In a five to seven page paper discuss Marx’s view
of his contemporary social ills and these are emblematic of the ongoing Industrial
Revolution. What is his remedy for the situation? In what ways might this be an ideal but an
impractical solution?
Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels: Manifesto of the Communist Party [from the English edition of 1888,
edited by Engels]
Introduction
A spectre is haunting
Two things result from this
fact.
I. Communism is already
acknowledged by all European Powers to be itself a Power.
II. It is high time that
Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views,
their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of
Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself. To
this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in
I. Bourgeois and Proletarians
The history of all hitherto
existing societies is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician
and plebeian, lord and serf, guild‑master and journeyman, in a word,
oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried
on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended,
either in a revolutionary re‑constitution of society at large, or in the
common ruin of the contending classes.
In the earlier epochs of
history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into
various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have
patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords,
vassals, guild‑masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of
these classes, again, subordinate gradations.
The modern bourgeois society
that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with clash
antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch,
the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it
has simplified the class antagonisms: Society as a whole is more and more
splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes, directly
facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
From the serfs of the Middle
Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses
the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.
The discovery of
The feudal system of
industry, under which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds,
now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The
manufacturing system took its place. The guild‑masters were pushed on one
side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the
different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each
single workshop.
Meantime the markets kept
ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacture no longer sufficed.
Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place
of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place of the
industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of whole
industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
Modern industry has
established the world‑market, for which the discovery of
We see, therefore, how the
modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a
series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.
Each step in the development
of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that
class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and
self‑governing association in the mediaeval commune; here independent
urban republic (as in Italy and Germany), there taxable "third
estate" of the monarchy (as in France), afterwards, in the period of
manufacture proper, serving either the semi‑feudal or the absolute
monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, corner‑stone
of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the
establishment of Modern Industry and of the world‑market, conquered for
itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The
executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common
affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie,
historically, has played a most revolutionary part. The bourgeoisie, wherever
it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic
relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man
to his "natural superiors," and has left
remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self‑interest,
than callous "cash payment." It has drowned the most heavenly
ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine
sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved
personal worth into exchange value. And in place of the numberless and feasible
chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom ‑‑
Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by
religious and political illusions, naked, shameless, direct, brutal
exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped
of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent
awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man
of science, into its paid wage laborers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the
family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere
money relation.
The bourgeoisie has disclosed
how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigor in the Middle
Ages, which Reactionists so much admire, found its fitting complement in the
most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man's activity can
bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids,
Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put
in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist
without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby
the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form,
was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier
industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted
disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation
distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed,
fast‑frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable
prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new‑formed ones become
antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that
is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses,
his real conditions of life, and his
relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly
expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface
of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish
connexions everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has through
its exploitation of the world‑market given a cosmopolitan character to
production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of
Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground
on which it stood. All old‑established national industries have been
destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new
industries, whose introduction
becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that
no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the
remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but
in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the
productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction
the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and
national seclusion and self‑sufficiency, we have intercourse in every
direction, universal inter‑dependence of nations. And
as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual
creations of individual nations become common property. National one‑sidedness
and narrow‑mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the
numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid
improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated
means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian,
nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy
artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces
the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate.
It compels all nations, on
pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them
to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become
bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
The bourgeoisie has subjected
the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has
greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus
rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just
as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and
semi‑barbarian countries dependent on the
civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois,
the East on the West.
The bourgeoisie keeps more
and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of
production, and of property. It has agglomerated production, and has
concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was
political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with
separate interests, laws, governments and systems of taxation, became lumped
together into one nation, with one government, one code
of laws, one national class‑interest, one frontier
and one customs‑tariff. The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one
hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces
than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to
man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam‑navigation,
railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation,
canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground ‑‑
what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces
slumbered in the lap of social labour?
We see then: the means of
production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself
up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of
these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal
society produced and exchanged, the feudal
organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one
word, the feudal
relations of property became no longer compatible with the
already developed
productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be
burst asunder;
they were burst asunder.
Into their place stepped free
competition, accompanied by a social and political
constitution adapted to it, and by the economical and political
sway of the
bourgeois class.
A similar movement is going
on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society
with its relations of production, of exchange and of
property, a society that
has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of
exchange, is like the
sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the
nether world whom
he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past
the history of industry
and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern
productive forces
against modern conditions of production, against the property
relations that are
the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and
of its rule. It is
enough to mention the commercial crises that by their
periodical return put on
its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of
the entire bourgeois
society. In these crises a great part not only of the
existing products, but
also of the previously created productive forces, are
periodically destroyed. In
these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all
earlier epochs, would
have seemed an absurdity ‑‑ the epidemic of
over‑production. Society suddenly
finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism;
it appears as if a
famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the
supply of every means of
subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why?
Because there
is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence,
too much industry, too
much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of
society no longer tend
to further the development of the conditions of
bourgeois property; on the
contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions,
by which they are
fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they
bring disorder into
the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of
bourgeois property.
The conditions of bourgeois
society are too narrow to comprise the wealth
created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these
crises? On the one
hand inforced destruction of a mass of productive forces;
on the other, by the
conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation
of the old ones.
That is to say, by paving the
way for more extensive and more destructive
crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are
prevented.
The weapons with which the
bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now
turned against the bourgeoisie itself.
But not only has the
bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself;
it has also called into existence the men who are to
wield those weapons ‑‑ the
modern working class ‑‑ the proletarians.
In proportion as the
bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same
proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed
‑‑ a class of
labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who
find work only so
long as their labour increases capital. These labourers,
who must sell
themselves piece‑meal, are a commodity, like every other
article of commerce,
and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of
competition, to all the
fluctuations of the market.
Owing to the extensive use of
machinery and to division of labour, the work of
the proletarians has lost all individual character, and
consequently, all charm
for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine,
and it is only the most
simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack,
that is required of
him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is
restricted, almost entirely,
to the means of subsistence that he requires for his
maintenance, and for the
propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and
therefore also of
labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion
therefore, as the
repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more,
in proportion
as the use of machinery and division of labour
increases, in the same proportion
the burden of toil also increases, whether by
prolongation of the working hours,
by increase of the work exacted in a given time or by
increased speed of the
machinery, etc.
Modern industry has converted
the little workshop of the patriarchal master into
the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of
labourers, crowded
into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates
of the industrial
army they are placed under the command of a perfect
hierarchy of officers and
sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and
of the bourgeois
State; they are daily and
hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over‑looker,
and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer
himself. The more
openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim,
the more petty, the
more hatef
ul and the more embittering it is.
The less the skill and
exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other
words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more
is the labour of men
superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no
longer any
distinctive social validity for the working class. All are
instruments of
labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their
age and sex.
No sooner is the exploitation
of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an
end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set
upon by the other
portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the
pawnbroker, etc.
The lower strata of the
middle class ‑‑ the small tradespeople, shopkeepers,
retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants ‑‑
all these sink
gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive
capital does not
suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on,
and is swamped in
the competition with the large capitalists, partly
because their specialized
skill is rendered worthless by the new methods of
production. Thus the
proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.
The proletariat goes through
various stages of development. With its birth
begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the
contest is carried on by
individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then
by the
operatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual
bourgeois who
directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against
the bourgeois
conditions of production, but against the instruments of
production themselves;
they destroy imported wares that compete with their
labour, they smash to pieces
machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by
force the vanished
status of the workman of the Middle Ages.
At this stage the labourers
still form an incoherent mass scattered over the
whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition.
If anywhere they unite
to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the
consequence of their own active
union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in
order to attain its
own political ends, is compelled to set the whole
proletariat in motion, and is
moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage,
therefore, the
proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their
enemies, the
remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non‑industrial
bourgeois, the
petty bourgeoisie. Thus the whole historical movement is
concentrated in the
hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a
victory for the
bourgeoisie.
But with the development of
industry the proletariat not only increases in
number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its
strength grows, and it
feels that strength more. The various interests and
conditions of life within
the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised,
in proportion as
machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly
everywhere reduces
wages to the same low level. The growing competition among
the bourgeois, and
the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the
workers ever more
fluctuating. The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more
rapidly
developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the
collisions
between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more
and more the
character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon the
workers begin to form
combinations (Trades Unions) against the bourgeois; they club
together in order
to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent
associations in order to make
provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and
there the contest
breaks out into riots.
Now and then the workers are
victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of
their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the
ever‑expanding union
of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved
means of communication
that are created by modern industry and that place the
workers of different
localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact
that was needed
to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the
same character, into one
national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is
a political
struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the
Middle Ages, with
their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern
proletarians, thanks to
railways, achieve in a few years.
This organisation of the
proletarians into a class, and consequently into a
political party, is continually being upset again by the
competition between the
workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger,
firmer, mightier. It
compels legislative recognition of particular interests of
the workers, by
taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie
itself. Thus the
ten‑hours' bill in
Altogether collisions between
the classes of the old society further, in many
ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The
bourgeoisie finds itself
involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy;
later on, with
those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests
have become
antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the
bourgeoisie of
foreign countries. In all these battles it sees itself
compelled to appeal to
the proletariat, to ask for its help, and thus, to drag
it into the political
arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the
proletariat with its own
instruments of political and general education, in other words,
it furnishes the
proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.
Further, as we have already
seen, entire sections of the ruling classes are, by
the advance of industry, precipitated into the
proletariat, or are at least
threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply
the proletariat
with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.
Finally, in times when the
class struggle nears the decisive hour, the process
of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact
within the whole range
of society, assumes such a violent, glaring character,
that a small section of
the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the
revolutionary class, the
class that holds the future in its hands. Just as,
therefore, at an earlier
period, a section of the nobility went over to the
bourgeoisie, so now a portion
of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in
particular, a portion of
the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to
the level of
comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.
Of all the classes that stand
face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the
proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other
classes decay and
finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the
proletariat is its special
and essential product. The lower middle class, the small
manufacturer, the
shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against
the bourgeoisie,
to save from extinction their existence as fractions of
the middle class. They
are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay
more, they are
reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If
by chance they
are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their
impending transfer into the
proletariat, they thus defend not their present, but their future
interests,
they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at
that of the proletariat.
The "dangerous
class," the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off
by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and
there, be swept into the
movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life,
however, prepare
it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary
intrigue.
In the conditions of the
proletariat, those of old society at large are already
virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his
relation to his wife
and children has no longer anything in common with the
bourgeois
family‑relations;
modern industrial labour, modern subjection to capital, the
same in
every trace of national character. Law, 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, sought to fortify their
already acquired status by subjecting society at large to
their conditions of
appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the
productive forces
of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode
of appropriation, and
thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They
have nothing of
their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to
destroy all previous
securities for, and insurances of, individual property.
All previous historical
movements were movements of minorities, or in the
interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self‑conscious,
independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of
the immense
majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present
society, cannot
stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole
superincumbent strata of
official society being sprung into the air.
Though not in substance, yet
in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the
bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of
each country
must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own
bourgeoisie.
In depicting the most general
phases of the development of the proletariat, we
traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within
existing society, up to
the point where that war breaks out into open revolution,
and where the violent
overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway
of the
proletariat.
Hitherto, every form of
society has been based, as we have already seen, on the
antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to
oppress a class,
certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can,
at least, continue
its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of
serfdom, raised himself to
membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under
the yoke of feudal
absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern
laborer, on the
contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry,
sinks deeper and
deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class.
He becomes a pauper,
and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and
wealth. And here it
becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to
be the ruling class
in society, and to impose its conditions of existence
upon society as an
over‑riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to
assure an
existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot
help letting him
sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead
of being fed by him.
Society can no longer live
under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence
is no longer compatible with society.
The essential condition for
the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois
class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the
condition for capital
is wage‑labour. Wage‑labour rests
exclusively on competition between the
laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter
is the
bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to
competition, by
their revolutionary combination, due to association. The
development of Modern
Industry, therefore, cuts
from under its feet the very foundation on which the
bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the
bourgeoisie, therefore,
produces, above all, is its own grave‑diggers. Its fall and
the victory of the
proletariat are equally inevitable.
II. Proletarians and
Communists
In what relation do the
Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?
The Communists do not form a
separate party opposed to other working‑class
parties.
They have no interests
separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a
whole.
They do not set up any
sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and
mould the proletarian movement.
The Communists are
distinguished from the other working‑class parties is only:
(1) In the national struggles
of the proletarians of the different countries,
they point out and bring to the front the common interests
of entire
proletariat, independently of nationality.
(2) In the various stages of
development which the struggle of the working class
against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and
everywhere
represent the interests of the movement as a whole.
The Communists, therefore,
are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced
and resolute section of the working‑class parties
of every country, that section
which pushes forward all others; on the other hand,
theoretically, they have
over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of
clearly understanding
the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate
general results of the
proletarian movement.
The immediate aim of the
Communist is the same as that of all the other
proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class,
overthrow of the
bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the
proletariat.
The theoretical conclusions
of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or
principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or
that would‑be
universal reformer. They merely express, in general terms,
actual relations
springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical
movement going on
under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property
relations is not at all
a distinctive feature of Communism.
All property relations in the
past have continually been subject to historical
change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.
The French Revolution, for
example, abolished feudal property in favour of
bourgeois property.
The distinguishing feature of
Communism is not the abolition of property
generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern
bourgeois private
property is the final and most complete expression of the
system of producing
and appropriating products, that is based on class
antagonisms, on the
exploitation of the many by the few.
In this sense, the theory of
the Communists may be summed up in the single
sentence: Abolition of private property.
We Communists have been
reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of
personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man's own
labour, which property
is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom,
activity and
independence.
Hard‑won, self‑acquired,
self‑earned property! Do you mean the property of the
petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property
that preceded the
bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the
development of industry
has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still
destroying it daily.
Or do you mean modern
bourgeois private property?
But does wage‑labour
create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates
capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage‑labour,
and which
cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new
supply of wage‑labour
for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is
based on the
antagonism of capital and wage‑labour. Let us examine both
sides of this
antagonism.
To be a capitalist, is to
have not only a purely personal, but a social status
in production. Capital is a collective product, and only
by the united action of
many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united
action of all members
of society, can it be set in motion.
Capital is, therefore, not a
personal, it is a social power.
When, therefore, capital is
converted into common property, into the property of
all members of society, personal property is not thereby
transformed into social
property. It is only the social character of the property that
is changed. It
loses its class‑character.
Let us now take wage‑labour.
The average price of wage‑labour
is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the
means of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite in bare
existence as a
labourer. What, therefore, the wage‑labourer appropriates
by means of his
labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare
existence. We by no
means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the
products of labour,
an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and
reproduction of human
life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the
labour of others. All
that we want to do away with, is the miserable character
of this appropriation,
under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital,
and is allowed to
live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class
requires it.
In bourgeois society, living
labour is but a means to increase accumulated
labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a
means to widen, to
enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.
In bourgeois society,
therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist
society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society
capital is
independent and has individuality, while the living person is
dependent and has
no individuality.
And the abolition of this
state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition
of individuality and freedom! And
rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois
individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is
undoubtedly
aimed at.
By freedom is meant, under
the present bourgeois conditions of production, free
trade, free selling and buying. But if selling and buying
disappears, free
selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free
selling and buying, and
all the other "brave words" of our bourgeoisie
about freedom in general, have a
meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and
buying, with the
fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when
opposed to the
Communistic abolition of
buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of
production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.
You are horrified at our
intending to do away with private property. But in your
existing society, private property is already done away with
for nine‑tenths of
the population; its existence for the few is solely due
to its non‑existence in
the hands of those nine‑tenths. You reproach us,
therefore, with intending to do
away with a form of property, the necessary condition for
whose existence is the
non‑existence of any property for the immense majority of society.
In one word, you reproach us
with intending to do away with your property.
Precisely so; that is just
what we intend.
From the moment when labour
can no longer be converted into capital, money, or
rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised,
i.e., from the moment
when individual property can no longer be transformed into
bourgeois property,
into capital, from that moment, you say individuality
vanishes.
You must, therefore, confess
that by "individual" you mean no other person than
the bourgeois, than the middle‑class owner of
property. This person must,
indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.
Communism deprives no man of
the power to appropriate the products of society;
all that it does is to deprive him of the power to
subjugate the labour of
others by means of such appropriation.
It has been objected that
upon the abolition of private property all work will
cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.
According to this, bourgeois
society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs
through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work,
acquire nothing, and
those who acquire anything, do not work. The whole of this
objection is but
another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer
be any wage‑labour
when there is no longer any capital.
All objections urged against
the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating
material products, have, in the same way, been urged against
the Communistic
modes of producing and appropriating intellectual products.
Just as, to the
bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the
disappearance of
production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to
him identical
with the disappearance of all culture.
That culture, the loss of
which he laments, is, for the enormous majority, a
mere training to act as a machine.
But don't wrangle with us so
long as you apply, to our intended abolition of
bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of
freedom, culture,
law, etc. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the
conditions of your
bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your
jurisprudence is but
the will of your class made into a law for all, a will,
whose essential
character and direction are determined by the economical
conditions of existence
of your class.
The selfish misconception
that induces you to transform into eternal laws of
nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your
present mode of
production and form of property‑historical relations that
rise and disappear in
the progress of production ‑‑ this
misconception you share with every ruling
class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the
case of ancient
property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you
are of course
forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of
property.
Abolition of the family! Even
the most radical flare up at this infamous
proposal of the Communists.
On what foundation is the
present family, the bourgeois family, based? On
capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form
this family exists
only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds
its complement in the
practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in
public
prostitution.
The bourgeois family will
vanish as a matter of course when its complement
vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
Do you charge us with wanting
to stop the exploitation of children by their
parents? To this crime we plead guilty.
But, you will say, we destroy
the most hallowed of relations, when we replace
home education by social.
And your education! Is not
that also social, and determined by the social
conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct
or indirect, of
society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not
invented the
intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter
the character of
that intervention, and to rescue education from the
influence of the ruling
class.
The bourgeois clap‑trap
about the family and education, about the hallowed
co‑relation of parent and child, becomes all the more disgusting,
the more, by
the action of Modern Industry, all family ties among the
proletarians are torn
asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles
of commerce and
instruments of labour.
But you Communists would
introduce community of women, screams the whole
bourgeoisie in chorus.
The bourgeois sees in his
wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that
the instruments of production are to be exploited in
common, and, naturally, can
come to no other conclusion than that the lot of being
common to all will
likewise fall to the women.
He has not even a suspicion
that the real point is to do away with the status of
women as mere instruments of production.
For the rest, nothing is more
ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our
bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to
be openly and
officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no
need to
introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time
immemorial.
Our bourgeois, not content
with having the wives and daughters of their
proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common
prostitutes, take the
greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives.
Bourgeois marriage is in
reality a system of wives in common and thus, at the
most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached
with, is that they desire
to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically
concealed, an openly
legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self‑evident
that the
abolition of the present system of production must bring with
it the abolition
of the community of women springing from that system,
i.e., of prostitution both
public and private.
The Communists are further
reproached with desiring to abolish countries and
nationality.
The working men have no
country. We cannot take from them what they have not
got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire
political supremacy, must
rise to be the leading class of the nation, must
constitute itself the nation,
it is, so far, itself national, though not in the
bourgeois sense of the word.
National differences and
antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more
vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to
freedom of commerce,
to the world‑market, to uniformity in the mode of
production and in the
conditions of life corresponding thereto.
The supremacy of the
proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United
action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one
of the first
conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.
In proportion as the
exploitation of one individual by another is put an end to,
the exploitation of one nation by another will also be
put an end to. In
proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation
vanishes, the
hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.
The charges against Communism
made from a religious, a philosophical, and,
generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of
serious
examination.
Does it require deep intuition
to comprehend that man's ideas, views and
conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness, changes with every
change in the
conditions of his material existence, in his social relations
and in his social
life?
What else does the history of
ideas prove, than that intellectual production
changes its character in proportion as material production is
changed? The
ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its
ruling class.
When people speak of ideas
that revolutionise society, they do but express the
fact, that within the old society, the elements of a new
one have been created,
and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace
with the dissolution
of the old conditions of existence.
When the ancient world was in
its last throes, the ancient religions were
overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in
the 18th century to
rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with
the then
revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and
freedom of
conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free
competition within the
domain of knowledge.
"Undoubtedly," it
will be said, "religious, moral, philosophical and juridical
ideas have been modified in the course of historical
development. But religion,
morality philosophy, political science, and law, constantly
survived this
change."
"There are, besides,
eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc. that are
common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes
eternal truths, it
abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of
constituting them on a new
basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past
historical experience."
What does this accusation
reduce itself to? The history of all past society has
consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms
that assumed
different forms at different epochs.
But whatever form
they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages,
viz., the exploitation
of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then,
that the social
consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and
variety it
displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas,
which cannot
completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class
antagonisms.
The Communist revolution is
the most radical rupture with traditional property
relations; no wonder that its development involves the most
radical rupture with
traditional ideas.
But let us have done with the
bourgeois objections to Communism.
We have seen above, that the
first step in the revolution by the working class,
is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling as
to win the battle of
democracy.
The proletariat will use its
political supremacy top wrest, by degrees, all
capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments
of production in the
hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as
the ruling class; and
to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as
possible.
Of course, in the beginning,
this cannot be effected except by means of despotic
inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of
bourgeois
production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear
economically
insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the
movement, outstrip
themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social
order, and are
unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of
production.
These measures will of course
be different in different countries.
Nevertheless in the most
advanced countries, the following will be pretty
generally applicable.
1. Abolition of property in
land and application of all rents of land to public
purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or
graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of
inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the
property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit
in the hands of the State, by means of a national
bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the
means of communication and transport in the hands of
the State.
7. Extension of factories and
instruments of production owned by the State; the
bringing into cultivation of waste‑lands, and the improvement
of the soil
generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to
labour. Establishment of industrial armies,
especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture
with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition
of the distinction between town and country, by a more
equable distribution of
the population over the country.
10. Free education for all
children in public schools. Abolition of children's
factory labour in its present form. Combination of education
with industrial
production, &c., &c.
When, in the course of
development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all
production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast
association of the whole
nation, the public power will lose its political character.
Political power,
properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class
for oppressing
another. If the proletariat during its contest with the
bourgeoisie is
compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as
a class, if, by
means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class,
and, as such, sweeps
away by force the old conditions of production, then it
will, along with these
conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of
class
antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have
abolished its own
supremacy as a class.
In place of the old bourgeois
society, with its classes and class antagonisms,
we shall have an association, in which the free
development of each is the
condition for the free development of all.
III. Socialist and Communist
Literature
1. Reactionary Socialism
A. Feudal Socialism
B. Petty‑Bourgeois Socialism
C. German, or "True,"
Socialism
2. Conservative, Or Bourgeois, Socialism
3. Critical‑Utopian Socialism And Communism
1. REACTIONARY SOCIALISM
A. Feudal Socialism
Owing to their historical
position, it became the vocation of the aristocracies
of
the French revolution of July 1830, and in the English
reform agitation, these
aristocracies again succumbed to the hateful upstart. Thenceforth,
a serious
political contest was altogether out of the question. A
literary battle alone
remained possible. But even in the domain of literature the
old cries of the
restoration period had become impossible.
In order to arouse sympathy,
the aristocracy were obliged to lose sight,
apparently, of their own interests, and to formulate their
indictment against
the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working
class alone. Thus the
aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new
master, and
whispering in his ears sinister prophecies of coming
catastrophe.
In this way arose Feudal
Socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo of
the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its
bitter, witty and incisive
criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart's core;
but always
ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend
the march of
modern history.
The aristocracy, in order to
rally the people to them, waved the proletarian
alms‑bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw
on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms, and
deserted with loud and
irreverent laughter.
One section of the French
Legitimists and "Young England" exhibited this
spectacle.
In pointing out that their
mode of exploitation was different to that of the
bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they exploited under
circumstances and
conditions that were quite different, and that are now
antiquated. In showing
that, under their rule, the modern proletariat never
existed, they forget that
the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of
their own form of society.
For the rest, so little do
they conceal the reactionary character of their
criticism that their chief accusation against the bourgeoisie
amounts to this,
that under the bourgeois regime a class is being
developed, which is destined to
cut up root and branch the old order of society.
What they upbraid the
bourgeoisie with is not so much that it creates a
proletariat, as that it creates a revolutionary proletariat.
In political practice,
therefore, they join in all coercive measures against the
working class; and in ordinary life, despite their high
falutin phrases, they
stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped from the tree of
industry, and to
barter truth, love, and honour for traffic in wool, beetroot‑sugar,
and potato
spirits.
As the parson has ever gone
band in hand with the landlord, so has Clerical
Socialism
with Feudal Socialism.
Nothing is easier than to
give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge. Has not
Christianity declaimed
against private property, against marriage, against the
State? Has it not preached in the place of these, charity
and poverty, celibacy
and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and Mother
Church? Christian
Socialism is but the holy,
water with which the priest consecrates the
heart‑burnings of the aristocrat.
B. Petty‑Bourgeois
Socialism
The feudal aristocracy was
not the only class that has ruined by the
bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of existence
pined and perished
in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society. The
mediaeval burgesses and the
small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modern
bourgeoisie. In
those countries which are but little developed,
industrially and commercially,
these two classes still vegetate side by side with the
rising bourgeoisie.
In countries where modern
civilisation has become fully developed, a new class
of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between
proletariat and
bourgeoisie and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of
bourgeois
society. The individual members of this class, however, are
being constantly
hurled down into the proletariat by the action of
competition, and, as modern
industry develops, they even see the moment approaching when
they will
completely disappear as an independent section of modern
society, to be
replaced, in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by
overlookers, bailiffs
and shopmen.
In countries like
the population, it was natural that writers who sided
with the proletariat
against the bourgeoisie, should use, in their criticism of
the bourgeois regime,
the standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and from
the standpoint of
these intermediate classes should take up the cudgels for
the working class.
Thus arose
petty‑bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi was the head of this school, not
only in
This
the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the
hypocritical apologies of
economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects
of machinery and
division of labour; the concentration of capital and land in a
few hands;
overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the
petty
bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the
anarchy in production,
the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth,
the industrial war of
extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds,
of the old
family relations, of the old nationalities.
In its positive aims,
however, this form of Socialism aspires either to
restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with
them the old
property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the
modern means of
production and of exchange, within the framework of the old
property relations
that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those
means. In either case,
it is both reactionary and Utopian.
Its last words are: corporate
guilds for manufacture, patriarchal relations in
agriculture.
Ultimately, when stubborn
historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating
effects of self‑deception, this form of Socialism ended
in a miserable fit of
the blues.
C. German, or
"True," Socialism
The Socialist and Communist
literature of
under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and that was
the expression of the
struggle against this power, was introduced into
bourgeoisie, in that country, had just begun its contest with
feudal absolutism.
German philosophers, would‑be
philosophers, and beaux esprits, eagerly seized on
this literature, only forgetting, that when these writings
immigrated from
them. In contact with German social conditions, this
French literature lost all
its immediate practical significance, and assumed a
purely literary aspect.
Thus, to the German
philosophers of the eighteenth century, the demands of the
first French Revolution were nothing more than the demands
of "Practical Reason"
in general, and the utterance of the will of the
revolutionary French
bourgeoisie signified in their eyes the law of pure Will, of Will
as it was
bound to be, of true human Will generally.
The world of the German
literate consisted solely in bringing the new French
ideas into harmony with their ancient philosophical
conscience, or rather, in
annexing the French ideas without deserting their own
philosophic point of view.
This annexation took place in
the same way in which a foreign language is
appropriated, namely, by translation.
It is well known how the
monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints over the
manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom
had been written.
The German literate reversed
this process with the profane French literature.
They wrote their
philosophical nonsense beneath the French original. For
instance, beneath the French criticism of the economic
functions of money, they
wrote "Alienation of Humanity," and beneath the
French criticism of the
bourgeois State they wrote "dethronement of the Category
of the General," and so
forth.
The introduction of these
philosophical phrases at the back of the French
historical criticisms they dubbed "Philosophy of
Action," "True Socialism,"
"German Science of
Socialism," "Philosophical Foundation of Socialism," and so
on.
The French Socialist and
Communist literature was thus completely emasculated.
And, since it ceased in the
hands of the German to express the struggle of one
class with the other, he felt conscious of having overcome
"French
one‑sidedness" and
of representing, not true requirements, but the requirements
of truth; not the interests of the proletariat, but the
interests of Human
Nature, of Man in general,
who belongs to no class, has no reality, who exists
only in the misty realm of philosophical fantasy.
This German Socialism, which
took its schoolboy task so seriously and solemnly,
and extolled its poor stock‑in‑trade in such
mountebank fashion, meanwhile
gradually lost its pedantic innocence.
The fight of the German, and
especially, of the Prussian bourgeoisie, against
feudal aristocracy and absolute monarchy, in other words,
the liberal movement,
became more earnest.
By this, the long wished‑for
opportunity was offered to "True" Socialism of
confronting the political movement with the Socialist demands, of
hurling the
traditional anathemas against liberalism, against representative
government,
against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the
press, bourgeois
legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to
the masses that
they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this
bourgeois movement.
German Socialism forgot, in
the nick of time, that the French criticism, whose
silly echo it was, presupposed the existence of modern
bourgeois society, with
its corresponding economic conditions of existence, and
the political
constitution adapted thereto, the very things whose attainment was
the object of
the pending struggle in
To the absolute governments, with
their following of parsons, professors,
country squires and officials, it served as a welcome
scarecrow against the
threatening bourgeoisie.
It was a sweet finish after
the bitter pills of floggings and bullets with which
these same governments, just at that time, dosed the German
working‑class
risings.
While this "True"
Socialism thus served the governments as a weapon for fighting
the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, directly
represented a reactionary
interest, the interest of the German Philistines. In
class, a relic of the sixteenth century, and since then
constantly cropping up
again under various forms, is the real social basis of the
existing state of
things.
To preserve this class is to
preserve the existing state of things in
The industrial and political
supremacy of the bourgeoisie threatens it with
certain destruction; on the one hand, from the concentration
of capital; on the
other, from the rise of a revolutionary proletariat.
"True" Socialism appeared
to kill these two birds with one stone. It spread like
an epidemic.
The robe of speculative
cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric, steeped
in the dew of sickly sentiment, this transcendental robe
in which the German
Socialists wrapped their
sorry "eternal truths," all skin and bone, served to
wonderfully increase the sale of their goods amongst such a
public.
And on its part, German
Socialism recognised, more and more, its own calling as
the bombastic representative of the petty‑
bourgeois Philistine.
It proclaimed the German
nation to be the model nation, and the German petty
Philistine
to be the typical man. To every
villainous meanness of this model man
it gave a hidden, higher, Socialistic interpretation,
the exact contrary of its
real character. It went to the extreme length of directly
opposing the "brutally
destructive" tendency of Communism, and of proclaiming its
supreme and impartial
contempt of all class struggles. With very few exceptions, all
the so‑called
Socialist and Communist
publications that now (1847) circulate in
to the domain of this foul and enervating literature.
2. CONSERVATIVE, OR
BOURGEOIS, SOCIALISM
A part of the bourgeoisie is
desirous of redressing social grievances, in order
to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.
To this section belong
economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers
of
the condition of the working class, organisers of
charity, members of societies
for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance
fanatics, hole‑and‑corner
reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of Socialism has,
moreover, been
worked out into complete systems.
We may site Proudhon's
Philosophie de la Misere as an example of this form.
The Socialistic bourgeois
want all the advantages of modern social conditions
without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting
therefrom. They desire
the existing state of society minus its revolutionary and
disintegrating
elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat.
The bourgeoisie
naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the
best; and
bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into
various more or
less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to
carry out such a system,
and thereby to march straightway into the social New
Jerusalem, it but requires
in reality, that the proletariat should remain within
the bounds of existing
society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas
concerning the bourgeoisie.
A second and more practical,
but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought
to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes
of the working class, by
showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in
the material
conditions of existence, in economic relations, could be of any
advantage to
them. By changes in the material conditions of existence,
this form of
Socialism, however, by no
means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations
of production, an abolition that can be effected only by
a revolution, but
administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these
relations;
reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations
between capital and
labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify the
administrative work,
of bourgeois government.
Bourgeois Socialism attains
adequate expression, when, and only when, it becomes
a mere figure of speech.
Free trade: for the benefit
of the working class. Protective duties: for the
benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit
of the working
class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant
word of bourgeois
Socialism.
It is summed up in the
phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois ‑‑ for the benefit
of the working class.
3. CRITICAL‑UTOPIAN
SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM
We do not here refer to that
literature which, in every great modern revolution,
has always given voice to the demands of the proletariat,
such as the writings
of Babeuf and others.
The first direct attempts of
the proletariat to attain its own ends, made in
times of universal excitement, when feudal society was
being overthrown, these
attempts necessarily failed, owing to the then undeveloped
state of the
proletariat, as well as to the absence of the economic conditions
for its
emancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, and could be
produced by
the impending bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary
literature that
accompanied these first movements of the proletariat had
necessarily a
reactionary character. It inculcated universal asceticism and
social levelling
in its crudest form.
The Socialist and Communist
systems properly so called, those of Saint‑Simon,
Fourier, Owen and others,
spring into existence in the early undeveloped period,
described above, of the struggle between proletariat and
bourgeoisie (see
Section 1. Bourgeois and Proletarians).
The founders of these systems
see, indeed, the class antagonisms, as well as the
action of the decomposing elements, in the prevailing form
of society. But the
proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the spectacle
of a class
without any historical initiative or any independent
political movement.
Since the development of
class antagonism keeps even pace with the development
of industry, the economic situation, as they find it,
does not as yet offer to
them the material conditions for the emancipation of the
proletariat. They
therefore search after a new social science, after new social
laws, that are to
create these conditions.
Historical action is to yield
to their personal inventive action, historically
created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones, and the
gradual,
spontaneous class‑organisation of the proletariat to the
organisation of society
specially contrived by these inventors. Future history resolves
itself, in their
eyes, into the propaganda and the practical carrying out
of their social plans.
In the formation of their
plans they are conscious of caring chiefly for the
interests of the working class, as being the most suffering
class. Only from the
point of view of being the most suffering class does the
proletariat exist for
them.
The undeveloped state of the
class struggle, as well as their own surroundings,
causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far
superior to all class
antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member
of society, even
that of the most favoured. Hence, they habitually appeal
to society at large,
without distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the
ruling class. For how
can people, when once they understand their system, fail
to see in it the best
possible plan of the best possible state of society?
Hence, they reject all
political, and especially all revolutionary, action; they
wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, and
endeavour, by small
experiments, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of
example, to pave
the way for the new social Gospel.
Such fantastic pictures of
future society, painted at a time when the
proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a
fantastic
conception of its own position correspond with the first
instinctive yearnings
of that class for a general reconstruction of society.
But these Socialist and
Communist publications contain also a critical element.
They attack every principle
of existing society. Hence they are full of the most
valuable materials for the enlightenment of the working class.
The practical
measures proposed in them ‑‑ ‑such as the
abolition of the distinction between
town and country, of the family, of the carrying on of
industries for the
account of private individuals, and of the wage system, the
proclamation of
social harmony, the conversion of the functions of the State
into a mere
superintendence of production, all these proposals, point solely to
the
disappearance of class antagonisms which were, at that time, only
just cropping
up, and which, in these publications, are recognised in
their earliest,
indistinct and undefined forms only. These proposals, therefore,
are of a purely
Utopian
character.
The significance of Critical‑Utopian
Socialism and Communism bears an inverse
relation to historical development. In proportion as the
modern class struggle
develops and takes definite shape, this fantastic standing
apart from the
contest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical
value and all
theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of
these systems
were, in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples
have, in every case,
formed mere reactionary sects. They hold fast by the
original views of their
masters, in opposition to the progressive historical
development of the
proletariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and that consistently,
to deaden the
class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They
still dream of
experimental realisation of their social Utopias, of founding
isolated
"phalansteres,"
of establishing "Home Colonies," of setting up a "Little
Icaria"
‑‑ duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem ‑‑ and
to realise all these castles
in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the feelings
and purses of the
bourgeois. By degrees they sink into the category of the
reactionary
conservative Socialists depicted above, differing from these only
by more
systematic pedantry, and by their fanatical and superstitious
belief in the
miraculous effects of their social science.
They, therefore, violently
oppose all political action on the part of the
working class; such action, according to them, can only
result from blind
unbelief in the new Gospel.
The Owenites in
Chartists
and the Reformistes.
IV. Position of the
Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition
Parties
Section II has made clear the
relations of the Communists to the existing
working‑class parties, such as the Chartists in
Reformers
in
The Communists fight for the
attainment of the immediate aims, for the
enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but
in the movement
of the present, they also represent and take care of the
future of that
movement. In
against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving,
however, the right
to take up a critical position in regard to phrases and
illusions traditionally
handed down from the great Revolution.
In
this party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of
Democratic Socialists,
in the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois.
In
prime condition for national emancipation, that party which
fomented the
insurrection of
In
way, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal
squirearchy, and the petty
bourgeoisie.
But they never cease, for a
single instant, to instil into the working class the
clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism
between bourgeoisie and
proletariat, in order that the German workers may straightaway
use, as so many
weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social and political
conditions that the
bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy,
and in order
that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in
the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin.
The Communists turn their
attention chiefly to
on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be
carried out under more
advanced conditions of European civilisation, and with a much
more developed
proletariat, than that of
eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in
the prelude to an immediately following proletarian
revolution.
In short, the Communists
everywhere support every revolutionary movement against
the existing social and political order of things.
In all these movements they
bring to the front, as the leading question in each,
the property question, no matter what its degree of
development at the time.
Finally, they labour
everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic
parties of all countries.
The Communists disdain to
conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that
their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow
of all existing social
conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic
revolution. The
proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a
world to win.
WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES,
UNITE!
END.