{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_31193/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_31193","id":"gutenberg_31193","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31193","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: History - Modern (1750+)","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Politics","Communism","Socialism"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines, from images obtained from The Internet Archive.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nManifesto\n\nOf the\n\nCommunist\n\nParty\n\n\nBy\n\nKARL MARX\n\nand\n\nFREDERICK ENGELS\n\n\n\nAUTHORIZED ENGLISH TRANSLATION\n\n\nEdited and Annotated by Frederick Engels\n\n\n\n\n_Price 10 Cents_\n\n\n\n\nNEW YORK\n\nPublished by the New York Labor News Co., 28 City Hall Place\n\n1908\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\nThe \"Manifesto\" was published as the platform of the \"Communist\nLeague,\" a workingmen's association, first exclusively German, later on\ninternational, and, under the political conditions of the Continent\nbefore 1848, unavoidably a secret society.  At a Congress of the\nLeague, held in London in November, 1847, Marx and Engels were\ncommissioned to prepare for publication a complete theoretical and\npractical party programme.  Drawn up in German, in January, 1848, the\nmanuscript was sent to the printer in London a few weeks before the\nFrench revolution of February 24.  A French translation was brought out\nin Paris, shortly before the insurrection of June, 1848.  The first\nEnglish translation, by Miss Helen Macfarlane, appeared in George\nJulian Harney's \"Red Republican,\" London, 1850.  A Danish and a Polish\nedition had also been published.\n\nThe defeat of the Parisian insurrection of June, 1848--the first great\nbattle between Proletariat and Bourgeoisie--drove again into the\nbackground, for a time, the social and political aspirations of the\nEuropean working class.  Thenceforth, the struggle for supremacy was\nagain, as it had been before the revolution of February, solely between\nthe different sections of the propertied class; the working class was\nreduced to a fight for political elbow-room, and to the position of\nextreme wing of the Middle-class Radicals.  Wherever independent\nproletarian movements continued to show signs of life, they were\nruthlessly hunted down.  Thus the Prussian police hunted out the\nCentral Board of the Communist League, then located in Cologne.  The\nmembers were arrested, and, after eighteen months' imprisonment, they\nwere tried in October, 1852.  This celebrated \"Cologne Communist trial\"\nlasted from October 4 till November 12; seven of the prisoners were\nsentenced to terms of imprisonment in a fortress, varying from three to\nsix years.  Immediately after the sentence the League was formally\ndissolved by the remaining members.  As to the \"Manifesto,\" it seemed\nthenceforth to be doomed to oblivion.\n\nWhen the European working class had recovered sufficient strength for\nanother attack on the ruling classes, the International Workingmen's\nAssociation sprang up.  But this association, formed with the express\naim of welding into one body the whole militant proletariat of Europe\nand America, could not at once proclaim the principles laid down in the\n\"Manifesto.\"  The International was bound to have a programme broad\nenough to be acceptable to the English Trades' Unions, to the followers\nof Proudhon in France, Belgium, Italy and Spain, and to the\nLassalleans(a) in Germany.  Marx, who drew up this programme to the\nsatisfaction of all parties, entirely trusted to the intellectual\ndevelopment of the working class, which was sure to result from\ncombined action and mutual discussion.  The very events and\nvicissitudes of the struggle against Capital, the defeats even more\nthan the victories, could not help bringing home to men's minds the\ninsufficiency of their various favorite nostrums, and preparing the way\nfor a more complete insight into the true conditions of working-class\nemancipation.  And Marx was right.  The International, on its breaking\nup in 1874, left the workers quite different men from what it had found\nthem in 1864.  Proudhonism in France, Lassalleanism in Germany, were\ndying out, and even the conservative English Trades' Unions, though\nmost of them had long since severed their connection with the\nInternational, were gradually advancing towards that point at which,\nlast year at Swansea, their President could say in their name,\n\"Continental Socialism has lost its terrors for us.\"  In fact, the\nprinciples of the \"Manifesto\" had made considerable headway among the\nworkingmen of all countries.\n\nThe Manifesto itself thus came to the front again.  The German text had\nbeen, since 1850, reprinted several times in Switzerland, England and\nAmerica.  In 1872 it was translated into English in New York, where the\ntranslation was published in \"Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly.\"  From\nthis English version a French one was made in \"Le Socialiste\" of New\nYork.  Since then at least two more English translations, more or less\nmutilated, have been brought out in America, and one of them has been\nreprinted in England.  The first Russian translation, made by\nBakounine, was published at Herzen's \"Kolokol\" office in Geneva, about\n1863; a second one, by the heroic Vera Zasulitch, also in Geneva, 1882.\nA new Danish edition is to be found in \"Socialdemokratisk Bibliothek,\"\nCopenhagen, 1885; a fresh French translation in \"Le Socialiste,\" Paris,\n1886.  From this latter a Spanish version was prepared and published in\nMadrid, 1886.  The German reprints are not to be counted; there have\nbeen twelve altogether at the least.  An Armenian translation, which\nwas to be published in Constantinople some months ago, did not see the\nlight, I am told, because the publisher was afraid of bringing out a\nbook with the name of Marx on it, while the translator declined to call\nit his own production.  Of further translations into other languages I\nhave heard, but have not seen them.  Thus the history of the Manifesto\nreflects, to a great extent, the history of the modern working class\nmovement; at present it is undoubtedly the most widespread, the most\ninternational production of all Socialist Literature, the common\nplatform acknowledged by millions of workingmen from Siberia to\nCalifornia.\n\nYet, when it was written, we could not have called it a _Socialist_\nManifesto.  By Socialists, in 1847, were understood, on the one hand,\nthe adherents of the various Utopian systems: Owenites in England,\nFourierists in France, both of them already reduced to the position of\nmere sects, and gradually dying out; on the other hand, the most\nmultifarious social quacks, who, by all manners of tinkering, professed\nto redress, without any danger to capital and profit, all sorts of\nsocial grievances; in both cases men outside the working class movement\nand looking rather to the \"educated\" classes for support.  Whatever\nportion of the working classes had become convinced of the\ninsufficiency of mere political revolutions, and had proclaimed the\nnecessity of a total social change, that portion, then, called itself\nCommunist.  It was a crude, rough-hewn, purely instinctive sort of\nCommunism; still it touched the cardinal point and was powerful enough\namong the working class to produce the Utopian Communism, in France of\nCabet, and in Germany of Weitling.  Thus, Socialism was, in 1847, a\nmiddle class movement, Communism a working class movement.  Socialism\nwas, on the Continent at least, \"respectable\"; Communism was the very\nopposite.  And as our notion, from the very beginning was, that \"the\nemancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class\nitself,\" there could be no doubt as to which of the two names we must\ntake.  Moreover, we have ever since been far from repudiating it.\n\nThe \"Manifesto\" being our joint production, I consider myself bound to\nstate that the fundamental proposition which forms its nucleus belongs\nto Marx.  That proposition is: that in every historical epoch, the\nprevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social\norganization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which\nis built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and\nintellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history\nof mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding\nland in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles,\ncontests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed\nclasses; that the history of these class struggles forms a series of\nevolution in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the\nexploited and the oppressed class--the proletariat--cannot attain its\nemancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class--the\nbourgeoisie--without, at the same time, and once for all, emancipating\nsociety at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinctions\nand class struggles.\n\nThis proposition, which, in my opinion, is destined to do for history\nwhat Darwin's theory has done for biology, we, both of us, had been\ngradually approaching for some years before 1845.  How far I had\nindependently progressed toward it, is best shown by my \"Condition of\nthe Working Class in England.\"(b)  But when I again met Marx at\nBrussels in the spring of 1845, he had it ready worked out, and put it\nbefore me, in terms almost as clear as those in which I have stated it\nhere.\n\nFrom our joint preface to the German edition of 1872, I quote the\nfollowing:\n\n\"However much the state of things may have altered during the last\ntwenty-five years, the general principles laid down in this Manifesto\nare, on the whole, as correct to-day as ever.  Here and there some\ndetail might be improved.  The practical application of the principles\nwill depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all\ntimes, on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and\nfor that reason no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures\nproposed at the end of Section II.  That passage would, in many\nrespects, be very differently worded to-day.  In view of the gigantic\nstrides of modern industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved\nand extended organization of the working class; in view of the\npractical experience gained, first in the February revolution, and\nthen, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the\nfirst time held political power for two whole months, this programme\nhas in some details become antiquated.  One thing especially was proved\nby the Commune, viz., that 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of\nthe ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.'\n(See 'The Civil War in France; Address of the General Council of the\nInternational Workingmen's Association,' London, Truelove, 1871, p. 15,\nwhere this point is further developed.)  Further, it is self-evident\nthat the criticism of Socialist literature is deficient in relation to\nthe present time, because it comes down only to 1847; also, that the\nremarks on the relation of the Communists to the various opposition\nparties (Section IV.), although in principle still correct, yet in\npractice are antiquated, because the political situation has been\nentirely changed, and the progress of history has swept from off the\nearth the greater portion of the political parties there enumerated.\n\n\"But, then, the Manifesto has become a historical document which we\nhave no longer any right to alter.\"\n\nThe present translation is by Mr. Samuel Moore, the translator of the\ngreater portion of Marx's \"Capital.\"  We have revised it and I have\nadded a few notes explanatory of historical allusions.\n\nFREDERICK ENGELS.\n\nLondon, January 30, 1888.\n\n\n\n(a) Lassalle personally, to us, always acknowledged himself to be a\ndisciple of Marx, and, as such, stood on the ground of the \"Manifesto.\"\nBut in his public agitation, 1862-64, he did not go beyond demanding\nco-operative workshops supported by State credit.\n\n(b) The condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.  By\nFrederick Engels.  Translated by Florence K. Wischnewetzky.  To be had\nfrom the N. Y. Labor News Co., 28 City Hall Place, New York.\n\n\n\n\nMANIFESTO\n\nOF THE\n\nCOMMUNIST PARTY.\n\n\nBY KARL MARX AND FREDERICK ENGELS.\n\n\nA specter is haunting Europe--the specter of Communism.  All the powers\nof old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this\nspecter; Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French radicals and\nGerman police spies.\n\nWhere is the party in opposition that has not been decried as\nCommunistic by its opponents in power?  Where the opposition that has\nnot hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more\nadvanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary\nadversaries?\n\nTwo things result from this fact.\n\nI. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be in\nitself a power.\n\nII. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the\nwhole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and\nmeet this nursery tale of the Specter of Communism with a Manifesto of\nthe party itself.\n\nTo this end the Communists of various nationalities have assembled in\nLondon, and sketched the following manifesto to be published in the\nEnglish, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.\n\n\n\nI.\n\nBOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS.(a)\n\nThe history of all hitherto existing society(b) is the history of class\nstruggles.\n\nFreeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf,\nguildmaster(c) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed,\nstood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an\nuninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, that each time ended, either\nin the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the\ncommon ruin of the contending classes.\n\nIn the earlier epochs of history we find almost everywhere a\ncomplicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold\ngradation of social rank.  In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights,\nplebeians, slaves; in the middle ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild\nmasters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these\nclasses, again, subordinate gradations.\n\nThe modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal\nsociety, has not done away with class antagonisms.  It has but\nestablished new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of\nstruggle in place of the old ones.\n\nOur epoch, the epoch of the bourgeois, possesses, however, this\ndistinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms.  Society\nas a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps,\ninto two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and\nProletariat.\n\nFrom the serfs of the middle ages sprang the chartered burghers of the\nearliest towns.  From these burgesses the first elements of the\nbourgeoisie were developed.\n\nThe discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh\nground for the rising bourgeoisie.  The East Indian and Chinese\nmarkets, the colonization of America, trade with the colonies, the\nincrease in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to\ncommerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known,\nand thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal\nsociety, a rapid development.\n\nThe feudal system of industry, under which industrial production was\nmonopolized by close guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing\nwants of the new markets.  The manufacturing system took its place.\nThe guild masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle\nclass; division of labor between the different corporate guilds\nvanished in the face of division of labor in each single workshop.\n\nMeantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising.  Even\nmanufacture no longer sufficed.  Thereupon steam and machinery\nrevolutionized industrial production.  The place of manufacture was\ntaken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place of the industrial middle\nclass, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of whole industrial\narmies, the modern bourgeois.\n\nModern industry has established the world's market, for which the\ndiscovery of America paved the way.  The market has given an immense\ndevelopment to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land.  This\ndevelopment has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and\nin proportion as industry, commerce, navigation and railways extended,\nin the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its\ncapital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from\nthe middle ages.\n\nWe see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of\na long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes\nof production and of exchange.\n\nEach step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a\ncorresponding political advance of that class.  An oppressed class\nunder the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing\nassociation in the medieval commune(d), here independent urban republic\n(as in Italy and Germany), there taxable \"third estate\" of the monarchy\n(as in France), afterwards, in the period of manufacture proper,\nserving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a\ncounterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, corner-stone of the\ngreat monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the\nestablishment of Modern Industry and of the world's market, conquered\nfor itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political\nsway.  The executive of the modern State is but a committee for\nmanaging the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.\n\nThe bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.\n\nThe bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to\nall feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations.  It has pitilessly torn\nasunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his \"natural\nsuperiors,\" and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man\nthan naked self-interest, callous \"cash payment.\"  It has drowned the\nmost heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm,\nof philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical\ncalculation.  It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and\nin place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up\nthat single, unconscionable freedom--Free Trade.  In one word, for\nexploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has\nsubstituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.\n\nThe bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto\nhonored and looked up to with reverent awe.  It has converted the\nphysician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into\nits paid wage laborers.\n\nThe bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and\nhas reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.\n\nThe bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal\ndisplay of vigor in the middle ages, which Reactionists so much admire,\nfound its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence.  It has\nbeen the first to show what man's activity can bring about.  It has\naccomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts,\nand Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the\nshade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.\n\nThe bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the\ninstruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and\nwith them the whole relations of society.  Conservation of the old\nmodes of production in unaltered forms, was, on the contrary, the first\ncondition of existence for all earlier industrial classes.  Constant\nrevolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social\nconditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the\nbourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.  All fixed, fast-frozen\nrelations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and\nopinions, are swept away; all new-formed ones become antiquated before\nthey can ossify.  All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is\nprofaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his\nreal conditions of life and his relations with his kind.\n\nThe need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the\nbourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe.  It must nestle\neverywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.\n\nThe bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world's market\ngiven a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every\ncountry.  To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under\nthe feet of industry the national ground on which it stood.  All\nold-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily\nbeing destroyed.  They are dislodged by new industries, whose\nintroduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized\nnations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material,\nbut raw material drawn from the remotest zones, industries whose\nproducts are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the\nglobe.  In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the\ncountry, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the\nproducts of distant lands and climes.  In place of the old local and\nnational seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every\ndirection, universal inter-dependence of nations.  And as in material,\nso also in intellectual production.  The intellectual creations of\nindividual nations become common property.  National one-sidedness and\nnarrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the\nnumerous national and local literatures, there arises a world\nliterature.\n\nThe bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of\nproduction, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws\nall, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization.  The cheap\nprices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters\ndown all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely\nobstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate.  It compels all nations,\non pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it\ncompels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst,\n_i.e._, to become bourgeois themselves.  In one word, it creates a\nworld after its own image.\n\nThe bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns.  It\nhas created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population\nas compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of\nthe population from the idiocy of rural life.  Just as it has made the\ncountry dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and\nsemi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of\npeasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.\n\nThe bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state\nof the population, of the means of production, and of property.  It has\nagglomerated population, centralized means of production, and has\nconcentrated property in a few hands.  The necessary consequence of\nthis was political centralization.  Independent, or but loosely\nconnected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments and\nsystems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one\ngovernment, one code of laws, one national class interest, one\nfrontier, and one customs tariff.\n\nThe bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has\ncreated more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all\npreceding generations together.  Subjection of Nature's forces to man,\nmachinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam\nnavigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents\nfor cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out\nof the ground--what earlier century had even a presentiment that such\nproductive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?\n\nWe see then: the means of production and of exchange on whose\nfoundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal\nsociety.  At a certain stage in the development of these means of\nproduction and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society\nproduced and exchanged, the feudal organization of agriculture and\nmanufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property,\nbecame no longer compatible with the already developed productive\nforces; they became so many fetters.  They had to be burst asunder.\n\nInto their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and\npolitical constitution adapted to it, and by the economical and\npolitical sway of the bourgeois class.\n\nA similar movement is going on before our own eyes.  Modern bourgeois\nsociety with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property,\na society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of\nexchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the\npowers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.  For\nmany a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the\nhistory of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern\nconditions of production, against the property relations that are the\nconditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule.  It is\nenough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return\nput on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the\nbourgeois society.  In these crises a great part not only of the\nexisting products, but also of the previously created productive\nforces, is periodically destroyed.  In these crises there breaks out an\nepidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an\nabsurdity--the epidemic of overproduction.  Society suddenly finds\nitself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a\nfamine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every\nmeans of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and\nwhy? because there is too much civilization, too much means of\nsubsistence, too much industry, too much commerce.  The productive\nforces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the\ndevelopment of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary,\nthey have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are\nfettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring\ndisorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of\nbourgeois property.  The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow\nto comprise the wealth created by them.  And how does the bourgeoisie\nget over these crises?  On the one hand by enforced destruction of a\nmass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new\nmarkets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones.  That\nis to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive\ncrises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.\n\nThe weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground\nare now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.\n\nBut not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to\nitself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield\nthose weapons--the modern working class--the proletarians.\n\nIn proportion as the bourgeoisie, _i.e._, capital, is developed, in the\nsame proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class,\ndeveloped; a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find\nwork, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital.\nThese laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity,\nlike every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to\nall the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the\nmarket.\n\nOwing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labor, the\nwork of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and,\nconsequently, all charm for the workman.  He becomes an appendage of\nthe machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most\neasily acquired knack, that is required of him.  Hence, the cost of\nproduction of a workman is restricted almost entirely to the means of\nsubsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for the\npropagation of his race.  But the price of a commodity, and therefore\nalso of labor, is equal, in the long run, to its cost of production.\nIn proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases,\nthe wage decreases.  Nay, more, in proportion as the use of machinery\nand division of labor increase, in the same proportion the burden of\ntoil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by\nincrease of the work exacted in a given time, or by increased speed of\nthe machinery, etc.\n\nModern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal\nmaster into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.  Masses of\nlaborers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers.  As\nprivates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a\nperfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants.  Not only are they slaves\nof the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State, they are daily and\nhourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-seer, and, above all, by\nthe individual bourgeois manufacturer himself.  The more openly this\ndespotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the\nmore hateful and the more embittering it is.\n\nThe less skill and exertion of strength is implied in manual labor, in\nother words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is\nthe labor of men superseded by that of women.  Differences of age and\nsex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working\nclass.  All are instruments of labor, more or less expensive to use,\naccording to age and sex.\n\nNo sooner is the exploitation of the laborer by the manufacturer so far\nat an end that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by\nthe other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper,\nthe pawnbroker, etc.\n\nThe lower strata of the middle class--the small trades-people,\nshopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and\npeasants--all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because\ntheir diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which modern\nindustry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the\nlarge capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered\nworthless by new methods of production.  Thus the proletariat is\nrecruited from all classes of the population.\n\nThe proletariat goes through various stages of development.  With its\nbirth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie.  At first the contest\nis carried on by individual laborers, then by the workpeople of a\nfactory, then by the operatives of one trade, in one locality, against\nthe individual bourgeois who directly exploits them.  They direct their\nattacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against\nthe instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares\nthat compete with their labor, they smash to pieces machinery, they set\nfactories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of\nthe workman of the middle ages.\n\nAt this stage the laborers still form an incoherent mass scattered over\nthe whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition.  If\nanywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the\nconsequence of their own active union, but of the union of the\nbourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is\ncompelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet,\nfor a time, able to do so.  At this stage, therefore, the proletarians\ndo not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the\nremnants of absolute monarchy, and land owners, the non-industrial\nbourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie.  Thus the whole historical movement\nis concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so\nobtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.\n\nBut with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases\nin number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength\ngrows and it feels that strength more.  The various interests and\nconditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and\nmore equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions\nof labor, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level.\nThe growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting\ncommercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating.\nThe unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing,\nmakes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between\nindividual workman and individual bourgeois take more and more the\ncharacter of collisions between two classes.  Thereupon the workers\nbegin to form combinations (Trades' Unions) against the bourgeois; they\nclub together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found\npermanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these\noccasional revolts.  Here and there the contest breaks out into riots.\n\nNow and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time.  The real\nfruit of their battles lies not in the immediate result but in the ever\nimproved means of communication that are created in modern industry and\nthat place the workers of different localities in contact with one\nanother.  It was just this contact that was needed to centralize the\nnumerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national\nstruggle between classes.  But every class struggle is a political\nstruggle.  And that union, to attain which the burghers of the middle\nages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern\nproletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.\n\nThis organization of the proletarians into a class and consequently\ninto a political party, is continually being upset again by the\ncompetition between the workers themselves.  But it ever rises up\nagain; stronger, firmer, mightier.  It compels legislative recognition\nof particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the\ndivisions among the bourgeoisie itself.  Thus the ten-hours' bill in\nEngland was carried.\n\nAltogether collisions between the classes of the old society further,\nin many ways, the course of the development of the proletariat.  The\nbourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle.  At first with\nthe aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie\nitself whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of\nindustry; at all times with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries.  In\nall these countries it sees itself compelled to appeal to the\nproletariat, to ask for its help, and thus to drag it into the\npolitical arena.  The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the\nproletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.\n\nFurther, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling classes\nare, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or\nare at least threatened in their conditions of existence.  These also\nsupply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and\nprogress.\n\nFinally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the\nprocess of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within\nthe whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring\ncharacter, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift,\nand joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in\nits hands.  Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the\nnobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the\nbourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion\nof the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level\nof comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.\n\nOf all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie to-day,\nthe proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.  The other\nclasses decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry; the\nproletariat is its special and essential product.\n\nThe lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the\nartisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie to save\nfrom extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class.  They\nare therefore not revolutionary, but conservative.  Nay, more, they are\nreactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history.  If by\nchance they are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their\nimpending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their\npresent, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint\nto place themselves at that of the proletariat.\n\nThe \"dangerous class,\" the social scum, that passively rotting class\nthrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be\nswept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of\nlife, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of\nreactionary intrigue.\n\nIn the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large are\nalready virtually swamped.  The proletarian is without property; his\nrelation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with\nthe bourgeois family relations; modern industrial labor, modern\nsubjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as\nin Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character.\nLaw, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices,\nbehind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.\n\nAll the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify\ntheir already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their\nconditions of appropriation.  The proletarians cannot become masters of\nthe productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own\nprevious mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous\nmode of appropriation.  They have nothing of their own to secure and to\nfortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and\ninsurances of, individual property.\n\nAll previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in\nthe interest of minorities.  The proletarian movement is the\nself-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the\ninterest of the immense majority.  The proletariat, the lowest stratum\nof our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without\nthe whole super-incumbent strata of official society being sprung into\nthe air.\n\nThough not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat\nwith the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle.  The proletariat\nof each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its\nown bourgeoisie.\n\nIn depicting the most general phases of the development of the\nproletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within\nexisting society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open\nrevolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the\nfoundation for the sway of the proletariat.\n\nHitherto every form of society has been based, as we have already seen,\non the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes.  But in order to\noppress a class certain conditions must be assured to it under which it\ncan, at least, continue its slavish existence.  The serf, in the period\nof serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the\npetty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to\ndevelop into a bourgeois.  The modern laborer, on the contrary, instead\nof rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below\nthe conditions of existence of his own class.  He becomes a pauper, and\npauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth.  And here\nit becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the\nruling class in society and to impose its conditions of existence upon\nsociety as an over-riding law.  It is unfit to rule because it is\nincompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery,\nbecause it cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has\nto feed him instead of being fed by him.  Society can no longer live\nunder this bourgeoisie; in other words, its existence is no longer\ncompatible with society.\n\nThe essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the\nbourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the\ncondition for capital is wage-labor.  Wage-labor rests exclusively on\ncompetition between the laborers.  The advance of industry, whose\ninvoluntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the\nlaborers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due\nto association.  The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts\nfrom under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie\nproduces and appropriates products.  What the bourgeoisie therefore\nproduces, above all, are its own grave diggers.  Its fall and the\nvictory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.\n\n\n\n(a) By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern Capitalists, owners of\nthe means of social production and employers of wage-labor.  By\nproletariat, the class of modern wage-laborers who, having no means of\nproduction of their own, are reduced to selling their labor-power in\norder to live.\n\n(b) That is, all written history.  In 1847, the pre-history of society,\nthe social organization existing previous to recorded history, was all\nbut unknown.  Since then, Haxthausen discovered common ownership of\nland in Russia, Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which\nall Teutonic races started in history, and by and by village\ncommunities were found to be, or to have been the primitive form of\nsociety everywhere from India to Ireland.  The inner organization of\nthis primitive Communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form,\nby Morgan's crowning discovery of the true nature of the Gens and its\nrelation to the Tribe.  With the dissolution of these primaeval\ncommunities society begins to be differentiated into separate and\nfinally antagonistic classes.  I have attempted to retrace this process\nof dissolution in: \"Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und\ndes Staats,\" 2nd edit., Stuttgart, 1886.\n\n(c) Guildmaster, that is a full member of a guild, a master within, not\na head of a guild.\n\n(d) \"Commune\" was the name taken, in France, by the nascent towns even\nbefore they had conquered from their feudal lords and masters, local\nself-government and political rights as the \"Third Estate.\"  Generally\nspeaking, for the economical development of the bourgeoisie, England is\nhere taken as the typical country; for its political development,\nFrance.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\nPROLETARIANS AND COMMUNISTS.\n\nIn what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?\n\nThe Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working\nclass parties.\n\nThey have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat\nas a whole.\n\nThey do not set up any sectarian principles of their own by which to\nshape and mould the proletarian movement.\n\nThe Communists are distinguished from the other working class parties\nby this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the\ndifferent countries, they point out and bring to the front the common\ninterests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.\n2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the\nworking class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always\nand everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.\n\nThe Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most\nadvanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every\ncountry, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other\nhand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat\nthe advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the\nconditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian\nmovement.\n\nThe immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the\nother proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class,\noverthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by\nthe proletariat.\n\nThe theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on\nideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or\nthat would-be universal reformer.\n\nThey merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from\nan existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under\nour very eyes.  The abolition of existing property relations is not at\nall a distinctive feature of Communism.\n\nAll property relations in the past have continually been subject to\nhistorical change, consequent upon the change in historical conditions.\n\nThe French revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favor\nof bourgeois property.\n\nThe distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of\nproperty generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property.  But\nmodern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete\nexpression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that\nis based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the\nfew.\n\nIn this sense the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the\nsingle sentence: Abolition of private property.\n\nWe Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the\nright of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man's own\nlabor, which property is alleged to be the ground work of all personal\nfreedom, activity and independence.\n\nHard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property!  Do you mean the\nproperty of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of\nproperty that preceded the bourgeois form?  There is no need to abolish\nthat; the development of industry has to a great extent already\ndestroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.\n\nOr do you mean modern bourgeois private property?\n\nBut does wage labor create any property for the laborer?  Not a bit.\nIt creates capital, _i.e._, that kind of property which exploits\nwage-labor, and which cannot increase except upon condition of\nbegetting a new supply of wage-labor for fresh exploitation.  Property,\nin its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage\nlabor.  Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.\n\nTo be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social\nstatus in production.  Capital is a collective product, and only by the\nunited action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the\nunited action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.\n\nCapital is therefore not a personal, it is a social power.\n\nWhen, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the\nproperty of all members of society, personal property is not thereby\ntransformed into social property.  It is only the social character of\nthe property that is changed.  It loses its class character.\n\nLet us now take wage-labor.\n\nThe average price of wage-labor is the minimum wage, _i.e._, that\nquantum of the means of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite to\nkeep the laborer in bare existence as a laborer.  What, therefore, the\nwage-laborer appropriates by means of his labor, merely suffices to\nprolong and reproduce a bare existence.  We by no means intend to\nabolish this personal appropriation of the products of labor, an\nappropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of\nhuman life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labor\nof others.  All that we want to do away with, is the miserable\ncharacter of this appropriation, under which the laborer lives merely\nto increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the\ninterest of the ruling class requires it.\n\nIn bourgeois society living labor is but a means to increase\naccumulated labor.  In Communist society accumulated labor is but a\nmeans to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the laborer.\n\nIn bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in\nCommunist society, the present dominates the past.  In bourgeois\nsociety capital is independent and has individuality, while the living\nperson is dependent and has no individuality.\n\nAnd the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois:\nabolition of individuality and freedom!  And rightly so.  The abolition\nof bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois\nfreedom is undoubtedly aimed at.\n\nBy freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of\nproduction, free trade, free selling and buying.\n\nBut if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying\ndisappears also.  This talk about free selling and buying, and all the\nother \"brave words\" of our bourgeoisie about freedom in general, have a\nmeaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying,\nwith the fettered traders of the middle ages, but have no meaning when\nopposed to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the\nbourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.\n\nYou are horrified at our intending to do away with private property.\nBut in your existing society private property is already done away with\nfor nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely\ndue to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths.  You\nreproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of\nproperty, the necessary condition for whose existence is the\nnon-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.\n\nIn one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your\nproperty.  Precisely so: that is just what we intend.\n\nFrom the moment when labor can no longer be converted into capital,\nmoney, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolized,\n_i.e._, from the moment when individual property can no longer be\ntransformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment,\nyou say, individuality vanishes!\n\nYou must, therefore, confess that by \"individual\" you mean no other\nperson than the bourgeois, than the middle class owner of property.\nThis person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.\n\nCommunism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of\nsociety: all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate\nthe labor of others by means of such appropriation.\n\nIt has been objected, that upon the abolition of private property all\nwork will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.\n\nAccording to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the\ndogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire\nnothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work.  The whole of\nthis objection is but another expression of tautology, that there can\nno longer be any wage-labor when there is no longer any capital.\n\nAll objections against the Communistic mode of producing and\nappropriating material products, have, in the same way, been urged\nagainst the Communistic modes of producing and appropriating\nintellectual products.  Just as, to the bourgeois the disappearance of\nclass property is the disappearance of production itself, so the\ndisappearance of class culture is to him identical with the\ndisappearance of all culture.\n\nThat culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous\nmajority, a mere training to act as a machine.\n\nBut don't wrangle with us so long as you apply to our intended\nabolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions\nof freedom, culture, law, etc.  Your very ideas are but the outgrowth\nof the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property,\njust as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a\nlaw for all, a will, whose essential character and direction are\ndetermined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.\n\nThe selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal\nlaws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your\npresent mode of production and form of property--historical relations\nthat rise and disappear in the progress of production--the\nmisconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you.\nWhat you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in\nthe case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in\nthe case of your own bourgeois form of property.\n\nAbolition of the family!  Even the most radical flare up at this\ninfamous proposal of the Communists.\n\nOn what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based?\nOn capital, on private gain.  In its completely developed form this\nfamily exists only among the bourgeoisie.  But this state of things\nfinds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the\nproletarians, and in public prostitution.\n\nThe bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its\ncomplement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.\n\nDo you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by\ntheir parents?  To this crime we plead guilty.\n\nBut, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we\nreplace home education by social.\n\nAnd your education!  Is not that also social, and determined by the\nsocial conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct\nor indirect, of society by means of schools, etc.?  The Communists have\nnot invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek\nto alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education\nfrom the influence of the ruling class.\n\nThe bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the\nhallowed co-relation of parent and child become all the more\ndisgusting, as, by the action of modern industry, all family ties among\nthe proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into\nsimple articles of commerce and instruments of labor.\n\nBut you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the\nwhole bourgeoisie in chorus.\n\nThe bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production.  He\nhears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common,\nand, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than that the lot of\nbeing common to all will likewise fall to the women.\n\nHe has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away\nwith the status of women as mere instruments of production.\n\nFor the rest nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation\nof our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to\nbe openly and officially established by the Communists.  The Communists\nhave no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost\nfrom time immemorial.\n\nOur bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of their\nproletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes,\ntake the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives.\n\nBourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common, and thus,\nat the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with, is\nthat they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically\nconcealed, an openly legalized community of women.  For the rest it is\nself-evident that the abolition of the present system of production\nmust bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing\nfrom that system, _i.e._, of prostitution both public and private.\n\nThe Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish\ncountries and nationality.\n\nThe workingmen have no country.  We cannot take from them what they\nhave not got.  Since the proletariat must first of all acquire\npolitical supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation,\nmust constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national,\nthough not in the bourgeois sense of the word.\n\nNational differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and\nmore vanishing; owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom\nof commerce, to the world's market, to uniformity in the mode of\nproduction and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.\n\nThe supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still\nfaster.  United action, of the leading civilized countries at least, is\none of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.\n\nIn proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put\nan end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put\nan end to.  In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the\nnation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an\nend.\n\nThe charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical,\nand, generally, from an ideological standpoint are not deserving of\nserious examination.\n\nDoes it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views,\nand conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness changes with every\nchange in the conditions of his material existence, in his social\nrelations and in his social life?\n\nWhat else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual\nproduction changes its character in proportion as material production\nis changed?  The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of\nits ruling class.\n\nWhen people speak of ideas that revolutionize society they do but\nexpress the fact that within the old society the elements of a new one\nhave been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even\npace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.\n\nWhen the ancient world was in its last throes the ancient religions\nwere overcome by Christianity.  When Christian ideas succumbed in the\neighteenth century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its\ndeath battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie.  The ideas of\nreligious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to\nthe sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.\n\n\"Undoubtedly,\" it will be said, \"religious, moral, philosophical and\njuridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical\ndevelopment.  But religion, morality, philosophy, political science,\nand law, constantly survived this change.\n\n\"There are besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc.,\nthat are common to all states of society.  But Communism abolishes\neternal truths, it abolishes all religion and all morality, instead of\nconstituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to\nall past historical experience.\"\n\nWhat does this accusation reduce itself to?  The history of all past\nsociety has consisted in the development of class antagonisms,\nantagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.\n\nBut whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past\nages, viz., they exploitation of one part of society by the other.  No\nwonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all\nthe multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common\nforms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the\ntotal disappearance of class antagonisms.\n\nThe Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional\nproperty relations; no wonder that its development involves the most\nradical rupture with traditional ideas.\n\nBut let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.\n\nWe have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working\nclass is to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class;\nto win the battle of democracy.\n\nThe proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees,\nall capital from the bourgeoisie; to centralize all instruments of\nproduction in the hands of the State, _i.e._, of the proletariat\norganized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive\nforces as rapidly as possible.\n\nOf course, in the beginning this cannot be effected except by means of\ndespotic inroads on the rights of property and on the conditions of\nbourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear\neconomically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of\nthe movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the\nold social order and are unavoidable as a means of entirely\nrevolutionizing the mode of production.\n\nThese measures will, of course, be different in different countries.\n\nNevertheless in the most advanced countries the following will be\npretty generally applicable:\n\n1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land\nto public purposes.\n\n2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.\n\n3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.\n\n4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.\n\n5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a\nnational bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.\n\n6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the\nhands of the State.\n\n7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the\nState; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the\nimprovement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.\n\n8. Equal liability of all to labor.  Establishment of industrial\narmies, especially for agriculture.\n\n9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries: gradual\nabolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more\nequable distribution of the population over the country.\n\n10. Free education for all children in public schools.  Abolition of\nchildren's factory labor in its present form.  Combination of education\nwith industrial production, etc., etc.\n\nWhen, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared\nand all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast\nassociation of the whole nation, the public power will lose its\npolitical character.  Political power, properly so called, is merely\nthe organized power of one class for oppressing another.  If the\nproletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by\nthe force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if, by means\nof a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps\naway by force the old conditions of production then it will, along with\nthese conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of\nclass antagonisms, and of classes generally, and will thereby have\nabolished its own supremacy as a class.\n\nIn place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class\nantagonisms we shall have an association in which the free development\nof each is the condition for the free development of all.\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\nSOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST LITERATURE.\n\nI.  REACTIONARY SOCIALISM.\n\n(_a_) _Feudal Socialism_.\n\nOwing to their historical position, it became the vocation of the\naristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against modern\nbourgeois society.  In the French revolution of July, 1830, and in the\nEnglish reform agitation, these aristocracies again succumbed to the\nhateful upstart.  Thenceforth, a serious political contest was\naltogether out of question.  A literary battle alone remained possible.\nBut even in the domain of literature the old cries of the restoration\nperiod(a) had become impossible.\n\nIn order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy were obliged to lose\nsight, apparently, of their own interests, and to formulate their\nindictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited\nworking class alone.  Thus the aristocracy took their revenge by\nsinging lampoons on their new master, and whispering in his ears\nsinister prophecies of coming catastrophe.\n\nIn this way arose feudal Socialism; half lamentation, half lampoon;\nhalf echo of the past, half menace of the future, at times by its\nbitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the\nvery heart's core, but always ludicrous in its effects, through total\nincapacity to comprehend the march of modern history.\n\nThe aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the\nproletarian alms-bag in front for a banner.  But the people, so often\nas it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of\narms and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.\n\nOne section of the French Legitimists, and \"Young England,\" exhibited\nthis spectacle.\n\nIn pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different from that\nof the bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they exploited under\ncircumstances and conditions that were quite different and that are now\nantiquated.  In showing that under their rule the modern proletariat\nnever existed they forget that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary\noffspring of their own form of society.\n\nFor the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionary character of\ntheir criticism, that their chief accusation against the bourgeoisie\namounts to this: that under the bourgeois _regime_ a class is being\ndeveloped, which is destined to cut up root and branch the old order of\nsociety.\n\nWhat they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it creates a\nproletariat, as that it creates a revolutionary proletariat.\n\nIn political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive measures\nagainst the working class; and in ordinary life, despite their high\nfalutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped from\nthe tree of industry, and to barter truth, love, and honor for traffic\nin wool, beet-root sugar and potato spirit(b).\n\nAs the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has\nClerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism.\n\nNothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge.\nHas not Christianity declaimed against private property, against\nmarriages, against the State?  Has it not preached in the place of\nthese charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh,\nmonastic life and Mother Church?  Christian Socialism is but the Holy\nWater with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the\naristocrat.\n\n\n(_b_) _Petty Bourgeois Socialism_.\n\nThe feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by the\nbourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of existence pined and\nperished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society.  The medieval\nburgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the\nmodern bourgeoisie.  In those countries which are but little developed,\nindustrially and commercially these two classes still vegetate side by\nside with the rising bourgeoisie.\n\nIn countries where modern civilization has become fully developed, a\nnew class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between\nproletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a\nsupplementary part of bourgeois society.  The individual members of\nthis class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the\nproletariat by the action of competition and as modern industry\ndevelops, they even see the moment approaching when they will\ncompletely disappear as an independent section of modern society to be\nreplaced in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by overlookers,\nbailiffs and shopmen.\n\nIn countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more than\nhalf of the population, it was natural that writers who sided with the\nproletariat against the bourgeoisie, should use in their criticism of\nthe bourgeois _regime_, the standard of the peasant and petty\nbourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intermediate classes should\ntake up the cudgels for the working class.  Thus arose petty bourgeois\nSocialism.  Sismondi was the head of this school, not only in France\nbut also in England.\n\nThis school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the\ncontradictions in the conditions of modern production.  It laid bare\nthe hypocritical apologies of economists.  It proved incontrovertibly\nthe disastrous effects of machinery and division of labor; the\nconcentration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and\ncrises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and\npeasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the\ncrying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war\nof extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds,\nof the old family relations, of the old nationalities.\n\nIn its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to\nrestoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them\nthe old property relations and the old society, or to cramping the\nmodern means of production and of exchange, within the frame work of\nthe old property relations that have been and were bound to be exploded\nby those means.  In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.\n\nIts last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal\nrelations in agriculture.\n\nUltimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all\nintoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in\na miserable fit of the blues.\n\n\n(_c_) _German or \"True\" Socialism_.\n\nThe Socialist and Communist literature of France, a literature that\noriginated under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and that was\nthe expression of the struggle against this power, was introduced into\nGermany at a time when the bourgeoisie in that country had just begun\nits contest with feudal absolutism.\n\nGerman philosophers,--would-be philosophers and _beaux\nesprits_,--eagerly seized on this literature, only forgetting that when\nthese writings immigrated from France into Germany, French social\nconditions had not immigrated along with them.  In contact with German\nsocial conditions, this French literature lost all its immediate\npractical significance, and assumed a purely literary aspect.  Thus, to\nthe German philosophers of the eighteenth century, the demands of the\nfirst French Revolution were nothing more than the demands of\n\"Practical Reason\" in general, and the utterances of the will of the\nrevolutionary French bourgeoisie signified in their eyes the laws of\npure will, of will as it was bound to be, of true human will generally.\n\nThe work of the German _literati_ consisted solely in bringing the new\nFrench ideas into harmony with their ancient philosophical conscience,\nor rather, in annexing the French ideas without deserting their own\nphilosophic point of view.\n\nThis annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign language\nis appropriated, namely, by translation.\n\nIt is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints\nover the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom\nhad been written.  The German _literati_ reversed this process with the\nprofane French literature.  They wrote their philosophical nonsense\nbeneath the French original.  For instance, beneath the French\ncriticism of the economic functions of money they wrote \"Alienation of\nHumanity,\" and beneath the French criticism of the bourgeois State they\nwrote \"Dethronement of the Category of the General,\" and so forth.\n\nThe introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of the\nFrench historical criticisms they dubbed \"Philosophy of Action,\" \"True\nSocialism,\" \"German Science of Socialism,\" \"Philosophical Foundation of\nSocialism,\" and so on.\n\nThe French Socialist and Communist literature was thus completely\nemasculated.  And, since it ceased in the hands of the German to\nexpress the struggle of one class with the other, he felt conscious of\nhaving overcome \"French one-sidedness\" and of representing not true\nrequirements but the requirements of truth, not the interests of the\nproletariat, but the interests of human nature, of man in general, who\nbelongs to no class, has no reality, and exists only in the misty realm\nof philosophical phantasy.\n\nThis German Socialism, which took its school-boy task so seriously and\nsolemnly, and extolled its poor stock in trade in such mountebank\nfashion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic innocence.\n\nThe fight of the German, and especially of the Prussian bourgeoisie,\nagainst feudal aristocracy and absolute monarchy, in other words, the\nliberal movement, became more earnest.\n\nBy this, the long wished-for opportunity was offered to \"True\nSocialism\" of confronting the political movement with the Socialist\ndemands, of hurling the traditional anathemas against liberalism,\nagainst representative government, against bourgeois competition,\nbourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois\nliberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that they had\nnothing to gain and everything to lose by this bourgeois movement.\nGerman Socialism forgot, in the nick of time, that the French\ncriticism, whose silly echo it was, presupposed the existence of modern\nbourgeois society, with its corresponding economic conditions of\nexistence, and the political constitution adapted thereto, the very\nthings whose attainment was the object of the pending struggle in\nGermany.\n\nTo the absolute governments, with their following of parsons,\nprofessors, country squires and officials, it served as a welcome\nscarecrow against the threatening bourgeoisie.\n\nIt was a sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings and bullets\nwith which these same governments, just at that time, dosed the German\nworking-class risings.\n\nWhile this \"True\" Socialism thus served the government as a weapon for\nfighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, directly\nrepresented a reactionary interest, the interest of the German\nphilistines.  In Germany the _petty bourgeois_ class, a relique of the\n16th century and since then constantly cropping up again under various\nforms, is the real social basis of the existing state of things.\n\nTo preserve this class, is to preserve the existing state of things in\nGermany.  The industrial and political supremacy of the bourgeoisie\nthreatens it with certain destruction; on the one hand, from the\nconcentration of capital; on the other, from the rise of a\nrevolutionary proletariat.  \"True\" Socialism appeared to kill these two\nbirds with one stone.  It spread like an epidemic.\n\nThe robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric,\nsteeped in the dew of sickly sentiment, this transcendental robe in\nwhich the German Socialists wrapped their sorry \"eternal truths\" all\nskin and bone, served to wonderfully increase the sale of their goods\namongst such a public.\n\nAnd on its part, German Socialism recognized more and more its own\ncalling as the bombastic representative of the petty bourgeois\nphilistine.\n\nIt proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the German\npetty philistine to be the typical man.  To every villainous meanness\nof this model man it gave a hidden, higher, socialistic interpretation,\nthe exact contrary of its real character.  It went to the extreme\nlength of directly opposing the \"brutally destructive\" tendency of\nCommunism, and of proclaiming its supreme and impartial contempt of all\nclass-struggles.  With very few exceptions, all the so-called Socialist\nand Communist publications that now (1847) circulate in Germany belong\nto the domain of this foul and enervating literature.\n\n\n2. CONSERVATIVE OR BOURGEOIS SOCIALISM.\n\nA part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances,\nin order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.\n\nTo this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians,\nimprovers of the condition of the working class, organizers of charity,\nmembers of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals,\ntemperance fanatics, hole and corner reformers of every imaginable\nkind.  This form of Socialism has, moreover, been worked out into\ncomplete systems.\n\nWe may cite Proudhon's _Philosophie de la Misere_ as an example of this\nform.\n\nThe socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social\nconditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting\ntherefrom.  They desire the existing state of society minus its\nrevolutionary and disintegrating elements.  They wish for a bourgeoisie\nwithout a proletariat.  The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world\nin which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois socialism develops\nthis comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems.\nIn requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to\nmarch straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in\nreality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of\nexisting society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning\nthe bourgeosie.\n\nA second and more practical, but less systematic form of this Socialism\nsought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the\nworking class, by showing that no mere political reform but a change in\nthe material conditions of existence in economical relations could be\nof any advantage to them.  By changes in the material conditions of\nexistence this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands\nabolition of the bourgeois relations of production,--an abolition that\ncan be effected only by a revolution--but administrative reforms, based\non the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that\nin no respect affect the relations between capital and labor, but, at\nthe best, lessen the cost and simplify the administrative work of\nbourgeois government.\n\nBourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression, when, and only when,\nit becomes a mere figure of speech.\n\nFree Trade: for the benefit of the working class.  Protective Duties:\nfor the benefit of the working class.  Prison Reform: for the benefit\nof the working class.  This is the last word and the only seriously\nmeant word of bourgeois Socialism.\n\nIt is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois--for the\nbenefit of the working class.\n\n\n3. CRITICAL-UTOPIAN SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM.\n\nWe do not here refer to that literature which, in every great modern\nrevolution, has always given voice to the demands of the proletariat,\nsuch as the writings of Baboeuf and others.\n\nThe first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends,\nmade in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was being\noverthrown, these attempts necessarily failed, owing to the then\nundeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to the absence of the\neconomic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that had yet to be\nproduced, and could be produced by the impending bourgeois epoch alone.\nThe revolutionary literature that accompanied these first movements of\nthe proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character.  It inculcated\nuniversal asceticism and social levelling in its crudest form.\n\nThe Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those of St.\nSimon, Fourier, Owen and others, spring into existence in the early\nundeveloped period, described above, of the struggle between\nproletariat and bourgeoisie (see: Section I., Bourgeoisie and\nProletariat.)\n\nThe founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms as\nwell as the action of the decomposing elements in the prevailing form\nof society.  But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them\nthe spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any\nindependent political movement.\n\nSince the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the\ndevelopment of industry, the economic situation, as they find it, does\nnot as yet offer to them the material conditions for the emancipation\nof the proletariat.  They therefore search after a new social science,\nafter new social laws, that are to create these conditions.\n\nHistorical action is to yield to their personal inventive action,\nhistorically created conditions of emancipation to phantastic ones, and\nthe gradual, spontaneous class organization of the proletariat to an\norganization of society specially contrived by these inventors.  Future\nhistory resolves itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the\npractical carrying out of their social plans.\n\nIn the formation of their plans they are conscious of caring chiefly\nfor the interest of the working class, as being the most suffering\nclass.  Only from the point of view of being the most suffering class\ndoes the proletariat exist for them.\n\nThe undeveloped state of the class struggle as well as their own\nsurroundings cause Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far\nsuperior to all class antagonisms.  They want to improve the condition\nof every member of society, even that of the most favored.  Hence they\nhabitually appeal to society at large, without distinction of class;\nnay, by preference to the ruling class.  For how can people, when once\nthey understand their system, fail to see in it the best possible plan\nof the best possible state of society?\n\nHence they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary\naction; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, and endeavor,\nby small experiments, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force\nof example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel.\n\nSuch phantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the\nproletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a\nphantastic conception of its own position, correspond with the first\ninstinctive yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction of\nsociety.\n\nBut these Socialist and Communist publications contain also a critical\nelement.  They attack every principle of existing society.  Hence they\nare full of the most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the\nworking class.  The practical measures proposed in them, such as the\nabolition of the distinction between town and country, of the family,\nof the carrying on of industries for the account of private\nindividuals, and of the wage system, the proclamation of social\nharmony, the conversion of the functions of the State into a mere\nsuperintendence of production, all these proposals point solely to the\ndisappearance of class antagonisms which were, at that time, only just\ncropping up, and which, in these publications, are recognized under\ntheir earliest, indistinct and undefined forms only.  These proposals,\ntherefore, are of a purely Utopian character.\n\nThe significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an\ninverse relation to historical development.  In proportion as the\nmodern class struggle develops and takes definite shape, this\nphantastic standing apart from the contest, these phantastic attacks on\nit lose all practical value and all theoretical justification.\nTherefore, although the originators of these systems were, in many\nrespects, revolutionary, their disciples have in every case formed mere\nreactionary sects.  They hold fast by the original views of their\nmasters, in opposition to the progressive historical development of the\nproletariat.  They, therefore, endeavor, and that consistently, to\ndeaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms.  They\nstill dream of experimental realization of their social Utopias, of\nfounding isolated \"phalansteres,\" of establishing \"Home Colonies,\" of\nsetting up a \"Little Icaria\"(c)--duodecimo editions of the New\nJerusalem, and to realize all these castles in the air, they are\ncompelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois.  By\ndegrees they sink into the category of the reactionary conservative\nSocialists depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic\npedantry, and by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the\nmiraculous effects of their social science.\n\nThey, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part of\nthe working class; such action, according to them, can only result from\nblind unbelief in the new Gospel.\n\nThe Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respectively,\noppose the Chartists and the \"Reformistes.\"\n\n\n\n(a) Not the English Restoration 1660 to 1689, but the French\nRestoration 1814 to 1830.\n\n(b) This applies chiefly to Germany where the landed aristocracy and\nsquirearchy have large portions of their estates cultivated for their\nown account by stewards, and are moreover, extensive beet-root sugar\nmanufacturers and distillers of potato spirits.  The wealthier British\naristocracy are, as yet, rather above that; but they, too, know how to\nmake up for declining rents by lending their names to floaters of more\nor less shady joint-stock companies.\n\n(c) Phalansteres were socialist colonies on the plan of Charles\nFourier; Icaria was the name given by Cabet to his Utopia and, later\non, to his American Communist colony.\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\nPOSITION OF THE COMMUNISTS IN RELATION TO THE VARIOUS EXISTING\nOPPOSITION PARTIES.\n\nSection II. has made clear the relations of the Communists to the\nexisting working class parties, such as the Chartists in England and\nthe Agrarian Reformers in America.\n\nThe Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the\nenforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the\nmovement of the present, they also represent and take care of the\nfuture of that movement.  In France the Communists ally themselves with\nthe Social-Democrats(a), against the conservative and radical\nbourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical\nposition in regard to phrases and illusions traditionally handed down\nfrom the great Revolution.\n\nIn Switzerland they support the Radicals, without losing sight of the\nfact that this party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of\nDemocratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois.\n\nIn Poland they support the party that insists on an agrarian\nrevolution, as the prime condition for national emancipation, that\nparty which fomented the insurrection of Cracow in 1846.\n\nIn Germany they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a\nrevolutionary way against the absolute monarchy, the feudal\nsquirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie.\n\nBut they never cease, for a single instant, to instil into the working\nclass the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism\nbetween bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the German workers\nmay straightway use, as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the\nsocial and political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily\nintroduce along with its supremacy, and in order that, after the fall\nof the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight against the\nbourgeoisie itself may immediately begin.\n\nThe Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that\ncountry is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be\ncarried out under more advanced conditions of European civilization,\nand with a much more developed proletariat, than that of England was in\nthe seventeenth, and of France in the eighteenth century, and because\nthe bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an\nimmediately following proletarian revolution.\n\nIn short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary\nmovement against the existing social and political order of things.\n\nIn all these movements they bring, to the front, as the leading\nquestion in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of\ndevelopment at the time.\n\nFinally, they labor everywhere for the union and agreement of the\ndemocratic parties of all countries.\n\nThe Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.  They openly\ndeclare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow\nof all existing social conditions.  Let the ruling classes tremble at a\nCommunistic revolution.  The proletarians have nothing to lose but\ntheir chains.  They have a world to win.\n\nWorkingmen of all countries unite!\n\n\n\n(a) The party then represented in parliament by Ledru-Rollin, in\nliterature by Louis Blanc, in the daily press by the Reforme.  The name\nof Social-Democracy signified, with these its inventors, a section of\nthe Democratic or Republican party more or less tinged with Socialism.\n\n\n\n\nTHE END.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Preamble\n\nOF THE\n\nINDUSTRIAL WORKERS\n\nOF THE WORLD\n\nAn Address Delivered at Minneapolis, Minn,\n\nBy DANIEL DE LEON\n\n\nThe organization of the Industrial Workers of the World, at Chicago,\nJuly 10, 1905, marked an epoch in the history of the Labor Movement in\nAmerica, for the reason that, as the preamble to the constitution\ndeclares, there can be no peace between the exploited working class and\nthe exploiting capitalist class; the I. W. W. organized on that\nbasis--the recognition of the class struggle.\n\n\nA 48-PAGE PAMPHLET, 5 CENTS\n\n\nSend all orders to ....\n\nNEW YORK LABOR NEWS CO.\n\n28 CITY HALL PLACE\n\nNEW YORK\n\n\n\n\nWHAT MEANS THIS STRIKE?\n\nBy DANIEL DE LEON\n\n\"What Means This Strike?\" is an address delivered before the striking\ntextile workers of New Bedford, Mass.  It is the best thing extant with\nwhich to begin the study of Socialism.  The strike is used as an object\nlesson to show the nature of capitalist society.  The development of\nthe capitalist is clearly given, showing why it is that the capitalist\nclass is able to live in idleness and luxury while the working class\nrots in poverty and toil.\n\nCONTENTS.--Whence Do Wages Come, and Whence Profits--The Capitalist\nSystem of Production--Nature of the \"Work\" Performed by the\nCapitalist--Mechanism of Stock Corporation--Nature of the \"Work\"\nPerformed by the \"Directors\" of Stock Corporations--\"Original\nAccumulation\"--How the Capitalist in General Gets His Capital--How Levi\nP. Morton Got His Capital--The Class Struggle--Nature of the Conflict\nBetween the Working Class and the Capitalist Class--Development of\nCapitalist Society--Development of the Strike--How the Capitalists Rob\nInventors--How the Capitalist Uses Machinery to Rob and Subjugate the\nWorking Class--Why the Modern Strike Is Usually a Failure--Principles\nof the Organization the Working Class Must Have to Fight Successfully\nthe Capitalist Class--Weaknesses of \"Pure and Simple\" Trade\nUnions--Career of Samuel Gompers--There Will Be No Safety for the\nWorking Class Until It Wrenches the Government from the Capitalist\nClass, Abolishes the Wages System of Slavery, and Unfurls the Banner of\nthe Socialist Republic.\n\n\nSingle Copies, 5 Cents; 100 Copies,\n\n\n  LITERATURE.\n\n  Leaflets, in English, per thousand .......................... $1.75\n  Leaflets, in German,   \"      \"    ..........................  3.00\n  Leaflets, in Italian,  \"      \"    ..........................  4.00\n  Leaflets, in French,   \"      \"    ..........................  4.00\n  Leaflets, in Slavonic, \"      \"    ..........................  3.00\n  Leaflets, in Croatian, \"      \"    ..........................  3.00\n  Leaflets, in Spanish,  \"      \"    ..........................  5.00\n  Leaflets, in Polish,   \"      \"    ..........................  4.00\n  Leaflets, in Finnish,  \"      \"    ..........................  5.00\n  Leaflets, in Swedish,  \"      \"    ..........................  3.00\n\nNOTE.---The requisite amount of each must accompany each order.  All\nsupplies sent by the General Office have the postage or express charges\npaid in advance.\n\n\nNEW YORK LABOR NEWS CO.\n\n28 CITY HALL PLACE, NEW YORK\n\n\n\n\nVALUE, PRICE, AND PROFIT\n\nBy KARL MARX.  Edited by his daughter ELEANOR MARX AVELING.  With an\nIntroduction and Annotations by LUCIEN SANIAL.\n\n\nThis book is especially timely, like everything else that Marx wrote.\nWritten a couple of years before his \"Capital\" appeared, it is an\naddress to workingmen, and covers in popular form many of the subjects\nlater scientifically expanded in \"Capital.\"\n\nLucien Sanial says of it: \"It is universally considered as the best\nepitome we have of the first volume of 'Capital,' and as such, is\ninvaluable to the beginner in economics.  It places him squarely on his\nfeet at the threshold of his inquiry; that is, in a position where his\nperceptive faculties cannot be deceived and his reasoning power\nvitiated by the very use of his eyesight; whereas, by the very nature\nof his capitalist surroundings, he now stands on his head and sees all\nthings inverted.\"\n\nSpecial interest attaches to what Marx says relative to strikes.  Were\nthe working Class thoroughly acquainted with the subject matter of this\nlittle work, we should hear no more of the \"common ground\" on which\ncapital and labor might meet to settle their differences.\n\nThe thousand and one schemes that are daily being flaunted in the faces\nof the working class by the lieutenants of the capitalists show the\nnecessity there is on the part of the working class for a comprehensive\nunderstanding of the matter of wages, the relation of the worker to the\nemployer, the source of profits, and the relation between profits and\nwages.  These and other subjects are here presented, and so clearly\ndoes Marx present them that all he has to say can be understood by any\nperson willing to pay close attention to his words.\n\n\nCloth, 50 Cents.  Paper, 15 Cents.\n\nNEW YORK LABOR NEWS COMPANY,\n\n28 CITY HALL PLACE, NEW YORK.\n\n\n----------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nFrom a Mechanical Standpoint\n\nit is the first one Marx's works published in America that can be\nlooked upon as a careful piece of publishing.  It is to be hoped that\nthis excellent volume is the forerunner of other volumes of Marx, and\nthat America will have the honor of publishing an edition that is\naccurate as to text, thorough in annotations, convenient in size, and\npresentable in every way.  The present book will delight the lover of\nMarx, and every Socialist will desire a copy of it.--N. Y. Daily People.\n\n----------------------------------------------------------------------","title":"Manifesto of the Communist Party","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":14575}