Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party

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Manifesto Of theCommunistParty

ByKARL NARXandFREDERICK ENGELS

AUTHORIZED ENGLISH TRANSLATIONEdited and Annotated by Frederick Engels

Price lO Cents

NEW YORKPublished by the New York Labor News Co., 28 City Hal Place1908


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VALUE,PRICE,ANDPROFIT

From a Mechanical Standpointit is the first one of Marx's workspublished in America that can beloolced upon as a careful piece ofpublishing. It is to be hoped thatthis excellent volume is the fore-runner of other volumes of Marx,and that America will have thehonor of publlshii}g an editionthat is accurate as to text, thor-ough in annotations, convenientin size, and presentable in everyway. The present bools will de-light the lover of Marx, and everySocialist will desire a copy of it.N. Y. Daily People.

By Karl Mabx. Edited by hia daughter Eleanor MabxAvELiNG. With an Introduction and Annotatioug by LuciENSanial.

THIS book is especially timely, like everything else that Marxwrote. Written a couple of years before his Capitalappeared, it Is an address to workingmen, and covers inpopular form many of the subjects later scientifically

expanded in Capital.Lucien Sanial says of it: **It is universally considered as thebest epitome we have of the first volume of 'Capital,* and as such,is invaluable to the beginner in economics. It places him squarelyon his feet at the threshold of his inquiry; that is, in a positionwhere his perceptive faculties cannot be deceived and his reasoningpower vitiated by the very use of his eyesight ; whereas, by thevery nature of his capitalist surroundings, he now stands on hishead and sees all things inverted.

Special interest attaches to what Marx says relative to strikes.Were the w^orking Class thoroughly acquainted with the subjectmatter of this little w^ork,we should hear no more of the commonground on which capital and labor might meet to settle theirdifferences.The thousand and one schemes that are daily being flaunted inthe faces of the working class by the lieutenants of the capitalistsfihow^ the necessity there is on the part of the working class fora comprehensive understanding of the matter of wages, the relationof the wage worker to the employer, the source of profits, and therelation between profits and wages. These and other subjects arehere presented, and so clearly does Marx present them that all hehas to say can be understood by any person willing to pay closeattention to his words. ^q^^m ^tac^

Cloth, 50 Cents. Papr, 16 Cents.NEW YORK LABOR NEWS COMPANY,


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PREFACEThe Manifesto was published as the platform of theCommunist League, a workingmen's association, first exclu-

sively German, later on international, and, under the politicalconditions of the Continent before 1848, unavoidably a secretsociety. At a Congress of the League, held in London in No-vember, 1847, Marx and Engels were commissioned to preparefor publication a complete theoretical and practical party pro-gramme. Drawn up in German, in January, 1848, the manu-script was sent to the printer in London a few weeks beforethe French revolution of February 24. A French translationwas brought out in Paris, shortly before the insurrection ofJune, 1848. The first English translation, by Miss HelenMacfarlane, appeared in George Julian Harney's Red Repub-lican, London, 1850. A Danish and a Polish edition had alsobeen published.The defeat of the Parisian insurrection of June, 1848the first great battle between Proletariat and Bourgeoisiedrove again into the background, for a time, the social andpolitical aspirations

of the European workingclass. Thence-

forth, the struggle for supremacy was again, as it had beenbefore the revolution of February, solely between the differentsections of the propertied class ; the working class was reducedto a fight for political elbow-room, and to the position of ex-treme wing of the Middle-class Radicals. Wherever independ-ent proletarian movements continued to show signs of life,they were ruthlessly hunted down. Thus the Prussian policehunted out the Central Board of the Communist League, thenlocated in Cologne. The members were arrested, and, aftereighteen months' imprisonment, they were tried in October,1852. This celebrated Cologne Communist trial lastedfrom October 4 till November 12 ; seven of the prisoners were


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2 PREFACE.sentenced to terms of imprisonment in a fortress, varyingfrom three to six years. Immediately after the sentence theLeague was formally dissolved by the remaining members.As to the Manifesto/^ it seemed thenceforth to be doomed tooblivion.When the European working class had recovered sufficientstrength for another attack on the ruling classes, the Inter-national Workingmen^s Association sprang up. But this asso-ciation, formed with the express aim of welding into one bodythe whole militant proletariat of Europe and America, couldnot at once proclaim the principles laid down in the Mani-festo.^' The International was bound to have a programmebroad enough to be acceptable to the English Trades^ Unions,to the followers of Proudhon in France, Belgium, Italy andSpain, and to the Lassalleans (a) in Germany. Marx, whodrew up this programme to the satisfaction of all parties, en-tirely trusted to the intellectual development of the workingclass, which was sure to result from combined action andmutual discussion. The very events and vicissitudes of thestruggle against Capital, the defeats even more than the vic-tories, could not help bringing home to men^s minds the in-sufficiency of their various favorite nostrums, and preparingthe way for a more complete insight into the true conditionsof working-class emancipation. And Marx was right. TheInternational, on its breaking up in 1874, left the workersquite different men from what it had found them in 1864.Proudhonism in France, Lassalleanism in Germany, weredying out, and even the conservative English Trades^ Unions,though most of them had long since severed their connectionwith the International, were gradually advancing towards thatpoint at which, last year at Swansea, their President couldsay in their name, Continental Socialism has lost its terrorsfor us. In fact, the principles of the Manifesto had made

(a) Lassalle personally, to ns, always acknowledged himself to bea disciple of Marx, and, as such, stood on the ground of the Mani-festo. But in his public agitation, 1862-64, he did not go beyond(Icmnnding co-operative workshops supported by State credit.


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PREFACE, 8considerable headway among the workingmen of all countries.The Manifesto itself thus came to the front again. TheGerman text had been, since 1850, reprinted several times inSwitzerland, England and America. In 1872 it was translatedinto English in New York, where the translation was pub-lished in Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly.'' From this Eng-lish version a French one was made in Le Socialiste of NewYork. Since then at least two more English translations,more or less mutilated, have been brought out in America, andone of them has been reprinted in England. The first Eus-eian translation, made by Bakounine, was published atHerzen's ^'KolokoF' office in Geneva, about 1863; a secondone, by the heroic Vera Zasulitch, also in Geneva, 1882. Anew Danish edition is to be found in SocialdemokratiskBibliothek,'' Copenhagen, 1885 ; a fresh French translation inLe Socialiste, Paris, 1886. From this latter a Spanish ver-sion was prepared and published in Madrid, 1886. The Ger-man reprints are not to be counted; there have been twelvealtogether at the least. An Armenian translation, which wasto be published in Constantinople some months ago, did notsee the light, I am told, because the publisher was afraid ofbringing out a book with the name of Marx on it, while thetranslator declined to call it his own production. Of furthertranelations into other languages I have heard, but have notseen them. Thus the history of the Manifesto reflects, to agreat extent, the history of the modern working class move-ment; at present it is undoubtedly the most widespread, tlicmost international production of all Socialist Literature, thecommon platform acknowledged by millions of workingmenfrom Siberia to California.

Yet, when it was written, we could not have called it aSocialist Manifesto. By Socialists, in 1847, were understood,on the one hand, the adherents of the various Utopian sys-tems: Owenites in England, Fourierists in France, both ofthem already reduced to the position of mere sects, and gradu-ally dying out ; on the other hand, the most multifarious so-cial quacks, who, by all manners of tinkering, professed to


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4 PREFACE.redress, without any danger to capital and profit, all sorts ofsocial grievances ; in both cases men outside the working classmovement and looking rather to the educated'^ classes forsupport. Whatever portion of the working classes had becomeconvinced of the insufficiency of mere political revolutions,and had proclaimed the necessity of a total social change, thatportion, then, called itself Communist. It was a crude, rough-hewn, purely instinctive sort of Communism ; still it touchedthe cardinal point and was powerful enough among the work-ing class to produce the Utopian Communism, in France ofCabet, and in Germany of Weitling. Thus, Socialism was,in 1847, a middle class movement. Communism a workingclass movement. Socialism was, on the Continent at least,^^respectable^^ ; Communism was the very opposite. And asour notion, from the very beginning was, that ^'the emancipa-tion of the working class must be the act of the working classitself, there could be no doubt as to which of the two nameswe must take. Moreover, we have ever since been far fromrepudiating it.The Manifesto being our joint production, I considermyself bound to state that the fundamental proposition whichforms its nucleus belongs to Marx. That proposition is : thatin every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economicproduction and exchange, and the social organization neces-sarily following from it, form the basis upon which is builtup, and from which alone can be explained, the political andintellectual history of that epoch ; that consequently the wholehistory of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribalsociety, holding land in common ownership) has been a his-tory of class struggles, contests between exploiting and ex-ploited, ruling and oppressed classes ; that the history of theseclass struggles forms a series of evolution in which, nowa-days, a stage has been reached where the exploited and theoppressed classthe proletariatcannot attain its emanci-pation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling classthebourgeoisiewithout, at the same time, and once for all,emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppres-sion, class distinctions and class struggles.


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PREFACE, 5This proposition, which, in my opinion, is destined to dofor history what Darwin's theory has done for biology, we,

both of lis, had been gradually approaching for some yearsbefore 1845. How far I had independently progressed towardit, is best shown by my Condition of the Working Class inEngland/^ (b) But when I again met Marx at Brussels inthe spring of 1845, he had it ready worked out, and put itbefore me, in terms almost as clear as those in which I havestated it here.From our joint preface to the German edition of 1872,I quote the following:However much the state of things may have altered dur-ing the last twenty-five years, the general principles laiddown in this Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct to-dayas ever. Here and there some detail might be improved. Thepractical application of the principles will depend, as theManifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on thehistorical conditions for the time being existing, and for thatreason no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measuresproposed at the end of Section II. That passage would, inmany respects, be very differently worded to-day. In view ofthe gigantic strides of modern industry since 1848, and of theaccompanying improved and extended organization of theworking class ; in view of the practical experience gained, firstin the February revolution, and then, still more, in the ParisCommune, where the proletariat for the first time held po-litical power for two whole months, this programme has insome details become antiquated. One thing especially wasproved by the Commune, viz., that 'the working class cannotsimply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wieldit for its own purposes. (See 'The Civil War in France;Address of the General Council of the International Working-men's Association,' London, Truelove, 1871, p. 15, where thispoint is further developed.) Further, it is self-evident that

(b) The condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. ByFrederick Engels. Translated by Florence K. Wischnewetzky. To behad from the N. Y. Labor News Ck>., 28 aty Hall Place, New York.


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PREFACE.the criticism of Socialist literature is deficient in relation tothe present time, because it comes down only to 1847 ; also, thatthe remarks on the relation of the Communists to ttie variousopposition parties (Section IV.)^ although in principle stillcorrect, yet in practice are antiquated, because the politicalsituation has been entirely changed, and the progress of his-tory has swept from off the earth the greater portion of thepolitical parties there enumerated.

But, then, the Manifesto has become a historical documentwhich we have no longer any right to alter/'The present translation is by Mr. Samuel Moore, thetranslator of the greater portion of Marx's Capital/' Wehave revised it and I have added a few notes explanatory ofhistorical allusions.

Frederick Engels.London, January 30, 1888.


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MANIFESTOOF THECOMMUNIST PARTY.

By Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

A specter is haunting Europethe specter of Commun-ism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holyalliance to exorcise this specter; Pope and Czar, Mettemichand Guizot, French radicals and German police spies.Where is the party in opposition that has not been decriedas Communistic by its opponents in power ? Where the opposi-tion that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Com-munism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as wellas against its reactionary adversaries?Two things result from this fact.

I. Communism is already acknowledged by all Europeanpowers to be in itself a power.

II. It is high time that Communists should openly, inthe face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims,their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Specter ofCommunism with a Manifesto of the party itself.To this end the Communists of various nationalities haveassembled in London, and sketched the following manifestoto be published in the English, French, German, Italian,Flemish and Danish languages.


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8 COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.I.

BOUEGEOIS AND PEOLETAUIAlSrS. (a)The history of all hitherto existing society (b) is the his-

tory of class struggles.Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf,guildmaster (c) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor andoppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, car-ried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, thateach time ended, either in the revolutionary reconstitution ofsociety at large, or in the common ruin of the contendingclasses.

In the earlier epochs of history we find almost everywherea complicated arrangement of society into various orders, amanifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Eome we havepatricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the middle ages,feudal lords, vassals, guild masters, journeymen, apprentices,

(a) By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern Capitalists,owners of the means of social production and employers of wage-labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage-laborers who, havingno means of production of their own, are reduced to selling theirlabor-power in order to live.

(b) That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of so-ciety, the social organization existing previous to recorded history,was all but unknown. Since then, Haxthausen discovered commonownership of land in Russia, Maurer proved it to be the social foun-dation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and by andby village communities were found to be, or to have been theprimitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland. The in-ner organization of this primitive Communistic society v/as laid bare,in its typical form, by Morgan's crowning discovery of the true natureof the Gens and its relation to the Tribe. With the dissolution ofthese primaeval communities society begins to be differentiated intoseparate and finally antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retracethis process of dissolution in : Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privat-eigenthums und des Staats, 2nd edit., Stuttgart, 1886.

(c) Guildmaster, that is a full member of a guild, a master within,not a head of a guild.


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COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. 9serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate grada-tions.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from theruins of feudal society, has not done away with class antagon-isms. It has but established new classes, new conditions ofoppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeois, possesses, however,this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagon-isms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up intotwo great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facingeach other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.From the serfs of the middle ages sprang the charteredburghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the firstelements of the bourgeoisie were developed.The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape,opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The EastIndian and Chinese markets, the colonization of America,trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchangeand in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to naviga-tion, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby,to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society,a rapid development.The feudal system of industry, under which industrial pro-duction was monopolized by close guilds, now no longersufficed for the growmg wants of the new markets. Themanufacturing system took its place. The guild masters werepushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class ; divi-sion of labor between the different corporate guilds vanishedin the face of division of labor in each single workshop.

Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demandever rising. Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereuponsteam and machinery revolutionized industrial production.


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10 COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modem In-dustry, the place of the industrial middle class, by industrialmillionaires, the leaders of whole industrial armies, the mod-ern bourgeois.Modern industry has established the world's market, forwhich the discovery of America paved the way. The markethas given an immense development to commerce, to naviga-tion, to communication by land. This development has, inits turn, reacted on the extension of industry ; and in propor-tion as industry, commerce, navigation and railways extended,in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased itscapital, and pushed into the background every class handeddown from the middle ages.We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself theproduct of a long course of development, of a series of revolu-tions in the modes of production and of exchange.Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accom-panied by a corresponding political advance of that class. Anoppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, anarmed and self-governing association in the mediaeval com-mune (d), here independent urban republic (as in Italy andGermany), there taxable third estate'' of the monarchy (asin France), afterwards, in the period of manufacture proper,serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as acounterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, corner-stone ofthe great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last,since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world'smarket, conquered for itself, in the modern representative

(d) Commime was the name taken, in France, by the nascenttowns even before they had conquered from their feudal lords andmasters, local self-government and political rights as the ThirdEstate. Generally speaking, for the economical development of thebourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country; for itspolitical development, France.


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COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. 11State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modemState is but a committee for managing the common affairs ofthe whole bourgeoisie.The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolu-tionary part.The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, hasput an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It haspitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that boundman to his natural superiors, and has left remaining noother nexus between man and man than naked self-interest,callous cash payment. It has drowned the most heavenlyecstacies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, ofphilistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical cal-culation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value,and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered free-doms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedomFreeTrade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious andpolitical illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct,brutal exploitation.The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupationhitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It hasconverted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, theman of science, into its paid wage laborers.The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its senti-mental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a meremoney relation.The bourgeoisie has disclosed how ft came to pass that thebrutal display of vigor in the middle ages, which Eeaction-ists so much admire, found its fitting complement in the mostslothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man'sactivity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders farsurpassing Egyptian pyramids, Eoman aqueducts, and Gothic


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12 COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.cathedrals ; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shadeall former Exoduses of nations and crusades.The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolu-tionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the rela-tions of production, and with them the whole relations of so-ciety. Conservation of the old modes of production in un-altered forms, was, on the contrary, the first condition of ex-istence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolution-izing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all socialconditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguishthe bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable pre-judices and opinions, are swept away; all new-formed onesbecome antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solidmelts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at lastcompelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of lifeand his relations with his kind.The need of a constantly expanding market for its products

chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. Itmust nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connec-tions everywhere.The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world'smarket given a cosmopolitan character to production and con-sumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Eeac-tionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the na-tional ground on which it stood. All old-established nationalindustries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed.They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction be-comes a life and death question for all civilized nations, byindustries that no longer work up indigenous raw material,but raw material drawn from the remotest zones, industrieswhose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every


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COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. 13quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied bythe productions of the country, we find new wants, requiringfor their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes.In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universalinter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also inintellectual production. The intellectual creations of individualnations become common property. National one-sidedness andnarrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, andfrom the numerous national and local literatures, there arisesa world literature.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instru-ments of production, by the immensely facilitated means ofcommunication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nationsinto civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are theheavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls,with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatredof foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain ofextinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production ; it com-pels them to introduce what it calls civilization into theirmidst, i. e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, itcreates a 'world after its own image.The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule ofthe towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly in-creased the urban population as compared with the rural, andhas thus rescued a considerable part of the population fromthe idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country de-pendent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nationsof peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with thescattered state of the population, of the means of production,


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14 COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralizedmeans of production, and has concentrated property in a fewhands. The necessary consequence of this was political cen-tralization. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces,with separate interests, laws, governments and systems oftaxation, became lumped together into one nation, with onegovernment, one code of laws, one national class interest, onefrontier, and one customs tariff.

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundredyears, has created more massive and more colossal productiveforces than have all preceding generations together. Subjec-tion of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application ofchemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, rail-ways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continent^ forcultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjuredout of the groundwhat earlier century had even a presenti-ment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of so-cial labor ?We see then : the means of production and of exchange onwhose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were gen-erated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the develop-ment of these means of production and of exchange, the con-ditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged,the feudal organization of agriculture and manufacturing in-dustry, in one word, the feudal relations of property, be-came no longer compatible with the already developed pro-ductive forces; they became so many fetters. They had tobe burst asunder.

Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied bya social and political constitution adapted to it, and by theeconomical and political sway of the bourgeois class.A similar movement is going on before our own eyes.


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COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. 15Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, ofexchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up suchgigantic means of production and of exchange, is like thesorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of thenether world whom he has called up by his spells. For manya decade past the history of industry and commerce is but thehistory of the revolt of modern productive forces against mod-ern conditions of production, against the property relationsthat are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisieand of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crisesthat by their periodical return put on its trial, each time morethreateningly, the existence of the bourgeois society. In thesecrises a great part not only of the existing products, but alsoof the previously created productive forces, is periodically de-stroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that,in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurditytheepidemic of overproduction. Society suddenly finds. itselfput back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears asif a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off thesupply of every means of subsistence ; industry and commerceseem to be destroyed; and why? because there is too muchcivilization, too much means of subsistence, too much in-dustry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the dis-posal of society no longer tend to further the development ofthe conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, theyhave become too powerful for these conditions, by which theyare fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, theybring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endangerthe existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bour-geois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created bythem. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises?On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of pro-ductive forces ; on the other, by the conquest of new markets.


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16 COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. Thatis to

say, by paving the way for more extensive and more de-structive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crisesare prevented.The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalismto the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons thatbring death to itself ; it has also called into existence the menwho are to wield those weaponsthe modern working classthe proletarians.

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i. e., capital, is developed,in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern workingclass, developed; a class of laborers, who live only so long asthey find work, and who find work only so long as their laborincreases capital. These laborers, who must sell themselvespiecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of com-merce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes ofcompetition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to divisionof labor, the work of the proletarians has lost all individualcharacter, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. Hebecomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the mostsimple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack,that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of aworkman is restricted almost entirely to the means of sub-sistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for thepropagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, andtherefore also of labor, is equal, in the long run, to its cost ofproduction. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness ofthe work increases, the wage decreases. N ay, more, in propor-tion as the Use of machinery and division of labor increase.


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COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. 17in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases,whether by prolongation of the working hours, by increase ofthe work exacted in a given time, or by increased speed ofthe machinery, etc.Modern industry has converted the little workshop of thepatriarchal master into the great factory of the industrialcapitalist. Masses of laborer^, crowded into the factory, areorganized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial armythey are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy ofofficers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bour-geois class, and of the bourgeois State, they are daily andhourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-seer, and, aboveall, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. Themore openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end andaim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embitter-ing it is.The less skill and exertion of strength is implied in manuallabor, in other words, the more modem industry becomes de-veloped, the more is the labor of men superseded by that ofwomen. Differences of age and sex have no longer any dis-tinctive social validity for the working class. All are instru-ments of labor, more or less expensive to use, according toage and sex.No sooner is the exploitation of the laborer by the manu-facturer so far at an end that he receives his wages in cash,than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie,the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.The lower strata of the middle classthe small trades-people, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, thehandicraftsmen and peasantsall these sink gradually intothe proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital doesnot suffice for the scale on which modem industry is carried


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18 COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capital-ists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthlessby new methods of production. Thus the proletariat isrecruited from all classes of the population.The proletariat goes through various stages of develop-ment. With its birth begins its struggle with the bour-geoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labor-ers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operativesof one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeoiswho directly exploits them. They direct their attacks notagainst the bourgeois conditions of production, but against theinstruments of production themselves; they destroy importedwares that compete with their labor, they smash to piecesmachinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore byforce the vanished status of the workman of the middle ages.

At this stage the laborers still form an incoherent massscattered over the whole country, and broken up by theirmutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form morecompact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their ownactive union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class,in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to setthe whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for atime, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletariansdo not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies,the remnants of absolute monarchy, and land owners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie. Thus the wholehistorical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bour-geoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bour-geoisie.But with the development of industry the proletariat notonly increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greatermas?es, its strength grows and it feels that strength more.


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COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. 19The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks ofthe proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion asmachinery obliterates all distinctions of labor, and nearlyeverywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The grow-ing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting com-mercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever morefluctuating. The unceasing improvement of machinery, evermore rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more andmore precarious; the collisions between individual workmanand individual bourgeois take more and more the character ofcollisions between two classes. Thereupon the workers beginto form combinations (Trades' Unions) against the bourgeois^;they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages;they found permanent associations in order to make provisionbeforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there thecontest breaks out into riots.Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for atime. The real fruit of their battles lies not in the imme-diate result but in the ever improved means of communica-tion that are created in modern industry and that place theworkers of different localities in contact with one another.It was just this contact that was needed to centralize thenumerous local struggles, all of the same character, into onenational struggle between classes. But every class struggle isa political struggle. And that union, to attain which theburghers of the middle ages, with their miserable highways,required centuries, the modern proletarians, thanks to rail-ways, achieve in a few years.

This organization of the proletarians into a class and con-sequently into a political party, is continually being upsetagain by the competition between the workers themselves. Butit ever rises up again; stronger, firmer, mightier. It com-


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20 COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.pels legislative recognition of particular interests of the work-ers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bour-geoisie itself. Thus the ten-hours^ bill in England was carried.

Altogether collisions between the classes of the old societyfurther, in many ways, the course of the development of theproletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a con-stant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, withthose portions of the bourgeoisie itself whose interests havebecome antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all timeswith the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these coun-tries it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, toask for its help, and thus to drag it into the political arena.The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat withweapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the rul-ing classes are, by the advance of industry, precipitated intothe proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditionsof existence. These also supply the proletariat with freshelements of enlightenment and progress.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisivehour, the process of dissolution going on within the rulingclass, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumessuch a violent, glaring character, that a small section of theruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionaryclass, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as,therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility wentover to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisiegoes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of thebourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the levelof comprehending theoretically the historical movement as awhole.

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the hour-


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COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. 21geoisie to-day, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionaryclass. The other classes decay and finally disappear in theface of modern industry; the proletariat is its special andessential product.The lower middle class, the small manufactnrer, the shop-keeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against thebourgeoisie to save from extinction their existence as frac-tions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolution-ary, but conservative. Nay, more, they are reactionary, forthey try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance theyare revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impendingtransfer into the proletariat ; they thus defend not their pres-ent, but their future interests, they desert their own stand-point to place themselves at that of the proletariat.The '^dangerous class, the social scum, that passively rot-ting class thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may,here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarianrevolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it farmore for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society atlarge are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is with-out property; his relation to his wife and children has nolonger anything in common with the bourgeois family rela-tions; modern industrial labor, modem subjection to capital,the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany,has stripped him of every trace of national character. La W,morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices,behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sou^tto fortify their already acquired status by subjecting societyat large to their conditions of appropriation. The pro-letarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of


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'22 COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of ap-propriation, and thereby also every other previous mode ofappropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure andto fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securitiesfor, and insurances of, individual property.

All previous historical movements were movements ofminorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarianmovement is the self-conscious, independent movement of theimmense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society,cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole super-incumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of theproletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle.The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of allsettle matters with its own bourgeoisie.In depicting the most general phases of the developmentof the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war,raging within existing society, up to the point where thatwar breaks out into open revolution, and where the violentoverthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the swayof the proletariat.

Hitherto every form of society has been based, as we havealready seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressedclasses. But in order to oppress a class certain conditionsmust be assured to it under which it can, at least, continueits slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom,raised himself to membership in the commune, just as thepetty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, man-aged to develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, onthe contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry,sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of


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COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. 23his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism developsmore rapidly than population and wealth. And here it be-comes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to bethe ruling class in society and to impose its conditions ofexistence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit torule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to itsslave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting himsink into such a state that it has to feed him instead of beingfed by him. Society can no longer live under this bour-geoisie; in other words, its existence is no longer compatiblewith society.The essential condition for the existence, and for the swa^of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation ofcapital; the condition for capital is wage-labor. Wage-laborrests exclusively on competition between the laborers. Theadvance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bour-geoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to compe-tition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association.The development of modem industry, therefore, cuts fromunder its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisieproduces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisietherefore produces, above all, are its own grave diggers. Itsfall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

II.PEOLETARIANS AND COMMUNISTS.

In what relation do the Communists stand to the prole-tarians as a whole ?

The Communists do not fonn a separate party opposed toother working class parties.

They have no interests separate and apart from those ofthe proletariat as a whole.


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24 COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own

by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.The Communists are distinguished from the other work-

ing class parties by this only: 1. In the national strugglesof the proletarians of the different countries, they point outand bring to the front the common interests of the entireproletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the variousstages of development which the struggle of the working classagainst the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always andeverywhere represent the interests of the movement as awhole.

The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practi-cally, the most advanced and resolute section of the workingclass parties of every country, that section which pushes for-ward aU others; on the other hand, theoretically, they haveover the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clear-ly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and theultimate general results of the proletarian movement.The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as thatof all the other proletarian parties: formation of the prole-tariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy,conquest of political power by the proletariat.The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in noway based on ideas or principles that have been invented, ordiscovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.

They merely express, in general terms, actual relationsspringing from an existing class struggle, from a historicalmovement going on under our very eyes. The abolition ofexisting property relations is not at all a distinctive featureof Communism.All property relations in the past have continually beensubject to historical change, consequent upon the change inhistorical conditions.


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COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. 25The French revolution, for example, abolished feudal

property in favor of bourgeois property.The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abo-lition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeoisproperty. But modern bourgeois private property is thefinal and most complete expression of the system of produc-ing and appropriating products, that is based on class an-tagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.

In this sense the theory of the Communists may besummed up in the single sentence : Abolition of private prop-erty.We Communists have been reproached with the desire ofabolishing the right of personally acquiring property as thefruit of a man's own labor, which property is alleged to bethe ground work of all personal freedom, activity and inde-pendence.Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property Do youmean the property of the petty artisan and of the small peas-ant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form ?There is no need to abolish that ; the development of industryhas to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still de-stroying it daily.

Or do you mean modern bourgeois private property?But does wage labor create any property for the laborer?Not a bit. It creates capital, i. e., that kind of propertywhich exploits wage-labor, and which cannot increase exceptupon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labor forfresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based ontbe antagonism of capital and wage labor. Let us examine*,both sides of this antagonism.To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal,but a social statics in production. Capital is a collective prod-uct, and only by the united action of many members, nay, inthe last resort; only by the united action of all members of


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26 COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.society, can it be set in motion.

Capital is therefore not a personal, it is a social power.When, therefore, capital is converted into common prop-erty, into the property of all members of society, personalproperty is not thereby transformed into social property. Itis only the social character of the property that is changed.It loses its class character.

Let us now take wage-labor.The average price of wage-labor is the minimum wage,i. e., that quantum of the means of subsistence, which is

absolutely requisite to keep the laborer in bare existence as alaborer. What, therefore, the wage-laborer appropriates bymeans of his labor, merely suffices to prolong and reproducea bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this per-sonal appropriation of the products of labor, an appropria-tion that is made for the maintenance and reproduction ofhuman life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to com-mand the labor of others. All that we want to do away with,is the miserable character of this appropriation, under whichthe laborer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed tolive only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.In bourgeois society living labor is but a means to increaseaccumulated labor. In Communist society accumulated laboris but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existenceof the laborer.

In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates thepresent; in Communist society, the present dominates thepast. In bourgeois society capital is independent and hasindividuality, while the living person is dependent and hasno individuality.And the abolition of this state of things is called by thebourgeois: abolition of individuality and freedom Andrightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, hour-


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COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. 27geois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedlyaimed at.By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois condi-tions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buy-ing disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying,and all the other brave words of our bourgeoisie about free-dom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast withrestricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of themiddle ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Com-munistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeoisconditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.You are horrified at our intending to do away with pri-vate property. But in your existing society private propertyis already done away with for nine-tenths of the population;its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence inthe hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore,with intending to do away with a form of property, the nec-essary condition for whose existence is the non-existence ofany property for the immense majority of society.In one word, you reproach us with intending to do awaywith your property. Precisely so : that is just what we intend.

From the moment when labor can no longer be convertedinto capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable ofbeing monopolized, i. e., from the moment when individualproperty can no longer be transformed into bourgeois prop-erty, into capital, from that moment, you say, individualityvanishes You must, therefore, confess that by individual youmean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middleclass owner of property. This person must, indeed, be sweptout of the way, and made impossible.Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriatethe products of society : all that it does is to deprive him of


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M COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of suchappropriation.It has been objected, that upon the abolition of privateproperty all work will cease, and universal laziness will over-take us.

According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago tohave gone to the dogs through sheer idleness ; for those of itsmembers who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquireanything, do not work. The whole of this objection is butanother expression of tautology, that there can no longer beany wage-labor when there is no longer any capital.

All objections against the Communistic mode of produc-ing and appropriating material products, have, in the sameway, been urged against the Communistic modes of produc-ing and appropriating intellectual products. Just as, to tliebourgeois the disappearance of class property is the disappear-ance of production itself, so the disappearance of class cul-ture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for theenormous majority, a mere training to act as a machine.But don't wrangle with us so long as you apply to ourintended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of yourbourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, etc. Your veryideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bour-geois production and bourgeois property, just as your juris-prudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all,a will, whose essential character and direction are determinedby the economical conditions of existence of your class.The selfish misconception that induces you to transforminto eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social formsspringing from your present mode of production and formof propertyhistorical relations that rise and disappear inthe progress of productionthe misconception you share withevery ruling class that has preceded you. What you see


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COMMUmST MANIFESTO. 29clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit inthe case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden toadmit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.

Abolition of the family Even the most radical flare tipat this infamous proposal of the Communists.On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeoisfamily, based? On capital, on private gain. In its com-pletely developed form this family exists only among thebourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement inthe practical absence of the family among the proletarians,and in public prostitution.The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of coursewhen its complement vanishes, and both will vanish withthe vanishing of capital.Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation ofchildren by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of rela-tions, when we replace home education by social.And your education Is not that also social, and deter-mined by the social conditions under which you educate, bythe intervention, direct or indirect, of society by means ofschools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the inter-vention of society in education; they do but seek to alter thecharacter of that intervention, and to rescue education fromthe influence of the ruling class.The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education,about the hallowed co-relation of parent and child becomeall the more disgusting, as, by the action of modern industry,all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, andtheir children transformed into simple articles of commerceand instruments of labor.

But you Communists would introduce commimity ofwomen, screams tjie whole bourgeoisie in chorus.The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of pro-


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30 COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.duction. He hears that the instruments of production areto be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to noother conclusion than that the lot of being common to allwill likewise fall to the women.He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed atis to do away with the status of women as mere instrumentsof production.For the rest nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuousindignation of our bourgeois at the community of womenwhich, they pretend, is to be openly and oflScially establishedby the Communists. The Communists have no need to in-troduce community of women; it has existed almost fromtime immemorial.

Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives anddaughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speakof common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducingeach other's wives.

Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in com-mon, and thus, at the most, what the Communists might pos-sibly be reproached with, is that they desire to introduce, insubstitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legal-ized community of women. For the rest it is self-evidentthat the abolition of the present system of production mustbring with it the abolition of the community of womenspringing from that system, i. e., of prostitution both pub-lic and private.The Communists are further reproached with desiring toabolish countries and nationality.The workingmen have no country. We cannot take fromthem what they have not got. Since the proletariat mustfirst of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be theleading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation,it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois senseof the word.


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COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. 31National differences and antagonisms between peoples are

daily more and more vanishing; owing to the development ofthe bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world's mar-ket, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the con-ditions of life corresponding thereto.The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to van-ish still faster. United action, of the leading civilized coun-tries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipa-tion of the proletariat.In proportion as the exploitation of one individual byanother is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation byanother will also be put an end to. In proportion as theantagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, thehostility of one nation to another will come to an end.The charges against Communism made from a religious,a philosophical, and, generally, from an ideological stand-point are not deserving of serious examination.Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man'sideas, views, and conceptions, in one word, man's conscious-ness changes with every change in the conditions of his ma-terial existence, in his social relations and in his social life?What else does the history of ideas prove, than that in-tellectual production changes its character in proportion asmaterial production is changed? The ruling ideas of eachage have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.When people speak of ideas that revolutionize society theydo but express the fact that within the old society the ele-ments of a new one have been created, and that the dissolu-tion of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution ofthe old conditions of existence.When the ancient world was in its last throes the ancientreligions were overcome by Christianity. When Christianideas succumbed in the eighteenth century to rationalist ideas,feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolu-


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83 COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.tionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and free-dom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of freecompetition within the domain of knowledge.

Undoubtedly/' it will be said, religious, moral, philo-sophical and juridical ideas have been modified in the courseof historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy,political science, and law, constantly survived this change.There are besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Jus-tice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Com-munism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion andall morality, instead of constituting them on a new baisis; ittherefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experi-ence.'*

What does this axjcusation reduce itself to? The historyof all past society has consisted in the development of classantagonisms., antagonisms that assumed different forms atdifferent epochs.But whaterer form they may have taken, one fact is com-mon to all past ages, viz., tht exploitation of one part ofsociety by the other. No wonder, then, that the social con-sciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and va-riety it displays, moves within certain common forms, orgeneral ideas, which cannot completely vanish except withthe total disappearance of class antagonisms.The Communist revolution is the most radical rupturewith traditional property relations; no wonder that its de-velopment involves the most radical rupture with traditionalideas.

But let us have done with the bourgeois objections toCommunism.We have seen above that the first step in the revolution bythe working class is to raise the proletariat to the position ofthe ruling class ; to win the battle of democracy.The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest^


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COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. SSby degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie; to centralize allinstruments of production in the hands of the State, i. e.,of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to in-crease the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.Of course, in the beginning this cannot be effected exceptby means of despotic inroads on the rights of property andon the conditions of bourgeois production; by means ofmeasures, therefore, which appear economically insufficientand untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, out-strip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the oldsocial order and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revo-lutionizing the mode of production.These measures will, of course, be different in differentcountries.

Nevertheless in the most advanced countries the follow-ing will be pretty generally applicable:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of allrents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, bymeans of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive

monopoly.6. Centralization of the means lof communication and

transport in the hands of the State.7. Extension of factories and instruments of productionowned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste

lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accord-ance with a common plan.

8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of indus-trial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing indus-tries : gradual abolition of the distinction between town and


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84 COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.country, by a more equable distribution of the populationover the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools.Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form.Combination of education with industrial production, etc.,etc.

When, in the course of development, class distinctionshave disappeared and all production has been concentratedin the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, thepublic power will lose its political character. Political power,properly so called, is merely the organized power of one classfor oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contestwith the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circum-stances, to organize itself as a class, if, by means of a revo-lution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweepsaway by force the old conditions of production then it will,along with these conditions, have swept away the con-ditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of classesgenerally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacyas a class.

In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes andclass antagonisms we shall have an association in which thefree development of each is the condition for the free devel-opment of all.

III.SOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST LITERATUEE.

I. REACTIONARY SOCIALISM.(a) Feudal Socialism.

Owing to their historical position, it became the vocationof the aristocracies of France and England to write pam-phlets against modem bourgeois society. In the French rev-


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COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. 35olution of July, 1830, and in the English reform agitation,these aristocracies again succumbed to the hateful upstart.Thenceforth, a serious political contest was altogether out ofquestion. A literary battle alone remained possible. Buteven in the domain of literature the old cries of the restora-tion period (a) had become impossible.In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy were obligedto lose sight, apparently, of their own interests, and to form-ulate their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interestof the exploited working class alone. Thus the aristocracytook their revenge by singing lampoons on their new master,and whispering in his ears sinister prophecies of comingcatastrophe.In this way arose feudal Socialism ; half lamentation, halflampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future,at times by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking thebourgeoisie to the very heart's core, but always ludicrous inits effects, through total incapacity to comprehend the marchof modern history.The aris^ '^racy, in order to rally the people to them,waved the proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. Butthe people, so often as it joined them, saw on their hind-quarters the old feudal coats of arms and deserted with loudand irreverent laughter.One section of the French Legitimists, and ^'Young Eng-land,^^ exhibited this spectacle.In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was dif-ferent from that of the bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget thatthey exploited under circumstances and conditions that werequite different and that are now antiquated. In showing thatunder their rule the modern proletariat never existed they

(a) Not the English Restoration 1660 to 1689, but the FrenchRestoration 1814 to 1830.


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36 COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.forget that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspringof their own form of society.For the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionary char-acter of their criticism, that their chief accusation againstthe bourgeoisie amounts to this: that under the bourgeoisregime a class is being developed, which is destined to cut uproot and branch the old order of society.What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so muchthat it creates a proletariat, as that it creates a revolutionaryproletariat.In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercivemeasures against the working class; and in ordinary life, de-spite their high falutin phrases, they stoop to pick up thegolden apples dropped from the tree of industry, and tobarter truth, love, and honor for traffic in wool, beet-rootsugar and potato spirit (b).As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the land-lord, so has Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism.

Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a So-cialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against pri-vate property, against marriages, against the State? Has itnot preached in the place of these charity and poverty, celi-bacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and MotherChurch? Christian Socialism is but the Holy Water withwhich the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aris-tocrat.

(&) Petty Bourgeois Socialism,The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was(b) This applies chiefly to Germany where the mnded aristocracy

and squirearchy have large portions of their estates cultivated fortheir own account by stewards, and are moreover, extensive beet-rootsugar manufacturers and distillers of potato spirits. The wealthierBritish aristocracy are, as yet, rather above that; but they, too, knowhow to make up for declining rents by lending their names to floatersof more or less shady joint-stock companies.


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COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. 37ruined by the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose condi-tions of existence pined and perished in the atmosphere ofmodern bourgeois society. The mediaeval burgesses and thesmall peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modernbourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little devel-oped, industrially and commercially these two classes stillvegetate side by side with the rising bourgeoisie.In countries where modem civilization has become fullydeveloped, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed,fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and everrenewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society.The individual members of this class, however, are beingconstantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action ofcompetition and as modern industry develops, they even seethe moment approaching when they will completely disap-pear as an independent section of modem society to be re-placed in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by over-lookers, bailiffs and shopmen.In countries like France, where the peasants constitutefar more than half of the population, it was natural thatwriters who sided with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie,should use in their criticism of the bourgeois regime, thestandard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and from thestandpoint of these intermediate classes should take up thecudgels for the working class. Thus arose petty bourgeoisSocialism. Sismondi was the head of this school, not onlyin France but also in England.

This school of Socialism dissected with great acutenessthe contradict bns in the conditions of modern production.It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It provedincontrovertibly the disastrous effects of machinery and di-vision of labor ; the concentration of capital and land in a fewhands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevit-able ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of


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38 COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying ine-qualities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war ofextermination between nations, the dissolution of old moralbonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism as-pires either to restoring the old means of production and ofexchange, and with them the old property relations and theold society, or to cramping the modern means of productionand of exchange, within the frame work of the old propertyrelations that have been and were bound to be exploded bythose means. In either case, it is both reactionary andUtopian.

Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; pa-triarchal relations in agriculture.

Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersedall intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Social-ism ended in a, miserable fit of the blues.

(c) German or ''True Socialism.The Socialist and Communist literature of France, a lit-

erature that originated under the pressure of a bourgeoisie inpower, and that was the expression of the struggle againstthis power, was introduced into Germany at a time when thebourgeoisie in that country had just begun its contest withfeudal absolutism.

German philosophers,would-be philosophers and heaitxesprits,eagerly seized on this literature, only forgettingthat when these writings immigrated from France into Ger-many, French social conditions had not immigrated alongwith them. In contact with German social conditions, thisFrench literature lost all its immediate practical significance,and assumed a purely literary aspect. Thus, to the Germanphilosophers of the eighteenth century, the demands of thefirst French Eevolution were nothing more than the demands


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COMMXTNIST MANIFESTO. Z9of Practical Eeason in general, and the utterances of thewill of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie signified in theireyes the laws of pure will, of will as it was bound to be, oftrue human will generally.The work of the German literati consisted solely in bring-ing the new French ideas into harmony with their ancientphilosophical conscience, or rather, in annexing the Frenchideas without deserting their own philosophic point of view.

This annexation took place in the same way in which aforeign language is appropriated, namely, by translation.

It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Cath-olic Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical worksof ancieot heathendom had been written. The German lit-erati reversed this process with the profane French literature.They wrote their philosophical nonsense beneath the Frenchoriginal. For instance, beneath the French criticism of theeconomic functions of money they wrote Alienation of Hu-manity, and beneath the French criticism of the bourgeoisState they wrote Dethronement of the Category of the Gen-eral, and so forth.The introduction of these philosophical phrases at theback of the French historical criticisms they dubbed Phil-osophy of Action, True Socialism, German Science ofSocialism, Philosophical Foundation of Socialism, andso on.

The French Socialist and Communist literature was thuscompletely emasculated. And, since it ceased in the hands ofthe German to express the struggle of one class with the other,he felt conscious of having overcome French one-sidednessand of representing not true requirements but the require-ments of truth, not the interests of the proletariat, but theinterests of human nature, of man in general, who belongs tono class, has no reality, and exists only in the misty realmof philosophical phantasy.


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40 COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.This German Socialism, which took its school-boy task so

seriously and solemnly, and extolled its poor stock in tradein such mountebank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost itspedantic innocence.The fight of the German, and especially of the Prussianbourgeoisie, against feudal aristocracy and absolute monarchy,in other words, the liberal movement, became more earnest.

By this, the long wished-for opportunity was offered toTrue Socialism'^ of confronting the political movement withthe Socialist demands, of hurling the traditional anathemasagainst liberalism, against representative government, againstbourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bour-geois legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and ofpreaching to the masses that they had nothing to gain andeverything to lose by this bourgeois movement. German So-cialism forgot, in the nick of time, that the French criti-cism, whose silly echo it was, presupposed the existence ofmodern bourgeois society, with its corresponding economicconditions of existence, and the political constitution adaptedthereto, the very things whose attainment was the object ofthe pending struggle in Germany.To the absolute governments, with their following of par-sons, professors, country squires and officials, it served as awelcome scarecrow against the threatening bourgeoisie.

It was a sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings andbullets with which these same governments, just at that time,dosed the German working-class risings.While this True^' Socialism thus served the governmentas a weapon for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at thesame time, directly represented a reactionary interest, theinterest of the German philistines. In Germany the pettyhourgeois class, a relique of the 16th century and since thenconstantly cropping up again under various forms, is thereal social basis of the existing state of things.


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COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. 41To preserve this class, is to preserve the existing state of

things in Germany. The industrial and political supremacyof the bourgeoisie threatens it with certain destruction; onthe one hand, from the concentration of capital; on theother, from the rise of a revolutionary proletariat. TrueSocialism appeared to kill these two birds with one stone.It spread like an epidemic.The robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flow-ers of rhetoric, steeped in the dew of sickly sentiment, thistranscendental robe in which the German Socialists wrappedtheir sorry eternal truths all skin and bone, served to won-derfully increase the sale of their goods amongst such apublic.And on its part, German Socialism recognized more andmore its own calling as the bombastic representative of thepetty bourgeois philistine.It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation,and the German petty philistine to be the typical man. Toevery villainous meanness of this model man it gave a hidden^higher, socialistic interpretation, the exact contrary of itsreal character. It went to the extreme length of directly op-posing the 'T)rutally destructive tendency of Communism,and of proclaiming its supreme and impartial contempt ofall class-struggles. With very few exceptions, all the so-called Socialist and Communist publications that now (1847)circulate in Germany belong to the domain of this foul andenervating literature.

2. CONSERVATIVE OR BOURGEOIS SOCIALISM.A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social

grievances, in order to secure the continued existence of bour-geois society.To this section belong economists, philanthropists, human-


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42 COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.itarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, or-ganizers of charity, members of societies for the preventionof cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole and cornerreformers of every imaginable kind. This form of Socialismhas, moreover, been worked out into complete systems.We may cite Proudhon's Philosophie de la Misere as anexample of this form.The socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of mod-ern social conditions without the struggles and dangers nec-essarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing stateof society minus its revolutionary and disintegrating ele-ments. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat.The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it issupreme to be the best; and bourgeois socialism develops thiscomfortable conception into various more or less completesystems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such asystem, and thereby to march straightway into the socialNew Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariatshould remain within the bounds of existing society, butshould cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bour-geosie.A second and more practical, but less systematic form ofthis Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary move-ment in the eyes of the working class, by showing that nomere political reform but a change in the material condi-tions of existence in economical relations could be of anyadvantage to them.- By changes in the material conditionsof existence this form of Socialism, however, by no meansunderstands abolition of the bourgeois relations of produc-tion,an abolition that can be effected only by a revolutionbut administrative reforms, based on the continued existence

of these relations ; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affectthe relations between capital and labor, but, at the best, lessen


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COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. 43the cost and simplify the administrative work of bourgeoisgovernment.

Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression, when,and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech.Free Trade :^ for the benefit of the working class. Pro-

tective Duties: for the benefit of the working class. PrisonReform : for the benefit of the working class. This is thelast word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeoisSocialism.

It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bour-geoisfor the benefit of the working class.

3. CRITICAL-UTOPIAN SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM.We do not here refer to that literature which, in every

great modem revolution, has always given voice to the de-mands of the proletariat, such as the writings of Baboeuf andothers.The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain itsown ends, made in times of universal excitement, when feudalsociety was being overthro^vn, these attempts necessarilyfailed, owing to the then undeveloped state of the proletariat,as well as to the absence of the economic conditions for itsemancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, andcould be produced by the impending bourgeois epoch alone.The revolutionary literature that accompanied these firstmovements of the proletariat had necessarily a reactionarycharacter. It inculcated universal asceticism and social level-ling in its cradest form.The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called,those of St. Simon, Fourier, Owen and others, spring intoexistence in the early undeveloped period, described above,of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie (see:Section I., Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.)The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class an-


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44 COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.tagonisms as well as the action of the decomposing elementsin the prevailing form of society. But the proletariat, as yetin its infancy, offers to them the spectacle of a class withoutany historical initiative or any independent political move-ment.

Since the development of class antagonism keeps evenpace with the development of industry, the economic situa-tion, as they find it, does not as yet offer to them the materialconditions for the emancipation of the proletariat. Theytherefore search after a new social science, after new sociallaws, that are to create these conditions.

Historical action is to yield to their personal inventiveaction, historically created conditions of emancipation tophantastic ones, and the gradual, spontaneous class organ-ization of the proletariat to an organization of society spec-ially contrived by these inventors. Future history resolvesitself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the practicalcarrying out of their social plans.In the formation of their plans they are conscious of car-ing chiefly for the interest of the working class, as being themost suffering class. Only from the point of view of beingthe most suffering class does the proletariat exist for them.The undeveloped state of the class struggle as well as theirown surroundings cause Socialists of this kind to considerthemselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They wantto improve the condition of every member of society, eventhat of the most favored. Hence they habitually appeal tosociety at large, without distinction of class; nay, by pref-erence to the ruling class. For how can people, when oncethey understand their system, fail to see in it the best possi-ble plan of the best possible state of society?Hence they reject all political, and especially all revolu-tionary action; they wish to attain their ends by peacefulmeans, and endeavor, by small experiments, necessarily doom-


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COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. 45ed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the wayfor the new social Gospel.

Such phantastic pictures of future society, painted at atime when the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped stateand has but a phantastic conception of its own position, cor-respond with the iirst instinctive yearnings of that class fora general reconstruction of society.But these Socialist and Communist publications containalso a critical element. They attack every principle of ex-isting society. Hence they are full of the most valuable ma-terials for the enlightenment of the working class. The prac-tical measures proposed in them, such as the abolition of thedistinction between town and country, of the family, of thecarrying on of industries for the account of private indi-viduals, and of the wage system, the proclamation of socialharmony, the conversion of the functions of the State into amere superintendence of production, all these proposals pointsolely to the disappearance of class antagonisms which were,at that time, only just cropping up, and which, in these pub-lications, are recognized imder their earliest, indistinct andundefined forms only. These proposals, therefore, are of apurely Utopian character.The

significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Com-munism bears an inverse relation to historical development.In proportion as the modern class struggle develops andtakes definite shape, this phantastic standing apart from thecontest, these phantastic attacks on it lose all practical valueand all theoretical justification. Therefore, although theoriginators of these systems were, in many respects, revolu-tionary, their disciples have in every case formed mere reac-tionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of theirmasters, in opposition to the progressive historical develop-ment of the proletariat. They, therefore, endeavor, and thatconsistently, to deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the


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46 COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.class antagonisms. They still dream of experimental realiza-tion of their social Utopias, of founding isolated ^'phalan-steres, of establishing Home Colonies/^ of setting up aLittle Icaria (c)duodecimo editions of the New Jeru-salem, and to realize all these castles in the air, they arecompelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bo

Documents

Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party