Thread by @hegelfan1

<THREAD> I'm now hearing this meme that governments around the world have defeated communism.

Guys. It's time for some Marxist theory

A spectre is haunting Europe--the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to 1/590

exorcise this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies. Where is the party 2/590

in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the Opposition that has not 3/590

hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary 4/590

adversaries? Two things result from this fact. I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powers to be itself 5/590

a Power. II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their 6/590

aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself. To 7/590

this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London, and sketched the following Manifesto, to be published 8/590

in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages. I. BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS The history of 9/590

all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and 10/590

serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried 11/590

on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution 12/590

of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost 13/590

everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome 14/590

we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, 15/590

serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations. The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from 16/590

the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions 17/590

of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, 18/590

this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into 19/590

two great hostile camps, into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. From the serfs 20/590

of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the 21/590

bourgeoisie were developed. The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. 22/590

The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of 23/590

exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and 24/590

thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development. The feudal system of industry, 25/590

under which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the 26/590

new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle 27/590

class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single 28/590

workshop. Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, 29/590

steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, 30/590

the place of the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern 31/590

bourgeois. Modern industry has established the world-market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market 32/590

has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its time, 33/590

reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same 34/590

proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from 35/590

the Middle Ages. We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of 36/590

a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange. Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was 37/590

accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, 38/590

an armed and self-governing association in the mediaeval commune; here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany), 39/590

there taxable "third estate" of the monarchy (as in France), afterwards, in the period of manufacture proper, serving either 40/590

the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, corner-stone of the great 41/590

monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world-market, 42/590

conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern State is 43/590

but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most 44/590

revolutionary part. The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic 45/590

relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and has left 46/590

remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment." It has drowned the 47/590

most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of 48/590

egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless and indefeasible 49/590

chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom--Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by 50/590

religious and political illusions, naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo 51/590

every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the 52/590

priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental 53/590

veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation. The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that 54/590

the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists so much admire, found its fitting complement in the 55/590

most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders 56/590

far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade 57/590

all former Exoduses of nations and crusades. The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments 58/590

of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the 59/590

old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial 60/590

classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty 61/590

and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train 62/590

of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can 63/590

ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober 64/590

senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its 65/590

products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish 66/590

connexions everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given a cosmopolitan character 67/590

to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet 68/590

of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily 69/590

being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised 70/590

nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries 71/590

whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied 72/590

by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and 73/590

climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, 74/590

universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations 75/590

of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, 76/590

and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature. The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement 77/590

of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, 78/590

nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese 79/590

walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, 80/590

on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation 81/590

into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. The bourgeoisie 82/590

has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population 83/590

as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just 84/590

as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the 85/590

civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West. The bourgeoisie keeps more and more 86/590

doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated 87/590

production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. 88/590

Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments and systems of taxation, became 89/590

lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier and one 90/590

customs-tariff. The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal 91/590

productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application 92/590

of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents 93/590

for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground--what earlier century had even a presentiment 94/590

that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour? We see then: the means of production and of exchange, 95/590

on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development 96/590

of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal 97/590

organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible 98/590

with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst 99/590

asunder. Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted to it, and 100/590

by the economical and political sway of the bourgeois class. A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern 101/590

bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic 102/590

means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world 103/590

whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of 104/590

the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are 105/590

the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that 106/590

by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society. 107/590

In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are 108/590

periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an 109/590

absurdity--the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; 110/590

it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry 111/590

and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too 112/590

much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development 113/590

of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they 114/590

are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger 115/590

the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created 116/590

by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand inforced destruction of a mass of productive 117/590

forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to 118/590

say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented. 119/590

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. But 120/590

not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who 121/590

are to wield those weapons--the modern working class--the proletarians. In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, 122/590

is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed--a class of labourers, who 123/590

live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, 124/590

who must sell themselves piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed 125/590

to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. Owing to the extensive use of machinery 126/590

and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for 127/590

the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired 128/590

knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means 129/590

of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, 130/590

and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion therefore, as the repulsiveness of the 131/590

work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in 132/590

the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by increase of the 133/590

work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of the machinery, etc. Modern industry has converted the little workshop 134/590

of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, 135/590

are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy 136/590

of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily 137/590

and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. 138/590

The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering 139/590

it is. The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes 140/590

developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive 141/590

social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their 142/590

age and sex. No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his 143/590

wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, 144/590

etc. The lower strata of the middle class--the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen 145/590

and peasants--all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for 146/590

the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because 147/590

their specialized skill is rendered worthless by the new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from 148/590

all classes of the population. The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle 149/590

with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, 150/590

then by the operatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They 151/590

direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; 152/590

they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they 153/590

seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages. At this stage the labourers still form 154/590

an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite 155/590

to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, 156/590

which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover 157/590

yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies 158/590

of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie. 159/590

Thus the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory 160/590

for the bourgeoisie. But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated 161/590

in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within 162/590

the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, 163/590

and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting 164/590

commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more 165/590

rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual 166/590

bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations 167/590

(Trades Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations 168/590

in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there the contest breaks out into riots. 169/590

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate 170/590

result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication 171/590

that are created by modern industry and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It 172/590

was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national 173/590

struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers 174/590

of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve 175/590

in a few years. This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually 176/590

being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. 177/590

It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the 178/590

bourgeoisie itself. Thus the ten-hours' bill in England was carried. Altogether collisions between the classes of the 179/590

old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in 180/590

a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests 181/590

have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these 182/590

battles it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for its help, and thus, to drag it into the political 183/590

arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own instruments of political and general education, 184/590

in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie. Further, as we have already seen, 185/590

entire sections of the ruling classes are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least 186/590

threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and 187/590

progress. Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the process of dissolution going on within 188/590

the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section 189/590

of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. 190/590

Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the 191/590

bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves 192/590

to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole. Of all the classes that stand face to face 193/590

with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear 194/590

in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product. The lower middle class, the small 195/590

manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction 196/590

their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they 197/590

are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only 198/590

in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, 199/590

they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat. The "dangerous class," the social scum, 200/590

that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement 201/590

by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary 202/590

intrigue. In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian 203/590

is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family-relations; 204/590

modern industrial labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has 205/590

stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind 206/590

which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests. All the preceding classes that got the upper hand, sought to fortify 207/590

their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot 208/590

become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby 209/590

also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission 210/590

is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property. All previous historical movements were 211/590

movements of minorities, or in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent 212/590

movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our 213/590

present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being 214/590

sprung into the air. Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first 215/590

a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie. 216/590

In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, 217/590

raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow 218/590

of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat. Hitherto, every form of society has been based, 219/590

as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain 220/590

conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period 221/590

of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, 222/590

managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry, 223/590

sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops 224/590

more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the 225/590

ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule 226/590

because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink 227/590

into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, 228/590

in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society. The essential condition for the existence, and for 229/590

the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. 230/590

Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter 231/590

is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due 232/590

to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the 233/590

bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. 234/590

Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable. II. PROLETARIANS AND COMMUNISTS In what relation 235/590

do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class 236/590

parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian 237/590

principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement. The Communists are distinguished from the 238/590

other working-class parties by this only: (1) In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, 239/590

they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 240/590

(2) In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, 241/590

they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole. The Communists, therefore, are on the one 242/590

hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which 243/590

pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage 244/590

of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement. 245/590

The immediate aim of the Communist is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat 246/590

into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat. The theoretical conclusions 247/590

of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be 248/590

universal reformer. They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, 249/590

from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive 250/590

feature of Communism. All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent 251/590

upon the change in historical conditions. The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois 252/590

property. The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois 253/590

property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and 254/590

appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few. In this sense, 255/590

the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. We Communists have 256/590

been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man's own labour, 257/590

which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence. Hard-won, self-acquired, 258/590

self-earned property! Do you mean the property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded 259/590

the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed 260/590

it, and is still destroying it daily. Or do you mean modern bourgeois private property? But does wage-labour create any 261/590

property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and 262/590

which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, 263/590

in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage-labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism. 264/590

To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective 265/590

product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members 266/590

of society, can it be set in motion. Capital is, therefore, not a personal, it is a social power. When, therefore, capital 267/590

is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed 268/590

into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class-character. Let 269/590

us now take wage-labour. The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence, 270/590

which is absolutely requisite in bare existence as a labourer. What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means 271/590

of his labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this personal 272/590

appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, 273/590

and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with, is the miserable 274/590

character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only 275/590

in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it. In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase 276/590

accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence 277/590

of the labourer. In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates 278/590

the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has 279/590

no individuality. And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and 280/590

freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly 281/590

aimed at. By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying. 282/590

But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, 283/590

and all the other "brave words" of our bourgeoisie about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with 284/590

restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic 285/590

abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself. You are horrified 286/590

at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away 287/590

with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those 288/590

nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for 289/590

whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society. In one word, you reproach us 290/590

with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend. From the moment when labour can 291/590

no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment 292/590

when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say individuality 293/590

vanishes. You must, therefore, confess that by "individual" you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class 294/590

owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible. Communism deprives no man of 295/590

the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour 296/590

of others by means of such appropriation. It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property all work will 297/590

cease, and universal laziness will overtake us. According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the 298/590

dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not 299/590

work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour 300/590

when there is no longer any capital. All objections urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating material 301/590

products, have, in the same way, been urged against the Communistic modes of producing and appropriating intellectual products. 302/590

Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance 303/590

of class culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture. That culture, the loss of which he laments, 304/590

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 305/590

our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, etc. Your 306/590

very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence 307/590

is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will, whose essential character and direction are determined by 308/590

the economical conditions of existence of your class. The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal 309/590

laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property--historical 310/590

relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production--this misconception you share with every ruling class that 311/590

has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, 312/590

you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property. Abolition of the family! Even 313/590

the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists. On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois 314/590

family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. 315/590

But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public 316/590

prostitution. The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish 317/590

with the vanishing of capital. Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To 318/590

this crime we plead guilty. But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education 319/590

by social. And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, 320/590

by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention 321/590

of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the 322/590

influence of the ruling class. The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of 323/590

parent and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all family ties among the 324/590

proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour. 325/590

But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the whole bourgeoisie in chorus. The bourgeois sees in 326/590

his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, 327/590

naturally, can come to no other conclusion than that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women. He 328/590

has not even a suspicion that the real point is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production. 329/590

For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, 330/590

they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community 331/590

of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial. Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of 332/590

their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's 333/590

wives. Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly 334/590

be reproached with, is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised 335/590

community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with 336/590

it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private. The 337/590

Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality. The working men have no country. 338/590

We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, 339/590

must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though 340/590

not in the bourgeois sense of the word. National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, 341/590

owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world-market, to uniformity in the mode of production 342/590

and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto. The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. 343/590

United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat. 344/590

In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another 345/590

will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of 346/590

one nation to another will come to an end. The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical, and, generally, 347/590

from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination. Does it require deep intuition to comprehend 348/590

that man's ideas, views and conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of 349/590

his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life? What else does the history of ideas prove, than 350/590

that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of 351/590

each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class. When people speak of ideas that revolutionise society, they do but 352/590

express the fact, that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of 353/590

the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence. When the ancient world was in its 354/590

last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to 355/590

rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious 356/590

liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge. 357/590

"Undoubtedly," it will be said, "religious, moral, philosophical and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of 358/590

historical development. But religion, morality philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change." 359/590

"There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc. that are common to all states of society. But Communism 360/590

abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore 361/590

acts in contradiction to all past historical experience." What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all 362/590

past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different 363/590

epochs. But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part 364/590

of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety 365/590

it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance 366/590

of class antagonisms. The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder 367/590

that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas. But let us have done with the bourgeois 368/590

objections to Communism. We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the 369/590

proletariat to the position of ruling as to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy 370/590

to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the 371/590

State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly 372/590

as possible. Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of 373/590

property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient 374/590

and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social 375/590

order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production. These measures will of course 376/590

be different in different countries. Nevertheless in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally 377/590

applicable. 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy 378/590

progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all right of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all 379/590

emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State 380/590

capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands 381/590

of the State. 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation 382/590

of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 8. Equal liability 383/590

of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. 9. Combination of agriculture with 384/590

manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution 385/590

of the population over the country. 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's 386/590

factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c., &c. When, in the course 387/590

of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association 388/590

of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely 389/590

the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is 390/590

compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the 391/590

ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, 392/590

have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished 393/590

its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have 394/590

an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. III. SOCIALIST 395/590

AND COMMUNIST LITERATURE 1. REACTIONARY SOCIALISM A. Feudal Socialism Owing to their historical position, it became 396/590

the vocation of the aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against modern bourgeois society. In the French 397/590

revolution of July 1830, and in the English reform agitation, these aristocracies again succumbed to the hateful upstart. 398/590

Thenceforth, a serious political contest was altogether out of the question. A literary battle alone remained possible. 399/590

But even in the domain of literature the old cries of the restoration period had become impossible. In order to arouse 400/590

sympathy, the aristocracy were obliged to lose sight, apparently, of their own interests, and to formulate their indictment 401/590

against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus the aristocracy took their revenge by 402/590

singing lampoons on their new master, and whispering in his ears sinister prophecies of coming catastrophe. In this way 403/590

arose Feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its 404/590

bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart's core; but always ludicrous in its effect, 405/590

through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history. The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, 406/590

waved the proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters 407/590

the old feudal coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter. One section of the French Legitimists and 408/590

"Young England" exhibited this spectacle. In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to that of the 409/590

bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they exploited under circumstances and conditions that were quite different, and 410/590

that are now antiquated. In showing that, under their rule, the modern proletariat never existed, they forget that the 411/590

modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of their own form of society. For the rest, so little do they conceal the 412/590

reactionary character of their criticism that their chief accusation against the bourgeoisie amounts to this, that under 413/590

the bourgeois regime a class is being developed, which is destined to cut up root and branch the old order of society. 414/590

What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it creates a proletariat, as that it creates a revolutionary 415/590

proletariat. In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive measures against the working class; and in ordinary 416/590

life, despite their high falutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped from the tree of industry, and 417/590

to barter truth, love, and honour for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar, and potato spirits. As the parson has ever gone 418/590

hand in hand with the landlord, so has Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism. Nothing is easier than to give Christian 419/590

asceticism a Socialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the State? 420/590

Has it not preached in the place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and 421/590

Mother Church? Christian Socialism is but the holy, water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat. 422/590

B. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by the bourgeoisie, not the 423/590

only class whose conditions of existence pined and perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society. The mediaeval 424/590

burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those countries which are 425/590

but little developed, industrially and commercially, these two classes still vegetate side by side with the rising bourgeoisie. 426/590

In countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating 427/590

between proletariat and bourgeoisie and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The individual 428/590

members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition, and, 429/590

as modern industry develops, they even see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent 430/590

section of modern society, to be replaced, in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen. 431/590

In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more than half of the population, it was natural that writers 432/590

who sided with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, should use, in their criticism of the bourgeois regime, the standard 433/590

of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intermediate classes should take up the cudgels for 434/590

the working class. Thus arose petty-bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi was the head of this school, not only in France but 435/590

also in England. This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in the conditions of modern 436/590

production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects 437/590

of machinery and division of labour; the concentration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it 438/590

pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, 439/590

the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution 440/590

of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities. In its positive aims, however, this form of 441/590

Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, 442/590

and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange, within the framework of the old property 443/590

relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian. 444/590

Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture, patriarchal relations in agriculture. Ultimately, when stubborn 445/590

historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a miserable fit 446/590

of the blues. C. German, or "True," Socialism The Socialist and Communist literature of France, a literature that originated 447/590

under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and that was the expression of the struggle against this power, was introduced 448/590

into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie, in that country, had just begun its contest with feudal absolutism. German 449/590

philosophers, would-be philosophers, and beaux esprits, eagerly seized on this literature, only forgetting, that when these 450/590

writings immigrated from France into Germany, French social conditions had not immigrated along with them. In contact with 451/590

German social conditions, this French literature lost all its immediate practical significance, and assumed a purely literary 452/590

aspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of the eighteenth century, the demands of the first French Revolution were nothing 453/590

more than the demands of "Practical Reason" in general, and the utterance of the will of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie 454/590

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 455/590

the German literate consisted solely in bringing the new French ideas into harmony with their ancient philosophical conscience, 456/590

or rather, in annexing the French ideas without deserting their own philosophic point of view. This annexation took place 457/590

in the same way in which a foreign language is appropriated, namely, by translation. It is well known how the monks wrote 458/590

silly lives of Catholic Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom had been written. 459/590

The German literate reversed this process with the profane French literature. They wrote their philosophical nonsense 460/590

beneath the French original. For instance, beneath the French criticism of the economic functions of money, they wrote "Alienation 461/590

of Humanity," and beneath the French criticism of the bourgeois State they wrote "dethronement of the Category of the General," 462/590

and so forth. The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of the French historical criticisms they dubbed 463/590

"Philosophy of Action," "True Socialism," "German Science of Socialism," "Philosophical Foundation of Socialism," and so 464/590

on. The French Socialist and Communist literature was thus completely emasculated. And, since it ceased in the hands of 465/590

the German to express the struggle of one class with the other, he felt conscious of having overcome "French one-sidedness" 466/590

and of representing, not true requirements, but the requirements of truth; not the interests of the proletariat, but the 467/590

interests of Human Nature, of Man in general, who belongs to no class, has no reality, who exists only in the misty realm 468/590

of philosophical fantasy. This German Socialism, which took its schoolboy task so seriously and solemnly, and extolled 469/590

its poor stock-in-trade in such mountebank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic innocence. The fight of the German, 470/590

and especially, of the Prussian bourgeoisie, against feudal aristocracy and absolute monarchy, in other words, the liberal 471/590

movement, became more earnest. By this, the long wished-for opportunity was offered to "True" Socialism of confronting 472/590

the political movement with the Socialist demands, of hurling the traditional anathemas against liberalism, against representative 473/590

government, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and 474/590

equality, and of preaching to the masses that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this bourgeois movement. 475/590

German Socialism forgot, in the nick of time, that the French criticism, whose silly echo it was, presupposed the existence 476/590

of modern bourgeois society, with its corresponding economic conditions of existence, and the political constitution adapted 477/590

thereto, the very things whose attainment was the object of the pending struggle in Germany. To the absolute governments, 478/590

with their following of parsons, professors, country squires and officials, it served as a welcome scarecrow against the 479/590

threatening bourgeoisie. It was a sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings and bullets with which these same governments, 480/590

just at that time, dosed the German working-class risings. While this "True" Socialism thus served the governments as a 481/590

weapon for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, directly represented a reactionary interest, the interest 482/590

of the German Philistines. In Germany the petty-bourgeois class, a relic of the sixteenth century, and since then constantly 483/590

cropping up again under various forms, is the real social basis of the existing state of things. To preserve this class 484/590

is to preserve the existing state of things in Germany. The industrial and political supremacy of the bourgeoisie threatens 485/590

it with certain destruction; on the one hand, from the concentration of capital; on the other, from the rise of a revolutionary 486/590

proletariat. "True" Socialism appeared to kill these two birds with one stone. It spread like an epidemic. The robe of 487/590

speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric, steeped in the dew of sickly sentiment, this transcendental robe 488/590

in which the German Socialists wrapped their sorry "eternal truths," all skin and bone, served to wonderfully increase the 489/590

sale of their goods amongst such a public. And on its part, German Socialism recognised, more and more, its own calling 490/590

as the bombastic representative of the petty-bourgeois Philistine. It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, 491/590

and the German petty Philistine to be the typical man. To every villainous meanness of this model man it gave a hidden, 492/590

higher, Socialistic interpretation, the exact contrary of its real character. It went to the extreme length of directly 493/590

opposing the "brutally destructive" tendency of Communism, and of proclaiming its supreme and impartial contempt of all 494/590

class struggles. With very few exceptions, all the so-called Socialist and Communist publications that now (1847) circulate 495/590

in Germany belong to the domain of this foul and enervating literature. 2. CONSERVATIVE, OR BOURGEOIS, SOCIALISM A part 496/590

of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances, in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois 497/590

society. To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, 498/590

organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner 499/590

reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of Socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems. We may 500/590

cite Proudhon's Philosophie de la Misere as an example of this form. The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages 501/590

of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing 502/590

state of society minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. 503/590

The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this 504/590

comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, 505/590

and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should 506/590

remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie. A 507/590

second and more practical, but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement 508/590

in the eyes of the working class, by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions 509/590

of existence, in economic relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, 510/590

this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition 511/590

that can be effected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations; 512/590

reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, 513/590

and simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois government. Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression, when, and 514/590

only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech. Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for 515/590

the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only 516/590

seriously meant word of bourgeois Socialism. It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois--for the benefit 517/590

of the working class. 3. CRITICAL-UTOPIAN SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM We do not here refer to that literature which, in 518/590

every great modern revolution, has always given voice to the demands of the proletariat, such as the writings of Babeuf 519/590

and others. The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, made in times of universal excitement, 520/590

when feudal society was being overthrown, these attempts necessarily failed, owing to the then undeveloped state of the 521/590

proletariat, as well as to the absence of the economic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, 522/590

and could be produced by the impending bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that accompanied these first 523/590

movements of the proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character. It inculcated universal asceticism and social levelling 524/590

in its crudest form. The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen and others, 525/590

spring into existence in the early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie 526/590

(see Section 1. Bourgeois and Proletarians). The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms, as well 527/590

as the action of the decomposing elements, in the prevailing form of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, 528/590

offers to them the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any independent political movement. Since 529/590

the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the development of industry, the economic situation, as they find 530/590

it, does not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search 531/590

after a new social science, after new social laws, that are to create these conditions. Historical action is to yield to 532/590

their personal inventive action, historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones, and the gradual, spontaneous 533/590

class-organisation of the proletariat to the organisation of society specially contrived by these inventors. Future history 534/590

resolves itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the practical carrying out of their social plans. In the formation 535/590

of their plans they are conscious of caring chiefly for the interests of the working class, as being the most suffering 536/590

class. Only from the point of view of being the most suffering class does the proletariat exist for them. The undeveloped 537/590

state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far 538/590

superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society, even that of the most 539/590

favoured. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, without distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the 540/590

ruling class. For how can people, when once they understand their system, fail to see in it the best possible plan of the 541/590

best possible state of society? Hence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary, action; they wish to 542/590

attain their ends by peaceful means, and endeavour, by small experiments, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force 543/590

of example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel. Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when 544/590

the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a fantastic conception of its own position correspond with 545/590

the first instinctive yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction of society. But these Socialist and Communist 546/590

publications contain also a critical element. They attack every principle of existing society. Hence they are full of the 547/590

most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the working class. The practical measures proposed in them--such as the 548/590

abolition of the distinction between town and country, of the family, of the carrying on of industries for the account of 549/590

private individuals, and of the wage system, the proclamation of social harmony, the conversion of the functions of the 550/590

State into a mere superintendence of production, all these proposals, point solely to the disappearance of class antagonisms 551/590

which were, at that time, only just cropping up, and which, in these publications, are recognised in their earliest, indistinct 552/590

and undefined forms only. These proposals, therefore, are of a purely Utopian character. The significance of Critical-Utopian 553/590

Socialism and Communism bears an inverse relation to historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle 554/590

develops and takes definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all 555/590

practical value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of these systems were, in many respects, 556/590

revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary sects. They hold fast by the original views 557/590

of their masters, in opposition to the progressive historical development of the proletariat. They, therefore, endeavour, 558/590

and that consistently, to deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dream of experimental 559/590

realisation of their social Utopias, of founding isolated "phalansteres," of establishing "Home Colonies," of setting up 560/590

a "Little Icaria"--duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem--and to realise all these castles in the air, they are compelled 561/590

to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois. By degrees they sink into the category of the reactionary conservative 562/590

Socialists depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic pedantry, and by their fanatical and superstitious 563/590

belief in the miraculous effects of their social science. They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the 564/590

part of the working class; such action, according to them, can only result from blind unbelief in the new Gospel. The Owenites 565/590

in England, and the Fourierists in France, respectively, oppose the Chartists and the Reformistes. IV. POSITION OF THE 566/590

COMMUNISTS IN RELATION TO THE VARIOUS EXISTING OPPOSITION PARTIES Section II has made clear the relations of the Communists 567/590

to the existing working-class parties, such as the Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America. The Communists 568/590

fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but 569/590

in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement. In France the Communists 570/590

ally themselves with the Social-Democrats, against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right 571/590

to take up a critical position in regard to phrases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution. 572/590

In Switzerland they support the Radicals, without losing sight of the fact that this party consists of antagonistic elements, 573/590

partly of Democratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois. In Poland they support the party that 574/590

insists on an agrarian revolution as the prime condition for national emancipation, that party which fomented the insurrection 575/590

of Cracow in 1846. In Germany they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way, against the absolute 576/590

monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie. But they never cease, for a single instant, to instil into 577/590

the working class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order 578/590

that the German workers may straightaway use, as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions 579/590

that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy, and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary 580/590

classes in Germany, the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin. The Communists turn their attention 581/590

chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more 582/590

advanced conditions of European civilisation, and with a much more developed proletariat, than that of England was in the 583/590

seventeenth, and of France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude 584/590

to an immediately following proletarian revolution. In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement 585/590

against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements they bring to the front, as the leading 586/590

question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time. Finally, they labour everywhere 587/590

for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries. The Communists disdain to conceal their views and 588/590

aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. 589/590

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!