists ally themselves with the\r\nSocial-Democrats, against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving,\r\nhowever, the right to take up a critical position in regard to phrases and\r\nillusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn Switzerland they support the Radicals, without losing sight of the fact that\r\nthis party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of Democratic Socialists,\r\nin the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn Poland they support the party that insists on an agrarian revolution as the\r\nprime condition for national emancipation, that party which fomented the\r\ninsurrection of Cracow in 1846.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn Germany they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary\r\nway, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty\r\nbourgeoisie.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nBut they never cease, for a single instant, to instil into the working class\r\nthe clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie\r\nand proletariat, in order that the German workers may straightaway use, as so\r\nmany weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions that\r\nthe bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy, and in\r\norder that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight\r\nagainst the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is\r\non the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more\r\nadvanced conditions of European civilisation, and with a much more developed\r\nproletariat, than that of England was in the seventeenth, and of France in the\r\neighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but\r\nthe prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement\r\nagainst the existing social and political order of things.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nIn all these movements they bring to the front, as the leading question in\r\neach, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the\r\ntime.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nFinally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic\r\nparties of all countries.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare\r\nthat their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing\r\nsocial conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.\r\nThe proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to\r\nwin.\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nWORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!\r\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c/div\u003e\u003c!–end chapter–\u003e\r\n\u003c/article\u003e"}],"SectionSequence":["Back Link","Work Title","Deck","Author","Period","Era","Composition","Date Note","Region","Terra Avita","Terra Avita Region","Modern Country","Original Title","Language","Primary Discipline","Secondary Discipline","Tradition","Full Versions","Core Thesis","Classification","Arguments","Influence","Significance","Evidence Note","Full Text"],"Counts":{"ContextCards":3,"GeoCards":4,"DisciplineCards":2,"Links":11,"Sections":25,"Styles":3,"Scripts":1}}