Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
(Marx: 1818-1883) & (Engels:
1820-1895
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. 1848 (published in German in
1848; first English translaon in 1850). The
Manifesto of the Communist Party.
Selections from "Manifesto
of the Communist Party"
A spectre is haunting
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?
Two things result from this fact.
I.
Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powers to be itself a Power.
II.
It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world,
publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale
of the Spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.
To this end, Communists of
various nationalities have assembled in
INTRODUCTION
1. Bourgeois and Proletarians
The history of all hitherto
existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and
plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and
oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on
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.
In the earlier epochs of history
we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various
orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have
patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the middle ages, feudal lords,
vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these
classes, again, subordinate gradations.
The modern bourgeois society that
has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class
antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression,
new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
Our epoch, the epoch of the
bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature; it has simplified
the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into
two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other:
Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
From the serfs of the Middle Ages
sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first
elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.
The discovery of
The feudal system of industry,
under which industrial production was monopolized by close guilds, now no
longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new market. The manufacturing
system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the
manufacturing middle class; division of labor between the different corporate
guilds vanished in the face of division of labor in each single workshop.
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 middleclass, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of whole
industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
Modern industry has established
the world-market, for which the discovery of
We see, therefore, how the modern
bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series
of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange....
The charges against Communism
made from a religious, a philosophical, and generally, from an ideological
standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.
Does it require deep intuition to
comprehend that man's ideas, views, and conceptions, in one word, man's
consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material
existence, in his social relations, and in his social life?
What else does the history of
ideas prove than that intellectual production changes in character in
proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have
ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
When people speak of ideas that
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.
When the ancient world was in its
last throes the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian
ideas succumbed in the eighteenth century to rationalist ideas, feudal society
fought its death-battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of
religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway
of free competition within the domain of knowledge.
"Undoubtedly," it will
be said, "religious, moral, philosophical, and judicial ideas have been
modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality,
philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change."
"There are, besides, eternal
truths, such as Freedom, Justice, and so forth, that are common to all states
of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truth, it abolishes all religion
and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore
acts in contradiction to all past historical experience."
What does this accusation reduce
itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of
class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different
epochs.
But whatever form they may have
taken, one fact is common to all past ages--namely, the exploitation of one
part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of
past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within
certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except
with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.
The Communist revolution is the
most radical rupture with traditional property-relations; no wonder that its
development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.But let us
have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.
We have seen above that the first
step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the
position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.
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,--that is,
of the proletariat organized as a ruling class; and to increase the total
productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this
cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of
property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures,
therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which in
the course of movement outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon
the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely
revolutionizing the mode of production.
These measures will of course be
different in different countries. Nevertheless in the most advanced countries
the following will be pretty generally applicable:
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all
rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. 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 liability of all to labor.
Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with
manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by a more equable
distribution of the population over
the country.
10. Free education for all children in public
schools. Abolition of children's factory labor
in its present form.
Combination of education with industrial production,
and so forth.
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 organization
power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its
contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to
organize itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the
ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of
production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the
conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of classes generally,
and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and
class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development
of each is the condition for the free development of all....
In short, the Communists everywhere support every
revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of
things.
In all these movements they bring to the front, as the
leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of
development at the time.
Finally, they labor everywhere for the union and agreement
of the democratic parties of all countries.
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They
openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow
of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a
Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.
They have a world to win.
Working men of all countries, unite!