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The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx · Karl Marx Audiobooks

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