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03 - Socialist and Communist Literature - The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx · Logic Library

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The Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Section three.
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Socialist and Communist literature One reactionary socialism a feudal socialism. Owing to their
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historical position, it became the vocation of the aristocracies of France and England to
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write pamphlets against modern bourgeois society. In the French Revolution of July eighteen thirty
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and in the English Reform agitation, these aristocracies again succumbed to the hateful upstart.
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Thenceforth, a serious political contest was altogether out of the question. A
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literary battle alone remained possible, But even in the domain of literature, the
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old cries of the Restoration period had become impossible. In order to arouse sympathy,
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the aristocracy were obliged to lose sight, apparently of their own interests,
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and to formulate their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working
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class alone. Thus the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new
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master and whispering in his ears sinister prophecies of coming a catastrophe. In this
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way arose feudal socialism half lamentation, half lampoon, half echo of the past,
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half menace of the future, at times by its bitter, witty and
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incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart's core, but always ludicrous
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in its effect. Through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history,
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the aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waived the proletarian
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alms bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as
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it joined them, saw on their hind quarters the old feudal coats of arms,
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and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter. One section of the French legitimists
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and Young England exhibited this spectacle. In pointing out that their mode of exploitation
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was different to that of the bourgeoisie. The feudalists forget that they exploited under
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circumstances and conditions that were quite different and that are now antiquated. In showing
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that under their rule the modern proletariat never existed, they forget that the modern
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bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of their own form of society. For the rest,
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so little do they conceal the reactionary character of their criticism that the chief
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accusation against the bourgeoisie amounts to this, that under the bourgeoisrigigen a class is
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being developed which is destined to cut, up root and branch the old order
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of society. What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it
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creates a proletariat, as that it creates a revolutionary proletariat. In political practice.
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Therefore they join in all coercive measures against the working class, and in
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ordinary life, despite their high falutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the
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golden apples dropped from the tree of industry, and to barter truth, love
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and honor for traffic and wool, beetroot, sugar and potato spirits. As
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the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has clerical
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socialism with feudal socialism. Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a socialist
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tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the
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state. Has it not preached in the place of these charity and poverty,
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celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and mother church. Christian socialism
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is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart burnings of the
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aristocrat b petty bourgeois socialism. The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that
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was ruined by the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of existence pined
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and perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society. The medieval burgesses and the
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small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those countries which
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are but little developed industrially and commercially, these two classes still vegetate side by
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side with the rising bourgeoisie. In countries where modern civilization has become fully developed,
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a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletariat and
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bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The
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individual members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the
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proletariat by the action of competition, and as modern industry develops, they even
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see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent section of modern
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society, to be replaced in manufactures, agriculture, and commerce by overlookers,
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bailiffs, and shopmen. In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far
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more than half of the population, it was natural that writers who sided with
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the proletariat against the bourgeoisie should use in their criticism of the bourgeois regime the
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standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intermediate
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classes should take up the cudgels for the working class. Thus arose petty bourgeois
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socialism. Sismondi was the head of this school, not only in France but
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also in England. This school of socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in
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the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists.
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It proved incontrovertibly the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour, the concentration
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of capital and land in a few hands over production and crises. It pointed
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out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the
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proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth,
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the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds,
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of the old family relations, of the old nationalities. In its positive
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aims, however, this form of socialism aspires either to restoring the old means
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production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations and the old
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society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the
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framework of the old property relations that have been and were bound to be exploded
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by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and utopian.
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Its last words are corporate guilds for manufacture, patriarchal relations in agriculture. Ultimately,
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when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self deception, this
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form of socialism ended in a miserable fit of the blues see German or true
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socialism. The socialist and communist literature of France, a literature that originated under
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the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power and that was the expression of a struggle
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against this power, was introduced into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie in
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that country had just begun its contest with feudal absolutism. German philosophers would be
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philosophers and beau Sprie eagerly seized on this literature, only forgetting that when these
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writings immigrated from France into Germany, French social conditions had not immigrated along with
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them. In contact with German social conditions, this French literature lost all its
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immediate practical significance and assumed a purely literary aspect. Thus, to the German
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philosophers of the eighteenth century, the demands of the First French Revolution were nothing
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more than the demand's practical reason in general, and the utterance of the will
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of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie signified in their eyes the law of pure will of
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will as it was bound to be of true human will. Generally, the
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world of the German literate consisted solely in bringing the new French ideas into harmony
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with their ancient philosophical conscience, or rather in annexing the French ideas without deserting
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their own philosophic point of view. This annexation took place in the same way
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in which a foreign language is appropriated, namely by translation. It is well
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known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic saints over the manuscripts on which
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the classical works of ancient Heathendom had been written. The German literate reversed this
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process with the profane French literature. They wrote their philosophical nonsense beneath the French
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original. For instance, beneath the French criticism of the economic functions of money,
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they wrote alienation of humanity, and beneath the French criticism of the bourgeois
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state they wrote defronement of the category of the general, and so forth.
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The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of the French historical criticisms they
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dubbed philosophy of action, true socialism, German science of socialism, philosophical foundation
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of socialism, and so on. The French socialist and communist literature was thus
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completely emasculated, and since it ceased in the hands of the German to express
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the struggle of one class with the other, he felt conscious of having overcome
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French one sidedness, and of representing not true requirements, but the requirements of
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truth. Not the interests of the proletariat, but the interests of human nature,
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of man in general general. Who belongs to no class, has no
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reality, who exists only in the misty realm of philosophical fantasy. This German
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socialism, which took its schoolboy tasks so seriously and solemnly, and extolled its
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poor stock in trade in such mountebank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic innocence.
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The fight of the German and especially of the Prussian bourgeoisie against feudal aristocracy
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and absolute monarchy. In other words, the liberal movement became more earnest.
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By this, the long wished for opportunity was offered to true socialism of confronting
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the political movement with the socialist demands, of hurling the traditional anathemas against liberalism,
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against representative government, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press,
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bourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that
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they had nothing to gain and everything to lose. By this bourgeois movement,
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German socialism forgot, in the nick of time that the French criticism, whose
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silly echo it was, presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its
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corresponding economic conditions of existence, and the political constitution adapted there too the very
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things whose attainment was the object of the pending struggle in Germany. To the
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absolute governments, with their following of parsons, professors, country squires and officials,
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it served as a welcome scarecrow against the threatening bourgeoisie. It was a
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sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings and bullets with which those same governments
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just at that time those to the German working class risings. While this true
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socialism thus served the governments as a weapon for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it
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at the same time directly represented a reactionary interest, the interest of the German
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philistines. In Germany. The pitty bourgeois class, a relic of the sixteenth
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century and since then constantly cropping up again under various forms, is the real
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social basis of the existing state of things. To preserve this class is to
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preserve the existing state of things in Germany. The industrial and political supremacy of
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the bourgeoisie threatens it with certain destruction on the one hand, from the concentration
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of capital, on the other, from the rise of a revolutionary proletariat.
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True socialism appeared to kill these two birds with one stone. It spread like
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an epidemic, the robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric,
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steeped in the dew of sickly sentiment. This transcendental robe in which the German
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socialists rapped their sorry, eternal truths, all skin and bone, served to
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wonderfully increase the sale of their goods amongst such a public. And on its
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part, German socialism recognized more and more its own calling as the bombastic representative
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of the petty bourgeois philistine. It proclaimed the German nation to be the model
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nation, and the German petty philistine to be the typical man. To every
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villainous meanness of this model man, it gave a hidden higher socialistic interpretation the
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exact contrary of its real character. It went to the extreme length of directly
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opposing the brutally destructive tendency of communism and of proclaiming its supreme and impartial contempt
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of all class struggles. With very few exceptions, all the so called socialist
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and communist publications that now a teen forty seven circulating Germany belong to the domain
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of this foul and enervating literature. Section two. Conservative or bourgeois socialism.
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A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of addressing social grievances in order to secure
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the continued existence of bourgeois society. To this section belong economists, philanthropists,
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humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organizers of charity,
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members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, whole
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and corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of socialism has moreover been
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worked out into complete systems. We may cite Prudon's philosophy de la misire as
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an example of this form. The socialistic bourgeois want all the advanceges of modern
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social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom They desire the existing state
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of society minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without
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a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to
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be the best, and bourgeois socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or
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less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system,
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and thereby to march straight away into the social new Jerusalem. It but requires
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in reality that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but
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should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie. A second and more
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practical, but less systematic form of this socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement
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in the eyes of the working class by showing that no mere political reform,
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but only a change in the material conditions of existence in economic relations, could
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be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence.
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This form of socialism, however, by no means, understands abolition of
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the bourgeois relations of production and abolition that can be affected only by a revolution,
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but administrative reforms based on the continued existence of these relations. Reforms therefore
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that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour, but at best
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lessen the cost and simplify the administrative work of bourgeois government. Bourgeois socialism attains
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adequate expression when and only when it becomes a mere figure of speech. Trade
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for the benefit of the working class, protective duties for the benefit of the
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working class, prison, reform for the benefit of the working class. This
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is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism. It
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is summed up in the phrase the bourgeois is a bourgeois for the benefit of
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the working class. Three critical utopian socialism and communism. We do not here
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refer to that literature which, in every great modern revolution has always given a
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voice to the demands of the proletariat, such as the writings of Babouf and
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others. The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends,
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made in times of universal excitement when feudal society was being overthrown. These attempts
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necessarily failed, owing to the then undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well
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as to the absence of the economic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that had
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yet to be produced and could be produced by the impending bourgeois epoch alone.
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The revolutionary literature that accompanied these first movements of the proletariat had necessarily a reactionary
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character. It inculcated universal asceticism and social leveling in its crudest form. The
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socialist and communist systems properly so called those of Saint Simon Fourier, Owen and
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others spring into existence in the early undeveloped period described above of the struggle between
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proletariat and bourgeoisie see Section one Bourgeois and Proletariants. The founders of these systems
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see indeed the class antagonisms as well as the action of the decomposing elements in
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the prevailing form of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy,
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offers to them the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any
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independent political movement. Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the
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development of industry, the economic situation, as they find it, does not
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as yet offer to them the material conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.
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They therefore search after a new social science, after new social laws that are
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to create these conditions. Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive action,
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historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones, and the gradual spontaneous class
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organization of the proletariat to the organization of society specially contrived by these inventors.
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Future history resolves itself in their eyes into the propaganda and the practical carrying out
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of their social plans. In the formation of their plans, they are conscious
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of caring chiefly for the interests of the working class, as being the most
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suffering class. Only from the point of view of being the most suffering class
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does the proletariat exist for them. The undeveloped state of the class struggle,
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as well as their own surroundings, causes socialists of this kind to consider themselves
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far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every
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member of society, even that of the most favored. Hence they habitually appeal
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to society at large without distinction of class, nay by preference to the ruling
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class. For how can people, when once they understand their system, fail
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to see in it the best possible plan of the best possible state of society.
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Hence they reject all political and especially all revolutionary action, that wish to
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attain their ends by peaceful means and endeavor by small experiments necessarily doomed to failure,
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and by the force of example, to pave the way for the new
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social gospel. Such fantastic pictures of future society painted at a time when the
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proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a fantastic conception of
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its own position, correspond with the first instinctive yearnings of that class for a
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general reconstruction of society. But these socialist and communist publications contain also a critical
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element. They attack every principle of existing society. Hence they are full of
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the most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the working class. The practical measures
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proposed in them, such as the abolition of the distinction between town and country,
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of the family, of the carrying on of industries for the account of
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private individuals and of the wage system, the proclamation of social harmony, the
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conversion of the functions of the state into a mere superintendency production. All these
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proposals point solely to the disappearance of class antagonisms, which were at the time
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only just cropping up, and which in these publications are recognized in their earliest,
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indistinct and undefined forms. Only. These proposals, therefore, are rather
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a purely utopian character. The significance of critical utopian socialism and communism bears an
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inverse relation to historical development in proportion. As the modern class struggle develops and
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takes definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic attacks
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on it lose all practical value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the
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originators of these systems were in many respects revolutionary, their disciples have in every
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case formed mere reactionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of their
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masters in opposition to the progressive historical development of the proletariat. They therefore endeavor
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and that consistently to deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms.
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They still dream of experimental realization of their social utopias, are founding isolated Falan
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stairs, of establishing Homer colonies, of setting up a little Hiceria duodecimo,
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additions of the new Jerusalem, and to realize all these castles in the air,
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they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois.
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By degrees they sink into the category of the reactionary conservative. So socialists depicted
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above, differing from these only by a more systematic pedantry and by their fanatical
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and superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social science. They therefore violently
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oppose all political action on the part of the working class. Such action,
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according to them, can only result from blind unbelief in the New Gospel.
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The Owenites in England and the Furyaists in France, respectively oppose the Chartists and
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the Reformists. Section four. Position of the Communists in relation to the various
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existing opposition parties. Section two has made clear the relations of the Communists to
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the existing working class parties, such as the Chartists in England and the agrarian
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Reformers in America. The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims for
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the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class, but in the movement
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of the present they also represent and take care of the future of that movement.
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In France, the Communists ally themselves with the Social Democrats against the conservative
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and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical
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position in regard to phrases and illusions traditionally handed down from the Great Revolution.
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In Switzerland, they support the radicals without losing sight of the fact that this
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party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of democratic socialists in the French sense,
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partly of radical bourgeois In Poland, they support the party that insists on an
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agrarian revolution as the prime condition for national emancipation, that party which fomented the
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insurrection of Krakau in eighteen forty six. In Germany, they fight with the
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bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way against the absolute monarchy, the feudal
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squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie. But they never cease for a single instant
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to instill into the working class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between
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bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the German workers may straight away use,
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as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions that the
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bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy, and in order that after the
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fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may
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immediately begin. The communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany because that country is
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on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under
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more advanced to con nditions of European civilization, and with a much more developed
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proletariat than that of England was in the seventeenth and of France in the eighteenth
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century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to
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an immediately following proletarian revolution. In short, the communists everywhere support every revolutionary
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movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements
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they bring to the front as the leading question in each the property question,
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no matter what its degree of development at the time. Finally, they labor
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everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries. The
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communists disdain to conceal all their views and aims. They openly declare that their
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ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing so conditions.
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Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution, the proletarians have nothing to
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lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of
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all countries unite. The end of the Manifesto