The Communist Manifesto
by
Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels,
1848
Translated from
German
to English by Samuel Moore (1888)
(¶) Paragraph numbers added to assist referencing
A spectre is haunting Europe
Chapter 1. Bourgeois and Proletarians
Chapter 2. Proletarians and Communists
Chapter 3. 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
Chapter 4. Position of the Communists in Relation
to the Various Existing Opposition Parties
German
(¶1)
A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism. All the powers of
old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope
and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police spies.
(¶2)
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic
by its opponents in power? Where the opposition that has not hurled back
the branding reproach of Communism against the more advanced opposition
parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
(¶3)
Two things result from this fact:
(¶4)
To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London
and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English,
French, German, Italian, Flemish, and Danish languages.
CHAPTER 1. BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS *
* By
bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of
the
means of social production, and employers of wage labour; by
proletariat
the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of
their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live.
[1888 note]
(¶1.1)
The history of all hitherto existing society * is the history of
class
struggles.
* That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the
social organisation existing previous to recorded history, was all but
unknown. Since then
Haxthausen discovered common ownership of land in
Russia;
Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all
Teutonic races started in history, and, by and by, village communities were
found to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from
India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this primitive communistic
society was laid bare, in its typical form, by
Morgan's crowning discovery
of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the
dissolution of these primaeval communities society begins to be
differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes. I have
attempted to retrace this process of dissolution in
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
[1888 note]
|
See Principles of
Communism on
"What working classes were there before the industrial revolution?" |
(¶1.2) Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-masters * 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 reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
* Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a
master within, not ahead of a guild. [1888 note]
(¶1.3)
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.
(¶1.4)
The modern
bourgeois
society
that has sprouted from the ruins of
feudal
society
has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but
established
new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in
place
of the old ones.
(¶1.5)
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.
(¶1.6)
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.
(¶1.7)
The
discovery of America, the
rounding of the
Cape, opened up fresh
ground
for the rising bourgeoisie. The
East Indian and Chinese markets, the
colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the
means
of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to
commerce, to
navigation,
to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the
revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid
development.
(¶1.8)
The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was
monopolized 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 aside 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.
(¶1.9)
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even
manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon,
steam and machinery
revolutionized 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.
(¶1.10)
Modern industry has established the world market, for which the
discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an
immense development
to
commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development
has, in
its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as
industry, commerce, navigation,
railways extended,
in the same
proportion
the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the
background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.
(¶1.11)
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.
(¶1.12)
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, it became an armed and self-governing
association in the medieval 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.
* "Commune" was the name taken in France by the nascent towns even
before
they had conquered from their feudal lords and masters local
self-government and political rights as the "Third Estate." Generally
speaking, for the economic development of the bourgeoisie, England is
here
taken as the typical country; for its political development, France. [1888
note]
(¶1.13)
The bourgeoisie has played a most revolutionary role in history.
(¶1.14)
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
no other bond 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 indefeasible chartered
freedoms has set up that single, unconscionable freedom - Free Trade. In
one
word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it
has
substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
(¶1.15)
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto
honoured
and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the
lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage
labourers.
(¶1.16)
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and
has
reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.
(¶1.17)
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal
display
of vigour in the Middle Ages which reactionaries 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 migrations
of
nations and crusades.
(¶1.18)
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing 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 revolutionizing
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 in
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.
(¶1.19)
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 connections everywhere.
(¶1.20)
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 reactionaries 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 civilized 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
production 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.
(¶1.21)
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of
production,
by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all nations,
even the most
barbarian, 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 a word, it creates a world after its own image.
(¶1.22)
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.
(¶1.23)
More and more the bourgeoisie keeps doing away with the scattered state
of
the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has
agglomerated population, centralized means of production, and has
concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this
was
political centralization. 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.
(¶1.24)
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, canalization 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?
(¶1.25)
We see, then, that the means of production and of exchange which served
as
the foundation for the growth of the bourgeoisie 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 a 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.
(¶1.26)
Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and
political constitution adapted to it, and by the economic and political
sway of the bourgeois class.
(¶1.27)
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 the existence of the
entire
bourgeois society on trial, each time more threateningly. 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 no sooner do they
overcome these fetters than 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 by
enforced 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.
(¶1.28)
The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground
are
now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.
(¶1.29)
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.
(¶1.30)
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 piecemeal, 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.
(¶1.31)
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.
(¶1.32)
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 overseer, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois
manufacturer
himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end
and
aim, the more petty, the more hateful, and the more embittering it is.
(¶1.33)
The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour - in
other words, the more modern industry develops - 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.
(¶1.34)
No sooner has the labourer received his wages in cash, for the moment
escaping exploitation by the manufacturer, than he is set upon by the
other
portions of the bourgeoisie - the landlord, the shopkeeper, the
pawnbroker,
etc.
(¶1.35)
The lower
strata of the middle class - the small tradespeople,
shopkeepers,
and 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 new methods of
production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the
population.
(¶1.36)
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 machinery to pieces, they set factories ablaze, they
seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the
Middle
Ages.
(¶1.37)
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, still able to do so for a
time. 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.
(¶1.38)
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 equalized, 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 (trade unions)
against the bourgeoisie; 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.
(¶1.39)
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 furthered by the improved
means of communication which are created by modern industry, and which
place the workers of different localities in contact with one another.
It
was just this contact that was needed to centralize 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,
which the
burghers of the
Middle Ages, with their miserable highways,
required centuries to attain, the modern proletarians, thanks to
railways
achieve in a few years.
(¶1.40)
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 Hour bill in England was carried.
(¶1.41)
Altogether, collisions between the classes of the old society further the
course of development of the proletariat in many ways. 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 elements of political and general
education; in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for
fighting the bourgeoisie.
(¶1.42)
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.
(¶1.43)
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 old 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.
(¶1.44)
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.
(¶1.45)
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 adopt that of the
proletariat.
(¶1.46)
The "dangerous class," the social scum (Lumpenproletariat), 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.
(¶1.47)
The social conditions of the old society no longer exist for the
proletariat. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his
wife
and children has no longer anything in common with bourgeois family
relations; modern industrial labour, modern subjection to capital, the
same
in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of
every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion are to him
so
many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many
bourgeois interests.
(¶1.48)
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.
(¶1.49)
All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in
the
interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious,
independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the
immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest
stratum of our present
society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole
superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.
| Superincumbent strata: a layer of society that rests on the layers beneath. See Saint Simon and Owen |
(¶1.50)
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.
(¶1.51)
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.
(¶1.52)
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 labourer, 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 overriding
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.
(¶1.53)
The essential condition for the existence and 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
labourers. 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 are its own grave-diggers. Its
fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
German
CHAPTER 2. PROLETARIANS AND COMMUNISTS
(¶2.1)
In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?
(¶2.2)
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working
class
parties.
(¶2.3)
They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat
as
a whole.
(¶2.4)
They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own by which to
shape
and mould the proletarian movement.
(¶2.5)
The Communists are distinguished from the other working class parties by
this only:
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.
(¶2.6)
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.
(¶2.7)
The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the other
proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class,
overthrow of bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the
proletariat.
(¶2.8)
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.
(¶2.9)
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.
(¶2.10)
All property relations in the past have continually been subject to
historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.
(¶2.11)
The
French
Revolution
, for example, abolished feudal property in favour
of
bourgeois property.
(¶2.12)
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property
generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern
bourgeois
private property's 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.
(¶2.13)
In this sense the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the
single sentence: abolition of private property.
(¶2.14)
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.
(¶2.15)
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.
(¶2.16)
Or do you mean modern bourgeois private property?
(¶2.17)
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.
(¶2.18)
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.
(¶2.19)
Capital is, therefore, not a personal, it is a social, power.
(¶2.20)
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.
(¶2.21)
Let us now take wage labour.
(¶2.22)
The average price of wage labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum
of
the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the
labourer
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 insofar
as
the interest of the ruling class requires it.
(¶2.23)
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.
(¶2.24)
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.
(¶2.25)
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.
(¶2.26)
By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of
production,
free trade, free selling and buying.
(¶2.27)
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
Communist abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions
of
production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.
(¶2.29)
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.
(¶2.30)
In a word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property.
Precisely so; that is just what we intend.
(¶2.31)
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.
(¶2.32)
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.
(¶2.33)
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.
(¶2.34)
It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property all
work
will cease and universal laziness will overtake us.
(¶2.35)
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: there can no
longer
be any wage labour when there is no longer any capital.
(¶2.36)
All objections urged against the Communist
mode of producing and
appropriating material products have in the same way been urged against
the
Communist 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.
(¶2.37)
That culture, the loss of which he laments, is for the enormous majority
a
mere training to act as a machine.
(¶2.38)
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 economic
conditions of existence of your class.
1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the
different countries they point out and bring to the front the common
interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality;
| See Principles of Communism |
(¶2.40) Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.
(¶2.41) 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. [See Engels 1845] But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
(¶2.42) The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
| See Mill and Taylor |
(¶2.44)
But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations when we
replace home education by social.
(¶2.45)
And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the
social
conditions under which you educate, by the intervention of society,
direct
or indirect, 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.
(¶2.46)
The bourgeois claptrap 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.
| See Principles of Communism |
(¶2.47) But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the whole bourgeoisie in chorus.
(¶2.48)
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.
(¶2.49)
He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away
with
the status of women as mere instruments of production.
(¶2.50)
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.
(¶2.51)
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.
(¶2.52)
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 legalized, 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.
(¶2.53)
The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries
and nationality.
(¶2.54)
The workingmen 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.
(¶2.55)
National differences and antagonisms between peoples are vanishing
gradually from day to day, 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.
(¶2.56)
The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster.
United action, of the leading civilized countries at least, is one of
the
first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.
(¶2.57)
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.
(¶2.58)
The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical,
and,
generally, from an ideological standpoint are not deserving of serious
examination.
(¶2.59)
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?
(¶2.60)
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.
(¶2.61)
When people speak of ideas that revolutionize 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.
(¶2.62)
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.
(¶2.63)
"Undoubtedly," it will be said, "religion, 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."
(¶2.64)
"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."
(¶2.65)
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.
(¶2.66)
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.
(¶2.67)
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.
(¶2.68)
But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.
(¶2.69)
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 class, to
establish democracy.
(¶2.70)
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest by degrees all
capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize 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.
(¶2.71)
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
revolutionizing
the mode of production.
(¶2.72)
These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
(¶2.73)
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. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state by means of a
national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization 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 obligation of all to work. 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
child
factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with
industrial production, etc.
(¶2.74)
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.
(¶2.75)
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.
CHAPTER 3. SOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST LITERATURE
1. Reactionary Socialism
a. Feudal Socialism
(¶3.1a.1)
Owing to their historical position it became the vocation of the
aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against modern
bourgeois society. In the
French revolution of July, 1830, and in the
English reform agitation these aristocracies again succumbed to
the
hateful
upstart. Thenceforth, a serious political struggle 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.
* Not the
English Restoration, 1660 to 1689, but the
French Restoration,
1814 to 1830. [1888 note]
(¶3.1a.2)
In order to arouse sympathy the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight,
apparently, of its own interests and to formulate its indictment
against
the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone.
Thus
the aristocracy took its revenge by singing lampoons against its new
master, and whispering in his ears sinister prophecies of coming
catastrophe.
(¶3.1a.3)
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.
(¶3.1a.4)
The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the
proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, as often as
it
joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms and
deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.
(¶3.1a.5)
One section of the French Legitimists, and "Young England," exhibited
this
spectacle.
(¶3.1a.6)
In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different from 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.
(¶3.1a.7)
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.
(¶3.1a.8)
What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it creates a
proletariat as that it creates a revolutionary proletariat.
(¶3.1a.9)
In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive measures
against the working class; and in ordinary life, despite their
highfalutin
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. *
* This applies chiefly to Germany, where the landed aristocracy and
squirearchy have large portions of their estates cultivated for their
own
account by stewards, and are, moreover, extensive beetroot-sugar
manufacturers and distillers of potato spirits. The wealthier British
aristocrats are as yet rather above that; but they, too, know how to
make
up for declining rents by lending their names to floaters of more or
less
shady joint-stock companies. [1888 note]
(¶3.1a.10)
As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has
Clerical
Socialism with Feudal Socialism.
(¶3.1a.11)
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
(¶3.1b.1)
The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by the
bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of existence pined and
perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society. The medieval
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.
(¶3.1b.2)
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.
(¶3.1b.3)
In countries like France where the peasants constitute far more than
half
of the population it was natural that writers who sided with the
proletariat against the bourgeoisie should use, in their criticism of
the
bourgeois regime, the standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and
from
the standpoint of these intermediate classes should take up the cudgels
for
the working class. Thus arose petty bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi was
the
head of this school, not only in France but also in England.
(¶3.1b.4)
This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the
contradictions
in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical
apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous
effects of machinery and division of labour, the concentration of
capital and land in a few hands, over-production 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.
(¶3.1b.5)
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.
(¶3.1b.6)
Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal
relations
in agriculture.
(¶3.1b.7)
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
(¶3.1c.1)
The
Socialist and Communist literature of France, a literature that
originated under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power and that was the
expression of the struggle against this power, was introduced into Germany
at a time when the bourgeoisie in that country had just begun its contest
with feudal
absolutism.
(¶3.1c.2)
German philosophers, would-be philosophers, and men of letters eagerly
seized on this literature, only forgetting that when these writings
immigrated from France into Germany, French social conditions had not
immigrated along with them. In contact with German social conditions
this
French literature lost all its immediate practical significance, and
assumed a purely literary aspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of
the
18th 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
laws of pure will, of will as it was bound to be, of true human will
generally.
(¶3.1c.3)
The work of the German literati 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.
(¶3.1c.4)
This annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign language
is
appropriated, namely by translation.
(¶3.1c.5)
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 literati 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.
(¶3.1c.6)
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.
(¶3.1c.7)
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
phantasy.
(¶3.1c.8)
This German Socialism, which took its school-boy task so seriously and
solemnly, and extolled its poor stock-in-trade in such mountebank
fashion,
meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic innocence.
(¶3.1c.9)
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.
(¶3.1c.10)
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 Germany.
(¶3.1c.11)
To the absolute governments, with their following of parsons,
professors,
country squires and officials, it served as a welcome scarecrow against
the
threatening bourgeoisie.
(¶3.1c.12)
It was a sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings and bullets,
with
which these same governments, just at that time, dosed the risings of
the
German working class.
(¶3.1c.13)
While this "True" Socialism thus served the governments as a weapon for
fighting the German bourgeoisie it at the same time directly
represented a
reactionary interest, the interest of the German Philistines. In
Germany
the petty bourgeois class, a relic of the 16th century, and since then
constantly cropping up again under various forms the real social basis
of
the existing state of things.
(¶3.1c.14)
To preserve this class is to preserve the existing state of things in
Germany. The industrial and political supremacy of the bourgeoisie
threatens it with certain destruction - on the one hand, from the
concentration of capital; on the other, from the rise of a
revolutionary
proletariat. "True" Socialism appeared to kill these two birds with one
stone. It spread like an, epidemic.
(¶3.1c.15)
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 increase wonderfully the sale of their goods amongst
such a
public.
(¶3.1c.16)
And on its part, German Socialism recognized more and more its own
calling
as the bombastic representative of the petty bourgeois Philistine.
(¶3.1c.17)
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 his 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 Germany belong to the domain of this foul and
enervating literature.
2. Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism
(¶3.2.1)
A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in
order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.
(¶3.2.2)
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.
(¶3.2.3)
We may cite Proudhon's Philosophy of Poverty as an example of this form.
(¶3.2.4)
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.
(¶3.2.5)
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.
(¶3.2.6)
Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression when, and only when, it
becomes a mere figure of speech:
Index
Age and sex (gender) 1.33
Children 1.47 - 2.43 - 2.72, point 10
Class
1.1 -
1.3
Feudal Class
1.4 -
1.8 -
1.12 -
1.14 -
1.25 -
2.11 -
2.62 -
3.1a.10 -
3.1b.1 -
3.1c.1 -
3.3.1 -
Bourgeois
Class
1 -
1.4 -
1.12 -
1.13 -
1.18 -
1.25 -
1.28 -
1.35 -
1.36 -
1.41 -
1.44 -
1.47 -
Proletariat
1 -
1.5 -
1.29 -
1.35 -
1.38 -
1.41 -
1.44 -
1.47 -
1.51 -
2.1 -
2.5.4 -
2.69 -
2.74 -
3.1a.6 -
3.1b.2 -
3.1c.7 -
3.2.4 -
3.3.1 -
3.3.3 -
4.7 -
Clerical Socialism 3.1a.10
Community of women 2.46
Culture: paragraphs 2.36 following
division of labour: par. 1.8, par. 1.31 and par. 3.1b.4.
Family: 1 - 1.47 - 2.40 - 3.1b.4 - 3.3.11 - Also see children
Feudal Socialism
3.1a -
3.1a.10
[Lord Ashley is an
example of a
politician
and
theorist that Marx and Engels regarded as a feudal socialist. Note, also,
the classification "Clerical Socialist"]
history paragraphs 1.1 - 1.3 - 1.13 - 1.27 - 1.45 - 2.60 - 2.65 - 3.1a.3
history of ideas: paragraphs 2.59 following
home and school: paragraphs 2.44 and 2.73
modern industry: par.1.8 following, par.1.12, par.1.32,
money (cash) relations and human relations: par 1.14, par 1.16, par 3.1c.5,
natural superiors: par.1.14
Owen and Owenites: paragraphs 3.3.1 and 3.3.14
Politics 1.12 - 1.14 - 1.23 - 1.25 -
Prostitution: paragraphs 2.41 and 2.51
science: par 1.15
self-conscious movement: par.1.49,
self-interest: par.1.14,
social harmony: par 3.3.11,
State: paragraphs 1.12, 1.32, 2.70 and 2.73
town and country: par.1.22, par.2.73, par.3.3.11,
trade union combination, revolt and riot: par.1.38,
3. Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism
(¶3.3.1)
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.
(¶3.3.2)
The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends -
made
in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was being
overthrown -
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.
(¶3.3.3)
The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those of
St. 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).
(¶3.3.4)
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.
(¶3.3.5)
Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the
development of industry, the economic situation, as such Socialists
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.
(¶3.3.6)
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 an
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.
(¶3.3.7)
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.
(¶3.3.8)
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?
(¶3.3.9)
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.
(¶3.3.10)
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.
(¶3.3.11)
But these Socialist and Communist writings 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; abolition of the family, of
private
gain 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 recognized in their earliest, indistinct, and
undefined forms only. These proposals, therefore, are of a purely
utopian
character.
(¶3.3.12)
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 realization of their
social
utopias, of founding isolated phalansteres, of establishing "Home
Colonies," or setting up a "Little Icaria"*- pocket editions of the New
Jerusalem- and to realize 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.
* Phalansteres were socialist colonies on the plan of Charles Fourier;
Icaria was the name given by Cabet to his Utopia, and, later on, to his
American Communist colony. [1888 note]
(¶3.3.13)
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.
(¶3.3.14)
The Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France, respectively,
oppose the
Chartists
and the Reformistes.
CHAPTER 4. POSITION OF THE COMMUNISTS IN RELATION TO THE VARIOUS
EXISTING
OPPOSITION PARTIES
(¶4.1)
Section 2 has made clear the relations of the Communists to the
existing
working class parties, such as the
Chartists
in England and the
Agrarian
Reformers in America.
(¶4.2)
The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the
enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the
movement of the present they also represent and take care of the future
of
that movement. In France the Communists ally themselves with the
Social-Democrats* against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie,
reserving, however, the right to take up a critical position in regard
to
phrases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great
Revolution.
* The party then represented in Parliament by Ledru-Rollin, in
literature
by Louis Blanc, in the daily press by the Reforme. The name of
Social-Democracy signifies, with these its inventors, a section of the
Democratic or Republican Party more or less tinged with Socialism. [1888
note]
(¶4.3)
In Switzerland they support the Radicals without losing sight of the
fact
that this party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of Democratic
Socialists, in the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois.
(¶4.4)
In Poland they support the party that insists on an agrarian revolution
as
the prime condition for national emancipation, that party which
fomented
the insurrection of Cracow in 1846.
(¶4.5)
In Germany they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a
revolutionary way, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal
squirearchy,
and the petty bourgeoisie.
(¶4.6)
But they never cease for a single instant to instill into the working
class
the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between
bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the German workers may
straightway use, as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social
and
political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce
along
with its supremacy, and in order that, after the fall of the
reactionary
classes in Germany, the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may
immediately begin.
(¶4.7)
The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany because
that
country
is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out
under more advanced conditions of
European civilisation and with a much
more developed proletariat than what existed in
England in the 17th and
in
France in the 18th century, and because the bourgeois revolution
in
Germany
will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian
revolution.
(¶4.8)
In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement
against the existing social and political order of things.
(¶4.9)
In all these movements they bring to the front as the leading question
in
each case the property question, no matter what its degree of
development
at the time.
(¶4.10)
Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the
democratic parties of all countries.
(¶4.11)
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
Communist
revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.
They
have a world to win.
(¶4.12)
Workingmen of all countries, unite!
THE END
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The synthesis that Marx and Engels made in the Communist Manifesto to
the theories of their day was distinctive. They do not claim, however, to
have created the idea of class conflict as the motor of history. This is in
Saint Simon's
writings. There is a similar strong strand in
Owenite
theory.
Look closely at what they say - They are arguing that the Saint Simonians and the Owenites underestimate the development of the working class and its historic potential.
I am puzzled by their statement that Owenites opposed Chartism. Gamage, in his history of chartism takes Owen's theory as complementary to Chartism and says that in the August 1847 election "the renowned Robert Owen stood upon Chartist principles" for Marylebone.
I suspect that Marx and Engels are reflecting factional differences - perhaps between moral and physical force chartists, or possibly over the issue of which came first: political or economic change.