Latest / The Communist Manifesto / The Communist Manifesto

Transcript

The Communist Manifesto · The Communist Manifesto

0:00
Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The specter is
0:11
haunting Europe, the specter of communism. All the powers of old Europe have
0:17
entered into a holy alliance to exercise this specter Popenzar, Mettinik and Guizo,
0:24
French radicals and German police spies. Where is the party in opposition that has
0:31
not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition
0:36
that has not hold back the branding reproach of communism against the more advanced opposition
0:42
parties as well as against its reactionary adversaries. Two things result from this fact.
0:50
First, Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a
0:57
power. Second, it is high time that communists should openly, in the
1:03
face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies
1:10
and meet this nursery tale of the specter of communism with a manifesto of the
1:15
party itself. To this end, communists of various nationalities have assembled in London
1:22
and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French,
1:26
German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages. Section one Bourgeois and Proletarians.
1:40
The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles. Freemen
1:47
and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman,
1:53
in a word, oppressor and oppressed, study in constant opposition to one another,
2:00
carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight
2:07
that each time ended either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in
2:14
the common ruin of the contending classes. In the earlier epochs of history,
2:19
we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold
2:25
gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians,
2:32
slaves. In the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild masters,
2:39
journeymen, apprentices, serfs. In almost all of these classes, again
2:46
subordinate gradations. The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal
2:53
society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes,
3:00
new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old
3:05
ones. Our epoch the epoch of the bourgeoisie possesses. However, this distinctive
3:13
feature it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and
3:21
more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing
3:28
each other, Bourgeoisie and proletariat. From the surfs of the Middle Ages sprang
3:35
the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of
3:40
the bourgeoisie were developed. The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape
3:47
opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie the East, Indian and Chinese markets.
3:53
The colonization of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the
3:59
means of exchange and in commodities generally gave to commerce, to navigation, to
4:05
industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby to the revolutionary element in
4:13
the tottering feudal society. A rapid development. The feudal system of industry,
4:20
under which industrial production was monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for
4:28
the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place.
4:34
The guild masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class. Division
4:42
of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour
4:46
in each single workshop. Meantime, the markets kept ever growing, demand ever
4:55
rising, even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionized industrial
5:04
production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant modern industry, the
5:13
place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole
5:18
industrial armies. The modern bourgeois. Modern industry has established the world market for
5:26
which the discovery of America paid the way. This market has given an immense
5:30
development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has
5:36
in its time reacted on the extension of industry, and in proportion as industry,
5:43
commerce, navigation, railways extended in the same proportion, the bourgeoisie developed,
5:50
increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from
5:56
the middle ages. We see therefore, how the modern bourgeois is itself the
6:01
product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the
6:06
modes of production and of exchange. Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie
6:13
was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class, an oppressed class under
6:18
the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self governing association in the
6:24
medieval commune, here independent urban republic as in Italy and Germany, there taxable
6:32
further estate of the monarchy, as in France afterwards in the period of manufacture
6:39
proper, serving either the semi feudal or the absolute monarchy, as a counterpoise
6:45
against the nobility, and in fact cornerstone of the great monarchies. In general.
6:51
The bourgeoisie has, at last, since the establishment of modern industry and
6:58
of the world market, conquered for itself in the modern representative state exclusive political
7:04
sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee from managing the
7:12
common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie historically has played a most revolutionary
7:18
part. The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put
7:25
an end to all feud patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder
7:32
the modeley feudal ties that bound men to his natural superiors, and has left
7:39
remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self interest, than callous
7:46
cash payment. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of
7:51
chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism in the icy waters of egotistical calculation. It
8:01
has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the number less
8:07
and feasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom, free
8:13
trade in one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions,
8:22
naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoisie has stripped of its
8:31
halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverend awe. It has
8:37
converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man
8:43
of science into its page wage laborers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the
8:50
family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money
8:56
relation. The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display
9:03
of vigor in the Middle Ages, which reactionists so much admire, found its
9:09
fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show
9:13
what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wanders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids,
9:20
Roman aqueducts and Gothic cathedrals. It has conducted expeditions that put in the
9:26
shade all former exoduses of nations and crusades. The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly
9:35
revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with
9:43
them, the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old mode of production
9:50
in unaltered form was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for
9:56
all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social
10:05
conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
10:13
All fixed, fast, frozen relations with the train of ancient and venerable prejudices
10:20
and opinions are swept away. All new formed ones become antiquated before they can
10:26
ossify. All that is solid melts into air, All that is wholly is
10:33
profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his
10:39
real conditions of life and his relations with his kind. The need of a
10:43
constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the
10:50
globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The
11:00
bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character
11:05
to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionists,
11:13
it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it
11:16
stood. All old established national industries have been destroyed, or are daily being
11:22
destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and
11:28
deaf question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous
11:35
raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones, industries whose products
11:41
are consumed not only a home, but in every quarter of the globe.
11:46
In place of the old wants satisfied by the productions of the country, we
11:52
find new wants requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes.
11:58
In place of the old local and national seclusion and self sufficiency, we have
12:03
intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of nations, and as in material so
12:13
also in intellectual production, the intellectual creations of individual nations become common property.
12:22
National one sidedness and narrow mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the
12:28
numerous national and local literatures there arises a world literature. The Bourgeoisie, by
12:35
the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of
12:41
communication, draws all even the most barbarian nations into civilization. The cheap prices
12:50
of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls,
12:56
with which it forces the barbarians intense the obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate.
13:03
It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois
13:07
mode of production. It compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their
13:13
midst i e. To become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates
13:20
a world after its own image. The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the
13:28
rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the
13:33
urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part
13:39
of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made
13:46
to the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi
13:50
barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois
14:00
the east on the west. The bourgeois keeps more and more doing away with
14:07
the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of
14:11
property. It has agglomerated production and has concentrated property in a few hands.
14:20
The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent all but loosely connected provinces
14:28
with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation became lumped together
14:35
into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national
14:41
class interest, one frontier, and one customs tariff. The bourgeoisie, during
14:50
its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal
14:56
productive forces than have all preceding gener generations together. Subjection of nature's forces to
15:05
man machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways,
15:13
electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers hall
15:22
populations conjured out of the ground. What earlier century had even a presentiment that
15:28
such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour. We see, then,
15:35
the means of production and of exchange on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself
15:41
up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development
15:48
of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society
15:54
produced and exchanged the feudal organization of agriculture and manufacturing industry. In one word,
16:02
the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive
16:07
forces. They became so many fetters they had to be burst asunder. They
16:15
were burst asunder. Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social
16:22
and political constitution adapted to it, and by the economical and political sway of
16:30
the bourgeois class. A similar movement is going on before our own eyes modern
16:37
bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property.
16:42
A society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange
16:49
is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the
16:53
never world, whom he is called up by his spells. For many a
16:59
decade past. The history of industry and commerce is but the history of the
17:03
revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations
17:11
that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule.
17:17
It is enough to mention the commercial crises that, by the periodical return but
17:22
on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois
17:29
society. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products,
17:37
but also of the previously creative productive forces are periodically destroyed. In these
17:45
crises, there breaks out an epidemic that in all earlier epochs would have seen
17:51
an absurdity, the epidemic of over production. Society suddenly finds itself health put
18:00
back into a state of momentary barbarism. It appears as if a famine,
18:06
a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of
18:11
subsistence. Industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why Because there is
18:18
too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too
18:25
much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to
18:32
further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property. On the contrary, they
18:37
have become too powerful for these conditions by which they are fettered, and so
18:44
soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois
18:49
society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are
18:56
too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie
19:03
get over these crises on the one hand, enforce destruction of a mass productive
19:08
forces, on the other, by the conquest of new markets and by the
19:15
more thorough exploitation of the old wants, that is to say, by paving
19:19
the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means
19:26
whereby crises are prevented. The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felt feudalism to the
19:33
ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. But not only has the bourgeoisie
19:41
forged the weapons that bring death to itself. It is also called into existence
19:45
the men who are to wield these weapons. The modern working class, the
19:52
proletarians, in proportion as the bourgeoisie i e. Capital is developed in the
20:00
same proportion as the proletariat. The modern working class developed a class of laborers
20:07
who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only
20:12
so long as their labor increases capital. These laborers, who must sell themselves
20:21
piecemeal, are a commodity like every other article of commerce, and are consequently
20:27
exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all fluctuations of the market.
20:37
Owing to the extensive use of machinery and division of labor, the work of
20:42
the proletariants has lost all individual character and consequently all charm. For the workman,
20:52
he becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most
20:56
simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack that is required of him.
21:03
Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted almost entirely to
21:11
the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance and for the propagation of
21:15
his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour,
21:22
is equal to the cost of production in proportion. Therefore, as the
21:26
repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases, nay more in proportion,
21:33
as the use of machinery and division of labour increases. In the same proportion
21:38
that the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours,
21:45
by increase of the work exacted in the given time, or by increased
21:49
speed of the machinery, et cetera. Modern industry has converted the little workshop
21:59
of the patrin triarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses
22:06
of laborers crowded into the factory are organized like soldiers, as privates of the
22:14
industrial army. They are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers
22:19
and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class and of the
22:26
bourgeois state, they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the
22:32
overlooker, and above all by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly
22:42
this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty,
22:48
the more hateful, and the more embittering it is, the less the skill
22:56
and exertion of strength implied in manual labour. In other words, the more
23:02
modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labor of men superseded by that
23:07
of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity
23:15
for the working class. All are instruments of labor, more or less expensive
23:22
to use according to their age and sex. No sooner is the exploitation of
23:26
the laborer by the manufacturer so far at an end that he receives his wages
23:33
in cash than he is set upon by other portions of the bourgeoisie, the
23:40
landlord, the shop keeper, the pawnbroker, et cetera. The lower strata
23:48
of the middle class, the small tradespeople, shop keepers, retired tradesmen generally,
23:53
the handicraftsmen, and peasants. All these sink gradually into the prolece pctariat,
24:00
partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which modern
24:06
industry is carried on and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists.
24:11
Partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by the new methods of production.
24:18
Thus, the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population. The proletariat
24:27
goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the
24:33
bourgeoisie. At first, the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then
24:41
by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operatives of one trade in
24:47
one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their
24:55
attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the the instruments of
25:00
production themselves. They destroy imported wares that compete with their labour. They smash
25:07
to pieces machinery, They set factories ablaze. They seek to restore by force
25:12
the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages. At this stage,
25:18
the labourers still form an incoherent mass, scattered over the whole country and broken
25:25
up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies.
25:33
This is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of
25:37
the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own
25:41
political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is
25:48
moreover, yet for a time able to do so. At this stage,
25:55
therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemy of their
26:00
enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non industrial bourgeois,
26:07
the petty bourgeoisie. Thus, the whole historical movement is concentrated in the
26:12
hands of the bourgeoisie. Every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.
26:22
But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number,
26:29
it becomes concentrated in greater masses. Its strength grows, and it feels
26:33
that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of
26:41
the proletariat are more and more equalized in proportion. As machinery obliterates all distinctions
26:49
of labour and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing
26:56
competition among the bourgeois and the resulting commercial crises makes the wages of the workers
27:03
ever more fluctuating. The unceasing improvement of machinery ever more rapidly developing, makes
27:11
their livelihood more and more precarious. The collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois
27:19
take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the
27:27
workers begin to form combinations trades unions against the bourgeois. They club together in
27:36
order to keep up the rate of wages. They found permanent associations in order
27:41
to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there the contest breaks
27:48
out into riots. Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for
27:56
a time. The real of their battles lies not in the immediate result,
28:03
but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on
28:08
by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry and that place
28:15
the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this
28:21
contact that was needed to centralize the numerous local struggles, all of the same
28:26
character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a
28:34
political struggle, and that union to attain, which the burghers of the Middle
28:40
Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarians, thanks
28:48
to railways, achieve in a few years. This organization of the proletarians into
28:56
a class, and consequently into a political party is continually being upset again by
29:03
the competition between the workers themselves, but it ever rises up again, stronger,
29:10
firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers
29:18
by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus the ten Hours
29:25
Bill in England was carried altogether collisions between the classes of the old society.
29:33
Further, in many ways the course of development of the proletariat, the bourgeoisie
29:40
finds itself involved in a constant battle, at first with the aristocracy, later
29:47
on with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself whose interests have become antagonistic to the
29:52
progress of industry, at all times, of the bourgeoisie of foreign countries.
30:00
In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat,
30:04
to ask for its help, and thus to drag it into the political arena.
30:12
The bourgeoisie itself therefore supplies the proletariat with its own instruments of political and
30:19
general education. In other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting
30:27
the bourgeoisie. Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the
30:33
ruling classes are, by the advance of industry precipitated into the proletariat, or
30:41
are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat
30:49
with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress. Finally, in times when the class
30:56
struggle nears the decisive hour, the process of dissolution going on within the ruling
31:03
class, in fact, within the whole range of society, assumes such a
31:08
violent, glaring character that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift
31:15
and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands.
31:22
Just as therefore, at an earlier period a section of the nobility went
31:26
over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to
31:33
the proletariat, and in particular a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have
31:41
raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.
31:52
Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie to day,
31:56
the proletariat alone is a real revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally
32:05
disappear in the face of modern industry. The proletariat is its special and essential
32:13
product. The lower middle class, small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan,
32:20
the peasant. All these fight against the bourgeoisie to save from extinction their
32:27
existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary but conservative.
32:36
Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the
32:40
wheel of history. If, by chance they are revolutionary, they are so
32:47
only in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat. They thus defend not
32:54
their present but their future interests. They desert their own standpoint to place themselves
33:01
at that of the proletariat. The dangerous class, the social scum, that
33:09
passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may here
33:16
and there be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution. Its conditions of
33:24
life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool
33:30
of reactionary intrigue. In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society
33:37
at large are already virtually swamped the proletarians without property, His relation to his
33:46
wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations.
33:54
Modern industrial labor, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in
34:00
France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of
34:07
national character. Law, morality, religion are to him so many bourgeois prejudices
34:16
behind which lurk in ambush, just as many bourgeois interests. All the preceding
34:25
classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting
34:31
society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of
34:39
the productive forces of society except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation,
34:46
and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their
34:53
own to secure and to fortify. Their mission is to destroy all previous securities
35:00
for and insurances of individual property. All previous historical movements were movements of minorities
35:13
or in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self conscious,
35:19
independent movement of the immense majority in the interests of the immense majority. The
35:28
proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise
35:35
itself up without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.
35:45
Though not in substance yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat of
35:51
the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must,
35:58
of course, first of all, settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.
36:07
In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat. We traced
36:12
the more or less veiled civil war raging within existing society, up to the
36:17
point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow
36:24
of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat. Hitherto,
36:34
every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on
36:38
the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class,
36:47
certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can at least continue
36:52
its slavish existence. The surf in the period of serfdom raised to membership in
37:00
the commune, just as the petty bourgeois under the yoke of feudal absolutism managed
37:07
to develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary, instead
37:14
of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions
37:20
of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops
37:25
more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie
37:34
is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose
37:38
its conditions of existence upon society as an overriding law. It is unfit to
37:45
rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery,
37:52
because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has
37:57
to feed him instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live
38:04
under the bourgeoisie. In other words, its existence is no longer compatible with
38:09
society. The essential condition for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois
38:16
class is the formation and augmentation of capital. The condition for capital is wage
38:24
labour. Wage labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of
38:36
industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers
38:43
due to competition by their revolutionary combination due to association. The development of modern
38:50
industry therefore cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces
38:58
and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all is its own
39:05
grave diggers. It's fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
39:19
The end of Section one. The Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx
39:28
and Friedrich Engels. Section two. Proletarians and Communists. In what relation do
39:40
the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The Communists do not form
39:46
a separate party opposed to other working class parties. They have no interests separate
39:52
and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set
39:59
up any secretar tarian principles of their own by which to shape and mold the
40:04
proletarian movement. The Communists are distinguished from the other working class parties by this
40:10
only. First, in the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries,
40:17
they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire
40:22
proletariat, independently of all nationality. Second, in the various stages of development
40:31
which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through,
40:37
they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole. The
40:45
Communists, therefore, are, on one hand, practically the most advanced and
40:51
resolute section of the working class parties of every country, that section which pushes
40:57
forward all others. On the other hand, theoretically they have, over the
41:04
great mass of the proletariat, the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march,
41:10
the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement. The
41:17
immediate aim of the communist is the same as that of all the other proletarian
41:22
parties. Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy,
41:30
conquest of political power by the proletariat. The theoretical conclusions of the communists
41:38
are in no way based on our ideas or principles that have been invented or
41:44
discovered by this or that would be universal reformer. They merely express in general
41:52
terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement
41:59
going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not
42:06
at all a distinctive feature of communism. All property relations in the past have
42:13
continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions. The
42:22
French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.
42:29
The distinguishing feature of communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the
42:34
abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most
42:42
complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products that is based on class
42:47
antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few. In this sense,
42:57
the theory of the communists may be summed up in the sad, single
43:00
sentence abolition of private property. We communists have been reproached with the desire of
43:08
abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man's own labor,
43:15
which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity
43:22
and independence. Hard one self acquired, self earned property. Do you mean
43:30
the property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of
43:35
property that preceded the bourgeois form. There is no need to abolish that.
43:39
The development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it and is still
43:45
destroying it daily. Or do you mean modern bourgeois private property? But does
43:54
wage labor create any property for the laborer? Not a bit. It creates
44:00
capital, i e. That kind of property which exploits wage labor, and
44:07
which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage labor for
44:13
fresh exploitation. Property in its present form is based on the antagonism of capital
44:21
and wage labor. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism. To be
44:28
a capitalist is to have not only a purely personal but a social status.
44:34
In production, capital is a collective product, and only by the united action
44:42
of many members. Nay, in the last resort, only by the united
44:46
action of all members of society can it be set in motion. Capital is
44:52
therefore not a personal it is a social power. When therefore capital is converted
45:00
into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property
45:07
is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of
45:13
the property that is changed. It loses its class character. Let us now
45:20
take wage labour. The average price of wage labour is the minimum wage,
45:27
i e. That quantum of the means of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite
45:32
in bare existence as a laborer. What therefore the wage laborer appropriates by means
45:40
of his labour merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by
45:50
no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an
45:54
appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that
46:00
leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labor of others. All that we want
46:06
to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the
46:12
laborer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so
46:17
far as the interest of the ruling class requires it. In bourgeois society,
46:24
living labor is but a means to increase accumulated labor. In communist society,
46:31
accumulated labor is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the
46:37
existence of the laborer. In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the
46:45
present. In communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society,
46:53
capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and
47:00
has no individuality. And the abolition of this state of things is called by
47:07
the bourgeois abolition of individuality and freedom, and rightly so, the abolition of
47:14
bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at by freedom
47:24
is meant under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling
47:31
and buying. But if selling and buying disappears. Free selling and buying disappears.
47:38
Also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other
47:44
brave words of our bourgeoisie about freedom in general, have a meaning, if
47:49
any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying with the fettered traders of
47:54
the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when compared to the communistic abolition of
48:01
buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie
48:07
itself. You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property.
48:15
But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine
48:21
tenths of the population. Its existence for the few is solely due to its
48:25
non existence in the hands of those nine tenths. You reproach us, therefore,
48:31
with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition
48:36
for whose existence is the non existence of any property for the immense majority of
48:42
society. In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with
48:49
your property. Precisely so that is just what we intend from the moment when
48:58
labour can no longer be converted into capital, money or rent into a social
49:04
power capable of being monopolized i e. From the moment when individual property can
49:10
no longer be transformed into bourgeois property into capital. From that moment you say
49:19
individuality vanishes, you must therefore confess that by individual you mean no other person
49:28
than the bourgeois, than the middle class owner of property. This person must
49:35
indeed be swept out of the way and made impossible. Communism deprives no man
49:43
of the power to appropriate the products of society. All that it does is
49:49
to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of
49:53
such appropriation. It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property,
50:00
all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us. According to this,
50:07
bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness,
50:13
for those of its members who work acquire nothing, and those who acquire
50:17
anything do not work. The whole of this objection was but another expression of
50:24
the tautology that there can no longer be any wage labor when there is no
50:30
longer any capital. All objections urged against the communistic mode of producing and appropriating
50:39
material products have in the same way been urged against the communistic modes of producing
50:47
and appropriating intellectual products. Just as to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class
50:55
property is the disappearance of production itself, So the disappearance of class culture is
51:02
to him identical with the disappearance of all culture. That culture, the loss
51:12
of which he laments, is for the enormous majority, a mere training to
51:17
act as a machine. But don't wrangle with us, so long as you
51:23
apply to our intended abolition of bourgeois property the standard of your bourgeois notions of
51:30
freedom, culture, law, et cetera. Your very ideas are but the
51:38
outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your
51:45
jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all,
51:51
a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence
51:58
of your class. The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws
52:07
of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of
52:12
production and form of property, historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress
52:19
of production. This misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you.
52:27
What you see clearly in the case of ancient property. What you admit
52:31
in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in
52:37
the case of your own bourgeois form of property, abolition of the family.
52:44
Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists. On
52:50
what foundation is the present family? The bourgeois family based on capital, on
52:58
private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the
53:06
bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of
53:12
the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution. The bourgeois family will
53:20
vanish, as a matter of course, when its complement vanishes, and both
53:23
will vanish with the vanishing of capital. Do you charge us with wanting to
53:30
stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.
53:37
But you will say we destroy the most hallowed of relations when we replace
53:42
home education by social and your education is not that also social and determined by
53:50
the social conditions under which you educate. By the intervention direct or indirect of
53:57
society by means of schools, et cetera. The Communists have not invented the
54:04
intervention of society in education they do, but seek to alter the character of
54:09
that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.
54:16
The bourgeois clap trap about the family and education, about the hallowed correlation of
54:22
parent and child becomes all the more disgusting the more by the action of modern
54:29
industry, all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children
54:36
transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labor. But e communists introduced
54:43
community of women, screams the whole bourgeoisie in chorus. The bourgeois sees in
54:51
his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production
54:57
are to be exploited in common, and naturally can come to no other conclusion
55:04
than that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.
55:08
He has not even a suspicion that the real point is to do away
55:13
with the status of women as mere instruments of production. For the rest,
55:21
nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of
55:27
women, which they pretend is to be openly and officially established by the communists.
55:35
The communists have no need to introduce community of women. It has existed
55:40
almost from time immemorial. Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and
55:46
daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes,
55:52
take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives. Bourgeois marriage is in reality
56:01
a system of wives in common. And thus, at the most what the
56:07
communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce in substitution for
56:14
a hypocritically concealed and openly legalized community of women. For the rest, it
56:21
is self evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with
56:28
it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i e.
56:34
Of prostitution, both public and private. The communists are further approached with
56:44
desiring to abolish countries and nationality. The working men have no country. We
56:52
cannot take from them what they have not got, since the proletariat must first
56:59
of all, why a political supremacy must rise to be the leading class of
57:04
the nation, must constitute itself the nation. It is so far itself national,
57:12
though not in the bourgeois sense of the word. National differences and antagonisms
57:19
between people are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the
57:24
bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in
57:30
the mode of production and in the conditions of life. Corresponding thereto the supremacy
57:36
of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action of the
57:43
leading civilized countries, at least is one of the first conditions for the emancipation
57:49
of the proletariat. In proportion, as the exploitation of one individual by another
57:54
is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another, will
57:59
all be put an end to. In proportion, as the antagonism between classes
58:05
within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to
58:10
an end. The charges against communism made from a religious, a philosophical,
58:16
and generally from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination. Does
58:24
it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views, and conceptions.
58:30
In one word, man's consciousness changes with every change in the conditions of his
58:36
material existence, in his social relations, and in his social life. What
58:43
else does the history of ideas prove than that intellectual production changes its character and
58:49
proportion as material production is changed. The ruling ideas of each age have ever
58:55
been the ideas of its ruling class. When people speak of ideas that revolutionize
59:04
society, they do but express the fact that within the old society the elements
59:09
of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old
59:15
ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence. When
59:22
the ancient world was in its last froze, the ancient religions were overcome by
59:28
Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the eighteenth century to rationalist ideas, feudal
59:36
society fought its deaf battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious
59:44
liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway a free competition within
59:51
the domain of knowledge. Undoubtedly, it will be said, religious, moral,
59:58
philosophical, and juridic ideas have been modified in the course of historical development.
1:00:04
But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law constantly survived
1:00:12
this change. There are besides eternal truths such as freedom, justice, etc.
1:00:19
That are common to all states of society. But communism abolishes eternal truths.
1:00:24
It abolishes all religion and all morality instead of constituting them on a new
1:00:30
basis. It therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience. What does
1:00:40
this accusation reduce itself to the history of all past society has consisted in the
1:00:46
development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs. But
1:00:55
whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages,
1:01:02
viz. The exploitation of one part of society by the other. No
1:01:08
wonder then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity
1:01:15
and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms or general ideas, which
1:01:22
cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms. The communist revolution
1:01:30
is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations. No wonder that its development
1:01:37
involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas. But let us have done with
1:01:43
the bourgeois objections to communism. We have seen above that the first step in
1:01:49
the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of
1:01:53
ruling as to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political
1:02:00
supremacy to rest by degrees all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments
1:02:09
of production in the hands of the state, i e. Of the proletariat
1:02:15
organized as the ruling class, and to increase the total of productive forces as
1:02:22
rapidly as possible. Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected
1:02:28
except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property and on the conditions
1:02:32
of bourgeois production, by means of measures therefore which appear economically insufficient and untenable,
1:02:40
but which, in the course of the movement outstrip themselves, necessitate further
1:02:47
inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely
1:02:53
revolutionizing the mode of production. These measures will, of course be different in
1:03:00
different countries. Nevertheless, in the most advanced countries, the following will be
1:03:07
pretty generally applicable. Number one abolition of property in land and application of all
1:03:15
rents of land to public purposes. Number two a heavy progressive or gradated income
1:03:24
tax. Number three, abolition of all right of inheritance. Number four confiscation
1:03:37
of the property of all emigrants and rebels. Number five. Centralization of credit
1:03:45
in the hands of the state by means of a national bank with state capital
1:03:50
and an exclusive monopoly. Number six. Centralization of the means of communication and
1:03:59
transport in the hands of the state. Number seven. Extension of factories and
1:04:06
instruments of production owned by the state. The bringing into cultivation of wastelands and
1:04:13
the improvement of the soil, generally in accordance with a common plan. Number
1:04:17
eight. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially
1:04:26
for agriculture. Number nine. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries. Gradual abolition
1:04:35
of the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the population
1:04:42
over the country. Number ten. Free education for all children in public schools,
1:04:51
abolition of children's factory labour in its present form, combination of education with
1:04:59
industrial predat duction, etc. Etc. When in the course of development,
1:05:06
class distinctions have disappeared and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a
1:05:12
vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character.
1:05:19
Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one
1:05:25
class for oppressing another. If the proletariat drawing its contest with the bourgeoisie,
1:05:32
is compelled by the force of circumstances to organize itself as a class. If
1:05:40
by means of a revolution it makes itself the ruling class, and as such
1:05:46
sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along
1:05:51
with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms
1:05:57
and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a
1:06:02
class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class
1:06:10
antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is
1:06:15
the condition for the free development of all. The end of Section two The
1:06:25
Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Section three Socialist
1:06:34
and communist literature one reactionary socialism a feudal socialism. Owing to their historical position,
1:06:48
it became the vocation of the aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets
1:06:54
against modern bourgeois society. In the French Revolution of July eighteen thirty and in
1:07:00
the English Reform agitation, these aristocracies again succumbed to the hateful upstart. Thenceforth
1:07:09
a serious political contest was altogether out of the question. A literary battle alone
1:07:15
remained possible, But even in the domain of literature, the old cries of
1:07:21
the Restoration period had become impossible. In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy
1:07:29
were obliged to lose sight, apparently of their own interests, and to formulate
1:07:33
their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone.
1:07:41
Thus the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new master and whispering
1:07:46
in his ears sinister prophecies of coming a catastrophe. In this way arose feudal
1:07:54
socialism, half lamentation, half lampoon, half echo of the post lasked,
1:08:00
half menace of the future, at times by its bitter, witty and incisive
1:08:06
criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart's core, but always ludicrous in
1:08:13
its effect. Through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history, the
1:08:19
aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waived the proletarian alms
1:08:25
bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as it
1:08:30
joined them, saw on their hind quarters, the old feudal coats of arms
1:08:35
and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter. One section of the French legitimists and
1:08:43
Young England exhibited this spectacle. In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was
1:08:48
different to that of the bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they exploited under circumstances
1:08:56
and conditions that were quite different and that are now antiquated. In showing that
1:09:02
under their rule the modern proletariat never existed, they forget that the modern bourgeoisie
1:09:08
is the necessary offspring of their own form of society. For the rest,
1:09:14
so little do they conceal the reactionary character of their criticism, that the chief
1:09:18
accusation against the bourgeoisie amounts to this, that under the bourgeois regime a class
1:09:25
is being developed which is destined to cut, up, root and branch the
1:09:29
old order of society. What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much
1:09:33
that it creates a proletariat, as that it creates a revolutionary proletariat. In
1:09:39
political practice. Therefore, they join in all coercive measures against the working class
1:09:46
and in ordinary life, despite their high falutin phrases, they stoop to pick
1:09:51
up the golden apples dropped from the tree of industry, and to barter truth,
1:09:58
love and honor for traffic and wool, beetroot, sugar and potato spirits.
1:10:04
As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so
1:10:09
has clerical socialism with feudal socialism. Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism
1:10:15
a socialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage,
1:10:23
against the state, has it not preached in the place of these charity and
1:10:28
poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and mother church.
1:10:34
Christian socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart burnings
1:10:42
of the aristocrat b petty bourgeois socialism. The feudal aristocracy was not the only
1:10:49
class that was ruined by the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of
1:10:55
existence pined and perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society. The medieval burgesses
1:11:01
and the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those
1:11:08
countries which are but little developed industrially and commercially, these two classes still vegetate
1:11:15
side by side with the rising bourgeoisie. In countries where modern civilization has become
1:11:20
fully developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between
1:11:27
proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society.
1:11:34
The individual members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down
1:11:40
into the proletariat by the action of competition, and as modern industry develops,
1:11:45
they even see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent section
1:11:51
of modern society, to be replaced in manufactures, agriculture, and commerce by
1:12:00
overlookers, bailiffs, and shopmen. In countries like France, where the peasants
1:12:05
constitute far more than half of the population, it was natural that writers who
1:12:12
sided with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie should use in their criticism of the bourgeois
1:12:17
regime the standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and from the standpoint of
1:12:23
these intermediate classes should take up the cudgels for the working class. Thus arose
1:12:30
petty bourgeois socialism. Sismondi was the head of this school, not only in
1:12:35
France but also in England. This school of socialism dissected with great acuteness the
1:12:43
contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of
1:12:49
economists. It proved incontrovertibly the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour,
1:12:58
the concentration of capital and land in a few hands over production and crises.
1:13:03
It pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery
1:13:10
of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution
1:13:15
of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old
1:13:23
moral bonds, of the old family relations of the old nationalities. In its
1:13:29
positive aims, however, this form of socialism aspires either to restoring the old
1:13:34
means production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations and the
1:13:41
old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within
1:13:46
the framework of the old property relations that have been and were bound to be
1:13:53
exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and utopia.
1:14:00
Its last words are corporate guilds for manufacture patriarchal relations in agriculture. Ultimately,
1:14:09
when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self deception, this
1:14:15
form of socialism ended in a miserable fit of the blues c German or true
1:14:26
socialism. The socialist and communist literature of France, a literature that originated under
1:14:32
the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power and that was the expression of a struggle
1:14:36
against this power, was introduced into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie in
1:14:43
that country had just begun its contest with feudal absolutism. German philosophers would be
1:14:50
philosophers, and beau Spree eagerly seized on this literature, only forgetting that when
1:14:59
these writings immigrated from France into Germany, French social conditions had not immigrated along
1:15:04
with them. In contact with German social conditions, this French literature lost all
1:15:11
its immediate practical significance and assumed a purely literary aspect. Thus, to the
1:15:17
German philosophers of the eighteenth century, the demands of the First French Revolution were
1:15:24
nothing more than the demand's practical reason in general, and the utterance of the
1:15:29
will of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie signified in their eyes the law of pure will
1:15:35
of will as it was bound to be of true human will. Generally,
1:15:41
the world of the German literate consisted solely in bringing the new French ideas into
1:15:47
harmony with their ancient philosophical conscience, or rather in annexing the French ideas without
1:15:55
deserting their own philosophic point of view. This alexeation took place in the same
1:16:00
way in which a foreign language is appropriated, namely by translation. It is
1:16:06
well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic saints over the manuscripts on
1:16:13
which the classical works of ancient Heathendom had been written. The German literate reversed
1:16:17
this process with the profane French literature. They wrote their philosophical nonsense beneath the
1:16:24
French original. For instance, beneath the French criticism of the economic functions of
1:16:29
money they wrote alienation of humanity, and beneath the French criticism of the bourgeois
1:16:34
state they wrote defronement of the category of the general, and so forth.
1:16:41
The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of the French historical criticisms.
1:16:45
They dubbed philosophy of action, true socialism, German science of socialism, philosophical
1:16:53
foundation of socialism, and so on. The French socialist and communist literature was
1:16:59
thus completely emasculated, and since it ceased in the hands of the German to
1:17:04
express the struggle of one class with the other, he felt conscious of having
1:17:10
overcome French one sidedness, and of representing not true requirements, but the requirements
1:17:16
of truth, not the interests of the proletariat, but the interests of human
1:17:21
nature of man in general. Who belongs to no class, has no reality,
1:17:28
who exists only in the misty realm of philosophical fantasy. This German socialism,
1:17:33
which took its schoolboy tasks so seriously and solemnly and extolled its poor stock
1:17:40
in trade in such mountebank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic innocence. The
1:17:47
fight of the German and especially of the Prussian bourgeoisie, against feudal aristocracy and
1:17:55
absolute monarchy. In other words, the liberal movement became more earnest by this.
1:18:01
The long wished for opportunity was offered to true socialism of confronting the political
1:18:08
movement with the socialist demands, of hurling the traditional anaphemers against liberalism, against
1:18:15
representative government, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation,
1:18:23
bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that they had
1:18:28
nothing to gain and everything to lose by this bourgeois movement. German socialism forgot,
1:18:34
in the nick of time that the French criticism, whose silly echo it
1:18:39
was, presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its corresponding economic conditions
1:18:45
of existence, and the political constitution adapted there too the very things whose attainment
1:18:51
was the object of the pending struggle in Germany. To the absolute governments,
1:18:57
with their following of parsons, profit infessor's, country squires and officials, it
1:19:02
served as a welcome scarecrow against the threatening bourgeoisie. It was a sweet finish
1:19:09
after the bitter pills of floggings and bullets with which those same governments just at
1:19:14
that time dos to the German working class risings. While this true socialism thus
1:19:20
served the governments as a weapon for fighting the German bourgeoisie. It at the
1:19:26
same time directly represented a reactionary interest, the interest of the German philistines.
1:19:33
In Germany, the pitty bourgeois class, a relic of the sixteenth century and
1:19:39
since then constantly cropping up again under various forms, is the real social basis
1:19:45
of the existing state of things. To preserve this class is to preserve the
1:19:49
existing state of things in Germany. The industrial and political supremacy of the bourgeoisie
1:19:56
threatens it with certain destruction on the one hand, from the concentration of capital,
1:20:01
on the other, from the rise of a revolutionary proletariat. True socialism
1:20:08
appeared to kill these two birds with one stone. It spread like an epidemic
1:20:14
the robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric, steeped in the
1:20:18
dew of sickly sentiment. This transcendental robe in which the German socialists wrapped their
1:20:25
sorry eternal troops, all skin and bone, served to wonderfully increase the sale
1:20:31
of their goods amongst such a public. And on its part, German socialism
1:20:36
recognized more and more its own calling as the bombastic representative of the petty bourgeois
1:20:44
philistine. It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the
1:20:48
German petty philistine to be the typical man. To every villainous meanness of this
1:20:55
model man. It gave a hidden, higher socialistic interpret the exact contrary of
1:21:01
its real character. It went to the extreme length of directly opposing the brutally
1:21:06
destructive tendency of communism and of proclaiming its supreme and impartial contempt of all class
1:21:15
struggles. With very few exceptions, all the so called socialist and communist publications
1:21:21
that now eighteen forty seven circulating Germany belonged to the domain of this foul and
1:21:29
enervating literature. Two. Conservative or bourgeois socialism, a part of the bourgeoisie,
1:21:39
is desirous of addressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of
1:21:45
bourgeois society. To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of
1:21:53
the condition of the working class, organizers of charity, members of societies for
1:21:59
the prevention of to animals, temperance fanatics, whole and corner reformers of every
1:22:04
imaginable kind. This form of socialism has moreover been worked out into complete systems.
1:22:14
We may cite Prudon's philosophy de la misire as an example of this form.
1:22:20
The socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles
1:22:27
and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society minus its
1:22:33
revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The
1:22:41
bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best,
1:22:46
and bourgeois socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems in
1:22:55
requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system and thereby to march straightway into
1:23:00
the social new Jerusalem. It but requires in reality that the proletariat should remain
1:23:06
within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas
1:23:13
concerning the bourgeoisie. A second and more practical, but less systematic form of
1:23:18
this socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class
1:23:25
by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material
1:23:30
conditions of existence. In economic relations could be of any advantage to them by
1:23:38
changes in the material conditions of existence. This form of socialism, however,
1:23:43
by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production and abolition that can
1:23:48
be affected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms based on the continued existence
1:23:56
of these relations. Reforms therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between
1:24:02
capital and labour, but at best lessen the cost and simplify the administrative work
1:24:11
of bourgeois government. Bourgeois socialism attains adequate expression when and only when it becomes
1:24:19
a mere figure of speech. Free trade for the benefit of the working class,
1:24:27
protective duties for the benefit of the working class, prison reform for the
1:24:32
benefit of the working class. This is the last word, and the only
1:24:36
seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism. It is summed up in the phrase the
1:24:43
bourgeois is a bourgeois for the benefit of the working class. Three critical utopian
1:24:51
socialism and communism. We do not here refer to that literature which, in
1:24:57
every great modern revolution has all always given voice to the demands of the proletariat,
1:25:02
such as the writings of Babouf and others. The first direct attempts of
1:25:08
the proletariat to attain its own ends, made in times of universal excitement when
1:25:14
feudal society was being overthrown. These attempts necessarily failed, owing to the then
1:25:19
undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to the absence of the economic
1:25:26
conditions for its emancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced and could be
1:25:31
produced by the impending bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that accompanied these first
1:25:38
movements of the proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character. It inculcated universal asceticism and
1:25:47
social leveling in its crudest form. The socialist and communist systems properly so called
1:25:55
those of Saint Simon Furier Owen and others, spring into exist, instance,
1:26:00
in the early undeveloped period described above of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie see
1:26:08
section one Bourgeois and Proletariants. The founders of these systems see indeed the class
1:26:15
antagonisms, as well as the action of the decomposing elements in the prevailing form
1:26:19
of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to
1:26:25
them the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any independent political movement.
1:26:32
Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the development of industry,
1:26:38
the economic situation, as they find it, does not as yet offer
1:26:43
to them the material conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search
1:26:49
after a new social science, after new social laws that are to create these
1:26:55
conditions. Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive action, historically created
1:27:02
conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones, and the gradual spontaneous class organization of the
1:27:10
proletariat to the organization of society specially contrived by these inventors. Future history resolves
1:27:18
itself, in their eyes into the propaganda and the practical carrying out of their
1:27:25
social plans. In the formation of their plans, they are conscious of caring
1:27:30
chiefly for the interests of the working class, as being the most suffering class.
1:27:36
Only from the point of view of being the most suffering class does the
1:27:41
proletariat exist for them. The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well
1:27:45
as their own surroundings, causes socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior
1:27:53
to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of
1:27:58
society that of the most favored. Hence they habitually appeal to society at large
1:28:05
without distinction of class, nay by preference to the ruling class. For how
1:28:12
can people, when once they understand their system, fail to see in it
1:28:15
the best possible plan of the best possible state of society. Hence they reject
1:28:23
all political and especially all revolutionary action. They wish to attain their ends by
1:28:29
peaceful means and endeavour by small experiments necessarily doomed to failure, and by the
1:28:35
force of example, to pave the way for the new social gospel. Such
1:28:42
fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the proletariat is still
1:28:47
in a very undeveloped state and has but a fantastic conception of its own position,
1:28:54
correspond with the first instinctive yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction society.
1:29:00
But these socialist and communist publications contain also a critical element. They attack
1:29:08
every principle of existing society. Hence they are full of the most valuable materials
1:29:14
for the enlightenment of the working class. The practical measures proposed in them such
1:29:19
as the abolition of the distinction between town and country, of the family,
1:29:24
of the carrying on of industries for the account of private individuals and of the
1:29:28
wage system, the proclamation of social harmony, the conversion of the functions of
1:29:32
the state into a mere superintendency production. All these proposals point solely to the
1:29:39
disappearance of class antagonisms, which were at the time only just cropping up,
1:29:45
and which in these publications are recognized in their earliest, indistinct and undefined forms.
1:29:54
Only these proposals, therefore, are of a purely utopian character. The
1:30:00
significance of critical utopian socialism and communism bears an inverse relation to historical development,
1:30:09
in proportion, as the modern class struggle develops and takes definite shape, this
1:30:14
fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic attacks on it lose all practical
1:30:20
value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of these systems were
1:30:29
in many respects revolutionary, their disciples have in every case formed mere reactionary sects.
1:30:36
They hold fast by the original views of their masters in opposition to the
1:30:42
progressive historical development of the proletariat. They therefore endeavor, and that consistently to
1:30:49
deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dream of
1:30:56
experimental realization of their social utopias, are founding isolated falanstairs, of establishing Homer
1:31:03
colonies, of setting up a little Hiceria duodecimo editions of the new Jerusalem,
1:31:11
and to realize all these castles in the air. They are compelled to appeal
1:31:15
to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois. By degrees they sink into the
1:31:20
category of the reactionary conservative socialists depicted above, differing from these only by a
1:31:28
more systematic pedantry and by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of
1:31:34
their social science. They therefore violently oppose all political action on the part of
1:31:43
the working class. Such action, according to them, can only result from
1:31:47
blind unbelief in the New Gospel. The Owenites in England and the Furiaists in
1:31:55
France, respectively oppose the Chartists and the Reformists. Section four. Position of
1:32:03
the Communists in relation to the various existing opposition parties. Section two has made
1:32:11
clear the relations of the Communists to the existing working class parties such as the
1:32:16
Chartists in England and the agrarian reformers in America. The communists fight for the
1:32:24
attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the
1:32:29
working class, but in the movement of the present they also represent and take
1:32:33
care of the future of that movement. In France, the communists ally themselves
1:32:40
with the social Democrats against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however,
1:32:46
the right to take up a critical position in regard to phrases and illusions traditionally
1:32:53
handed down from the Great Revolution. In Switzerland, they support the radicals without
1:33:00
losing sight of the fact that this party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of
1:33:05
democratic socialists in the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois In Poland, they
1:33:12
support the party that insists on the agrarian revolution as the prime condition for national
1:33:17
emancipation, that party which fomented the insurrection of Krakau in eighteen forty six.
1:33:25
In Germany, they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way
1:33:30
against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy and the petty bourgeoisie, but they
1:33:38
never cease for a single instant to instill into the working class the clearest possible
1:33:44
recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the German
1:33:50
workers may straight away use, as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the
1:33:57
social and political conditions that the bourgeos uisi must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy,
1:34:04
and in order that after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany,
1:34:10
the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin. The communists turn their attention
1:34:15
chiefly to Germany because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that
1:34:19
is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European civilization and with
1:34:26
a much more developed proletariat than that of England was in the seventeenth and of
1:34:31
France in the eighteenth century, And because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be
1:34:38
but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution. In short, the communists
1:34:45
everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.
1:34:53
In all these movements, they bring to the front as the leading question in
1:34:57
each the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.
1:35:02
Finally, they labor everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties
1:35:10
of all countries. The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They
1:35:16
openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all
1:35:23
existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The
1:35:30
proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
1:35:38
Working men of all countries unite. The end of the Manifesto