Preview Excerpt:Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable. Manifesto of the Communist Partyby Karl Marx and Frederick Engels1848
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 Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and
German police-spies.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as
communistic by its opponents in power? Where is 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
London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the
English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.
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I -- BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS [1]
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The history of all hitherto existing society [2] is the history of class
struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master
[3] 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.
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,
plebians, 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
distinct feature: it has simplified 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 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.
The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was
monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer suffices 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 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
manufacturers 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 the whole industrial
armies, the modern bourgeois.
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 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.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a
long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of
production and of exchange.
Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a
corresponding political advance in that class. An oppressed class under
the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association
of medieval commune [4]: here independent urban republic (as in Italy
and Germany); there taxable "third estate" of the monarchy (as in
France); afterward, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving
either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise
against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies
in general -- the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of
Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the
modern representative state, exclusive political sway. The executive of
the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of
the whole bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to
all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn
asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural
superiors", and has left no other nexus between man and man than naked
self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned out the most
heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, 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.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto
honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the
physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into
its paid wage laborers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and
has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation.
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal
display of vigor 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 exoduses of nations and crusades.
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 into air, all that is holy is
profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his
real condition of life and his relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the
bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle
everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given
a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country.
To the great chagrin of 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.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of
production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws
all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap
prices of commodities are the heavy artillery 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 civilization
into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it
creates a world after its own image.
The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It
has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population
as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of
the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the
country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and
semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of
peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.
The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state
of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has
agglomerated population, centralized the 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.
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 or 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 labor?
We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose
foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal
society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of
production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society
produced and exchanged, the feudal organization of agriculture and
manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property
became no longer compatible with the already developed productive
forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they
were burst asunder.
Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and
political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political
sway of the bourgeois class.
A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois
society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property,
a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of
exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the
powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For
many a decade past, the history of industry and commerce is but the
history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern
conditions of production, against the property relations that are the
conditions for the existence of the bourgeois 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 its 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 civilization, too much means of subsistence,
too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the
disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the
conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too
powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon
as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of
bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The
conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth
created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises?
One 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.
The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground
are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to
itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those
weapons -- the modern working class -- the proletarians.
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the
same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed
-- a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work, and who
find work only so long as their labor increases capital. These
laborers, 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.
Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labor,
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 maintenance, and for the propagation of
his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labor, is
equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the
repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. What is more, in
proportion as the use of machinery and division of labor increases, in
the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by
prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted
in a given time, or by increased speed of machinery, etc.
Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal
master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of
laborers, crowded into the factory, are organized 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 overlooker, and, above all, in
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.
The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labor, in
other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the
labor 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 labor, more or less expensive to use, according
to their age and sex.
No sooner is the exploitation of the laborer by the manufacturer, so far
at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by
the other portion of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the
pawnbroker, etc.
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.
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 laborers, then by the work of people of a
factory, then by the operative of one trade, in one locality, against
the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their
attacks not against the bourgeois condition of production, but against
the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares
that compete with their labor, they smash to pieces machinery, they set
factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of
the workman of the Middle Ages.
At this stage, the laborers still form an incoherent mass scattered over
the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If
anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the
consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the
bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is
compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet,
for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians
do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the
remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial
bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical movement is
concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained
is a victory for the bourgeoisie.
But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases
in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength
grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and
conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more
equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of
labor, 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
increasing 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 bourgeois; they
club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found
permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these
occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.
Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real
fruit of their battles lie not in the immediate result, but in the ever
expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved
means of communication that are created by Modern Industry, and that
place the workers of different localities in contact with one another.
It was just this contact that was needed to 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, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their
miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks
to railways, achieve in a few years.
This organization of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently,
into a political party, is continually being upset again by the
competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again,
stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of
particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the
divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the Ten-Hours Bill in
England was carried.
Altogether, collisions between the classes of the old society further in
many ways the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie
finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the
aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself,
whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at
all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these
battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask
for 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.
Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class
are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or
are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also
supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and
progress.
Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the
progress 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.
Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today,
the proletariat alone is a genuinely revolutionary class. The other
classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the
proletariat is its special and essential product.
The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the
artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save
from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They
are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay, more, they are
reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If, by
chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their
impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their
present, but their future interests; they desert their own standpoint to
place themselves at that of the proletariat.
The "dangerous class", the social scum, that passively rotting mass
thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there,
be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions
of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of
reactionary intrigue.
In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are
already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his
relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with
the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labor, 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.
All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify
their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their
conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of
the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own
previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous
mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to
fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and
insurances of, individual property.
All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in
the 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.
Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat
with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat
of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its
own bourgeoisie.
In depicting the most general phases of the development of the
proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within
existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open
revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the
foundation for the sway of the proletariat.
Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen,
on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to
oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it
can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period
of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the
petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to
develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary, instead
of rising with the process 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.
The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the
bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the
condition for capital is wage labor. Wage labor rests exclusively on
competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose
involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the
laborers, due to competition, by the 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.
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FOOTNOTES
[1] By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of
the means of social production and employers of wage labor.
By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no
means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor
power in order to live. [Note by Engels - 1888 English edition]
[2] That is, all _written_ history. In 1847, the pre-history of
society, the social organization existing previous to recorded
history, all but unknown. Since then, August von Haxthausen
(1792-1866) discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Georg
Ludwig von 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 organization of
this primitive communistic society was laid bare, in its typical
form, by Lewis Henry Morgan's (1818-1861) crowning discovery of the
true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the
dissolution of the primeaval communities, society begins to be
differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes. I
have attempted to retrace this dissolution in _Der Ursprung der
Familie, des Privateigenthumus und des Staats_, second edition,
Stuttgart, 1886. [Engels, 1888 English edition]
[3] Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a master within,
not a head of a guild. [Engels: 1888 English edition]
[4] This was the name given their urban communities by the townsmen of
Italy and France, after they had purchased or conquered their
initial rights of self-government from their feudal lords. [Engels:
1890 German edition]
"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 economical development of the
bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country, for its
political development, France. [Engels: 1888 English edition]
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II -- PROLETARIANS AND COMMUNISTS
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In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other
working-class parties.
They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat
as a whole.
They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to
shape and mold the proletarian movement.
The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by
this only:
(1) In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different
countries, they point out and bring to the front the common
interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all
nationality.
(2) In the various stages of development which the struggle of the
working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they
always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a
whole.
The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand practically, the most
advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every
country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other
hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat
the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the
conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian
movement.
The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other
proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class,
overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the
proletariat.
The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on
ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or
that would-be universal reformer.
They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from
an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under
our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at
all a distinctive feature of communism.
All property relations in the past have continually been subject to
historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.
The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favor
of bourgeois property.
The distinguishing feature of communism is not the abolition of property
generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern
bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of
the system of producing and appropriating products that is based on
class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the
single sentence: Abolition of private property.
We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the
right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man's own
labor, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal
freedom, activity and independence.
Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property
of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that
preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the
development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and
is still destroying it daily.
Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?
But does wage labor create any property for the laborer? Not a bit. It
creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage labor,
and which cannot increase except upon conditions of begetting a new
supply of wage labor for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present
form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labor. Let us
examine both sides of this antagonism.
To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social
STATUS in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the
united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the
united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.
Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.
When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the
property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby
transformed into social property. It is only the social character of
the property that is changed. It loses its class character.
Let us now take wage labor.
The average price of wage labor is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum
of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the
laborer in bare existence as a laborer. What, therefore, the wage
laborer appropriates by means of his labor merely suffices to prolong
and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this
personal appropriation of the products of labor, an appropriation that
is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that
leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labor of others. All that we
want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation,
under which the laborer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed
to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.
In bourgeois society, living labor is but a means to increase
accumulated labor. In communist society, accumulated labor is but a
means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the laborer.
In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in
communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois
society, capital is independent and has individuality, while the living
person is dependent and has no individuality.
And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois,
abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition
of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois
freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.
By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of
production, free trade, free selling and buying.
But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears
also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other "brave
words" of our bourgeois 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, or the bourgeois
conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.
You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property.
But in your existing society, private property is already done away with
for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely
due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You
reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of
property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the
non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.
In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your
property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.
From the moment when labor can no longer be converted into capital,
money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolized, i.e.,
from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed
into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say,
individuality vanishes.
You must, therefore, confess that by "individual" you mean no other
person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property.
This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.
Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of
society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate
the labor of others by means of such appropriations.
It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all
work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.
According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the
dogs through sheer idleness; for those 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 labor when there is no longer
any capital.
All objections urged against the communistic mode of producing and
appropriating material products, have, in the same way, been urged
against the communistic mode of producing and appropriating intellectual
products. Just as to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property
is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class
culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.
That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous
majority, a mere training to act as a machine.
But don't wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended
abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions
of freedom, culture, law, etc. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of
the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just
as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for
all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by
the economical conditions of existence of your class.
The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal
laws of nature and of reason the social forms stringing from your
present mode of production and form of property -- historical relations
that rise and disappear in the progress of production -- this
misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you.
What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in
the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the
case of your own bourgeois form of property.
Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous
proposal of the Communists.
On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based?
On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this
family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things
finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among
proletarians, and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its
complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by
their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.
But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace
home education by social.
And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the
social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or
indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not
intended the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to
alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from
the influence of the ruling class.
The bourgeois claptrap about the family and education, about the
hallowed correlation of parents and child, becomes all the more
disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family
ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children
transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labor.
But you Communists would introduce community or women, screams the
bourgeoisie in chorus.
The bourgeois sees 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 that the lot of being common
to all will likewise fall to the women.
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.
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 free love; it has existed almost from time
immemorial.
Our bourgeois, not content with having 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. (Ah, those were
the days!)
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 system of free love. For the rest, it is
self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must
bring with it the abolition of free love springing from that system,
i.e., of prostitution both public and private.
The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries
and nationality.
The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they
have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political
supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must
constitute itself _the_ nation, it is, so far, itself national, though
not in the bourgeois sense of the word.
National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and
more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom
of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of
production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.
The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster.
United action of the leading civilized countries at least is one of the
first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.
In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also
be put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be
put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within
the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to
an end.
The charges against communism made from a religious, a philosophical
and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of
serious examination.
Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views,
and conception, in one word, man's consciousness, changes with every
change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social
relations and in his social life?
What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual
production changes its character in proportion as material production is
changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its
ruling class.
When people speak of the ideas that revolutionize society, they do but
express that 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
juridicial ideas have been modified in the course of historical
development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and
law, constantly survived this change."
"There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc.,
that are common to all states of society. But communism abolishes
eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of
constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to
all past historical experience."
What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past
society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms,
antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.
But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past
ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No
wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all
the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common
forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the
total disappearance of class antagonisms.
The communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional
relations; no wonder that its development involved 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 degree,
all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of
production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized
as the 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 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.
These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
Nevertheless, in 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 rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the banks 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 he
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 all the distinction between town and country by a
more equable distribution of the populace 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, etc.
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
organized 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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
III -- SOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST LITERATURE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. REACTIONARY SOCIALISM
a. Feudal Socialism
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. [1]
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 their revenge by singing lampoons on
their new masters and whispering in his ears sinister prophesies of
coming catastrophe.
In this way arose feudal socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half
an echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter,
witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very
heart's core, but always ludicrous in its effect, through total
incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history.
The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the
proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as
it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms,
and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.
One section of the French Legitimists and "Young England" exhibited this
spectacle:
In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to that of
the bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they exploited under
circumstances and conditions that were quite different and that are now
antiquated. In showing that, under their rule, the modern proletariat
never existed, they forget that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary
offspring of their own form of society.
For the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionary character of
their criticism that their chief accusation against the bourgeois
amounts to this: that under the bourgeois regime a class is being
developed which is destined to cut up, root and branch, the old order of
society.
What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it creates a
proletariat as that it creates a _revolutionary_ proletariat.
In political practice, therefore, they join in all corrective measures
against the working class; and in ordinary life, despite their high
falutin' phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped from
the tree of industry, and to barter truth, love, and honor, for traffic
in wool, beetroot-sugar, and potato spirits. [2]
As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has
clerical socialism with feudal socialism.
Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a socialist tinge.
Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against
marriage, against the state? Has it not preached in the place of these,
charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic
life and Mother Church? Christian socialism is but the holy water with
which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.
b. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism
The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that 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.
In countries where modern civilization has become fully developed, a new
class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between
proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself a supplementary
part of bourgeois society. The individual members of this class,
however, as being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the
action of competition, and, as Modern Industry develops, they even see
the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as an
independent section of modern society, to be replaced in manufactures,
agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen.
In countries like 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.
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 labor; the concentration
of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it
pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the
misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying
inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of
extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds, of
the old family relations, of the old nationalities.
In it positive aims, however, this form of socialism aspires either to
restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the
old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern
means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old
property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by
those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.
Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal
relations in agriculture.
Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all
intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of socialism ended in
a miserable hangover.
c. German or "True" Socialism
The socialist and communist literature of France, a literature that
originated under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and that was
the expressions 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.
German philosophers, would-be philosophers, and beaux esprits (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 eighteenth century, the demands of the
first French Revolution were nothing more than the demands of "Practical
Reason" in general, and the utterance of the will of the revolutionary
French bourgeoisie signified, in their eyes, the laws of pure will, of
will as it was bound to be, of true human will generally.
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.
This annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign language
is appropriated, namely, by translation.
It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic saints
_over_ the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient
heathendom had been written. The German 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.
The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of the
French historical criticisms, they dubbed "Philosophy of Action", "True
Socialism", "German Science of Socialism", "Philosophical Foundation of
Socialism", and so on.
The French socialist and communist literature was thus completely
emasculated. And, since it ceased, in the hands of the German, to
express the struggle of one class with the other, he felt conscious of
having overcome "French one-sidedness" and of representing, not true
requirements, but the requirements of truth; not the interests of the
proletariat, but the interests of human nature, of man in general, who
belongs to no class, has no reality, who exists only in the misty realm
of philosophical fantasy.
This German socialism, which took its schoolboy task so seriously and
solemnly, and extolled its poor stock-in-trade in such a mountebank
fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic innocence.
The fight of the Germans, and especially of the Prussian bourgeoisie,
against feudal aristocracy and absolute monarchy, in other words, the
liberal movement, became more earnest.
By this, the long-wished for opportunity was offered to "True" Socialism
of confronting the political movement with the socialistic 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 those attainment was the
object of the pending struggle in Germany.
To the absolute governments, with their following of parsons,
professors, country squires, and officials, it served as a welcome
scarecrow against the threatening bourgeoisie.
It was a sweet finish, after the bitter pills of flogging and bullets,
with which these same governments, just at that time, dosed the German
working-class risings.
While this "True" Socialism thus served the government as a weapon for
fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, directly
represented a reactionary interest, the interest of German philistines.
In Germany, the petty-bourgeois class, a relic of the sixteenth century,
and since then constantly cropping up again under the various forms, is
the real social basis of the existing state of things.
To preserve this class is to preserve the existing state of things in
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.
The robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric,
steeped in the dew of sickly sentiment, this transcendental robe in
which the German Socialists wrapped their sorry "eternal truths", all
skin and bone, served to wonderfully increase the sale of their goods
amongst such a public. And on its part German socialism recognized,
more and more, its own calling as the bombastic representative of the
petty-bourgeois philistine.
It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the German
petty philistine to be the typical man. To every villainous meanness of
this model man, it gave a hidden, higher, socialistic interpretation,
the exact contrary of its real character. It went to the extreme length
of directly opposing the "brutally destructive" tendency of communism,
and of proclaiming its supreme and impartial contempt of all class
struggles. With very few exceptions, all the so-called socialist and
communist publications that now (1847) circulate in Germany belong to
the domain of this foul and enervating literature. [3]
2. CONSERVATIVE OR BOURGEOIS SOCIALISM
A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in
order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.
To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians,
improvers of the condition of the working class, organizers of charity,
members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals,
temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind.
This form of socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete
systems.
We may cite Proudhon's _Philosophy of Poverty_ as an example of this
form.
The socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social
conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting
therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its
revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie
without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in
which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois socialism develops
this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems.
In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to
march straightaway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in
reality that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing
society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the
bourgeoisie.
A second, and more practical, but less systematic, form of this
socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes
of the working class by showing that no mere political reform, but only
a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical
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 affected 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
labor, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify the
administrative work of bourgeois government.
Bourgeois socialism attains adequate expression when, and only when, it
becomes a mere figure of speech.
Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties:
for the benefit of the working class. Prison reform: for the benefit of
the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant
word of bourgeois socialism.
It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois -- for the
benefit of the working class.
3. CRITICAL-UTOPIAN SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM
We do not here refer to that literature which, in every great modern
revolution, has always given voice to the demands of the proletariat,
such as the writings of Babeuf [4] and others.
The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends,
made in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was being
overthrown, necessarily failed, owing to the then undeveloped state of
the proletariat, as well as to the absence of the economic conditions
for its emancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, and could
be produced by the impending bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary
literature that accompanied these first movements of the proletariat had
necessarily a reactionary character. It inculcated universal asceticism
and social levelling in its crudest form.
The socialist and communist systems, properly so called, those of
Saint-Simon [5], Fourier [6], Owen [7], and others, spring into
existence in the early undeveloped period, described above, of the
struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie (see Section 1. Bourgeois
and Proletarians).
The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms, as
well as the action of the decomposing elements in the prevailing form of
society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the
spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any
independent political movement.
Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the
development of industry, the economic situation, as they find it, does
not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the emancipation of
the proletariat. They therefore search after a new social science,
after new social laws, that are to create these conditions.
Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive action;
historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones; and
the gradual, spontaneous class organization of the proletariat to an
organization of society especially contrived by these inventors. Future
history resolves itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the
practical carrying out of their social plans.
In the formation of their plans, they are conscious of caring chiefly
for the interests of the working class, as being the most suffering
class. Only from the point of view of being the most suffering class
does the proletariat exist for them.
The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own
surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far
superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition
of every member of society, even that of the most favored. Hence, they
habitually appeal to society at large, without the distinction of class;
nay, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people when once
they understand their system, fail to see in it the best possible plan
of the best possible state of society?
Hence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary
action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, necessarily
doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way for the
new social gospel.
Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the
proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a fantastic
conception of its own position, correspond with the first instinctive
yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction of society.
But these socialist and communist publications contain also a critical
element. They attack every principle of existing society. Hence, they
are full of the most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the
working class. The practical measures proposed in them -- such as the
abolition of the distinction between town and country, of the family, of
the carrying on of industries for the account of private individuals,
and of the wage system, the proclamation of social harmony, the
conversion of the function of the state into a more 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.
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 justifications. 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, endeavor, 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" [8] -- 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.
They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part of
the working class; such action, according to them, can only result from
blind unbelief in the new gospel.
The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respectively,
oppose the Chartists and the Reformistes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FOOTNOTES
[1] NOTE by Engels to 1888 English edition: Not the English Restoration
(1660-1689), but the French Restoration (1814-1830).
[2] NOTE by Engels to 1888 English edition: 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
aristocracy are, as yet, rather above that; but they, too, know how
to make up for declining rents by lending their names to floaters
or more or less shady joint-stock companies.
[3] NOTE by Engels to 1888 German edition: The revolutionary storm of
1848 swept away this whole shabby tendency and cured its
protagonists of the desire to dabble in socialism. The chief
representative and classical type of this tendency is Mr Karl
Gruen.
[4] Francois Noel Babeuf (1760-1797): French political agitator; plotted
unsuccessfully to destroy the Directory in revolutionary France and
established a communistic system.
[5] Comte de Saint-Simon, Claude Henri de Rouvroy (1760-1825): French
social philosopher; generally regarded as founder of French
socialism. He thought society should be reorganized along
industrial lines and that scientists should be the new spiritual
leaders. His most important work is _Nouveau_Christianisme_ (1825).
[6] Charles Fourier (1772-1837): French social reformer; propounded a
system of self-sufficient cooperatives known as Fourierism,
especially in his work _Le_Nouveau_Monde_industriel_ (1829-30)
[7] Richard Owen (1771-1858): Welsh industrialist and social reformer.
He formed a model industrial community at New Lanark, Scotland, and
pioneered cooperative societies. His books include
_New_View_Of_Society_ (1813).
[8] NOTE by Engels to 1888 English edition: "Home Colonies" were what
Owen called his communist model societies. _Phalansteres_ were
socialist colonies on the plan of Charles Fourier; Icaria was
the name given by Caber to his utopia and, later on, to his
American communist colony.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
IV -- POSITION OF THE COMMUNISTS IN RELATION TO
THE VARIOUS EXISTING OPPOSITION PARTIES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Section II has made clear the relations of the Communists to the
existing working-class parties, such as the Chartists in England and the
Agrarian Reformers in America.
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 with the Social
Democrats* against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving,
however, the right to take up a critical position in regard to phases
and illusions traditionally handed down from the Great Revolution.
* [ NOTE by Engels to 1888 English edition: The party then represented
in Parliament by Ledru-Rollin, in literature by Louis Blanc
(1811-82), 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. ]
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.
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 Krakow in 1846.
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.
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.
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 civilization and
with a much more developed proletariat than that of England was in the
seventeenth, and France in the eighteenth century, and because the
bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an
immediately following proletarian revolution.
In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement
against the existing social and political order of things.
In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question
in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development
at the time.
Finally, they 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
communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their
chains. They have a world to win.
Working men of all countries, unite!
Look here for other Classics of Tyranny.
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