Answer all of the following questions in short essay format
1.) C. Wright Mills spends a large portion of The Promise arguing in part of an age old debate of whether or not sociology is a social science or a social study. What is the difference in these two? Which did Mills support? Based on your own interpretation of the reading, and your general knowledge of sociology, do you believe it is more of a social science of a social study?
2.) Using Marx’s Bourgeois and Proletariansexplain in what ways does the bourgeois furnish the proletariat with weapons to overthrow them? What are these weapons, and how are they utilized (if at all) by the proletariat?
3.)In Stupidity “Deconstructed” Joanna Kadi talks about how many people seem to think that “rich equals smart, poor equals stupid.” What meanings does Kadi give for this opinion, and does she seem to support or oppose this viewpoint? Please make sure to explain why.
4.) Please explain the difference in ‘youth culture’ and ‘Youth Culture’. Give examples from the text, and your own understanding of the topic.
5.) In Patterson’s The Knowing Consumer,explain the two main groups in society that he describes. Compare them to another reading that you have done thus far in this class.
Manifesto of the Communist Party
by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
February 1848
Written: Late 1847;
First Published: February 1848;
Source: Marx/Engels Selected Works, Vol. One, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp. 98-137;
Translated: Samuel Moore in cooperation with Frederick Engels, 1888;
Transcribed: by Zodiac and Brian Baggins;
Proofed: and corrected against 1888 English Edition by Andy Blunden 2004;
Copyleft: Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 1987, 2000, 2010. Permission is granted to
distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License.
Table of Contents
Editorial Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 2
Preface to The 1872 German Edition …………………………………………………………………………………. 4
Preface to The 1882 Russian Edition …………………………………………………………………………………. 5
Preface to The 1883 German Edition …………………………………………………………………………………. 6
Preface to The 1888 English Edition………………………………………………………………………………….. 7
Preface to The 1890 German Edition ……………………………………………………………………………….. 10
Preface to The 1892 Polish Edition ………………………………………………………………………………….. 12
Preface to The 1893 Italian Edition………………………………………………………………………………….. 13
Manifesto of the Communist Party…………………………………………………………………………………… 14
I. Bourgeois and Proletarians ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 14
II. Proletarians and Communists ……………………………………………………………………………………… 22
III. Socialist and Communist Literature ……………………………………………………………………………. 28
1. Reactionary Socialism …………………………………………………………………………………………. 28
A. Feudal Socialism ………………………………………………………………………………………… 28
B. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism …………………………………………………………………………… 29
C. German or “True” Socialism………………………………………………………………………… 29
2. Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism ……………………………………………………………………. 31
3. Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism………………………………………………………….. 32
IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties …………. 34
Letter from Engels to Marx, 24 November 1847 ……………………………………………………………….. 35
Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith ……………………………………………………………………….. 36
The Principles of Communism………………………………………………………………………………………… 41
Demands of the Communist Party in Germany………………………………………………………………….. 55
The Paris Commune. Address to the International Workingmen’s Association, May 1871……… 58
Endnotes ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 67
2
Introduction
Editorial Introduction
The “Manifesto of the Communist Party” was written by Marx and Engels as the Communist
League’s programme on the instruction of its Second Congress (London, November 29-December 8,
1847), which signified a victory for the followers of a new proletarian line during the discussion of the
programme questions.
When Congress was still in preparation, Marx and Engels arrived at the conclusion that the final
programme document should be in the form of a Party manifesto (see Engels’ letter to Marx of
November 23-24, 1847). The catechism form usual for the secret societies of the time and retained in
the “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith” and “Principles of Communism,” was not suitable for
a full and substantial exposition of the new revolutionary world outlook, for a comprehensive
formulation of the proletarian movement’s aims and tasks. See also “Demands of the Communist
Party in Germany,” issued by Marx soon after publication of the Manifesto, which addressed the
immediate demands of the movement.
Marx and Engels began working together on the Manifesto while they were still in London
immediately after the congress, and continued until about December 13 when Marx returned to
Brussels; they resumed their work four days later (December 17) when Engels arrived there. After
Engels’ departure for Paris at the end of December and up to his return on January 31, Marx worked
on the Manifesto alone.
Hurried by the Central Authority of the Communist League which provided him with certain
documents (e.g., addresses of the People’s Chamber (Halle) of the League of the Just of November
1846 and February 1847, and, apparently, documents of the First Congress of the Communist League
pertaining to the discussion of the Party programme), Marx worked intensively on the Manifesto
through almost the whole of January 1848. At the end of January the manuscript was sent on to
London to be printed in the German Workers’ Educational Society’s print shop owned by a German
emigrant J. E. Burghard, a member of the Communist League.
The manuscript of the Manifesto has not survived. The only extant materials written in Marx’s hand
are a draft plan for Section III, showing his efforts to improve the structure of the Manifesto, and a
page of a rough copy.
The Manifesto came off the press at the end of February 1848. On February 29, the Educational
Society decided to cover all the printing expenses.
The first edition of the Manifesto was a 23-page pamphlet in a dark green cover. In April-May 1848
another edition was put out. The text took up 30 pages, some misprints of the first edition were
corrected, and the punctuation improved. Subsequently this text was used by Marx and Engels as a
basis for later authorised editions. Between March and July 1848 the Manifesto was printed in the
Deutsche Londoner Zeitung, a democratic newspaper of the German emigrants. Already that same
year numerous efforts were made to publish the Manifesto in other European languages. A Danish, a
Polish (in Paris) and a Swedish (under a different title: “The Voice of Communism. Declaration of the
Communist Party”) editions appeared in 1848. The translations into French, Italian and Spanish made
at that time remained unpublished. In April 1848, Engels, then in Barmen, was translating the
Manifesto into English, but he managed to translate only half of it, and the first English translation,
made by Helen Macfarlane, was not published until two years later, between June and November 1850,
in the Chartist journal The Red Republican. Its editor, Julian Harney, named the authors for the first
time in the introduction to this publication. All earlier and many subsequent editions of the Manifesto
were anonymous.
The growing emancipation struggle of the proletariat in the ’60s and ’70s of the 19th century led to
new editions of the Manifesto. The year 1872 saw a new German edition with minor corrections and a
preface by Marx and Engels where they drew some conclusions from the experience of the Paris
3
Introduction
Commune of 1871. This and subsequent German editions (1883 and 1890) were entitled the
Communist Manifesto. In 1872 the Manifesto was first published in America in Woodhull & Claflin’s
Weekly.
The first Russian edition of the Manifesto, translated by Mikhail Bakunin with some distortions,
appeared in Geneva in 1869. The faults of this edition were removed in the 1882 edition (translation
by Georgi Plekhanov), for which Marx and Engels, who attributed great significance to the
dissemination of Marxism in Russia, had written a special preface.
After Marx’s death, the Manifesto ran into several editions. Engels read through them all, wrote
prefaces for the 1883 German edition and for the 1888 English edition in Samuel Moore’s translation,
which he also edited and supplied with notes. This edition served as a basis for many subsequent
editions of the Manifesto in English – in Britain, the United States and the USSR. In 1890, Engels
prepared a further German edition, wrote a new preface to it, and added a number of notes. In 1885,
the newspaper Le Socialiste published the French translation of the Manifesto made by Marx’s
daughter Laura Lafargue and read by Engels. He also wrote prefaces to the 1892 Polish and 1893
Italian editions.
This edition includes the two earlier versions of the Manifesto, namely the draft “Communist
Confession of Faith” and “The Principles of Communism,” both authored by Engels, as well as the
letter from Engels to Marx which poses the idea of publishing a “manifesto,” rather than a catechism.
The Manifesto addressed itself to a mass movement with historical significance, not a political sect.
On the other hand, the “Demands of the Communist Party in Germany” is included to place the
publication of the Manifesto in the context of the mass movement in Germany at the time, whose
immediate demands are reflected by Marx in this pamphlet. Clearly the aims of the Manifesto were
more far-reaching the movement in Germany at the time, and unlike the “Demands,” was intended to
outlive the immediate conditions.
The “Third Address to the International Workingmen’s Association” is included because in this
speech Marx examines the movement of the working class manifested in the Paris Commune, and his
observations here mark the only revisions to his social and historical vision made during his lifetime
as a result of the development of the working class movement itself, clarifying some points and
making others more concrete.
Preface to The 1872 German Edition
The Communist League, an international association of workers, which could of course be only a
secret one, under conditions obtaining at the time, commissioned us, the undersigned, at the
Congress held in London in November 1847, to write for publication a detailed theoretical and
practical programme for the Party. Such was the origin of the following Manifesto, the
manuscript of which travelled to London to be printed a few weeks before the February [French]
Revolution [in 1848]. First published in German, it has been republished in that language in at
least twelve different editions in Germany, England, and America. It was published in English for
the first time in 1850 in the Red Republican, London, translated by Miss Helen Macfarlane, and
in 1871 in at least three different translations in America. The French version first appeared in
Paris shortly before the June insurrection of 1848, and recently in Le Socialiste of New York. A
new translation is in the course of preparation. A Polish version appeared in London shortly after
it was first published in Germany. A Russian translation was published in Geneva in the sixties1.
Into Danish, too, it was translated shortly after its appearance.
However much that state of things may have altered during the last twenty-five years, the general
principles laid down in the Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever. Here and there,
some detail might be improved. The practical application of the principles will depend, as the
Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being
existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at
the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today. In
view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved
and extended organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in
the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the
first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some details been
antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that “the working class
cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.”
(See The Civil War in France: Address of the General Council of the International Working
Men’s Association, 1871, where this point is further developed.) Further, it is self-evident that the
criticism of socialist literature is deficient in relation to the present time, because it comes down
only to 1847; also that the remarks on the relation of the Communists to the various opposition
parties (Section IV), although, in principle still correct, yet in practice are antiquated, because the
political situation has been entirely changed, and the progress of history has swept from off the
earth the greater portion of the political parties there enumerated.
But then, the Manifesto has become a historical document which we have no longer any right to
alter. A subsequent edition may perhaps appear with an introduction bridging the gap from 1847
to the present day; but this reprint was too unexpected to leave us time for that.
Karl Marx & Frederick Engels
June 24, 1872, London
Preface to The 1882 Russian Edition
The first Russian edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, translated by Bakunin, was
published early in the ‘sixties by the printing office of the Kolokol [a reference to the Free
Russian Printing House]. Then the West could see in it (the Russian edition of the Manifesto)
only a literary curiosity. Such a view would be impossible today.
What a limited field the proletarian movement occupied at that time (December 1847) is most
clearly shown by the last section: the position of the Communists in relation to the various
opposition parties in various countries. Precisely Russia and the United States are missing here. It
was the time when Russia constituted the last great reserve of all European reaction, when the
United States absorbed the surplus proletarian forces of Europe through immigration. Both
countries provided Europe with raw materials and were at the same time markets for the sale of
its industrial products. Both were, therefore, in one way of another, pillars of the existing
European system.
How very different today. Precisely European immigration fitted North American for a gigantic
agricultural production, whose competition is shaking the very foundations of European landed
property – large and small. At the same time, it enabled the United States to exploit its
tremendous industrial resources with an energy and on a scale that must shortly break the
industrial monopoly of Western Europe, and especially of England, existing up to now. Both
circumstances react in a revolutionary manner upon America itself. Step by step, the small and
middle land ownership of the farmers, the basis of the whole political constitution, is succumbing
to the competition of giant farms; at the same time, a mass industrial proletariat and a fabulous
concentration of capital funds are developing for the first time in the industrial regions.
And now Russia! During the Revolution of 1848-9, not only the European princes, but the
European bourgeois as well, found their only salvation from the proletariat just beginning to
awaken in Russian intervention. The Tsar was proclaimed the chief of European reaction. Today,
he is a prisoner of war of the revolution in Gatchina 2 , and Russia forms the vanguard of
revolutionary action in Europe.
The Communist Manifesto had, as its object, the proclamation of the inevitable impending
dissolution of modern bourgeois property. But in Russia we find, face-to-face with the rapidly
flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois property, just beginning to develop, more than half the
land owned in common by the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina, though
greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the
higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the
same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West?
The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a
proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian
common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.
Karl Marx & Frederick Engels
January 21, 1882, London
Preface to The 1883 German Edition
The preface to the present edition I must, alas, sign alone. Marx, the man to whom the whole
working class of Europe and America owes more than to any one else – rests at Highgate
Cemetery and over his grave the first grass is already growing. Since his death [March 14, 1883],
there can be even less thought of revising or supplementing the Manifesto. But I consider it all the
more necessary again to state the following expressly:
The basic thought running through the Manifesto – that economic production, and the structure of
society of every historical epoch necessarily arising therefrom, constitute the foundation for the
political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently (ever since the dissolution of the
primaeval communal ownership of land) all history has been a history of class struggles, of
struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at various
stages of social evolution; that this struggle, however, has now reached a stage where the
exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself from the class
which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie), without at the same time forever freeing the
whole of society from exploitation, oppression, class struggles – this basic thought belongs solely
and exclusively to Marx.*
I have already stated this many times; but precisely now is it necessary that it also stand in front
of the Manifesto itself.
Frederick Engels
June 28, 1883, London
*
“This proposition,” I wrote in the preface to the English translation, “which, in my opinion, is destined to do for
history what Darwin’ s theory has done for biology, we both of us, had been gradually approaching for some years
before 1845. How far I had independently progressed towards it is best shown by my Conditions of the Working Class
in England. But when I again met Marx at Brussels, in spring 1845, he had it already worked out and put it before me
in terms almost as clear as those in which I have stated it here.” [Note by Engels to the German edition of 1890]
Preface to The 1888 English Edition
The Manifesto was published as the platform of the Communist League, a working men’ s
association, first exclusively German, later on international, and under the political conditions of
the Continent before 1848, unavoidably a secret society. At a Congress of the League, held in
November 1847, Marx and Engels were commissioned to prepare a complete theoretical and
practical party programme. Drawn up in German, in January 1848, the manuscript was sent to the
printer in London a few weeks before the French Revolution of February 24. A French translation
was brought out in Paris shortly before the insurrection of June 1848. The first English
translation, by Miss Helen Macfarlane, appeared in George Julian Harney’ s Red Republican,
London, 1850. A Danish and a Polish edition had also been published.
The defeat of the Parisian insurrection of June 1848 – the first great battle between proletariat and
bourgeoisie – drove again into the background, for a time, the social and political aspirations of
the European working class. Thenceforth, the struggle for supremacy was, again, as it had been
before the Revolution of February, solely between different sections of the propertied class; the
working class was reduced to a fight for political elbow-room, and to the position of extreme
wing of the middle-class Radicals. Wherever independent proletarian movements continued to
show signs of life, they were ruthlessly hunted down. Thus the Prussian police hunted out the
Central Board of the Communist League, then located in Cologne. The members were arrested
and, after eighteen months’ imprisonment, they were tried in October 1852. This celebrated
“Cologne Communist Trial” lasted from October 4 till November 12; seven of the prisoners were
sentenced to terms of imprisonment in a fortress, varying from three to six years. Immediately
after the sentence, the League was formally dissolved by the remaining members. As to the
Manifesto, it seemed henceforth doomed to oblivion.
When the European workers had recovered sufficient strength for another attack on the ruling
classes, the International Working Men’ s Association sprang up. But this association, formed
with the express aim of welding into one body the whole militant proletariat of Europe and
America, could not at once proclaim the principles laid down in the Manifesto. The International
was bound to have a programme broad enough to be acceptable to the English trade unions, to the
followers of Proudhon in France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain, and to the Lassalleans in Germany.*
Marx, who drew up this programme to the satisfaction of all parties, entirely trusted to the
intellectual development of the working class, which was sure to result from combined action and
mutual discussion. The very events and vicissitudes in the struggle against capital, the defeats
even more than the victories, could not help bringing home to men’ s minds the insufficiency of
their various favorite nostrums, and preparing the way for a more complete insight into the true
conditions for working-class emancipation. And Marx was right. The International, on its
breaking in 1874, left the workers quite different men from what it found them in 1864.
Proudhonism in France, Lassalleanism in Germany, were dying out, and even the conservative
English trade unions, though most of them had long since severed their connection with the
International, were gradually advancing towards that point at which, last year at Swansea, their
president [W. Bevan] could say in their name: “Continental socialism has lost its terror for us.” In
fact, the principles of the Manifesto had made considerable headway among the working men of
all countries.
*
Lassalle personally, to us, always acknowledged himself to be a disciple of Marx, and, as such, stood on the ground of
the Manifesto. But in his first public agitation, 1862-1864, he did not go beyond demanding co-operative workshops
supported by state credit.
8
Preface to the 1888 English Edition
The Manifesto itself came thus to the front again. Since 1850, the German text had been reprinted
several times in Switzerland, England, and America. In 1872, it was translated into English in
New York, where the translation was published in Woorhull and Claflin’s Weekly. From this
English version, a French one was made in Le Socialiste of New York. Since then, at least two
more English translations, more or less mutilated, have been brought out in America, and one of
them has been reprinted in England. The first Russian translation, made by Bakunin, was
published at Herzen’ s Kolokol office in Geneva, about 1863; a second one, by the heroic Vera
Zasulich, also in Geneva, in 1882. A new Danish edition is to be found in Socialdemokratisk
Bibliothek, Copenhagen, 1885; a fresh French translation in Le Socialiste, Paris, 1886. From this
latter, a Spanish version was prepared and published in Madrid, 1886. The German reprints are
not to be counted; there have been twelve altogether at the least. An Armenian translation, which
was to be published in Constantinople some months ago, did not see the light, I am told, because
the publisher was afraid of bringing out a book with the name of Marx on it, while the translator
declined to call it his own production. Of further translations into other languages I have heard
but had not seen. Thus the history of the Manifesto reflects the history of the modern workingclass movement; at present, it is doubtless the most wide spread, the most international
production of all socialist literature, the common platform acknowledged by millions of working
men from Siberia to California.
Yet, when it was written, we could not have called it a socialist manifesto. By Socialists, in 1847,
were understood, on the one hand the adherents of the various Utopian systems: Owenites in
England, Fourierists in France, both of them already reduced to the position of mere sects, and
gradually dying out; on the other hand, the most multifarious social quacks who, by all manner of
tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to capital and profit, all sorts of social
grievances, in both cases men outside the working-class movement, and looking rather to the
“educated” classes for support. Whatever portion of the working class had become convinced of
the insufficiency of mere political revolutions, and had proclaimed the necessity of total social
change, called itself Communist. It was a crude, rough-hewn, purely instinctive sort of
communism; still, it touched the cardinal point and was powerful enough amongst the working
class to produce the Utopian communism of Cabet in France, and of Weitling in Germany. Thus,
in 1847, socialism was a middle-class movement, communism a working-class movement.
Socialism was, on the Continent at least, “respectable”; communism was the very opposite. And
as our notion, from the very beginning, was that “the emancipation of the workers must be the act
of the working class itself,” there could be no doubt as to which of the two names we must take.
Moreover, we have, ever since, been far from repudiating it.
The Manifesto being our joint production, I consider myself bound to state that the fundamental
proposition which forms the nucleus belongs to Marx. That proposition is: That in every
historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social
organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which it is built up, and from that
which alone can be explained the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently
the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in
common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and
exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; That the history of these class struggles forms a series of
evolutions in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class
– the proletariat – cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class
– the bourgeoisie – without, at the same time, and once and for all, emancipating society at large
from all exploitation, oppression, class distinction, and class struggles.
This proposition, which, in my opinion, is destined to do for history what Darwin’ s theory has
done for biology, we both of us, had been gradually approaching for some years before 1845.
How far I had independently progressed towards it is best shown by my “Conditions of the
Working Class in England.” But when I again met Marx at Brussels, in spring 1845, he had it
9
Preface to the 1888 English Edition
already worked out and put it before me in terms almost as clear as those in which I have stated it
here.
From our joint preface to the German edition of 1872, I quote the following:
“However much that state of things may have altered during the last twenty-five
years, the general principles laid down in the Manifesto are, on the whole, as
correct today as ever. Here and there, some detail might be improved. The
practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states,
everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being
existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary
measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects,
be very differently worded today. In view of the gigantic strides of Modern
Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and extended
organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first
in the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the
proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this
programme has in some details been antiquated. One thing especially was proved
by the Commune, viz., that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of readymade state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” (See The Civil War in
France: Address of the General Council of the International Working Men’ s
Association 1871, where this point is further developed.) Further, it is self-evident
that the criticism of socialist literature is deficient in relation to the present time,
because it comes down only to 1847; also that the remarks on the relation of the
Communists to the various opposition parties (Section IV), although, in principle
still correct, yet in practice are antiquated, because the political situation has been
entirely changed, and the progress of history has swept from off the Earth the
greater portion of the political parties there enumerated.
“But then, the Manifesto has become a historical document which we have no
longer any right to alter.”
The present translation is by Mr Samuel Moore, the translator of the greater portion of Marx’ s
“Capital.” We have revised it in common, and I have added a few notes explanatory of historical
allusions.
Frederick Engels
January 30, 1888, London
Preface to The 1890 German Edition
Since [the first German preface of 1883] was written, a new German edition of the Manifesto has
again become necessary, and much has also happened to the Manifesto which should be recorded
here.
A second Russian translation – by Vera Zasulich – appeared in Geneva in 1882; the preface to
that edition was written by Marx and myself. Unfortunately, the original German manuscript has
gone astray; I must therefore retranslate from the Russian which will in no way improve the text.
It reads:
[Reprint of the 1882 Russian Edition ]
At about the same date, a new Polish version appeared in Geneva: Manifest Kommunistyczny.
Furthermore, a new Danish translation has appeared in the Socialdemokratisk Bibliothek,
Copenhagen, 1885. Unfortunately, it is not quite complete; certain essential passages, which seem
to have presented difficulties to the translator, have been omitted, and, in addition, there are signs
of carelessness here and there, which are all the more unpleasantly conspicuous since the
translation indicates that had the translator taken a little more pains, he would have done an
excellent piece of work.
A new French version appeared in 1886, in Le Socialiste of Paris; it is the best published to date.
From this latter, a Spanish version was published the same year in El Socialista of Madrid, and
then reissued in pamphlet form: Manifesto del Partido Communista por Carlos Marx y F. Engels,
Madrid, Administracion de El Socialista, Hernan Cortes 8.
As a matter of curiosity, I may mention that in 1887 the manuscript of an Armenian translation
was offered to a publisher in Constantinople. But the good man did not have the courage to
publish something bearing the name of Marx and suggested that the translator set down his own
name as author, which the latter however declined.
After one, and then another, of the more or less inaccurate American translations had been
repeatedly reprinted in England, an authentic version at last appeared in 1888. This was my friend
Samuel Moore, and we went through it together once more before it went to press. It is entitled:
Manifesto of the Communist Party, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Authorized English
translation, edited and annotated by Frederick Engels, 1888, London, William Reeves, 185 Fleet
Street, E.C. I have added some of the notes of that edition to the present one.
The Manifesto has had a history of its own. Greeted with enthusiasm, at the time of its
appearance, by the not at all numerous vanguard of scientific socialism (as is proved by the
translations mentioned in the first place), it was soon forced into the background by the reaction
that began with the defeat of the Paris workers in June 1848, and was finally excommunicated
“by law” in the conviction of the Cologne Communists in November 1852. With the
disappearance from the public scene of the workers’ movement that had begun with the February
Revolution, the Manifesto too passed into the background.
When the European workers had again gathered sufficient strength for a new onslaught upon the
power of the ruling classes, the International Working Men’ s Association came into being. Its
aim was to weld together into one huge army the whole militant working class of Europe and
America. Therefore it could not set out from the principles laid down in the Manifesto. It was
bound to have a programme which would not shut the door on the English trade unions, the
French, Belgian, Italian, and Spanish Proudhonists, and the German Lassalleans. This programme
– the considerations underlying the Statutes of the International – was drawn up by Marx with a
master hand acknowledged even by the Bakunin and the anarchists. For the ultimate final triumph
11
Preface to the 1890 German Edition
of the ideas set forth in the Manifesto, Marx relied solely upon the intellectual development of the
working class, as it necessarily has to ensue from united action and discussion. The events and
vicissitudes in the struggle against capital, the defeats even more than the successes, could not but
demonstrate to the fighters the inadequacy of their former universal panaceas, and make their
minds more receptive to a thorough understanding of the true conditions for working-class
emancipation. And Marx was right. The working class of 1874, at the dissolution of the
International, was altogether different from that of 1864, at its foundation. Proudhonism in the
Latin countries, and the specific Lassalleanism in Germany, were dying out; and even the ten
arch-conservative English trade unions were gradually approaching the point where, in 1887, the
chairman of their Swansea Congress could say in their name: “Continental socialism has lost its
terror for us.” Yet by 1887 continental socialism was almost exclusively the theory heralded in
the Manifesto. Thus, to a certain extent, the history of the Manifesto reflects the history of the
modern working-class movement since 1848. At present, it is doubtless the most widely
circulated, the most international product of all socialist literature, the common programme of
many millions of workers of all countries from Siberia to California.
Nevertheless, when it appeared, we could not have called it a socialist manifesto. In 1847, two
kinds of people were considered socialists. On the one hand were the adherents of the various
utopian systems, notably the Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France, both of whom, at
that date, had already dwindled to mere sects gradually dying out. On the other, the manifold
types of social quacks who wanted to eliminate social abuses through their various universal
panaceas and all kinds of patch-work, without hurting capital and profit in the least. In both cases,
people who stood outside the labor movement and who looked for support rather to the
“educated” classes. The section of the working class, however, which demanded a radical
reconstruction of society, convinced that mere political revolutions were not enough, then called
itself Communist. It was still a rough-hewn, only instinctive and frequently somewhat crude
communism. Yet, it was powerful enough to bring into being two systems of utopian communism
– in France, the “Icarian” communists of Cabet, and in Germany that of Weitling. Socialism in
1847 signified a bourgeois movement, communism a working-class movement. Socialism was,
on the Continent at least, quite respectable, whereas communism was the very opposite. And
since we were very decidedly of the opinion as early as then that “the emancipation of the
workers must be the task of the working class itself,” [from the General Rules of the
International] we could have no hesitation as to which of the two names we should choose. Nor
has it ever occurred to us to repudiate it.
“Working men of all countries, unite!” But few voices responded when we proclaimed these
words to the world 42 years ago, on the eve of the first Paris Revolution in which the proletariat
came out with the demands of its own. On September 28, 1864, however, the proletarians of most
of the Western European countries joined hands in the International Working Men’ s Association
of glorious memory. True, the International itself lived only nine years. But that the eternal union
of the proletarians of all countries created by it is still alive and lives stronger than ever, there is
no better witness than this day. Because today3, as I write these lines, the European and American
proletariat is reviewing its fighting forces, mobilized for the first time, mobilized as one army,
under one flag, for one immediate aim: the standard eight-hour working day to be established by
legal enactment, as proclaimed by the Geneva Congress of the International in 1866, and again by
the Paris Workers’ Congress of 1889. And today’ s spectacle will open the eyes of the capitalists
and landlords of all countries to the fact that today the proletarians of all countries are united
indeed.
If only Marx were still by my side to see this with his own eyes!
Frederick Engels
May 1, 1890, London
Preface to The 1892 Polish Edition
The fact that a new Polish edition of the Communist Manifesto has become necessary gives rise
to various thoughts.
First of all, it is noteworthy that of late the Manifesto has become an index, as it were, of the
development of large-scale industry on the European continent. In proportion as large-scale
industry expands in a given country, the demand grows among the workers of that country for
enlightenment regarding their position as the working class in relation to the possessing classes,
the socialist movement spreads among them and the demand for the Manifesto increases. Thus,
not only the state of the labour movement but also the degree of development of large-scale
industry can be measured with fair accuracy in every country by the number of copies of the
Manifesto circulated in the language of that country.
Accordingly, the new Polish edition indicates a decided progress of Polish industry. And there
can be no doubt whatever that this progress since the previous edition published ten years ago has
actually taken place. Russian Poland, Congress Poland, has become the big industrial region of
the Russian Empire. Whereas Russian large-scale industry is scattered sporadically – a part round
the Gulf of Finland, another in the centre (Moscow and Vladimir), a third along the coasts of the
Black and Azov seas, and still others elsewhere – Polish industry has been packed into a
relatively small area and enjoys both the advantages and disadvantages arising from such
concentration. The competing Russian manufacturers acknowledged the advantages when they
demanded protective tariffs against Poland, in spit of their ardent desire to transform the Poles
into Russians. The disadvantages – for the Polish manufacturers and the Russian government –
are manifest in the rapid spread of socialist ideas among the Polish workers and in the growing
demand for the Manifesto.
But the rapid development of Polish industry, outstripping that of Russia, is in its turn a new
proof of the inexhaustible vitality of the Polish people and a new guarantee of its impending
national restoration. And the restoration of an independent and strong Poland is a matter which
concerns not only the Poles but all of us. A sincere international collaboration of the European
nations is possible only if each of these nations is fully autonomous in its own house. The
Revolution of 1848, which under the banner of the proletariat, after all, merely let the proletarian
fighters do the work of the bourgeoisie, also secured the independence of Italy, Germany and
Hungary through its testamentary executors, Louis Bonaparte and Bismarck; but Poland, which
since 1792 had done more for the Revolution than all these three together, was left to its own
resources when it succumbed in 1863 to a tenfold greater Russian force. The nobility could
neither maintain nor regain Polish independence; today, to the bourgeoisie, this independence is,
to say the last, immaterial. Nevertheless, it is a necessity for the harmonious collaboration of the
European nations. It can be gained only by the young Polish proletariat, and in its hands it is
secure. For the workers of all the rest of Europe need the independence of Poland just as much as
the Polish workers themselves.
F. Engels
London, February 10, 1892
Preface to The 1893 Italian Edition
Publication of the Manifesto of the Communist Party coincided, one may say, with March 18,
1848, the day of the revolution in Milan and Berlin, which were armed uprisings of the two
nations situated in the centre, the one, of the continent of Europe, the other, of the Mediterranean;
two nations until then enfeebled by division and internal strife, and thus fallen under foreign
domination. While Italy was subject to the Emperor of Austria, Germany underwent the yoke, not
less effective though more indirect, of the Tsar of all the Russias. The consequences of March 18,
1848, freed both Italy and Germany from this disgrace; if from 1848 to 1871 these two great
nations were reconstituted and somehow again put on their own, it was as Karl Marx used to say,
because the men who suppressed the Revolution of 1848 were, nevertheless, its testamentary
executors in spite of themselves.
Everywhere that revolution was the work of the working class; it was the latter that built the
barricades and paid with its lifeblood. Only the Paris workers, in overthrowing the government,
had the very definite intention of overthrowing the bourgeois regime. But conscious though they
were of the fatal antagonism existing between their own class and the bourgeoisie, still, neither
the economic progress of the country nor the intellectual development of the mass of French
workers had as yet reached the stage which would have made a social reconstruction possible. In
the final analysis, therefore, the fruits of the revolution were reaped by the capitalist class. In the
other countries, in Italy, in Germany, in Austria, the workers, from the very outset, did nothing
but raise the bourgeoisie to power. But in any country the rule of the bourgeoisie is impossible
without national independence Therefore, the Revolution of 1848 had to bring in its train the
unity and autonomy of the nations that had lacked them up to then: Italy, Germany, Hungary.
Poland will follow in turn.
Thus, if the Revolution of 1848 was not a socialist revolution, it paved the way, prepared the
ground for the latter. Through the impetus given to large-scaled industry in all countries, the
bourgeois regime during the last forty-five years has everywhere created a numerous,
concentrated and powerful proletariat. It has thus raised, to use the language of the Manifesto, its
own grave-diggers. Without restoring autonomy and unity to each nation, it will be impossible to
achieve the international union of the proletariat, or the peaceful and intelligent co-operation of
these nations toward common aims. Just imagine joint international action by the Italian,
Hungarian, German, Polish and Russian workers under the political conditions preceding 1848!
The battles fought in 1848 were thus not fought in vain. Nor have the forty-five years separating
us from that revolutionary epoch passed to no purpose. The fruits are ripening, and all I wish is
that the publication of this Italian translation may augur as well for the victory of the Italian
proletariat as the publication of the original did for the international revolution.
The Manifesto does full justice to the revolutionary part played by capitalism in the past. The first
capitalist nation was Italy. The close of the feudal Middle Ages, and the opening of the modern
capitalist era are marked by a colossal figured: an Italian, Dante, both the last poet of the Middle
Ages and the first poet of modern times. Today, as in 1300, a new historical era is approaching.
Will Italy give us the new Dante, who will mark the hour of birth of this new, proletarian era?
Frederick Engels
London, February 1, 1893
Manifesto of the Communist Party
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.
I. 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 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, 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.
*
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. [Engels, 1888 English edition]
†
That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organisation 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 organisation 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 primeval communities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic
classes. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, second
edition, Stuttgart, 1886. [Engels, 1888 English Edition and 1890 German Edition (with the last sentence omitted)]
‡
Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a master within, not a head of a guild. [Engels, 1888 English Edition]
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Manifesto of the Communist Party
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 monopolised by closed guilds,
now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system
took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class;
division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour
in each single workshop.
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturer no longer
sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of
manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by
industrial millionaires, the leaders of 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 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.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of
development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.
Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political
advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and
self-governing association in the 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 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 remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked selfinterest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious
*
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]
16
Manifesto of the Communist Party
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.
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.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family
relation to a mere money relation.
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of 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 Exoduses of nations and crusades.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production,
and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first
condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production,
uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation
distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their
train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones
become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is
profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his
relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire
surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions
everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character
to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has
drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established
national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new
industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by
industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the
remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter
of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the 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 narrowmindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local
literatures, there arises a world literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely
facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation.
The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese
walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It
compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels
them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves.
In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
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Manifesto of the Communist Party
The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities,
has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a
considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country
dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the
civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.
The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of
the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means
of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this
was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate
interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation,
with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one
customs-tariff.
The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more
colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s
forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation,
railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers,
whole populations conjured out of the ground – what earlier century had even a presentiment that
such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?
We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built
itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means
of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and
exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the
feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive
forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.
Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution
adapted 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 overproduction. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears
as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of
subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much
civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The
productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the
conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these
conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring
disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The
conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how
does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand 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.
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Manifesto of the Communist Party
The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against
the bourgeoisie itself.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called
into existence the men who are to wield those weapons – the modern working class – the
proletarians.
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the
proletariat, the modern working class, developed – a class of labourers, who live only so long as
they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers,
who must sell themselves 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 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 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 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 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 overlooker, 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.
The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more
modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women.
Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class.
All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.
No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he
receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the
landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.
The lower strata of the middle class – the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, 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
specialised 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 labourers, then by the workpeople
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 conditions of
production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares
that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they
seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.
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Manifesto of the Communist Party
At this stage, the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and
broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this
is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which
class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion,
and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight
their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the
landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty 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 equalised, in
proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces
wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting
commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The 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 (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the
rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these
occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.
Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies,
not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped
on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place
the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was
needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national
struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain
which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the
modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.
This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is
continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever
rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests
of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the tenhours’ 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
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Manifesto of the Communist Party
period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie
goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have
raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.
Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a
really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern
Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.
The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these
fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle
class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for
they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are 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”, [lumpenproletariat] 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 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.
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 labourer, 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
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Manifesto of the Communist Party
an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave
within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him,
instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its
existence is no longer compatible with society.
The essential 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-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 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.
II. Proletarians and Communists
In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to 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 mould 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 line 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 favour of bourgeois property.
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the
abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most
complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class
antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition
of private property.
We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally
acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the
groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.
Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of 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-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
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Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists
based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Let us examine both sides of this
antagonism.
To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital
is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort,
only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.
Capital is therefore not 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-labour.
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 in so far as the
interest of the ruling class requires it.
In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In Communist
society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the
labourer.
In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present
dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the
living person is dependent and has no individuality.
And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and
freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and
bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.
By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free
selling and buying.
But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free
selling and buying, and all the other “brave words” of our 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 Communistic abolition of
buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.
You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society,
private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the
few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us,
therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose
existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.
In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is
just what we intend.
From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a
social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can
no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say,
individuality vanishes.
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Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists
You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois,
than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and
made impossible.
Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does
is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such 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 of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do
not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no
longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.
All objections urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating material
products, have, in the same way, been urged against the Communistic 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, &c. Your very ideas are but the
outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your
jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will whose essential character
and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.
The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason,
the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property –
historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production – this misconception you
share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient
property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in
the case of your own bourgeois form of property.
Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of
the Communists.
On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private
gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this
state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians,
and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both
will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime
we plead guilty.
But, you 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, &c.? The
Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter
the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.
The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents
and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the
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Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists
family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple
articles of commerce and instruments of labour.
But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the 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 community of women; 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.
Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the
Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for
a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is selfevident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of
the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.
The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.
The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the
proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the
nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois
sense of the word.
National differences and 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 civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the
proletariat.
In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another 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 revolutionise 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 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal
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Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists
society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious
liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within
the domain of knowledge.
“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been
modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political
science, and law, constantly survived this change.”
“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of
society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality,
instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical
experience.”
What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the
development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.
But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation
of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages,
despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general
ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.
The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no
wonder that its development 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 centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the
proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as
possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the
rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures,
therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the
movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are
unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.
These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
Nevertheless, in 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. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank
with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the
State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the
bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally
in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to 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
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Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists
populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s
factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial
production, &c, &c.
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has
been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will
lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of
one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is
compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a
revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions
of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the
existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own
supremacy as a class.
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an
association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of
all.
III. Socialist and Communist Literature
1. Reactionary Socialism
A. Feudal Socialism
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 agitation4, 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.*
In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight, apparently, of its own
interests, and to formulate their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited
working class alone. Thus, the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new
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 régime a class is being
developed which is destined to cut up root and branch the old order of society.
What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it creates a proletariat as that it creates
a revolutionary proletariat.
In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive measures against the working class; and in
ordinary life, despite their high-falutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped
from the tree of industry, and to barter truth, love, and honour, for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar,
and potato spirits.†
As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has Clerical Socialism with
Feudal Socialism.
*
Not the English Restoration (1660-1689), but the French Restoration (1814-1830). [Note by Engels to the English
edition of 1888.]
†
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 d…