Karl Marx and Frederick Engels<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bourgeois and Proletarians<\/p>\n
| Proletarians and Communists<\/a> A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its Two things result from this fact:<\/p>\n I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.<\/p>\n II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched <\/a><\/a><\/p>\n <\/a> The history of all hitherto existing society [2]<\/a> <\/a> Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolized by closed Meantime, the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturers no Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of <\/a> Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.<\/p>\n The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigor in The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labor, the work of the Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labor, in other words, No sooner is the exploitation of the laborer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its At this stage, the laborers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their This organization of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently, into a political Altogether, collisions between the classes of the old society further in many ways the Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the The dangerous class, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is <\/a> [1]<\/a> By bourgeoisie is meant the class of By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of <\/a> [2]<\/a> That is, all _written_ history. In Familie, des Privateigenthumus und des Staats_, second edition, Stuttgart, 1886. <\/a> [3]<\/a> Guild-master, that is, a full member of <\/a> [4]<\/a> This was the name given their urban Commune was the name taken in France by the nascent towns even before they <\/a><\/p>\n In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The Communists They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.<\/p>\n They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mold The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only:<\/p>\n (1) In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they (2) In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand practically, the most advanced and The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favor of bourgeois The distinguishing feature of communism is not the abolition of property generally, but In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?<\/p>\n But does wage labor create any property for the laborer? Not a bit. It creates capital, To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social STATUS in Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.<\/p>\n When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all Let us now take wage labor.<\/p>\n The average price of wage labor is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of In bourgeois society, living labor is but a means to increase accumulated labor. In In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in communist society, And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely From the moment when labor can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, You must, therefore, confess that by individual you mean no other person Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through All objections urged against the communistic mode of producing and appropriating That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous majority, a mere But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions The bourgeois claptrap about the family and education, about the hallowed correlation But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and The workers have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end The charges against communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes When people speak of the ideas that revolutionize society, they do but express that When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Undoubtedly, it will be said, religious, moral, philosophical, and There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the The communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional relations; no But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to communism.<\/p>\n We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.<\/p>\n 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.<\/p>\n 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.<\/p>\n 5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with 6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in he hands of the state.<\/p>\n 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the 8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall <\/a><\/p>\n 1. REACTIONARY SOCIALISM<\/b><\/p>\n a. Feudal Socialism<\/p>\n <\/a> Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight, apparently, of In this way arose feudal socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half an echo of the The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarian alms-bag One section of the French Legitimists and Young England exhibited this In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to that of the For the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionary character of their criticism What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it creates a proletariat as <\/a> In political practice, therefore, they join in all corrective As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has clerical socialism Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a socialist tinge. Has not b. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism<\/p>\n The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by the bourgeoisie, not In countries where modern civilization has become fully developed, a new class of petty In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more than half of the This school of socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in the In it positive aims, however, this form of socialism aspires either to restoring the Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal relations in Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of c. German or True Socialism<\/p>\n The socialist and communist literature of France, a literature that originated under German philosophers, would-be philosophers, and beaux esprits (men of letters), eagerly The work of the German literati consisted solely in bringing the new French ideas into This annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign language is appropriated, It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic saints _over_ the The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of the French historical The French socialist and communist literature was thus completely emasculated. And, This German socialism, which took its schoolboy task so seriously and solemnly, and The fight of the Germans, and especially of the Prussian bourgeoisie, against feudal By this, the long-wished for opportunity was offered to True Socialism of To the absolute governments, with their following of parsons, professors, country It was a sweet finish, after the bitter pills of flogging and bullets, with which these
\n| Socialist and Communist Literature<\/a> | Position
\nof the Communists in relation to the various existing opposition parties<\/a> | Preface to 1872 German edition<\/a> | Preface to
\n1882 Russian edition<\/a> | Preface to 1883 German edition<\/a> | Preface to 1888 English edition<\/a> | Preface to
\n1890 German edition<\/a> | Notes on the Manifesto and translations of it<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\nhave entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and
\nGuizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.<\/p>\n
\nopponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach
\nof communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its
\nreactionary adversaries?<\/p>\n
\npublish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the
\nspectre of communism with a manifesto of the party itself.<\/p>\n
\nthe following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish
\nand Danish languages.<\/p>\n
\nI — BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS [1]<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n
\nis the history of class struggles.<\/p>\n
\nguild-master [3]<\/a> and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed,
\nstood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now
\nopen fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of
\nsociety at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.<\/p>\n
\nof society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we
\nhave patricians, knights, plebians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals,
\nguild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again,
\nsubordinate gradations.<\/p>\n
\ndone away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of
\noppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.<\/p>\n
\nhas simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into
\ntwo great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — bourgeoisie
\nand proletariat.<\/p>\n
\nFrom these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.<\/p>\n
\nrising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America,
\ntrade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities
\ngenerally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known,
\nand thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid
\ndevelopment.<\/p>\n
\nguilds, now no longer suffices for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing
\nsystem took its place. The guild-masters were pushed aside by the manufacturing middle
\nclass; division of labor between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of
\ndivision of labor in each single workshop.<\/p>\n
\nlonger sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionized industrial production. The
\nplace of manufacture was taken by the giant, MODERN INDUSTRY; the place of the industrial
\nmiddle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the
\nmodern bourgeois.<\/p>\n
\npaved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to
\ncommunication by land. This development has, in turn, reacted on the extension of
\nindustry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the
\nsame proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the
\nbackground every class handed down from the Middle Ages.<\/p>\n
\ndevelopment, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.<\/p>\n
\nby a corresponding political advance in that class. An oppressed class under the sway of
\nthe feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association of medieval commune [4]<\/a>: here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there
\ntaxable third estate of the monarchy (as in France); afterward, in the period
\nof manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a
\ncounterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in
\ngeneral — the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of
\nthe world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative state, exclusive
\npolitical sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the
\ncommon affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n
\npatriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that
\nbound man to his natural superiors, and has left no other nexus between people
\nthan naked self-interest, than callous cash payment. It has drowned out the
\nmost heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine
\nsentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal
\nworth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms,
\nhas set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for
\nexploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked,
\nshameless, direct, brutal exploitation.<\/p>\n
\nup to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet,
\nthe man of science, into its paid wage laborers.<\/p>\n
\nfamily relation into a mere money relation.<\/p>\n
\nthe Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the
\nmost slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring
\nabout. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and
\nGothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former exoduses
\nof nations and crusades.<\/p>\n
\nproduction, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of
\nsociety. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the
\ncontrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant
\nrevolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions,
\neverlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier
\nones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable
\nprejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they
\ncan ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at
\nlast compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with
\nhis kind.<\/p>\n
\nthe entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish
\nconnections everywhere.<\/p>\n
\ncharacter to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of
\nreactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which
\nit stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being
\ndestroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and
\ndeath question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous
\nraw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products
\nare consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old
\nwants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their
\nsatisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and
\nnational seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal
\ninter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The
\nintellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National
\none-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous
\nnational and local literatures, there arises a world literature.<\/p>\n
\nimmensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations
\ninto civilization. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it
\nforces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels
\nall nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels
\nthem to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois
\nthemselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.<\/p>\n
\nenormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural,
\nand has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.
\nJust as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and
\nsemi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations
\nof bourgeois, the East on the West.<\/p>\n
\npopulation, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population,
\ncentralized the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The
\nnecessary consequence of this was political centralization. Independent, or but loosely
\nconnected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation,
\nbecame lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one
\nnational class interest, one frontier, and one customs tariff.<\/p>\n
\nand more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together.
\nSubjection of nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and
\nagriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents
\nfor cultivation, canalization or rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground —
\nwhat earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the
\nlap of social labor?<\/p>\n
\nbourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the
\ndevelopment of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which
\nfeudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organization of agriculture and
\nmanufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer
\ncompatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They
\nhad to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.<\/p>\n
\nconstitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class.<\/p>\n
\nrelations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such
\ngigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able
\nto control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a
\ndecade past, the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of
\nmodern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property
\nrelations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It
\nis enough to mention the commercial crises that, by their periodical return, put the
\nexistence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In
\nthese crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously
\ncreated productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out
\nan epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of
\nover-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary
\nbarbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the
\nsupply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why?
\nBecause there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry,
\ntoo much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to
\nfurther the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they
\nhave become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as
\nthey overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society,
\nendanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too
\nnarrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these
\ncrises? One the one hand, by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the
\nother, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old
\nones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises,
\nand by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.<\/p>\n
\nagainst the bourgeoisie itself.<\/p>\n
\nalso called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working
\nclass — the proletarians.<\/p>\n
\nis the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of laborers, who live
\nonly so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases
\ncapital. These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every
\nother article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of
\ncompetition, to all the fluctuations of the market.<\/p>\n
\nproletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the
\nworkman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most
\nmonotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of
\nproduction of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that
\nhe requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a
\ncommodity, and therefore also of labor, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion,
\ntherefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. What is more,
\nin proportion as the use of machinery and division of labor increases, in the same
\nproportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working
\nhours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time, or by increased speed of
\nmachinery, etc.<\/p>\n
\ngreat factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of laborers, crowded into the factory,
\nare organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army, they are placed under the
\ncommand of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the
\nbourgeois class, and of the bourgeois state; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the
\nmachine, by the overlooker, and, above all, in the individual bourgeois manufacturer
\nhimself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more
\npetty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.<\/p>\n
\nthe more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labor of men superseded by
\nthat of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity
\nfor the working class. All are instruments of labor, more or less expensive to use,
\naccording to their age and sex.<\/p>\n
\nthat he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portion of the
\nbourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.<\/p>\n
\nretired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these sink gradually
\ninto the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the
\nscale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the
\nlarge capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new
\nmethods of production. Thus, the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the
\npopulation.<\/p>\n
\nstruggle with the bourgeoisie. At first, the contest is carried on by individual laborers,
\nthen by the work of people of a factory, then by the operative of one trade, in one
\nlocality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their
\nattacks not against the bourgeois condition of production, but against the instruments of
\nproduction themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labor, they
\nsmash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the
\nvanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.<\/p>\n
\ncountry, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more
\ncompact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the
\nunion of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is
\ncompelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to
\ndo so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the
\nenemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the
\nnon-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical movement is
\nconcentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for
\nthe bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n
\nbecomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength
\nmore. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are
\nmore and more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labor,
\nand nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among
\nthe bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever
\nmore fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing,
\nmakes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen
\nand individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two
\nclasses. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (trade unions) against the
\nbourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent
\nassociations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and
\nthere, the contest breaks out into riots.<\/p>\n
\nbattles lie not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers.
\nThis union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by Modern
\nIndustry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another.
\nIt was just this contact that was needed to centralize the numerous local struggles, all
\nof the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class
\nstruggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the
\nMiddle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian,
\nthanks to railways, achieve in a few years.<\/p>\n
\nparty, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves.
\nBut it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition
\nof particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the
\nbourgeoisie itself. Thus, the Ten-Hours Bill in England was carried.<\/p>\n
\ncourse of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a
\nconstant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the
\nbourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry;
\nat all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees
\nitself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus to drag it into
\nthe political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its
\nown elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the
\nproletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n
\nadvance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in
\ntheir conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of
\nenlightenment and progress.<\/p>\n
\ndissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old
\nsociety, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling
\nclass cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the
\nfuture in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility
\nwent over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the
\nproletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised
\nthemselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.<\/p>\n
\nalone is a genuinely revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in
\nthe face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.<\/p>\n
\npeasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence
\nas fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative.
\nNay, more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If, by
\nchance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into
\nthe proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests; they
\ndesert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.<\/p>\n
\noff by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the
\nmovement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more
\nfor the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.<\/p>\n
\nvirtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and
\nchildren has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern
\nindustry labor, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America
\nas in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality,
\nreligion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as
\nmany bourgeois interests.<\/p>\n
\nacquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The
\nproletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by
\nabolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous
\nmode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their
\nmission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.<\/p>\n
\nminorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the
\nimmense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest
\nstratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole
\nsuperincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.<\/p>\n
\nbourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of
\ncourse, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n
\nthe more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where
\nthat war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the
\nbourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.<\/p>\n
\nantagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain
\nconditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish
\nexistence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the
\ncommune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to
\ndevelop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the
\nprocess of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own
\nclass. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and
\nwealth. And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the
\nruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an
\noverriding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to
\nits slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state,
\nthat it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under
\nthis bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.<\/p>\n
\nthe formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labor. Wage
\nlabor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry,
\nwhose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due
\nto competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of
\nModern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the
\nbourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces,
\nabove all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are
\nequally inevitable.<\/p>\n
\nFOOTNOTES<\/h3>\n
\n
\nmodern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor.<\/p>\n
\ntheir own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live. [Note by Engels –
\n1888 English edition]\n
\n1847, the pre-history of society, the social organization existing previous to recorded
\nhistory, all but unknown. Since then, August von Haxthausen (1792-1866) discovered common
\nownership of land in Russia, Georg Ludwig von Maurer proved it to be the social foundation
\nfrom which all Teutonic races started in history, and, by and by, village communities were
\nfound to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from India to
\nIreland. The inner organization of this primitive communistic society was laid bare, in
\nits typical form, by Lewis Henry Morgan’s (1818-1861) crowning discovery of the true
\nnature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of the primeaval
\ncommunities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic
\nclasses. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in _Der Ursprung der<\/p>\n
\n[Engels, 1888 English edition]\n
\na guild, a master within, not a head of a guild. [Engels: 1888 English edition]\n
\ncommunities by the townsmen of Italy and France, after they had purchased or conquered
\ntheir initial rights of self-government from their feudal lords. [Engels: 1890 German
\nedition]\n
\nhad conquered from their feudal lords and masters local self-government and political
\nrights as the Third Estate. Generally speaking, for the economical development
\nof the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country, for its political
\ndevelopment, France. [Engels: 1888 English edition]\n
\nII — PROLETARIANS AND COMMUNISTS<\/h3>\n
\n
\ndo not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.<\/p>\n
\nthe proletarian movement.<\/p>\n
\npoint out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat,
\nindependently of all nationality.<\/p>\n
\nagainst the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the
\ninterests of the movement as a whole.<\/p>\n
\nresolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes
\nforward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the
\nproletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and
\nthe ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.<\/p>\n
\nparties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy,
\nconquest of political power by the proletariat.<\/p>\n
\nprinciples that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal
\nreformer.<\/p>\n
\nclass struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of
\nexisting property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism.<\/p>\n
\nconsequent upon the change in historical conditions.<\/p>\n
\nproperty.<\/p>\n
\nthe abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final
\nand most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products that is
\nbased on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.<\/p>\n
\nAbolition of private property.<\/p>\n
\npersonally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labor, which property is alleged
\nto be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.<\/p>\n
\nartisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form?
\nThere is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent
\nalready destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.<\/p>\n
\ni.e., that kind of property which exploits wage labor, and which cannot increase except
\nupon conditions of begetting a new supply of wage labor for fresh exploitation. Property,
\nin its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labor. Let us examine
\nboth sides of this antagonism.<\/p>\n
\nproduction. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many
\nmembers, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can
\nit be set in motion.<\/p>\n
\nmembers of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It
\nis only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class
\ncharacter.<\/p>\n
\nsubsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the laborer in bare existence as a
\nlaborer. What, therefore, the wage laborer appropriates by means of his labor merely
\nsuffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this
\npersonal appropriation of the products of labor, an appropriation that is made for the
\nmaintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to
\ncommand the labor of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character
\nof this appropriation, under which the laborer lives merely to increase capital, and is
\nallowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it. <\/a><\/p>\n
\ncommunist society, accumulated labor is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the
\nexistence of the laborer.<\/p>\n
\nthe present dominates the past. In bourgeois society, capital is independent and has
\nindividuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.<\/p>\n
\nindividuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality,
\nbourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.<\/p>\n
\nfree selling and buying.<\/p>\n
\ntalk about free selling and buying, and all the other brave words of our
\nbourgeois about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with
\nrestricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no
\nmeaning when opposed to the communist abolition of buying and selling, or the bourgeois
\nconditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.<\/p>\n
\nexisting society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the
\npopulation; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of
\nthose nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of
\nproperty, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property
\nfor the immense majority of society.<\/p>\n
\nso; that is just what we intend.<\/p>\n
\ninto a social power capable of being monopolized, i.e., from the moment when individual
\nproperty can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that
\nmoment, you say, individuality vanishes.<\/p>\n
\nthan the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be
\nswept out of the way, and made impossible.<\/p>\n
\nit does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such
\nappropriations.<\/p>\n
\nand universal laziness will overtake us.<\/p>\n
\nsheer idleness; for those who acquire anything, do not work. The whole of this objection
\nis but another expression of the tautology: There can no longer be any wage labor when
\nthere is no longer any capital.<\/p>\n
\nmaterial products, have, in the same way, been urged against the communistic mode of
\nproducing and appropriating intellectual products. Just as to the bourgeois, the
\ndisappearance of class property is the disappearance of production itself, so the
\ndisappearance of class culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.<\/p>\n
\ntraining to act as a machine.<\/p>\n
\nproperty, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, etc. Your very
\nideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois
\nproperty, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for
\nall, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical
\nconditions of existence of your class.<\/p>\n
\nof reason the social forms stringing from your present mode of production and form of
\nproperty — historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production —
\nthis misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see
\nclearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property,
\nyou are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.<\/p>\n
\nthe Communists.<\/p>\n
\nprivate gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the
\nbourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the
\nfamily among proletarians, and in public prostitution.<\/p>\n
\nand both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.<\/p>\n
\nthis crime we plead guilty.<\/p>\n
\nby social.<\/p>\n
\nunder which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of
\nschools, etc.? The Communists have not intended the intervention of society in education;
\nthey do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from
\nthe influence of the ruling class.<\/p>\n
\nof parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern
\nIndustry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children
\ntransformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labor.<\/p>\n
\nchorus.<\/p>\n
\ninstruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no
\nother conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.<\/p>\n
\nof women as mere instruments of production.<\/p>\n
\nat the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established
\nby the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce free love; it has existed
\nalmost from time immemorial.<\/p>\n
\ntheir disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing
\neach other’s wives. (Ah, those were the days!)<\/p>\n
\nwhat the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in
\nsubstitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalized system of free love. For
\nthe rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must
\nbring with it the abolition of free love springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution
\nboth public and private.<\/p>\n
\nnationality.<\/p>\n
\nproletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading
\nclass of the nation, must constitute itself the<\/b> nation, it is, so far, itself
\nnational, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.<\/p>\n
\nowing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market,
\nto uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding
\nthereto.<\/p>\n
\nof the leading civilized countries at least is one of the first conditions for the
\nemancipation of the proletariat.<\/p>\n
\nto, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as
\nthe antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to
\nanother will come to an end.<\/p>\n
\nfrom an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.<\/p>\n
\nin one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his
\nmaterial existence, in his social relations and in his social life?<\/p>\n
\nits character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each
\nage have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.<\/p>\n
\nfact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the
\ndissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of
\nexistence.<\/p>\n
\nChristianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the eighteenth century to rationalist
\nideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The
\nideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of
\nfree competition within the domain of knowledge.<\/p>\n
\njuridicial ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion,
\nmorality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.<\/p>\n
\ncommon to all states of society. But communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all
\nreligion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts
\nin contradiction to all past historical experience.<\/p>\n
\nconsisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different
\nforms at different epochs.<\/p>\n
\nexploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social
\nconsciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves
\nwithin certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with
\nthe total disappearance of class antagonisms.<\/p>\n
\nwonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.<\/p>\n
\nraise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.<\/p>\n
\nthe bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state,
\ni.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total
\nproductive forces as rapidly as possible.<\/p>\n
\ninroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means
\nof measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which,
\nin the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the
\nold social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of
\nproduction.<\/p>\n
\napplicable.<\/p>\n
\npurposes.<\/p>\n
\nstate capital and an exclusive monopoly.<\/p>\n
\nbringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in
\naccordance with a common plan.<\/p>\n
\nagriculture.<\/p>\n
\nthe distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace
\nover the country.<\/p>\n
\nlabor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.<\/p>\n
\nproduction has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation,
\nthe public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called,
\nis merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat
\nduring its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to
\norganize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling
\nclass, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will,
\nalong with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class
\nantagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as
\na class.<\/p>\n
\nhave an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free
\ndevelopment of all.<\/p>\n
\nIII — SOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST LITERATURE<\/h3>\n
\n
\nthe aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against modern bourgeois
\nsociety. In the French Revolution of July 1830, and in the English reform agitation, these
\naristocracies again succumbed to the hateful upstart. Thenceforth, a serious political
\nstruggle was altogether out of the question. A literary battle alone remained possible.
\nBut even in the domain of literature, the old cries of the restoration period had become
\nimpossible. [1]<\/a><\/p>\n
\nits own interests, and to formulate its indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest
\nof the exploited working class alone. Thus, the aristocracy took their revenge by singing
\nlampoons on their new masters and whispering in his ears sinister prophesies of coming
\ncatastrophe.<\/p>\n
\npast, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism,
\nstriking the bourgeoisie to the very heart’s core, but always ludicrous in its effect,
\nthrough total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history.<\/p>\n
\nin front for a banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw on their
\nhindquarters the old feudal coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.<\/p>\n
\nspectacle:<\/p>\n
\nbourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they exploited under circumstances and conditions
\nthat were quite different and that are now antiquated. In showing that, under their rule,
\nthe modern proletariat never existed, they forget that the modern bourgeoisie is the
\nnecessary offspring of their own form of society.<\/p>\n
\nthat their chief accusation against the bourgeois amounts to this: that under the
\nbourgeois regime a class is being developed which is destined to cut up, root and branch,
\nthe old order of society.<\/p>\n
\nthat it creates a _revolutionary_ proletariat.<\/p>\n
\nmeasures against the working class; and in ordinary life, despite their high falutin’
\nphrases, they stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped from the tree of industry, and to
\nbarter truth, love, and honor, for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar, and potato spirits. [2]<\/a><\/p>\n
\nwith feudal socialism.<\/p>\n
\nChristianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the state? Has
\nit not preached in the place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification of
\nthe flesh, monastic life and Mother Church? Christian socialism is but the holy water with
\nwhich the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.<\/p>\n
\nthe only class whose conditions of existence pined and perished in the atmosphere of
\nmodern bourgeois society. The medieval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were
\nthe precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little
\ndeveloped, industrially and commercially, these two classes still vegetate side by side
\nwith the rising bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n
\nbourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever
\nrenewing itself a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The individual members of this
\nclass, however, as being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of
\ncompetition, and, as Modern Industry develops, they even see the moment approaching when
\nthey will completely disappear as an independent section of modern society, to be replaced
\nin manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen.<\/p>\n
\npopulation, it was natural that writers who sided with the proletariat against the
\nbourgeoisie should use, in their criticism of the bourgeois regime, the standard of the
\npeasant and petty bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intermediate classes, should
\ntake up the cudgels for the working class. Thus arose petty-bourgeois socialism. Sismondi
\nwas the head of this school, not only in France but also in England.<\/p>\n
\nconditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It
\nproved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labor; the
\nconcentration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed
\nout the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat,
\nthe anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the
\nindustrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds, of
\nthe old family relations, of the old nationalities.<\/p>\n
\nold means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the
\nold society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the
\nframework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by
\nthose means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.<\/p>\n
\nagriculture.<\/p>\n
\nself-deception, this form of socialism ended in a miserable hangover.<\/p>\n
\nthe pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and that was the expressions of the struggle
\nagainst this power, was introduced into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie in that
\ncountry had just begun its contest with feudal absolutism.<\/p>\n
\nseized on this literature, only forgetting that when these writings immigrated from France
\ninto Germany, French social conditions had not immigrated along with them. In contact with
\nGerman social conditions, this French literature lost all its immediate practical
\nsignificance and assumed a purely literary aspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of the
\neighteenth century, the demands of the first French Revolution were nothing more than the
\ndemands of Practical Reason in general, and the utterance of the will of the
\nrevolutionary French bourgeoisie signified, in their eyes, the laws of pure will, of will
\nas it was bound to be, of true human will generally.<\/p>\n
\nharmony with their ancient philosophical conscience, or rather, in annexing the French
\nideas without deserting their own philosophic point of view.<\/p>\n
\nnamely, by translation.<\/p>\n
\nmanuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom had been written. The
\nGerman literati reversed this process with the profane French literature. They wrote their
\nphilosophical nonsense beneath the French original. For instance, beneath the French
\ncriticism of the economic functions of money, they wrote alienation of
\nhumanity, and beneath the French criticism of the bourgeois state they wrote
\ndethronement of the category of the general, and so forth.<\/p>\n
\ncriticisms, they dubbed Philosophy of Action, True Socialism,
\nGerman Science of Socialism, Philosophical Foundation of
\nSocialism, and so on.<\/p>\n
\nsince it ceased, in the hands of the German, to express the struggle of one class with the
\nother, he felt conscious of having overcome French one-sidedness and of
\nrepresenting, not true requirements, but the requirements of truth; not the interests of
\nthe proletariat, but the interests of human nature, of man in general, who belongs to no
\nclass, has no reality, who exists only in the misty realm of philosophical fantasy.<\/p>\n
\nextolled its poor stock-in-trade in such a mountebank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost
\nits pedantic innocence.<\/p>\n
\naristocracy and absolute monarchy, in other words, the liberal movement, became more
\nearnest.<\/p>\n
\nconfronting the political movement with the socialistic demands, of hurling the
\ntraditional anathemas against liberalism, against representative government, against
\nbourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois
\nliberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that they had nothing to gain, and
\neverything to lose, by this bourgeois movement. German socialism forgot, in the nick of
\ntime, that the French criticism, whose silly echo it was, presupposed the existence of
\nmodern bourgeois society, with its corresponding economic conditions of existence, and the
\npolitical constitution adapted thereto, the very things those attainment was the object of
\nthe pending struggle in Germany.<\/p>\n
\nsquires, and officials, it served as a welcome scarecrow against the threatening
\nbourgeoisie.<\/p>\n
\nsame governments, just at that time, dosed the German working-class risings.<\/p>\n