Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Manifesto of the Communist Party By Karl Marx

and Fredrick Engels Written: Late 1847. First Published: February 1848. Source: Marx/Engels Selected Works, Volume One, Progress Publishers, Moscow, USSR, 1969, pp. 98-137. Transla ted: Samuel Moore in cooperation with Frederick Engels, 1888. Transcription/Mark up: Zodiac and Brian Basgen Proofread: Checked and corrected against the English Edition of 1888, by Andy Blunden, 2004. Public Domain: This work is completely free. Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org) 1991, 2000, 2004. Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels A spectre is haunting Europe the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Eur ope have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, M etternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies. Where is the part y in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in pow er? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of co mmunism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its re actionary 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 t hat Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their view s, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Co mmunism 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 langua ges. Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Bourgeois and Proletarians1 The history of all hitherto existing society2 is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master3 and jou rneyman, 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, o r 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 or ders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, k nights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-mast ers, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subo rdinate gradations. The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruin s of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but establi shed new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place o f the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, thi s distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is m ore and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes d irectly facing each other Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. From the serfs of the Mid dle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgess es the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed. The discovery of Americ a, 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, g ave to 1 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 mod ern 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] 2 That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social or ganisation existing previous to recorded history, all but unknown. Since then, A ugust 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 Teu tonic races started in history, and, by and by, village communities were found t o be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ir eland. The inner organisation of this primitive communistic society was laid bar e, in its typical form, by Lewis Henry Morgan's (1818-1861) crowning discovery o f the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolutio n 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, St uttgart, 1886. [Engels, 1888 English Edition and 1890 German Edition (with the l ast sentence omitted)] 3 Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a master within, not a head of a guild. [Engels, 1888 English Edition] Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby , to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid developm ent. The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolis ed by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new mar kets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the diffe rent 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 m anufacturer no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised in dustrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Ind ustry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois. Modern industry ha s 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 co mmunication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways exte nded, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, a nd pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages. We s ee, 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 ex change. Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a cor responding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval co mmune4: here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable third estate of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufac turing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a coun terpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Indu stry 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 com mittee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. 4 This was the name given their urban communities by the townsmen of Italy and Fra nce, after they had purchased or conquered their initial rights of self-government from their feudal lords. [Engels, 1890 G erman edition] Commune was the name taken in France by the nascent towns even befo re they had conquered from their feudal lords and masters local self-government and political rights as the "Third Estate". Generally speaking, for the economic al development of the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country, for its political development, France. [Engels, 1888 English Edition] Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part. The bourgeo isie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarc hal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties th at bound man to his natural superiors, and has left remaining no other nexus betwe en man and man than naked selfinterest, than callous cash payment. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of p hilistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has re solved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefe asible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom Free T rade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions , it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoi sie 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 ad mire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been t he 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 in struments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in u naltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all ea rlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation dist inguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relati ons, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swep t away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that i s solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compell ed to face with sober senses his, real conditions of life, and his relations wit h his kind. Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisi e over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everyw here, establish connexions everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitat ion of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consump tion in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from u nder the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All oldestablis hed national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They a re dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death ques tion for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose p roducts are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In pl ace of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wa nts, 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 i ntercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of indi vidual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedn ess become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local li teratures, there arises a world literature. The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improv ement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of co mmunication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down a ll Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to a dopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it call s civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one wo rd, it creates a world after its own image. The bourgeoisie has subjected the co untry to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly incr eased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a co nsiderable 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-barba rian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations o f bourgeois, the East on the West. The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing awa y 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, w ith separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumpe d together into one Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels 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 tha n have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, m achinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steamnavigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, ca nalisation or rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour? We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whos e 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 exchan ge, 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 pr oductive 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 th e history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern pr oductive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property re lations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its ru le. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical retur n 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 destroye d. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, wo uld have seemed an absurdity the epidemic of overproduction. Society suddenly fi nds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a fami ne, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of sub sistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too muc h commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to f urther 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 conditio ns of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. A nd how Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruct ion 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 pavi ng the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing th e means whereby crises are prevented. The weapons with which the bourgeoisie fel led feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. But n ot only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it ha s also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons the modern w orking class the proletarians. In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working clas s, 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, w ho must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, t o all the fluctuations of the market. Owing to the extensive use of machinery, a nd to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individu al character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an append age of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most ea sily 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 req uires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a c ommodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In p roportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decre ases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour inc reases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by pro longation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given t ime or by increased speed of machinery, etc. Modern Industry has converted the l ittle workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industria l capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command o f 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 en d and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is. Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other w ords, 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 disti nctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, mor e or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex. No sooner is the exp loitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receiv es his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeois ie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc. The lower strata of the m iddle 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 ne w methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of t he population. The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carr ied 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 d irectly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois condi tions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces mach inery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished sta tus of the workman of the Middle Ages. At this stage, the labourers still form a n incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutua l competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not y et the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisi e, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set t he 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 e nemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical moveme nt 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 prolet ariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, i ts strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and co nditions 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 th e bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developi ng, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between indi vidual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of coll isions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (T rades' Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the r ate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision befor ehand 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 fr uit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expandin g union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communi cation that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of differ ent localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was ne eded 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 c lass, 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 int erests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisi e itself. Thus, the tenhours' bill in England was carried. Altogether collisions b etween the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of devel opment of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant b attle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourg eoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of indus try; 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 th us, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supp lies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, i n other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourge oisie. 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 cl ass struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on withi n 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 itse lf adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels 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 o f the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehe nding 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 lo wer middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasa nt, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their exist ence 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 whe el 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 prese nt, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themse lves at that of the proletariat. The dangerous class, [lumpenproletariat] the soci al 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 revolu tion; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bri bed tool of reactionary intrigue. In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without p roperty; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labour, modern subjection t o capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has strip ped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to hi m so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeo is interests. All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortif y their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditio ns of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive fo rces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing o f their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous s ecurities for, and insurances of, individual property. All previous historical m ovements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The pro letarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense maj ority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stra tum of Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole supe rincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air. Though not in s ubstance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is a t first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, fi rst of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie. In depicting the most genera l phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veile d civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war brea ks 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 soc iety has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing an d 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, ju st as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to d evelop 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 e xistence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapi dly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisi e is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its condi tions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule becau se it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, bec ause 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 essenti al conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the f ormation 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 isolati on of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due t o association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under it s feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates pr oducts. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-di ggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable. Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Proletarians and Communists In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The Com munists 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 wh ole. 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 o ther working-class parties by this only: (1) In the national struggles of the pr oletarians 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 represen t the interests of the movement as a whole. The Communists, therefore, are on th e one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-c lass parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and t he ultimate general results of the proletarian movement. The immediate aim of th e 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 Communist s are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discove red, by this or that would-be universal reformer. They merely express, in genera l terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a hist orical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism. All property relati ons in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent up on the change in historical conditions. Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourg eois property. The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of p roperty generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of pro ducing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the ex ploitation of the many by the few. In this sense, the theory of the Communists m ay be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. We Commun ists 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 t o 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 ext ent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily. Or do you mean the m odern bourgeois private property? But does wage-labour create any property for t he labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which ex ploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present fo rm, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Let us examine both s ides of this antagonism. To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely person al, 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 unit ed action of all members of society, can it be set in motion. Capital is therefo re not only personal; it is a social power. When, therefore, capital is converte d into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal pr operty is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social ch aracter of the property that is changed. It loses its class character. Let us no w take wage-labour. Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels 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 mean s of his labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We b y no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labo ur, 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, u nder 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 so ciety, 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 t he present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois s ociety 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 bourgeoi s freedom is undoubtedly aimed at. By freedom is meant, under the present bourge ois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying. But if sellin g and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk abou t free selling and buying, and all the other brave words of our bourgeois about fr eedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selli ng 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 bourgeo is 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, p rivate 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 o f property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society. Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Preci sely 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 tra nsformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, indiv iduality vanishes. You must, therefore, confess that by individual you mean no oth er person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This pers on must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible. Communism deprive s no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does i s 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 propert y, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us. According to th is, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idle ness; for those those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who ac quire anything do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expressio n 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 produc ing and appropriating material products, have, in the same way, been urged again st the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating intellectual products. Ju st as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the disappearanc e of production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identica l with the disappearance of all culture. That culture, the loss of which he lame nts, 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 pr operty, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, &c. You r very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois productio n and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your cla ss made into a law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are d etermined by the economical conditions of existence of your class. Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nat ure and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of producti on and form of property historical relations that rise and disappear in the prog ress 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 ad mit 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 amon g the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practica l 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 wanti ng 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 replac e home education by social. And your education! Is not that also social, and det ermined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention di rect 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 t he ruling class. The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about t he hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, t he more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proleta rians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of c ommerce and instruments of labour. But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus. Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the i nstruments 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 t o the women. He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do a way with the status of women as mere instruments of production. For the rest, no thing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the c ommunity of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially establishe d 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 ha ving wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak o f common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives. B ourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the m ost, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire t o introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community o f women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and privat e. 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 suprema cy, 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 mor e 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 condit ions of life corresponding thereto. The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilised countries a t 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 Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to anoth er will come to an end. The charges against Communism made from a religious, a p hilosophical and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving o f serious examination. Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ide as, views, and conception, in one word, man's consciousness, changes with every ch ange 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 intellect ual production changes its character in proportion as material production is cha nged? 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 create d, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolutio n of the old conditions of existence. When the ancient world was in its last thr oes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas s uccumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its dea th battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious libert y and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competiti on within the domain of knowledge. Undoubtedly, it will be said, religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historica l development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, c onstantly survived this change. There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedo m, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolis hes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of cons tituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past his torical experience. What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of al l past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonism s that assumed different forms at different epochs. But whatever form they may h ave taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one pa rt of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of pa st ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within cert ain common Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total di sappearance of class antagonisms. The Communist revolution is the most radical r upture with traditional relations; no wonder that its development involved the m ost radical rupture with traditional ideas. But let us have done with the bourge ois objections to Communism. We have seen above, that the first step in the revo lution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of rulin g class to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political s upremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise al l 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 ra pidly as possible. Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except b y 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 unavo idable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production. These meas ures will, of course, be different in different countries. Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable: 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of la nd to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolit ion of all rights of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigran ts and rebels. 5. Centralisation of credit in the banks of the state, by means o f a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralisatio n of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. 7. Exte nsion of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringin g 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 populace over the country . 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's f actory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial prod uction, &c, &c. When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disa ppeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast associa tion of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Po litical power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class fo r 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, sweep s 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 antagonis ms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy a s a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class ant agonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Socialist and Communist Literature 1. Reactionary Socialism A. Feudal Socialism Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation o f the aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against modern bour geois society. In the French Revolution of July 1830, and in the English reform agitation[A], these aristocracies again succumbed to the hateful upstart. Thence forth, a serious political struggle was altogether out of the question. A litera ry battle alone remained possible. But even in the domain of literature the old cries of the restoration period had become impossible.5 In order to arouse sympa thy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight, apparently, of its own interests , and to formulate their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of t he exploited working class alone. Thus, the aristocracy took their revenge by si nging lampoons on their new masters and whispering in his ears sinister prophesi es 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 h eart's core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to compr ehend 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 ar ms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter. One section of the French Le gitimists and Young England exhibited this spectacle. In pointing out that their m ode of exploitation was different to that of the bourgeoisie, the feudalists for get that they exploited under circumstances and conditions that were quite diffe rent and that are now antiquated. In showing that, under their rule, the modern proletariat never [A] A reference to the movement for a reform of the electoral law which, under the p ressure of the working class, was pased by the British House of Commons in 1831 and finally endorsed by the House of Lords in June, 1832. The reform was directe d against monopoly rule of the landed and finance aristrocracy and opened the wa y to Parliament for the representatives of the industrial bourgeoisie. Neither w orkers nor the petty-bourgeois were allowed electoral rights, despite assurances they would. [Editor's note] 5 Not the English Restoration (1660-1689), but the Fr ench Restoration (1814-1830). [Engels, 1888 German edition] Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels existed, they forget that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of t heir own form of society. For the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionar y character of their criticism that their chief accusation against the bourgeois amounts to this, that under the bourgeois rgime a class is being developed which is destined to cut up root and branch the old order of society. What they upbra id 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, despi te their high-falutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped f rom the tree of industry, and to barter truth, love, and honour, for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar, and potato spirits.6 As the parson has ever gone hand in h and with the landlord, so has Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism. Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge. Has not Christian ity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the State? Has it not preached in the place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy and mortif ication of the flesh, monastic life and Mother Church? Christian Socialism is bu t the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the ari stocrat. B. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism The feudal aristocracy was not the only cl ass that was ruined by the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of e xistence pined and perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society. The m edieval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the m odern bourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little developed, industrial ly and commercially, these two classes still vegetate side by side with the risi ng bourgeoisie. In countries where modern civilisation has become fully develope d, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletari at and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeoi s society. The individual members of this class, 6 This applies chiefly to Germany, where the landed aristocracy and squirearchy ha ve large portions of their estates cultivated for their own account by stewards, and are, moreover, extensive beetroot-sugar manufacturers and distillers of pot ato spirits. The wealthier British aristocracy are, as yet, rather above that; b ut they, too, know how to make up for declining rents by lending their names to floaters or more or less shady joint-stock companies. [Engels, 1888 German editi on] Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition, and, as modern industry develops, they even see the moment approach ing when they will completely disappear as an independent section of modern soci ety, to be replaced in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, b ailiffs and shopmen. In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more than half of the population, it was natural that writers who sided with th e proletariat against the bourgeoisie should use, in their criticism of the bour geois rgime, the standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and from the standp oint of these intermediate classes, should take up the cudgels for the working c lass. Thus arose petty-bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi was the head of this school , not only in France but also in England. This school of Socialism dissected wit h great acuteness the contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the concentration o f capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletari at, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of we alth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of ol d moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities. In its pos itive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, a nd the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchang e within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bo und to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and U topian. Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal relati ons in agriculture. Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of selfdeception, this form of Socialism ended in a misera ble hangover. C. German or True Socialism The Socialist and Communist literature o f France, a literature that originated under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in po wer, and that was the expressions of the struggle against this power, was introd uced into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie, in that country, had just begu n its contest with feudal absolutism. German philosophers, would-be philosophers , and beaux esprits (men of letters), eagerly seized on this literature, only fo rgetting, that when these writings immigrated from France into Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Germany, French social conditions had not immigrated along with them. In contact with German social conditions, this French literature lost all its immediate pr actical significance and assumed a purely literary aspect. Thus, to the German p hilosophers of the Eighteenth Century, the demands of the first French Revolutio n were nothing more than the demands of Practical Reason in general, and the utter ance of the will of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie signified, in their eye s, the laws of pure Will, of Will as it was bound to be, of true human Will gene rally. The work of the German literati consisted solely in bringing the new Fren ch ideas into harmony with their ancient philosophical conscience, or rather, in annexing the French ideas without deserting their own philosophic point of view . This annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign language is appr opriated, namely, by translation. It is well known how the monks wrote silly liv es of Catholic Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancie nt heathendom had been written. The German literati reversed this process with t he profane French literature. They wrote their philosophical nonsense beneath th e French original. For instance, beneath the French criticism of the economic fu nctions of money, they wrote Alienation of Humanity, and beneath the French critic ism of the bourgeois state they wrote Dethronement of the Category of the General, and so forth. The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of th e French historical criticisms, they dubbed Philosophy of Action, True Socialism, Ger man Science of Socialism, Philosophical Foundation of Socialism, and so on. The Fre nch Socialist and Communist literature was thus completely emasculated. And, sin ce it ceased in the hands of the German to express the struggle of one class wit h the other, he felt conscious of having overcome French one-sidedness and of repr esenting, not true requirements, but the requirements of Truth; not the interest s of the proletariat, but the interests of Human Nature, of Man in general, who belongs to no class, has no reality, who exists only in the misty realm of philo sophical fantasy. This German socialism, which took its schoolboy task so seriou sly and solemnly, and extolled its poor stock-in-trade in such a mountebank fash ion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic innocence. The fight of the Germans, and especially of the Prussian bourgeoisie, against feudal aristocracy and absol ute monarchy, in other words, the liberal movement, became more earnest. Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels By this, the long-wished for opportunity was offered to True Socialism of confront ing the political movement with the Socialist demands, of hurling the traditiona l anathemas against liberalism, against representative government, against bourg eois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeo is liberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this bourgeois movement. German Socialism forg ot, in the nick of time, that the French criticism, whose silly echo it was, pre supposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its corresponding econo mic conditions of existence, and the political constitution adapted thereto, the very things those attainment was the object of the pending struggle in Germany. To the absolute governments, with their following of parsons, professors, count ry squires, and officials, it served as a welcome scarecrow against the threaten ing bourgeoisie. It was a sweet finish, after the bitter pills of flogging and b ullets, with which these same governments, just at that time, dosed the German w orking-class risings. While this True Socialism thus served the government as a we apon for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, directly represe nted a reactionary interest, the interest of German Philistines. In Germany, the petty-bourgeois class, a relic of the sixteenth century, and since then constan tly cropping up again under the various forms, is the real social basis of the e xisting state of things. To preserve this class is to preserve the existing stat e of things in Germany. The industrial and political supremacy of the bourgeoisi e threatens it with certain destruction on the one hand, from the concentration of capital; on the other, from the rise of a revolutionary proletariat. True Socia lism appeared to kill these two birds with one stone. It spread like an epidemic . The robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric, steeped in the dew of sickly sentiment, this transcendental robe in which the German So cialists wrapped their sorry eternal truths, all skin and bone, served to wonderfu lly increase the sale of their goods amongst such a public. And on its part Germ an Socialism recognised, more and more, its own calling as the bombastic represe ntative of the petty-bourgeois Philistine. It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the German petty Philistine to be the typical man. To eve ry villainous meanness of this model man, it gave a hidden, higher, Socialistic interpretation, the exact contrary of its real character. It went to the extreme length of directly opposing the brutally destructive tendency of Communism, and o f proclaiming its supreme and impartial contempt of all class struggles. With ve ry few exceptions, all the so-called Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Socialist and Communist publications that now (1847) circulate in Germany belong to the domain of this foul and enervating literature.7 2. Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order t o secure the continued existence of bourgeois society. To this section belong ec onomists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the work ing class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cru elty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imagina ble kind. This form of socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete sy stems. We may cite Proudhon's Philosophis de la Misre as an example of this form. T he Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions wit hout the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally con ceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march s traightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the p roletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie. A second, and more practi cal, but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought to depreciate every revo lutionary movement in the eyes of the working class by showing that no mere poli tical reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in econ omical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understand s abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be a ffected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and si mplify the administrative work, of bourgeois government. Bourgeois Socialism att ains adequate expression when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech . 7 The revolutionary storm of 1848 swept away this whole shabby tendency and cured its protagonists of the desire to dabble in socialism. The chief representative and classical type of this tendency is Mr Karl Gruen. [Engels, 1888 German editi on] Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for the ben efit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism. It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois for the benefit of t he working class. 3. Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism We do not here refer to that literature which, in every great modern revolution, has always given voice to the demands of the proletariat, such as the writings of Babeuf and others. The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, made in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was being overthrown, necessarily failed, owing to the then undeveloped state of the prole tariat, as well as to the absence of the economic conditions for its emancipatio n, conditions that had yet to be produced, and could be produced by the impendin g bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that accompanied these fir st movements of the proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character. It incu lcated universal asceticism and social levelling in its crudest form. The Social ist and Communist systems, properly so called, those of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Ow en, and others, spring into existence in the early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie (see Section 1. Bour geois and Proletarians). The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class an tagonisms, as well as the action of the decomposing elements in the prevailing f orm of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the s pectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any independent politic al movement. Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the development of industry, the economic situation, as they find it, does not as ye t offer to them the material conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search after a new social science, after new social laws, that a re to create these conditions. Historical action is to yield to their personal i nventive action; historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic on es; and the gradual, spontaneous class organisation of the proletariat to an org anisation of society especially contrived by these inventors. Future history Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels resolves itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the practical carrying o ut of their social plans. In the formation of their plans, they are conscious of caring chiefly for the interests of the working class, as being the most suffer ing class. Only from the point of view of being the most suffering class does th e proletariat exist for them. The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as we ll as their own surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themsel ves far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society, even that of the most favoured. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, without the distinction of class; nay, by preferenc e, to the ruling class. For how can people, when once they understand their syst em, fail to see in it the best possible plan of the best possible state of socie ty? Hence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary action; t hey wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel. Such fan tastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the proletariat is sti ll in a very undeveloped state and has but a fantastic conception of its own pos ition, correspond with the first instinctive yearnings of that class for a gener al reconstruction of society. But these Socialist and Communist publications con tain also a critical element. They attack every principle of existing society. H ence, they are full of the most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the working class. The practical measures proposed in them such as the abolition of the distinction between town and country, of the family, of the carrying on of i ndustries for the account of private individuals, and of the wage system, the pr oclamation of social harmony, the conversion of the function of the state into a more superintendence of production all these proposals point solely to the disa ppearance of class antagonisms which were, at that time, only just cropping up, and which, in these publications, are recognised in their earliest indistinct an d undefined forms only. These proposals, therefore, are of a purely Utopian char acter. The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an inv erse relation to historical development. In proportion as the modern class strug gle develops and takes definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from the co ntest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical value and all theoretic al justification. Therefore, although the originators of these systems were, in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed mere r eactionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in oppo sition to the progressive historical development of the proletariat. They, there fore, endeavour, and that consistently, to Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dre am of experimental realisation of their social Utopias, of founding isolated phal ansteres, of establishing Home Colonies, or setting up a Little Icaria8 duodecimo edi tions of the New Jerusalem and to realise all these castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois. By degrees, th ey sink into the category of the reactionary [or] conservative Socialists depict ed above, differing from these only by more systematic pedantry, and by their fa natical and superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social scien ce. They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part of the wo rking class; such action, according to them, can only result from blind unbelief in the new Gospel. The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, resp ectively, oppose the Chartists and the Rformistes. 8 Phalanstres were Socialist colonies on the plan of Charles Fourier; Icaria was th e name given by Cabet to his Utopia and, later on, to his American Communist col ony. [Engels, 1888 English Edition] Home Colonies were what Owen called his Commun ist model societies. Phalanstres was the name of the public palaces planned by Fo urier. Icaria was the name given to the Utopian land of fancy, whose Communist i nstitutions Cabet portrayed. [Engels, 1890 German Edition] Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Partie s Section II has made clear the relations of the Communists to the existing workin g-class parties, such as the Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America. The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movemen t. In France, the Communists ally with the SocialDemocrats9 against the conserva tive and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critica l position in regard to phases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution. In Switzerland, they support the Radicals, without losing sigh t of the fact that this party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of Democ ratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois. In Poland, t hey support the party that insists on an agrarian revolution as the prime condit ion for national emancipation, that party which fomented the insurrection of Cra cow in 1846. In Germany, they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a r evolutionary way, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie. But they never cease, for a single instant, to instill into the working class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism be tween bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the German workers may straight way use, as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social and political co nditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremac y, and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin. The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bour geois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European civilisation and with a much more developed proletariat than that of England was in the seventeenth, and France in the eighteenth century, and becau se the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution. 9 The party then represented in Parliament by Ledru-Rollin, in literature by Louis Blanc, in the daily press by the Rforme. The name of Social-Democracy signifies, with these its inventors, a section of the Democratic or Republican Party more or less tinged with socialism. [Engels, English Edition 1888] Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time. Finally, they labour everywhe re for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries. The C ommunists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that thei r ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social con ditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proleta rians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE! Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Appendix: Prefaces to various Language Editions The 1872 German Edition The Communist League, an international association of workers, which could of co urse 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 f or publication a detailed theoretical and practical programme for the Party. Suc h was the origin of the following Manifesto, the manuscript of which travelled t o London to be printed a few weeks before the February Revolution. First publish ed in German, it has been republished in that language in at least twelve differ ent editions in Germany, England, and America. It was published in English for t he first time in 1850 in the Red Republican, London, translated by Miss Helen Ma cfarlane, and in 1871 in at least three different translations in America. The f rench version first appeared in Paris shortly before the June insurrection of 18 48, and recently in Le Socialiste of New York. A new translation is in the cours e 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 'six ties. 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, th e general principles laid down in the Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct to day as ever. Here and there, some detail might be improved. The practical applic ation 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 propos ed at the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very diffe rently worded today. In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 18 48, and of the accompanying improved and extended organization of the working cl ass, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolutio n, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the fir st time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some de tails been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., tha t "the working class cannot simply lay hold of ready-made state machinery, and w ield it for its own purposes." (See The Civil War in France: Address of the Gene ral Council of the International Working Men's Assocation, 1871, where this poin t is further developed.) Further, it is self-evident that the criticism of socia list literature is deficient in relation to the present time, because it comes d own 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 entirel y changed, and the progress of history has swept from off the earth the greater portion of the political parties there enumerated. Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels 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 introductio n bridging the gap from 1847 to the present day; but this reprint was too unexpe cted to leave us time for that. Karl Marx & Fredrick Engels London, June 24, 1872 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 Kolo kol. 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 var ious opposition parties in various countries. Precisely Russia and the United St ates are missing here. It was the time when Russia constituted the last great re serve of all European reaction, when the United States absorbed the surplus prol etarian forces of Europe through immigration. Both countries provided Europe wit h 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 sha king the very foundations of European landed property -- large and small. At the same time, it enabled the United States to exploit its tremendous industrial re sources with an energy and on a scale that must shortly break the industrial mon opoly of Western Europe, and especially of England, existing up to now. Both cir cumstances react in a revolutionary manner upon America itself. Step by step, th e small and middle land ownership of the farmers, the basis of the whole politic al constitution, is succumbing to the competition of giant farms; at the same ti me, a mass industrial proletariat and a fabulous concentration of capital funds are developing for the first time in the industrial regions. And now Russia! Dur ing the Revolution of 1848-9, not only the European princes, but the European bo urgeois 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, and Rus sia forms the vanguard of revolutionary action in Europe. Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels The Communist Manifesto had, as its object, the proclamation of the inevitable i mpending dissolution of modern bourgeois property. But in Russia we find, face-t o-face with the rapidly flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois property, jus t 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 compl ement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development. Karl Marx & Fredrick Engels January 21, 1882, London The 1883 German Edition The preface to the present edition I must, alas, sign alone. Marx, the man to wh om the whole working class class of Europe and America owes more than to any one else -- rests at Highgate Cemetary and over his grave the first grass is alread y growing. Since his death [March 13, 1883], there can be even less thought of r evising or supplementing the Manifesto. But I consider it all the more necessary again to state the following expressly: The basic thought running through the M anifesto -- that economic production, and the structure of society of every hist orical epoch necessarily arising therefrom, constitute the foundation for the po litical and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently (ever since th e dissolution of the primaeval communal ownership of land) all history has been a history of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, bet ween dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social evolution; tha t this struggle, however, has now reached a stage where the exploited and oppres sed class (the proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie), without at the same time forever f reeing the whole of society from exploitation, oppression, class struggles -this basic thought belongs soley and exclusively to Marx.10 10 "This proposition", I wrote in the preface to the English translation, "which, i n my opinion, is destined to do for history what Darwin's theory has done for bi ology, 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 Condition s of the Working Class in England. But when I again met Marx at Brussels, in spr ing 1845, he had it already worked out and put it before me in terms almost as c lear as those in which I have stated it here."] Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels I have already stated this many times; but precisely now is it necessary that it also stand in front of the Manifesto itself. Fredrick Engels June 28, 1883, London The 1888 English Edition The Manifesto was published as the platform of the Communist League, a working m en's association, first exclusively German, later on international, and under th e political conditions of the Continent before 1848, unavoidably a secret societ y. At a Congress of the League, held in November 1847, Marx and Engels were comm issioned 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 wa s brought out in Paris shortly before the insurrection of June 1848. The first E nglish translation, by Miss Helen Macfarlane, appeared in George Julian Harney's Red Republican, London, 1850. A Danish and a Polish edition had also been publi shed. The defeat of the Parisian insurrection of June 1848 -- the first great ba ttle between proletariat and bourgeoisie -- drove again into the background, for a time, the social and political aspirations of the European working class. The nceforth, the struggle for supremacy was, again, as it had been before the Revol ution of February, solely between different sections of the propertied class; th e working class was reduced to a fight for political elbow-room, and to the posi tion of extreme wing of the middle-class Radicals. Wherever independent proletar ian 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' i mprisonment, they were tried in October 1852. This selebrated "Cologne Communist Trial" lasted from October 4 till November 12; seven of the prisoners were sent enced to terms of imprisonment in a fortress, varying from three to six years. I mmediately after the sentence, the League was formlly 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 ru ling classes, the International Working Men's Association sprang up. But this as sociation, formed with the express aim of welding into one body the whole milita nt 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 broa d enough to be acceptable to the English trade unions, to Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels the followers of Proudhon in France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain, and to the Lassa lleans in Germany.11 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 e vents and vicissitudes in the struggle against capital, the defeats even more th an 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 in sight into the true conditions for working-class emancipation. And Marx was righ t. 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 Ger many, were dying out, and even the conservative English trade unions, though mos t of them had long since severed their connection with the International, were g radually advancing towards that point at which, last year at Swansea, their pres ident 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. The Manifesto itself came thus to the front ag ain. 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, whe re the translation was published in Woorhull and Claflin's Weekly. From this Eng lish 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 Genev a, about 1863; a second one, by the heroic Vera Zasulich, also in Geneva, in 188 2. A new Danish edition is to be found in Socialdemokratisk Bibliothek, Copenhag en, 1885; a fresh French translation in Le Socialiste, Paris, 1886. From this la tter, a Spanish version was prepared and published in Madrid, 1886. The German r eprints are not to be counted; there have been twelve altogether at the least. A n 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 bring ing out a book with the name of Marx on it, while the translator declined to cal l it his own production. Of further translations into other languages I have hea rd but had not seen. Thus the history of the Manifesto reflects the history of t he modern working-class movement; at present, it is doubtless the most wide spre ad, the most international production of all socialist literature, the common pl atform 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 Socia lists, in 1847, were understood, on the one hand the adherents of the various Ut opian systems: Owenites 11 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 ag itation, 1862-1864, he did not go beyond demanding co-operative workshops suppor ted by state credit. Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels 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 an y danger to capital and profit, all sorts of social grievances, in both cases me n outside the working-class movement, and looking rather to the "educated" class es for support. Whatever portion of the working class had become convinced of th e insufficiency of mere political revolutions, and had proclaimed the necessity of total social change, called itself Communist. It was a crude, rough-hewn, pur ely instinctive sort of communism; still, it touched the cardinal point and was powerful enough amongst the working class to produce the Utopian communism of Ca bet 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 Conti nent 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 tw o names we must take. Moreover, we have, ever since, been far from repudiating i t. The Manifesto being our joint production, I consider myself bound to state th at the fundamental proposition which forms the nucleus belongs to Marx. That pro position is: That in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic pro duction 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 expl ained the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently th e whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, h olding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; That the histor y of these class struggles forms a series of evolutions in which, nowadays, a st age has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class -- the proletariat -- cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling cla ss -- the bourgeoisie -- without, at the same time, and once and for all, emanci pating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinction, an d 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 grad ually approaching for some years before 1845. How far I had independently progre ssed 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 state d it here. From our joint preface to the German edition of 1872, I quote the fol lowing: "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 c orrect today as ever. Here and there, some detail might be improved. The practic al application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, ev erywhere and Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels 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 a t the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very different ly 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, a nd then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first t ime held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some detail s been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that "t he 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 C ouncil of the International Working Men's Assocation 1871, where this point is f urther developed.) Further, it is self-evident that the criticism of socialist l iterature is deficient in relation to the present time, because it comes down on ly to 1847; also that the remarks on the relation of the Communists to the vario us opposition parties (Section IV), although, in principle still correct, yet in practice are antiquated, because the political situation has been entirely chan ged, and the progress of history has swept from off the Earth the greater portio n 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 por tion of Marx's Capital. We have revised it in common, and I have added a few not es explanatory of historical allusions. Fredrick Engels January 30, 1888, London The 1890 German Edition Since [The 1883 German edition preface] was written, a new German edition of the Manifesto has again become necessary, and much has also happened to the Manifes to which should be recorded here. A second Russian translation -- by Vera Zasuli ch -- appeared in Geneva in 1882; the preface to that edition was written by Mar x and myself. Unfortunately, the original German manuscript has gone astray; I m ust 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 ne w 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, whi ch Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels seem to have presented difficulties to the translator, have been omitted, and, i n addition, there are signs of carelessness here and there, which are all the mo re unpleasantly conspicuous since the translation indicates that had the transla tor 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 p ublished to date. From this latter, a Spanish version was published the same yea r 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 Soc ialista, Hernan Cortes. As a matter of curiosity, I may mention that in 1887 the manuscript of an Armenian translation was offered to a publisher in Constantino ple. 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 l ess inaccurate American translations had been repeatedly reprinted in England, a n authentic version at last appeared in 1888. This was my friend Samuel Moore, a nd 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. Authorize d English translation, edited and annotated by Frederick Engels, 1888, London, W illiam Reeves, 185 Fleet Street, E.C. I have added some of the notes of that edi tion to the present one. The Manifesto has had a history of its own. Greeted wit h 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 firs t 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 "b y law" in the conviction of the Cologne Communists in November 1852. With the di sappearance from the public scene of the workers' movement that had begun with t he February Revolution, the Manifesto too passed into the background. When the E uropean workers had again gathered sufficient strength for a new onslaught upon the power of the ruling classes, the International Working Men's Association cam e 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 pr inciples laid down in the Manifesto. It was bound to have a programme which woul d not shut the door on the English trade unions, the French, Belgian, Italian, a nd Spanish Proudhonists, and the German Lassalleans. This programme --the consid erations underlying the Statutes of the International -- was drawn up by Marx wi th a master hand acknowledged even by the Bakunin and the anarchists. For the ul timate Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels final triumph of the ideas set forth in the Manifesto, Marx relied solely upon t he 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 demonst rate to the fighters the inadequacy of their former universal panaceas, and make their minds more receptive to a thorough understanding of the true conditions f or working-class emancipation. And Marx was right. The working class of 1874, at the dissolution of the International, was altogether different from that of 186 4, at its foundation. Proudhonism in the Latin countries, and the specific Lassa lleanism in Germany, were dying out; and even the ten arch-conservative English trade unions were gradually approaching the point where, in 1887, the chairman o f their Swansea Congress could say in their name: "Continental socialism has los t its terror for us." Yet by 1887 continental socialism was almost exclusively t he theory heralded in the Manifesto. Thus, to a certain extent, the history of t he Manifesto reflects the history of the modern working-class movement since 184 8. At present, it is doubtless the most widely circulated, the most internationa l product of all socialist literature, the common programme of many millions of workers of all countries from Siberia to California. Nevertheless, when it appea red, we could not have called it a socialist manifesto. In 1847, two kinds of pe ople were considered socialists. On the one hand were the adherents of the vario us utopian systems, notably the Owenites in England and the Fourierists in Franc e, both of whom, at that date, had already dwindled to mere sects gradually dyin g 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-w ork, 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 "educa ted" classes. The section of the working class, however, which demanded a radica l reconstruction of society, convinced that mere political revolutions were not enough, then called itself Communist. It was still a rough-hewn, only instinctiv e and frequently somewhat crude communism. Yet, it was powerful enough to bring into being two systems of utopian communism -- in France, the "Icarian" communis ts of Cabet, and in Germany that of Weitling. Socialism in 1847 signified a bour geois movement, communism a working-class movement. Socialism was, on the Contin ent at least, quite respectable, whereas communism was the very opposite. And si nce we were very decidely of the opinion as early as then that "the emancipation of the workers must be the task of the working class itself," we could have no hesitation as to which of the two names we should choose. Nor has it ever occure d to us to repudiate it. "Working men of all countries, unite!" But few voices r esponded 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 o f its own. On September 28, 1864, however, the proletarians of most of the Weste rn European countries joined hands in the International Working Men's Associatio n 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 sti ll alive and lives stronger than Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels ever, there is no better witness than this day. Because today, as I write these lines, the European and American proletariat is reviewing its fighting forces, m obilized for the first time, mobilized as one army, under one flag, for one imme diate aim: the standard eight-hour working day to be established by legal enactm ent, as proclaimed by the Geneva Congress of the International in 1866, and agai n by the Paris Workers' Congress of 1889. And today's spectacle will open the ey es 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 s ide to see this with his own eyes! Fredrick Engels May 1, 1890, London The 1892 Polish Edition The fact that a new Polish edition of the Communist Manifesto has become necessa ry gives rise to various thoughts. First of all, it is noteworthy that of late t he 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 expand s in a given country, the demand grows among the workers of that country for enl ightenment regarding their position as the working class in relation to the poss essing 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 t he degree of development of large-scale industry can be measured with fair accur acy 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 decide d progress of Polish industry. And there can be no doubt whatever that this prog ress since the previous edition published ten years ago has actually taken place . Russian Poland, Congress Poland, has become the big industrial region of the R ussian Empire. Whereas Russian large-scale industry is scattered sporadically a part round the Gulf of Finland, another in the center (Moscow and Vladimir), a t hird along the coasts of the Black and Azov seas, and still others elsewhere Pol ish industry has been packed into a relatively small area and enjoys both the ad vantages and disadvantages arising from such concentration. The competing Russia n manufacturers acknowledged the advantages when they demanded protective tariff s against Poland, in spit of their ardent desire to transform the Poles into Rus sians. The disadvantages for the Polish manufacturers and the Russian government are manifest in the rapid spread of socialist ideas among the Polish workers an d in the growing demand for the Manifesto. Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels 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 n ew guarantee of its impending national restoration. And the restoration of an in dependent and strong Poland is a matter which concerns not only the Poles but al l of us. A sincere international collaboration of the European nations is possib le only if each of these nations is fully autonomous in its own house. The Revol ution 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 indepe ndence of Italy, Germany and Hungary through its testamentary executors, Louis B onaparte and Bismarck; but Poland, which since 1792 had done more for the Revolu tion than all these three together, was left to its own resources when it succum bed in 1863 to a tenfold greater Russian force. The nobility could neither maint ain nor regain Polish independence; today, to the bourgeoisie, this independence is, to say the last, immaterial. Nevertheless, it is a necessity for the harmon ious collaboration of the European nations. It can be gained only by the young P olish proletariat, and in its hands it is secure. For the workers of all the res t of Europe need the independence of Poland just as much as the Polish workers t hemselves. F. Engels London, February 10, 1892 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 center, 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 It aly 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 184 8 to 1871 these two great nations were reconstituted and somehow again put on th eir own, it was as Karl Marx used to say, because the men who suppressed the Rev olution of 1848 were, nevertheless, its testamentary executors in spite of thems elves. 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 wor kers, in overthrowing the government, had the very definite intention of overthr owing the bourgeois regime. But conscious though they were of the fatal antagoni sm existing between their own class and the bourgeoisie, still, neither the econ omic progress of the country nor the intellectual development of the mass of Fre nch workers had as yet reached the stage which would have made a social reconstr uction possible. In Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005

Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Frederick Engels the final analysis, therefore, the fruits of the revolution were reaped by the c apitalist class. In the other countries, in Italy, in Germany, in Austria, the w orkers, from the very outset, did nothing but raise the bourgeoisie to power. Bu t in any country the rule of the bourgeoisie is impossible without national inde pendence Therefore, the Revolution of 1848 had to bring in its train the unity a nd autonomy of the nations that had lacked them up to then: Italy, Germany, Hung ary. Poland will follow in turn. Thus, if the Revolution of 1848 was not a socia list revolution, it paved the way, prepared the ground for the latter. Through t he impetus given to large-scaled industry in all countries, the bourgeois regime during the last forty-five years has everywhere created a numerous, concentrate d and powerful proletariat. It has thus raised, to use the language of the Manif esto, its own grave-diggers. Without restoring autonomy and unity to each nation , it will be impossible to achieve the international union of the proletariat, o r the peaceful and intelligent co-operation of these nations toward common aims. Just imagine joint international action by the Italian, Hungarian, German, Poli sh and Russian workers under the political conditions preceding 1848! The battle s fought in 1848 were thus not fought in vain. Nor have the forty-five years sep arating us from that revolutionary epoch passed to no purpose. The fruits are ri pening, and all I wish is that the publication of this Italian translation may a ugur as well for the victory of the Italian proletariat as the publication of th e original did for the international revolution. The Manifesto does full justice to the revolutionary part played by capitalism in the past. The first capitalis t 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 i n 1300, a new historical era is approaching. Will Italy give us the new Dante, w ho will mark the hour of birth of this new, proletarian era? Fredrick Engels London, February 1, 1893 Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005