Workers of All Countries, Unite!
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MARX ENGELS
__TITLE__ ThePROGRESS Publishers
__CITY__ Moscow [5] __COMPILERS__ Compilers: F. TEPLOV and V. DAVYDOV Preface by F. TEPLOV MapKC
O COUHAJIUCTHMECKOH PEBOJIIOUHH
(CSopHHK)
Ha aWAUUCKOM H3btKe
10101-633
[6]Contents
Preface . ....................... 11
Karl Marx. Fromtontribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law.
Introduction" . >................... 30
Karl Marx. From Critical Marginal Notes on the Article "The King of
Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian"............ 35
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. From The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical
Criticism. Against Bruno Bauer and Company.......... 38
Frederick Engels. Speeches in Elberfeld. From Speech of February 15,1845 40
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. From Chapter I of The German Ideology. .
43
Frederick Engels. From Letter to the Communist Correspondence Committee
in Brussels, October 23, 1846................ 45
Kart Marx. From The Poverty of Philosophy. Answer to The Philosophy of
Poverty by M. Proudhon................. 46
Frederick Engels. From Principles of Communism......... 48
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. From Manifesto of the Communist Party . .
55
I. Bourgeois and Proletarians............... 56
II. Proletarians and Communists.............. 68
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Address of the Central Committee to the
Communist League, March 1850............... 77
Karl Marx. To the Editor of the Neue Deutsche Zeitung........ 88
Frederick Engels. Froni(Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany . . .
89
Karl Marx. From The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte...... 91
Karl Marx. From Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer in New York, March 5. 1852
104
Karl Marx. From the pamphlet Revelations Concerninng the Communist
Trial in Cologne.................. 105
Karl Marx. From The Future Results of the British Rule in India .... 106
7Karl Marx. From Letter to the Labour Parliament, March 9^1854 . . . . 109
Karl Marx. From Speech at the Anniversary of The People's Paper, delivered in London, April 14, 1856................. Ill
Karl Marx. From Letter to Engels in Manchester, April 16, 1856 .... 113 Frederick Engels. From Letter to Marx in London, October 7, 1858 ... 114 Karl Marx. From Letter to Engels in Manchester, October 8, 1858 .... 115
Karl Marx. From Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy....................... 116
Karl Marx. From Inaugural Address of the Working Men's International Association, established September 28, 1864, at a Public Meeting held at St. Martin's Hall,Long Acre, London............. 118
Karl Marx. From General Rules of the International Working Men's
Association..................... 121
Karl Marx. From Confidential Communication.......... 123
Karl Marx. From Capital, Volume I.............. . 125
Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist...........• . . . 125
Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation ........'.. 136
Karl Marx. From Letter to Ludwig Kugelmann in Hanover, April 12, 1871
140
Karl Marx. From Letter to Ludwig Kugelmann in Hanover, April 17, 1871
142
Karl Marx. From The Civil War in France............. 143
Karl Marx. From First Outline of The Civil War in France........ 180
The Character of the Commune ..../........ 180
Peasantry..................... • 183
The Commune (Social Measures).............. 187
Frederick Engels. Apropos of Working-Class Political Action. Reporter's Record of the Speech Made at the London Conference of the International
8Karl Marx. From Interview Given by Karl Marx to the Correspondent of the American Newspaper Chicago Tribune in the first half of December 1878
Frederick Engels. From Socialism: Utopian and Scientific........
Karl Marx. Introduction to the Programme of the French Workers' Party .
Karl Marx. From Letter to Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis in the Hague, February 22, 1881....................
Frederick Engels. Social Classes---Necessary and Superfluous.....
Frederick Engels. From Letter to Karl Kautsky in Vienna, September 12, 1882
Frederick Engels. From On the Occasion of Karl Marx's Death ....
Frederick Engels. From Letter to Eduard Bernstein in Zurich, August 27, 1883
Frederick Engels. From Letter to Eduard Bernstein in Zurich, January 1, 1884
Frederick Engels. From The Origin -•>/ the Family, Private Property and the State ...................•:......
Frederick Engels. From Preface to the English Edition of the First Volume of Capital.......................
Frederick-Engels. From the Introduction to Sigismund Borkheim's Pamphlet "To the Memory of the Flag-Waving German Patriots. 1806-1807". .
Frederick Engels. From Letter to Gerson Trier in Copenhagen, December 18,
1889.........................
Frederick Engels. From Introduction to The Civil War in France by Karl Marx '
Frederick Engels. From A Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic
Programme of 1891..................
Frederick Engels. Reply to Giovanni Bovio, February 6, 1892......
Frederick Engels. From Letter to Paul Lafargue at le Perreux, November 12, 1892........................
Frederick Engels, From Greetings to the International Congress of the Students-Socialists, December 19. 1893...........
Frederick Engels. From Afterword to the Work "On Social Relations
in Russia" .....................
FrederickEngels.From Future Italian Revolution and Socialist Party. . . Frederick Engels. From Letter to Paul Lafargue in Paris, March 6, 1894 . . Frederick Engels. From The Peasant Question in France and Germany . . . Frederick Engels. Introduction to The Class Struggles in France 1848 to 1850
Notes.........................
Name Index......................
Subject Index....................... .
243 245 252
254 256 260 262 264 266
267 270
272274 276
281 286
289 290
291 293 296 29-7 304 323 339 348
Working Men's Association, September 21, 1871.........
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. From Preface to the German Edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party of 1872............
Frederick Engels. On Authority............, . . .
Frederick Engels. The Bakuninists at Work, Review of the Uprising in Spain in the Summer of 1873...................
Karl Marx. From Critique of the Gotha Programme.....
191193 195
199 217217 219
237 241
Letter to Wilhelm Bracke in Brunswick, May 5, 1875......
Marginal Notes to the Programme of the German Workers' Party.....
Karl Marx. To the Editorial Board of the Otechestvenniye Zapiski, November 1877 .......................-.
Karl Marx. From the Draft of the Debate in the Reichstag on the Law Against Socialists.............
[9] ~ [10] __ALPHA_LVL1__ ^^*^^PREFACE __NOTE__ Foonote is an "a)" to the *left* of "PREFACE" !!!The theory of socialist revolution is one of the most important sections of Marxist-Leninist science. Its basic principles were formulated in the 19th century by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
The general philosophical basis underlying the Marxist theory of revolution is the materialist conception of history. In contrast to their predecessors, Marx and Engels extended philosophical materialism and the dialectic---the theory of development---to the sphere of history. They showed that the production and reproduction of material life is the basis of the life of society and the historical process. History is the natural process of development and change of socio-economic formations. The movement of social forms depends ultimately on the development of the productive forces, to the level of which the relations of production and of property must invariably adapt themselves. The relations of production thus form the basis of society upon which the superstructure is erected, that is, political, juridical and other relations and the institutions corresponding to them, forms of social consciousness and ideology, etc. The objective contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, between the mode of production of a given society and its forms, leads at a certain stage of development to radical changes in the life of society, to social revolution. This contradiction constitutes the material basis of revolution. Revolution completes the process whereby the preconditions for a new system gradually mature within the old, resolves the contradiction between new productive forces and old relations of production, smashes obsolete relations _-_-_
^^*^^ English translation ©Progress Publishers 1978
11 of production and the political superstructure securing them and provides room for further growth of the productive forces.The classic formulation of the materialist conception of history is to be found in Marx's "Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy." Marx emphasises that the essence of social revolution lies in resolving the conflict between the productive forces and the relations of production and in the transition from one socio-economic system to another, noting that "no social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself (see p. 117 of this book).
While underlining the objective character of the historical process, Marxism also attaches great importance to the conscious actions of classes, parties, groups and individuals, emphasising the immense role of advanced revolutionary theory. The fundamental principles of Marxism concerning the role of the people in history were already formulated in The Holy Family, the first joint work of Marx and Engels. Recognition of the decisive role of the people is one of the most important principles of the materialist conception of history. The masses, the working people, workers and peasants, constitute the most important productive force in society. By their labour they create all material wealth and are true creators of history:"Of all the instruments of production, the greatest productive power is the revolutionary class itself (see p. 46 of this book). In the course of the progressive development of history the importance of the decisive role of the people is steadily growing. The broader and deeper the upheaval which takes place in society, the more numerous are the masses which carry it out. "Together with the thoroughness of the historical action, the size of the mass whose action it is will therefore increase" (Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 4, Moscow, 1975. p. 82). Social revolutions are accomplished by the people. "Where it- is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for, body and soul", Engels noted in 1895, reviewing some of the results of the class battles in the second half of the 19 th century (see p. 318 of this book).
Investigating the laws of material production and the dialectic of the productive forces and the relations of production, Marx and 12 Engels demonstrated that the source of development, the motive force of all societies which are divided into classes is the class struggle. Marxism teaches us to see the struggle between classes, the struggle between exploited and exploiters, as the principal factor behind every political, social and other change in the life of society. Social revolutions represent the culmination points of this struggle in antagonistic formations. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles... oppressor and oppressed stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time«nded, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes" (Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 6, Moscow, 1976, p. 482). The class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie inevitably leads to the social revolution of the working class, to socialist revolution, which is the highest type of social revolution.
Marx and Engels also showed that the great historical significance of social revolutions consists not only in the fact that they advance society to a higher stage of development, to a new socio-economic system, but also in the fact that they are powerful accelerators of social and political progress. In The Class Struggles in France Marx graphically termed revolutions "the locomotives of history" which greatly speed up the pace of development and unleash the powerful creative forces of the people ( Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1976, p. 277). Revolutions make it possible to accomplish in months or years what, under ordinary conditions, would require many decades or even centuries to carry out. They-are a festival,of the oppressed and exploited. The mass of the people are never more active'in creating social orders than during revolutions.
In analysing the necessary material preconditions for a revolutionary upheaval in The German Ideology, Marx and Engels noted that there must be present for this "...,on the one hand the existing productive forces, on the other the formation of a revolutionary mass, which revolts not only against separate conditions of the existing society, but against the existing 'production of life' itself, the 'total activity' on which it was based" (Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 5, Moscow, 1976, p. 54).
These ideas are developed in more detail in the Manifesto of the Communist Party. Capitalism is a natural stage in the development of mankind; it is progressive by comparison with feudalism, but is an historically transient stage, which will give way to more highly 13 organised social relations. In creating colossal productive forces, bourgeois society has thereby paved the way for its own downfall; it has given birth to its own grave-digger---the proletariat. The struggle between labour and capital is universal, it has a worldwide character. At a certain stage of development private ownership of the means of production becomes a fetter on the productive forces, making the destruction of capitalism by^^7^^socialist revolution inevitable. The conflict between the developing productive forces and the obsolete bourgeois relations of production is the economic basis of the socialist revolution. The irreconcilable contradiction between the proletariat, 'the chief productive force of capitalist society, and the bourgeoisie, which appropriates the greater part of the product created by wagelabour, constitutes its social, class basis.
Revolution by the proletariat is the only possible means of transforming bourgeois society. Its purpose is to bring the relations of production into conformity with the gigantic productive'forces developed by capitalism, thereby creating conditions for the further advance of society---the achievement of mastery over the forces of nature, the flowering of the individual and the harmonious combination of the interests of the individual and society. No previous revolution has done away with exploitation of man by man: only its forms have been changed. The proletarian revolution eradicates all exploitation and establishes public ownership of the means of production---in this lies its essential difference from all other revolutions.
Marx's Capital, his major work and the labour of his entire life, gives the most fundamental economic proof of the inevitability of socialist revolution. "Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital ... grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. Thus integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated" (Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1974, p. 715).
Marx emphasises that, in establishing public ownership of the 14 basic means of production, the socialist revolution transforms the whole of society. The spontaneous, blind action of objective economic laws is replaced by their conscious utilisation: by the planned regulation of social production for the good of each member of society and of society as a whole.
The scientific proof of the inevitability of the collapse of capitalism does not, of course, mean that this will take place of itself, automatically. In addition to objective preconditions, which do not depend on the consciousness or will of men, conscious revolutionary mass actions are also necessary. In order to abolish the outmoded capitalist relations of production the power of the ruling classes defending this basis of their domination, must be broken and for this revolutionary power is needed. Marx and Engels not only demonstrated the necessity for socialist revolution, but they also revealed the social force to which history has assigned this most revolutionary task. This force is the proletariat, the working class, in whose hands, as Marx put it, lies "the renaissance of mankind''.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party reveals the world-wide historic mission of the proletariat with exceptional power and depth. The working class is given birth to by capitalism itself and grows, develops, unites and organises itself in direct proportion to the progress of industrial development. The objective position of the proletariat as wage-labour of capital in itself makes it the irreconcilable enemy of the entirfe system of wage-slavery. Constantly growing while other oppressed classes split and become fragmented, this class is the only unwaveringly consistent and uncompromising opponent of all forms of exploitation and every kind of oppression.
The working class's struggle against capitalism is not aimed at its own emancipation alone: its interests coincide with those of the broadest sections of the working people. Capitalism leaves the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie no alternative to decline and ruin; for them the only solution is to join the proletariat in the struggle to overthrow the rule of capital. The proletariat cannot emancipate itself without eradicating forever all forms of social and national enslavement and thereby emancipating the whole of society. That is, why it is this class, lacking private property, concentrated in the key centres of bourgeois society, united and organised and conscious of its fundamental interests, that forms the vanguard and leader of all working people in the struggle for full social emancipation, socialism and communism. This has now 15 been demonstrated many times in practice, as history shows. "It is to the great historic merit of Marx and Engels that they indicated to the workers of the world their role, their task, their mission, namely, to be the first to rise in the revolutionary struggle against capital and to rally around themselves in this struggle all working and exploited people," Lenin wrote (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 165).
The world -wide scale of the struggle between labour and capital determines the international character of the proletarian movement. One of the most important conditions for the victory of the proletariat is the internationalism of its revolutionary actions. In setting up the International Working Men's Association, Marx and Engels saw its object in "combining and generalising the till now disconnected efforts for emancipation by the working classes in different countries", in working consistently to put the principles of proletarian internationalism into practice (Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1976, p. 77). National narrow-mindedness, neglect or violation of these principles harm not only the international labour movement but, above all, its separate national detachments. "Past experience has shown how disregard of that bond of brotherhood which ought to exist be^ tween the workmen of different countries, and incite them to stand firmly by each other in all their struggle for emancipation, will be chastised by the common discomfiture of their incoherent efforts," Marx wrote in the "Inaugural Address of the International Working Men's Association" (Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1976, p. 17). The international power of capital and the united efforts directed by the bourgeoisie of various countries against the proletariat must be opposed by the international unity and solidarity of the working class. It is a necessary condition for its victory. "Nothing but an international bond of the working classes can ever ensure the definite triumph" (Marx/Engels, Werke, Bd. 16, Berlin, 1968, S. 322).
Marx and Engels laid the foundations for the theory of the Communist Party as the revolutionary conscious vanguard of the proletariat, its organiser and leader. They demonstrated that leadership of such a party is an indispensable condition for the implementation of the world -wide historical mission of the working class. Without this leadership there can be neither victory for socialist revolution nor the building of a new society. "For the proletariat to be strong enough to win on the decisive day it must---and Marx and I have advocated this ever since 1847--- 16 form a separate party distinct from all others and opposed to them, a conscious class party," Engels wrote in 1889 (see p. 274 of this book). In order to win in the revolution the working class must be properly organised. The proletariat begins to move spontaneously, unaware of what will be the ultimate goals of its struggle. In the course of this struggle various forms of organisation of the proletariat are worked out: trade unions, for example, which uphold its economic interests, and others. The highest form of class organisation is a revolutionary party, able to lead the working class forward together with those social strata which follow it---the peasantry, the intellectuals and other nonproletarian strata of the working people. The party brings a scientific world outlook into the labour movement, thus making it the leading social force, conscious of its great historical mission. Only the party is capable of leading the class struggle, the revolution and the building of a new society.
The fundamental principles of the theory of the proletarian party were formulated in the Manifesto of the Communist Party. The Manifesto's authors looked upon the party as "the most advanced and resolute" part of the working class "which pushes forward all others" (see p. 68 of this book), thereby revealing the correlation between the party and the class and characterising the party's aims and tasks. The party must be inseparably linked to the working class and armed with the most advanced theory; it must understand the conditions and course of the movement, see further than other workers and be" the most conscious and active part of its class. At different stages Communists "also uphold the movement's future" in the struggle for the immediate goals and interests.' of the proletariat. They express the most general interests "of the entire working class, the interests of the movement as a whole. Without the party, the Manifesto concludes, the working class can neither win power nor fundamentally transform society. Subsequent events fully confirmed this. One of the main reasons for the defeat of the Paris Commune was the lack ' of a proletarian party as the guiding force of the movement.
From 1847 onwards many works by Marx and Engels were devoted to working out the programmatic and organisational principles of the proletarian party. The Communist League, the first international organisation of the proletariat, which proclaimed scientific communism to be its ideological banner; the International Working Men's Association (the 1st International), which ideologically prepared the working class fot the Paris 17 Commune, the first attempt in history to establish a proletarian state; the foundation of workers' parties on the principles of Marxism in a number of countries: Engels' participation in the creation of the 2nd International (1889)---these are the principal landmarks in the work carried out by Marx and Engels to establish parties of the working class. Socialist revolution, Marx wrote, summing up accumulated experience in the Introduction to the Programme of the French Workers' Party (1880),"... can only result from revolutionary action by the class of producers-the proletariat-organised into an independent political party; ... it is necessary to strive to achieve such an organisation by all means at the disposal of the proletariat" (see p. 252 of.this book).''
Marx and Engels exposed the reformist notions on class collaboration between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and the peaceful development of capitalism into socialism, viewing them as a distortion by opportunists of the revolutionary theory of class struggle, substituting the false for the true. Only socialist revolution and the conquest of political power by the working class, irrespective of the form this takes, whether peaceful or nonpeaceful, can create conditions for the building of a new society in which there are no classes and no exploitation of man by man.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is central to the theory of socialist revolution. Proletarian dictatorship is necessary in order to defend the revolution, uphold its achievements and rebuff attempts by the overthrown classes to restore capitalism. Without the dictatorship of the proletariat it is impossible to smash the resistance of the exploiting classes and carry out the social and economic measures necessary to build a new society. Dictatorship of the proletariat means that the principal issue of revolution--- that of power---is resolved in favour of the working class and the working people. The theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat represents the further elaboration in concrete terms of the theory of the world-wide historical mission of the working class.
The necessity for the working class to conquer power, the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat was first put forward in The German Ideology: "...every class which is aiming at domination, even when its domination, as is the case with the proletariat, leads to the abolition of the old form of society in its entirety and of domination in general, must first conquer political power" (Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. S.Moscow, 1976, p. 47). This idea runs through the entire Manifesto of the Communist Party. The term "dictatorship of the proletariat" did not yet exist (Marx 18 introduced it later, in 1850, in The Class Struggles in France), but this fundamental programmatic principle was itself clearly and positively formulated: /'The first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy" (Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 6, Moscow, 1976, p. 504). It is this political supremacy of the working class which, in Engels' apt phrase, is "the only door to the new society" (Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1975, p. 386).
Political power in the hands of the working class and the working people is necessary to rebuild social relations on socialist principles. In explaining the role dictatorship of the proletariat should play, Marx and Engels wrote: "The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i. e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible" (see p. 75 of this book). Establishment of proletarian dictatorship also means, as Marx and Engels wrote, "the winning of the battle of democracy". The dictatorship of the proletariat uses force against the enemies of socialism, the exploiters, who seek to reverse the course of history and restore capitalism which is hated by the people. But for the overwhelming majority of the people, for the broad masses of the working people, dictatorship of the proletariat is the most complete and broadest democracy, real, not formal democracy.
Marx and Engels gave a brilliant critique of bourgeois democracy and of parliamentarism. This democracy represents limited, curtailed, formal democracy for the minority. Bourgeois parliamentarism is only a form of bourgeois dictatorship. Under the conditions of parliamentarism the working people possess only one right---to choose which of the bourgeois parties will rule for a certain period. It is not until power is taken by the workers that the main sections of the population acquire democratic freedom. Then democracy for the working people, for the majority of the people---democracy of the highest type, true democracy---comes into being.
Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte holds an important place in the elaboration of the theory of socialist revolution. After analysing the revolutions of 1848-49 and other bourgeois revolutions, Marx established that all of them had failed to smash the militarv-bureaucratic centralised state machine of 19 the ruling classes, which had later been utilised by counterrevolution to crush the revolutionary working masses. "All revolutions perfected this machine instead of smashing it. The parties' that contended in turn for domination regarded the possession of this huge state edifice as the principal spoils of the victor" (Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1976, •p. 477). The task of proletarian revolution, in contrast to bourgeois revolution, is to smash the state machine of the bourgeoisie. Marxism counterposes this conclusion, which has been fully confirmed by the practical experience of all the socialist revolutions of the 20th century, to the profoundly mistaken notions of reformists on the possibility of making use of the bourgeois state for the purpose of socialist reforms.
The Paris Commune of 1871 was a great new step forward. Marx was the first chronicler and historian of the Commune/In The Civil War in France and other works the reader will find a detailed exposition of the history and experience of the Commune and a thorough, profoundly penetrating critical analysis of the reasons for the mistakes and the defeat of the Communards. Marx saw in the heroic Commune, which existed for only 72 days, the prototype for a state of a completely new historical type. The Paris Commune, born of the revolutionary creativity of the masses, showed that the working class must not only smash the state machine of the bourgeoisie, but must also replace it by the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Commune, Marx pointed out, "was ... a workingclass government ... the political form at last discovered under which to work out the •economic emancipation of labour" (Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1975, p. 223). Its main social measures were directed specifically towards this end. The Commune was to serve as "a lever for uprooting the economical foundation upon which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of class rifle" (Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1975, p. 223). However, in view of the Commune's short life, "its special measures could but betoken the tendency of a government of the people by the people" (Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1975, p. 227). The world-wide historic significance of the Paris Commune lies in the fact that it was the first state, the first experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The revolution of the proletariat, socialist revolution, is a prolonged and complex process, Marx noted in The Eighteenth Brumaire. Unlike ,a bourgeois revolution, it does not end when 20 power is transferred to the revolutionary class and the barriers to the political and economic domination of that class are removed. The conquest of power serves only as a starting point for the revolutionary reshaping of society. Realisation of the creative tasks of the revolution begins with the establishment of proletarian dictatorship, which is the condition and instrument of their implementation. Later, in analysing the experience of the Commune, Marx emphasised that the winning of political power by the working class does not in itself eliminate class struggle: it does no more than create a favourable situation for the working class in which this struggle continues and "can run through its different phases in the most rational and humane way" (Marx and Engels, On the Paris Commune, Moscow, 1971, p. 156).
These ideas were further developed in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, which set down the programme of scientific communism. In this work Marx formulated the highly important principle that a separate transitional period between capitalism and socialism, the first phase of communism, was historically inevitable: "Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat" (Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 3, Moscow, 1975, p. 26).
Marx established that communist society passes through two phases in its development: the first is socialism and the second, higher phase, is communism proper.
One of the most characteristic features of socialism, the first phase, is the distribution of material wealth on the basis of the principle "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his work", that is, according to the quantity and quality of labour of each member of society. Man is no longer exploited by man but a certain inequality among people in respect to the material reward received from society still exists. This shortcoming, Marx noted, is inevitable "in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society" (Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 3, Moscow, 1975, p. 19). Socialism is not a short-lived stage but an entire historical epoch. The economic, social and other advantages of the new system are revealed most fully in a developed socialist society, and the complete and comprehensive development of socialism naturally ensures gradual transition to a higher phase.
21Touching on the future of the state, Marx showed that a socialist state is necessary for the building of socialist society. After it has achieved its goals, eliminated exploitation and exploiters and ensured the building of communism, the socialist state begins to wither away. Only under comm.unism does it w.ither away completely.
.The second, higher phase of communist society ensues as a result of the era of socialism, following upon a prolonged process of creating, the necessary economic, social and spiritual preconditions. Marx wrote that "in a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantlyonly then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" (Marx and Engets, Selected Works, Vol. 3,-Moscow, 1975, p. 19).
The revolutionary transformation of society is an exceptionally complex, prolonged and many-sided process. The views of the founders of scientific communism on the actual course of its development have an imperishable theoretical and practical significance.
In the "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League", as well as in a number of other works (The Class Struggles in France and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Marx, Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany by Engels, etc.) Marx and Engels develop the idea of continuous revolution. They point out that, where the stage of bourgeois reform has not yet been passed, socialist revolution will be preceded by a bourgeois-democratic revolution. The fundamental role of this is to clear the future battle-ground between the working class and the bourgeoisie of the detritus of feudal institutions. While actively participating in the bourgeois revolution, the working class must fight under its own banner. Remembering its ultimate goals, it cannot limit itself to a bourgeois-democratic revolution, but must strive to make revolution continuous, that is, to advance it as far as possible. The proletariat must not allow itself to be lured by trifling concessions from the bourgeoisie, which seeks to deceive the 22 proletariat and itself enjoy the fruits of the revolution which has been won by the people. The revolution must not stop halfway, but continue until all the propertied classes are removed, one by one, from positions of domination and state power is conquered by the proletariat. In examining the overall democratic struggle and the socialist revolution as different stages in a single revolutionary process, Marx and Engels warned against attempts to by-pass the necessary stages of development. They taught the proletariat not to be apathetic towards bourgeois revolution, not to stand aloof from it and relinquish leadership of the revolution to the bourgeoisie but, on the contrary, to participate energetically in it and wage a resolute struggle for the most consistent democracy and the carrying through of the revolution to its conclusion. The working class is vitally interested in the most thorough elimination of all survivals of feudalism, the establishment of a democratic republic, the maximum extension of democracy. This form of state alone creates the most favourable conditions for the struggle to establish the power of the working class.
The question of the proletariat's allies in the revolution is directly linked to the theory of continuous revolution. The fundamental solution of this problem in the Manifesto of the Com^ munist Party was confirmed and further developed on the basis of the experience of the 1848-49 revolution and the Paris Commune. In the revolutionary struggle the working class expresses the interests of all working people exploited by capital including, above all, the peasantry. "Hence the peasants find their natural ally and leader in the urban proletariat, whose task is the overthrow of the bourgeois order," Marx wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1976, p. 482). In the first edition of this work Marx further pointed out that when the peasantry becomes the ally of the proletariat, "the proletarian revolution will obtain that chorus without which its solo song becomes a swan song in all peasant countries" (ibid., p. 484). "...The whole thing in Germany," he wrote to Engels in 1856, "will depend on the possibility of backing the proletarian revolution by some second edition of the Peasant War. Then the affair will be splendid" (see p. 113 of this book). In these propositions Marx made a key political conclusion on the need for a revolutionary alliance between the working class and the peasantry and the leading role of the working class in this union.
Marx and Engels resolutely opposed Lassalle's thesis that, in relation to the proletariat, all the other classes represent "a single 23 reactionary mass". This thesis doomed the proletariat to isolation from the petty-bourgeois sections of the population in town and country, from the non-proletarian sections of the working people in its struggle for power. Engels' works occupy an important place in the elaboration of the problem of the proletariat's allies. In The Peasant Question in France and Germany Engels criticised the opportunist views which were being disseminated among socialists and set out theoretical principles for the agrarian programme of the socialist revolution, putting forward a number of profound propositions concerning the means and forms of socialist reconstruction of agriculture.
The conclusions of Marx and Engels were fully confirmed by history. Twentieth-century revolutions have shown that the most important preconditions for the development of the democratic revolution into the socialist-revolution js an active participation by the working class in the democratic revolution, its alliance with the peasantry and other non-proletarian sections of the working people • and its hegemony in the revolution.
An important constituent part of the revolutionary process is the movement of oppressed peoples for national liberation and independence. The teaching of Marx and Engels helps the working class reach a profound understanding of the very close interconnection and interdependence between the national liberation struggle and the struggle of the proletariat for social emancipation.
The position taken by Marx and Engels on the Irish question provides a notable example of how the proletariat of an oppressor nation should regard the national liberation movement. In the Confidential Communication---Marx regards the liberation of Ireland as a necessary condition for proletarian revolution in Britain, a country in which the material preconditions for revolution were more mature than in any other country. "Any nation that oppresses another forges its own chains," Marx wrote (see p. 124 of this book). Antagonism between nations is artificially inflamed and maintained by the bourgeoisie. "It knows that this scission is the true secret of maintaining its power" (see p. 124 of this book). The working class is the most active and consistent opponent of national oppression. Marxism teaches that socialist revolution alone leads to the complete elimination of national oppression. "In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one 24 nation to another will come to an end," states the Manifesto of the Communist Party (see p. 73 of this book).
Marx and Engels invariably connected the success of the revolutionary struggle within national boundaries with the general course of the world revolutionary movement. The revolution of the proletariat has universal significance and all peoples will inevitably become involved in it. "...The emancipation of labour is neither a local nor a national, but a social problem, embracing all countries in which modern society exists...." (see p. 121 of this book).
In approximately the 1870s Marx and Engels conceived the scientifically-grounded idea of two streams in the world revolutionary process*---the proletarian movement in the West and the peasant revolution in Russia---and their interaction. Marx and Engels closely followed the course of the revolutionary movement in Russia and emphasised that popular revolution in Russia could serve as a signal for the launching of proletarian revolution in the West "so that both complement each other" (see p. 292 of this book). In the Afterword to his work "On Social Relations in Russia", Engels wrote in 1894 that "the Russian revolution will ... give a fresh impulse to the labour movement in the West, creating for it new and better conditions for struggle and thereby advancing the victory of the modern industrial proletariat" (see p. 292 of this book).
Study of social movements in the countries of the East made possible the formulation of an important principle concerning the historical destinies of peoples which are backward in their development. Only in union with the proletarian revolution can they shorten the process of their development towards socialism. For this they must rely on the assistance and support of the victorious proletariat. "Only when the capitalist economy has been overcome at home and in the countries of its prime, only when the retarded countries have seen from their example 'how it's done', how the productive forces of modern industry are made to work as social property for society as a whole---only then will the retarded countries be able to start, on this abbreviated process of development," Engels wrote. "But then their success will be assured" (see p. 291 of this book). This, he noted, relates "to all countries at the pre-capitalist stage of development" (see p. 291).
The works included in this book will acquaint the reader with the basic principles of the strategy and tactics of the proletariat's revolutionary struggle as worked out by Marx and Engels, their views on individual aspects of the theory of revolution---on armed 25 uprising, the connection between war and revolution, etc.---and with their struggle against revolutionary phrase-mongering and opportunism and against the anarchists and other "alchemists of revolution", who sought "to make the revolution extempore", forcing the tactic of armed uprising upon the proletariat without taking into account the real situation or attempting to by-pass the necessary stages without consideration for objective social and economic conditions. Apart from adventurism and voluntarism, anarchism is distinguished by a lust for destruction and a rejection of the creative goals and tasks of the proletarian revolution which are connected with the building of a new society. In failing to understand the material basis of the revolutionary process, the anarchists divert the masses from actual revolutionary struggle. In Spain in 1873 they demonstrated in practice ' now not to make the revolution", and thereby doomed it to inevitable defeat.
The theory of socialist revolution created by Marx and Engels is not a dogma but a guide to action. For this reason its creators always demanded the most practical approach to the complex problems of the class struggle, condemning a dogmatic attitude towards theory. Choosing the means to win power, utilisation of peaceful and non-peaceful forms of revolutionary struggle, the change from one form to another, the combination of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary methods of struggle, etc. are all determined by concrete historical conditions and require of the proletarian party a sober and comprehensive assessment of the actual political situation and the balance of class forces within the country and on the international stage, combined with regard for the distinctive social and political features and national traditions and the level of development achieved by the labour movement.
Addressing the members of the International who had met for their London conference in 1871, soon after the defeat of the Paris Commune, Marx said: "We must declare to the governments: we know that you are the armed force which is directed against the proletarians; we shall proceed against you in a peaceful way where this is possible for us and with weapons should this prove necessary.''
Marx and Engels elaborated the theory of socialist revolution in the era of pre-monopoly capitalism, when the objective conditions necessary for the victory of the working class were taking shape. The revolution of 1848-49 and the Paris Commune, Engels noted in 1895, showed that economic development in Europe was still not sufficiently mature to eliminate the capitalist mode of production. 26 In the 19th century the proletariat---the revolutionary class---. too, had yet to acquire great strength. Only with the beginning of the era of imperialism did the necessary conditions for a victorious socialist revolution'come to maturity, as Lenin demonstrated.
In the new historical conditions of the 20th century the theoretical heritage of Marx and Engels was made use of by the advanced section of the working people and the oppressed majority of mankind in their struggle against exploitation, national enslavement, violence, wars and other social disasters engendered and spread by capitalism. The complete victory of Marxism and the steady growth of its influence on the development of mankind are bound up with the activity and ideas of Vladimir Lenin---with Leninism, which is a direct continuation and further development of Marxism in the historical conditions of the 20th century, a new, higher stage of Marxism.
Lenin comprehensively developed and enriched the theory of revolution created by Marx and Engels with new discoveries and new conclusions, raising it to a new, higher level. Lenin created the theory of imperialism on the basis of a profound generalisation of the latest trends in the development of capitalism. His analysis of the contradictions and laws of imperialism is a brilliant continuation and development of Marx's Capital. Lenin showed that imperialism is the last stage of capitalism, when the necessary conditions for its elimination have matured. Imperialism is the eve of socialist revolution, an era of unprecedented social upheavals and economic and political crises in bourgeois society. Discovery of the law that the capitalist economy and policy develop in an •uneven, spasmodic way at the imperialist stage enabled Lenin to substantiate new and highly important propositions that different countries would attain socialism at different times, that this process need not begin in the most developed country and that the victory of socialism was possible initially in one country. These conclusions changed former conceptions of the course and conditions for victory of the socialist revolution and opened up new prospects for the revolutionary labour movement.
Lenin was the leader of the first victorious socialist revolution in the world, accomplished in Russia in October 1917. The Great October Socialist Revolution began a new age in world history--- the age of mankind's transition from a capitalist to a communist socio-economic formation. The victory of socialist-revolutions in a number of European, Asian and Latin American countries has turned socialism into a world system and made it the decisive 27 factor in world development. With profound insight into the course and prospects for historical development after socialism's first victories, Lenin pointed to the inevitability of struggle on a world scale between the two social systems and revealed the importance of a socialist foreign policy, of consistent implementation of the principles of peaceful coexistence among states with different social systems. Acting in full conformity with the teaching of the creators of Marxist-Leninist theory, the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries are waging a tireless struggle in contemporary conditions for peace on earth, the prevention of wars, peaceful coexistence, implementation of detente and the reinforcement of political by military detente, the extension of detente to all parts of the world, giving it an irreversible, stable character, and for the consistent implementation of the principles contained in the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, which was held in Helsinki in the summer of 1975.
.The 20th century is the age of socialist revolution. The steadily growing economic, political and moral potential of the world socialist community---the principal revolutionary force of today, the struggle of the working class in the citadels of capitalism, the successes achieved by the national liberation movement, in fact, the entire course of mankind's development since October 1917, provide convincing evidence of the irrefutable correctness of the conclusions of Marxism-Leninism.
Life itself, the realities of today, have nullified the hopes of the apologists of capital that the class struggle will die down or can be eliminated in the world of capitalism. The latest pronouncements of the opponents of Marxism---different versions of the theory of modernisation and transformation of capitalism---have proved untenable as their numerous predecessors. Far from making socialist revolution, the inevitability of which was demonstrated by Marx and Engels, ``superfluous'', the contemporary scientific and technological revolution has made it increasingly necessary.
A profound and all-embracing crisis has struck the entire system of state-monopoly capitalism, involving every aspect of bourgeois society---the economy, politics, culture and ideology. The current slump in production, which is a traditional periodic phenomenon under capitalism and can now only be compared in strength and acuteness with the great depression of the 1930s, the highest level of unemployment in the entire post-war period, inflation, soaring prices and financial upheavals, combined with the energy and ecological crises and the crises of bourgeois democracy and culture 28 have given rise to a new wave of 'class battles between the proletariat and other sections of the working people on the one hand and the omnipotent monopolies on the other. The intensification and deepening of every kind of social conflict in most of the developed capitalist countries have dispelled the myths of the ideologists of the bourgeoisie concerning "harmony of class interests", "social partnership" and "class co-operation". "...This is an epoch of radical social change," said Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the C.P.S.U. Central Committee, in his Report to the 25th Congress of the C.P.S.U. "Socialism's positions are expanding and growing stronger. The victories of the national liberation movement are opening up new horizons for countries that have won independence. The clas.s struggle of the working people against monopoly oppression, against the exploiting order, is gaining in intensity. The scale of the revolutionary-democratic, anti-imperialist movement is steadily growing. Taken as a whole, this signifies development of the world revolutionary process.
``Such is the onward march of history. New generations and social strata, new parties and organisations are joining the revolutionary process" (XXVth Congress of the C.P.S.U. Documents and Resolutions, Moscow, 1976, pp. 32-33).
The transition from capitalism to a communist socio-economic formation constitutes the principal trend in the contemporary historical process.
[29] __ALPHA_LVL1__ KARL MARXIt is asked: can Germany attain a practice a la hauteur des principes, i.e., a revolution which will raise it not only to the official level of the modern nations but to the height of humanity which will be the near future of those nations?
The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism by weapons, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter. But for man the root is man himself. The evident proof of the radicalism of German theory, and hence of its practical energy, is that it proceeds from a resolute positive abolition of religion. The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest being for man, hence with the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken, despicable being, relations which cannot be better described than by the exclamation of a Frenchman when it was planned to introduce a tax on dogs: Poor dogs! They want to treat you like human beings!
__b_b_b__It is not the radical revolution, not the general human emancipation which is a Utopian dream for Germany, but rather the partial, the merely political revolution, the revolution which leaves the pillars of the house standing. On'what is a partial, a merely political revolution based? On the fact that part of civil society 30 emancipates itself and attains general domination; on the fact that a definite class, proceeding from its particular situation, undertakes the general emancipation of society. This class emancipates the whole of society but only provided the whole of society is in the same situation as this class, e.g., possesses money and education or can acquire them at will.
No class of civil society can play this role without arousing a moment of enthusiasm in itself and in the masses, a moment in which it fraternises and merges with society in general, becomes confused with it and is perceived and acknowledged as its general representative; a moment in which its demands and rights are truly the rights and demands of society itself; a moment in which it is truly the social head and the social heart. Only in the name of the general rights of society can a particular class lay claim to general domination. For the storming of this emancipatory position, and hence for the political exploitation of all spheres of society in the interests of its own sphere, revolutionary energy and intellectual self-confidence alone are not sufficient. For the revolution of a nation and the emancipation of a particular class of civil society to coincide, for one estate to be acknowledged as the estate of the whole society, all the defects of society must conversely be concentrated in another class, a particular estate must be the general stumbling-block, the incorporation of the general limitation, a particular social sphere must be looked upon as the notorious crime of the whole of society, so that liberation from that sphere appears as general self-liberation. For one estate to be par excellence the estate of liberation, another estate must conversely be the obvious estate of oppression. The negative general significance of the French nobility and the French clergy determined the positive general significance of the immediately adjacent and opposed class of the bourgeoisie.
But no particular class in Germany has the consistency, the severity, the courage or the ruthlessness that could mark it out as the negative representative of society. No more has any estate the breadth of soul that identifies itself, even for a moment, with the soul of the nation, the genius that inspires material might to political violence, or that revolutionary audacity which flings at the adversary the defiant words: / am nothing and I should be everything. The main stem of German morals and honesty, of the classes as well as of individuals, is rather that modest egoism which asserts its limitedness and allows it to be asserted against itself. The relation of the various sections of German society is therefore 31 not dramatic but epic. Each of them begins to be aware of itself and to settle down beside the others with all its particular claims not as soon as it is oppressed, but as soon as the circumstances of the time, without the section's own participation, create a social substratum on which it can in turn exert pressure. Even the moral self-confidence of the German middle class rests only on the consciousness that it is the general representative of the philistine mediocrity of all the other classes. It is therefore not only the German kings who accede to the throne malapropos^^1^^, every section of civil society goes through a defeat before it has celebrated victory, develops its own limitations before it has overcome the limitations facing it and asserts its narrow-hearted essence before it has been able to assert its magnanimous essence. Thus the very opportunity of a great role has on every occasion passed away before it is to hand, thus every class, once it begins the struggle against the class above it, is involved in the struggle against the class below it. Hence the princes are struggling against the monarchy, the bureaucrats against the nobility, and the bourgeois against them all, while the proletariat is already beginning to struggle against the bourgeoisie. No sooner does the middle class dare to think of emancipation from its own standpoint than the development of the social conditions and the progress of political theory pronounce that standpoint antiquated or at least problematic.
In France it is enough for somebody to be something for him to want to be everything; in Germany one has to be nothing if one is not to forego everything. In France partial emancipation is the basis of universal emancipation; in Germany universal emancipation is the conditio sine qua non of any partial emancipation. In France it is the reality of gradual liberation, in Germany the impossibility of gradual liberation, that must give birth to complete freedom. In*France every class is politically idealistic and becomes aware of itself at first not as a particular class but as the representative of social requirements generally. The role of emancipator therefore passes in dramatic motion to the various classes of the French nation one after the other until it finally comes to the class which implements social freedom no longer on the basis of certain conditions lying outside man and yet created by human society, but rather organises all conditions of human existence on the presupposition of social freedom. In Germany, on the contrary, where practical life is as spiritless as spiritual life is unpractical, no class in civil society has any need or capacity for 32 general emancipation until it is forced by its immediate condition, by material necessity, by its very chains.
Where, then, is the positive possibility of a German emancipation?
Answer: In the formation of a class with radical chains, a class of civil society which is' not a class of civil society, an estate which is the dissolution of all estates, a sphere which has a universal character by its universal suffering and claims no particular right because no particular wrong but wrong generally is perpetrated against it; which can no longer invoke a historical but only a human title; which does not stand in any one-sided antithesis to the consequences but in an all-round antithesis to the premises of the German state; a sphere, finally, which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all other spheres of society and thereby emancipating all other spheres of society, which, in a word, is the complete loss of man and hence can win itself only through the complete rewinning of man. This dissolution of society as a particular estate is the proletariat.
The proletariat is coming into being in Germany only as a result of the rising industrial development. For it is not the naturally arising poor but the artificially impoverished, not the human masses mechanically oppressed by the gravity of society but the masses resulting from the drastic dissolution of society, mainly of the middle estate, that form the proletariat, although it is obvious that gradually the naturally arising poor and the ChristianGermanic serfs also join its ranks.
.By proclaiming the dissolution of the hitherto existing world order the proletariat merely states the secret of its own existence, for it .is in fact the dissolution of that world order. By demanding the negation of private property, the proletariat merely raises to the rank of a principle of society what society has made the principle of the proletariat, what, without its own co-operation, is already incorporated in it- as the negative result of society. In regard to the world which is coming into being the proletarian then finds himself possessing the same right as the German king in regard to the world which has come into being when he calls the people his people as he calls the horse his horse. By declaring the people his private property the king simply states that the property-owner is king.
As philosophy finds its material weapons in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapons in philosophy. And once the lightning of thought has squarely struck this ingenuous soil of __PRINTERS_P_33_COMMENT__ 2-477 33 the people the emancipation of the Germans into human beings will take place.
Let us sum up the result:
The only practically possible liberation of Germany is liberation that proceeds from the standpoint of the theory which proclaims man to be the highest being for man. In Germany emancipation from the Middle Ages is possible only as emancipation from the partial victories over the Middle Ages as well. In Germany no kind of bondage can be broken without breaking every kind of bondage. The thorough Germany cannot make a revolution without making a thoroughgoing revolution. The emancipation of the German is the emancipation of the human being. The head of this emancipation is philosophy, its heart is the proletariat. Philosophy cannot be made a reality without the abolition of the proletariat, the proletariat cannot be abolished without philosophy being made a reality.
When all inner requisites are fulfilled the day of German resurrection will be proclaimed by the ringing call of the Gallic cock.
Written at the end of 1843-January 1844
Mart and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 3, pp. 182, 184-87
[34] __ALPHA_LVL1__ KARL MARXThe ``Prussian'' prophesies the smothering of uprisings which break out in "disastrous isolation of people from the community, and in the separation of their thoughts from social principles".
We have shown that the Silesian^^1^^ uprising occurred by no means in circumstances of the separation of thoughts from social principles. It only remains for us to deal with the "disastrous isolation of people from the community". By community here is meant the political community, the state. This is the old story about unpolitical Germany.
But do not all uprisings, without exception, break out in a disastrous isolation of man from the community? Does not every uprising necessarily presuppose isolation? Would, the 1789 revolution have taken place without the disastrous isolation of French citizens from the community? It was intended precisely to abolish this isolation.
But the community from which the worker is isolated is a community the real character and scope of which is quite different from that of the political community. The community from which the worker is isolated by his own labour is life itself, physical and mental life, human morality, human activity, human enjoyment, human nature. Human nature is the true community of men. The disastrous isolation from this essential nature is incomparably more universal, more intolerable, more dreadful, and more contradictory, than isolation from the political community. Hence, too, the abolition of this isolation----and even a partial reaction to it, an uprising against it---is just as much more infinite as man is more infinite than the citizen, and human life more infinite than political life. Therefore, however partial the uprising of the __PRINTERS_P_35_COMMENT__ 2* 35 industrial workers may be, it contains within itself a universal soul; however universal a. political uprising may be, it conceals even in its most grandiose form a narrow-minded spirit.
The ``Prussian'' worthily concludes his article with the following sentence:
"A social revolution without a political soul (i.e., without an organising idea from the point of view of the whole) is impossible.''
We have already seen that a social revolution is found to have the point of view of the whole because---even if it were to occur in only one factory district---it represents man's protest against a dehumanised life, because it starts out from the point of view of a separate real individual, because the community, against the separation of which from himself the individual reacts, is man's true community, human nature. The political soul of revolution, on the other hand, consists in the tendency of classes having no political influence to abolish their isolation from statehood and rule. Its point of view is that of the state, of an abstract whole, which exists 011/3; through separation from real life, and which is inconceivable without the organised contradiction between the universal idea of man and the individual existence of man. Hence, too, a revolution with a political soul, in accordance with the limited and dichotomous nature of this soul, organises a ruling stratum in society at the expense of society itself.
We want to divulge to the ``Prussian'' what a "social revolution with a political soul" actually is; we shall thereby at the same time confide the secret to him that he himself is unable, even in words, to rise above the narrow-minded political point of view.
A "sociaf revolution with a political soul is either a nonsensical concoction, if by ``social'' revolution the ``Prussian'' means a ``social'' as opposed to a political revolution, and nevertheless endows the social revolution with a political soul instead of a social one; or else a "social revolution with a political sou/" is only a paraphrase for what was usually called a "political revolution", or "simply a revolution". Every revolution dissolves the old society and to that extent it is social. Every revolution overthrows the old power and to that extent it is political.
Let the ``Prussian'' choose between the paraphrase and the nonsensel But whereas a social revolution with apolitical soul is a paraphrase or nonsense, a political revolution with a social soul has a rational meaning. Revolution in general---the overthrow of the existing power and dissolution of the old relationship---is a 36 political act. But socialism cannot be realised without revolution. It needs this political act insofar as it needs destruction and dissolution. But where its organising activity begins, where its proper object, its soul, comes to the fore---there socialism throws off the political cloak.
Dated July 31,1844
Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 3, pp. 204-06
__NOTE__ A lot of blue background streaks on this page. [37] __ALPHA_LVL1__ KARL MARXProletariat and wealth are opposites; as such they_form a single whole. They are both creations of the world of private property. The question is exactly what place each occupies in the antithesis. It is not sufficient to declare them two sides of a single whole.
Private property as private property, as wealth, is compelled to maintain itself, and thereby its opposite, the proletariat, in existence. That is the positive side of the antithesis, self-satisfied private property.
The proletariat, on the contrary, is compelled as proletariat to abolish itself and thereby its opposite, private property, which determines its existence, and which makes it proletariat. It is the negative side of the antithesis,, its restlessness within its very self, dissolved and self-dissolving private property.
The propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-estrangement. But the former class feels at ease and strengthened in this self-estrangement, it recognises estrangement as its awn power and has in it the semblance of a human existence. The latter feels annihilated in this estrangement; it sees in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existence. It is, to use an expression of Hegel, in its abasement the indignation at that abasement, an indignation to which it is necessarily driven by the contradiction between its human nature and its condition of life, which is the outright, resolute and comprehensive negation of that nature.
Within this antithesis the private property-owner is therefore the conservative side, the proletarian the destructive side. From the former arises the action of preserving the antithesis, from the latter the action of annihilating it.
Indeed private property drives itself in its economic movement towards its own dissolution, but only through a development which 38 does not depend on it, which is unconscious and which takes place against the will of private property by the very nature of things, only inasmuch as it produces the proletariat as proletariat, poverty which is conscious of its spiritual and physical poverty, dehumanisation which is conscious of its dehumanisation, and therefore self-abolishing. The proletariat executes the sentence that private property pronounces on itself by producing the proletariat, just as it executes the sentence that wage-labour pronounces on itself by producing wealth for others and poverty for itself. When the proletariat is victorious, it by no means becomes the absolute side of society, for it is victorious only by abolishing itself and its opposite. Then the proletariat disappears as well as the opposite which determines it, private property.
When socialist writers ascribe this world-historic rote to the proletariat, it is not at all, as Critical Criticism pretends to believe, because they regard the proletarians as gods. Rather the contrary. Since in the fully-formed proletariat the abstraction of all humanity, even of the semblance of humanity, is practically complete; since the conditions of life of the proletariat sum up all the conditions of life of society today in their most inhuman form; since man has lost himself in the proletariat, yet at the same time has not only gained theoretical consciousness of that loss, but through urgent, no longer removable, no longer disguisable, absolutely imperative need---the practical expression of necessity--- is driven directly to revolt against this inhumanity, it follows that the proletariat can and must emancipate itself. But it cannot emancipate itself without abolishing the conditions of its own life. It cannot abolish the conditions of its life without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of life of society today which are summed up in its own situation. Not in vain does it go through the stern but steeling school of labour. It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what, in accordance with this being, it will historically be compelled to do. Its aim and historical action is visibly and irrevocably foreshadowed in its own life situation as well as in the whole organisation of bourgeois society today. There is no need to explain here that a large part of the English and French proletariat is already conscious of its historic task and is constantly working to develop that consciousness into complete clarity.
Marx and Engels,
Written in September-
Collected Works, Vol. 4,
November 1844
pp. 35-37
[39] __ALPHA_LVL1__ FREDERICK ENGELSThe unavoidable result of our existing social relations, under all circumstances, and in all cases, will be a social revolution. With the same certainty with which we can develop from given mathematical principles a new mathematical ^proposition, with the same certainty we can'deduce from the existing economic relations and the principles of political economy the imminence of social revolution. Let us, however, look at this upheaval a little closer; what form will • it take, what will'be its results, in what ways will it differ from the previous violent upheavals? A social revolution, gentlemen, is something quite different from the political revolutions which have taken place so far. It is not directed, as these have been, against the property ,of monopoly, but against the monopoly of property; a social revolution, gentlemen, is the open warof the poor against the rich. And sucH a struggle, in which all the mainsprings and causes, which in previous historical conflicts lay dark and hidden at the bottom, operate, openly and without concealment, such a struggle, to be sure, threatens to be far fiercer and bloodier than all those that preceded it* The result of this struggle can be twofold. Either the^rebellious party only attacks the appearance, not the essence, only the form, not the thing itself, or it goes for the thing itself, ^grasps the evil itself by the root. In the first case private property will be allowed to continue and will only be distributed differently, so that the causes which have led to the present situation remain in operation and must sooner or later bring about a similar situation and another revolution. But, gentlemen, is this possible? Has there been a revolution which did not really carry out what it was out for? The English revolution realised both the religious and the political principles whose suppression by Charles I caused it to break out; 40 the French bourgeoisie in its fight against the aristocracy and the old monarchy achieved everything that it aimed for, ma^le an end to all the abuses which drove it to insurrection.^^3^^ And should the insurrection of the poor cease before poverty and its causes have been eliminated? It is not possible, gentlemen; it would be flying'in the face all historical experience to suppose such a thing. Furthermore, the level of education of the workers, especially in England and France, forbids us to consider this; possible. There only remains, then, the other alternative, namely, that the future social revolution will deal with the real causes of want and poverty, of ignorance and crime, that it will therefore carry/through a real social reform. And this can only happen by the proclamation of the principles of communism. Just consider, gentlemen, the ideas* which actuate the worker in those countries where;the worker too thinks. Look at France, at the different sections of the labour movement, whether they are not all communistic; go to England and listen to the kind of proposals being made to the workers for the improvement of their position---are they not all based on the principle of common property; study the different systems of social reform and how many will you find that are not communistic? Of all the systems which are still of any importance today, the only one which is not communistic is that of Fourier, who devoted more attention to the social organisation of human Activity than to the distribution of its products. All these facts justify the conclusion that a future social revolution will end with the implementation of the principles of communism and hardly permit any other possibility.
If, gentlemen, these conclusions are correct, if the social revolution and practical communism are the necessary result of our existing conditions---then we will have to concern ourselves above all with the measures by which we can avoid a violent and bloody overthrow of the social conditions. And there is only one means, namely, the peaceful introduction or at least preparation of communism. If we do not want the bloody solution of the social problem, if we do not want to permit the daily growing contradiction between the education and the condition of our proletarians to come to a head, which, according to all our experience of human nature, will mean that this contradiction will be solved by brute force, desperation and thirst,-fof fe^engej ~fheh, gentlemen, we must apply ourselves seriously afidl wither* prejudice to the social problem; then we must make it durfousiife to contribute our share toward^ humanising the condition of the 41 modern helots. And if it should perhaps appear to some of you that the raising of the hitherto abased classes will not be possible without an abasement of your own condition, then you ought to bear in mind that what is involved is to create for all people such a condition that everyone can freely develop his human nature and live in a human relationship with his neighbours, and has no need to fear any violent shattering of his condition; it must be borne in mind that-what some individuals have to sacrifice is not their reaf human enjoyment of life, but only the semblance of this enjoyment produced by our bad conditions, something which conflicts with the reason and the heart of those who now enjoy these apparent advantages. Far from wishing to'destroy real human life with all its requirements and needs, we wish on the contrary really to bring it into being. And if, even apart from this, you will only seriously consider for a moment what the consequences of our present situation are bound to be, into what labyrinths of contradictions and disorders it is leading us---then, gentlemen, you will certainly find it worth the trouble to study the social question seriously and thoroughly. And if I can induce you to do this, I shall have achieved the purpose of my talk.
Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 4, pp. 262-64
[42] __ALPHA_LVL0__ The End. [END] __ALPHA_LVL1__ KARL MARX...Finally, from the conception of history set forth by us we obtain these further conclusions: 1) In the development of productive forces there comes a stage when productive forces and means of intercourse are brought into being which, under the existing relations, only cause mischief, and are no longer productive but destructive forces (machinery and money); and connected with this a class is called forth which has to bear all the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages, which is ousted from society and forced into the sharpest contradiction to all other classes; a class which forms the majority of all members of society, and from which emanates the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness, which may, of course, arise among the other classes too through the contemplation of the situation of this class. 2) The conditions under which definite productive forces can be applied are the conditions of the rule of a definite class of society, whose social power, deriving from its property, has its pracfr'ca/-idealistic expression in each case in the form of the state and, therefore, every' revolutionary struggle is directed against a class which till then has been in power. 3) In all previous revolutions the mode of activity always remained unchanged and it was only a question of a different distribution of this activity, a new distribution of labour to other persons, whilst the communist revolution is directed against the hitherto existing mode of activity, does away with labour* and abolishes the rule of all classes with the classes themselves, because it is carried through by the class which no longer counts as a class in society, which is not recognised as a class, and is in itself the expression of the dissolution of all classes,
.43
hatidrfaljtie'si etc., within present society, and 4) both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass sdale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; the revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.
__ALPHA_LVL1__ FREDERICK ENGELSWritten in 1845-1846
Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 5 pp. 52-53
Paris, October 23, 1846
I therefore defined the objects of the Communists in this way: 1) to safeguard the interests of the proletariat as against those of the bourgeoisie; 2) to do this through the abolition of private property and its replacement by community of goods; 3) to recognise no means of carrying out these objects other than a democratic revolution by force.
Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, <
Moscow, 1975, p. 27
__ALPHA_LVL1__ KARL MARXMeanwhile the antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is a struggle of class against class, a struggle which carried to its highest expression is a total revolution. Indeed, is it at all surprising that a society founded on the opposition of classes should culminate in brutal contradiction, the shock of body against body, as its final denouement.
Do not say that social movement excludes political movement. There is never a political movement which is not at the same time social.
It is only in an order of things in which there are no more classes and class antagonisms that social evolutions will cease to be political revolutions. Till then, on the eve of every general reshuffling of society, the last word of social science will always be:
``Le combat ou la mort; la lutte sanguinaire ou le neant. C'est ainsi que la question est invinciblement posee."a
George Sand^^6^^
An oppressed class is the vital condition for every society founded on the antagonism of classes. The emancipation of the oppressed class thus implies necessarily the creation of a new society. For the oppressed class to be able to emancipate itself it is necessary that the productive powers already acquired and the existing social relations should no longer be capable of existing side by side. Of all the instruments of production, the greatest productive power is the revolutionary class itself. The organisation of revolutionary elements as a class supposes the existence of all the productive forces which could be engendered in the bosom of the old society.
Does this mean that after the fall of the old society there will be a new class domination culminating in a new political power? No.
The condition for the emancipation of the working class is the abolition of all classes, just as the condition for the emancipation of the third estate, of the bourgeois order, was the abolition of all estates*and all orders.
The working class, in the course of its development, will substitute for the old civil society an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism, and there will be no more political power properly socalled, since political power is precisely the official expression of antagonism in civil society.
Written in the first half of 1847
Marx and Engels, Collected Works. Vol. 6, pp. 211-12
'Estates here in the historical sense of the estates of feudalism, estates with definite and limited privileges. The revolution of the bourgeoisie abolished the estates and their privileges. Bourgeois society knows'only classes. It was, therefore, absolutely in contradiction with history to describe the proletariat as the "fourth estate". F. E. \Note to the German edition, 1885.1
46a „.
``Combat or death, bloody struggle or extinction. Thus the question is inexorably put."---Ed.
__ALPHA_LVL1__ FREDERICK ENGELS
Question 14: What kind of new social order will this have to be?
Answer: Above all, it will have to take the running of industry
and all branches of production in general out of the hands of
separate individuals competing with each other and instead will
have to ensure that all these branches of production are run by
society as a whole, i.e., for the social good, according to a social
plan and with the participation of all members of society. It will
therefore do away with competition and replace it by association.
Since the running of industry by individuals has private ownership
as its necessary consequence and since competition is nothing but
the manner in which industry is run by individual private owners,
private ownership cannot be separated from the individual running
of industry and competition. Hence, private ownership will also
have to be abolished, and in its stead there will be common use of
all the instruments of production and the distribution of all
products by common agreement, or the so-called community of
property. The abolition of private ownership is indeed the most
succinct and characteristic summary of the transformation of the
entire social system necessarily following from the development of
industry, and it is therefore rightly put forward by the Communists
as their main demand.
Question 15: The abolition of private property was therefore not possible earlier?
Answer: No. Every change in the social order, every revolution in property relations, has been the necessary result of the creation of new productive forces which would no longer conform to the old property relations. Private property itself arose in this way. For private property has not always existed, but when towards the end 48
of the Middle Ages a new mode of production appeared in the form of manufacture which could not be subordinated to the then existing feudal and guild property, manufacture, having outgrown the old property relations, created a new form of ownership--- private ownership. For manufacture and the first stage of development of large-scale industry, no other form of ownership was possible than private ownership and no other order of society than that founded upon private ownership. So long as it is not possible to produce so much that not only is there enough for all, but also a surplus for the increase of social capital and for the further development of the productive forces, so long must there always be a ruling class disposing of the productive forces of society, and a poor, oppressed class. How these classes are composed will depend upon the stage of development of production. In the Middle Ages, which were dependent upon agriculture, we find the lord and the serf; the towns of the later Middle Ages show us the master guildsman and the journeyman and day labourer; the seventeenth century has the manufacturer and the manufactory worker; the nineteenth century the big factory-owner and the proletarian. It is obvious that hitherto the productive forces had not yet been so far developed that enough could be produced for all or to make private property a fetter, a barrier, to these productive forces. Now, however, when the development of large-scale industry has, firstly, created capital and productive forces on a scale hitherto unheard of and the means are available to increase these productive forces in a short time to an infinite extent; when, secondly, these productive forces are concentrated in the hands of a few bourgeois whilst the great mass of the people are more and more becoming proletarians, and their condition more wretched and unendurable in the same measure in which the riches of the bourgeois increase; when, thirdly, these powerful productive forces that can easily be increased have so enormously outgrown private property and the bourgeois that at every moment they provoke the most violent disturbances in the social order---only now has the abolition of private property become not only possible but even absolutely necessary.
Question 16: Will it be possible to bring about the abolition of private property by peaceful methods?
Answer: It is to be desired that this could happen, and Communists certainly would be the last to resist it. The Communists know only too well that all conspiracies are not only futile but even harmful. They know only too Avell that revolutions are not made
49deliberately and arbitrarily, but that everywhere and at all times they have been the necessary outcome of circumstances entirely independent of the will and the leadership of particular parties and entire classes. But they also see that the development of the proletariat is in nearly every civilised country forcibly suppressed, and that thus the opponents of the Communists are working with all their might towards a revolution. Should the oppressed proletariat in the end be goaded into a revolution, we Communists will then defend the cause of the proletarians by deed just as well as we do now by word.
Question 17: Will it be possible to abolish private property at one stroke?
Answer: No, such a thing would be just as impossible as at one stroke to increase the existing productive forces to the degree necessary for instituting community of property. Hence, the proletarian revolution, which in all probability is impending, will transform existing society only gradually, and be able to abolish private property only when the necessary quantity of the means of production has been created.
Question 18: What will be the course of this revolution?
Answer: In the first place it will inaugurate a democratic constitution and thereby, directly or indirectly, the political rule of the proletariat. Directly in England, where the proletariat already constitutes the majority of the people. Indirectly in France and in Germany, where the majority of the people consists not only of proletarians but also of small peasants and urban petty bourgeois, who are only now being proletarianised and in all their political interests are becoming more and more dependent on the proletariat and therefore soon will have to conform to the demands of the proletariat. This will perhaps involve a second fight, but one that can end only in the victory of the proletariat.
Democracy would be quite useless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means of carrying through further measures directly attacking private ownership and securing the means of subsistence of the proletariat. Chief among these measures, already made necessary by the existing conditions, are the following:
1. Limitation of private ownership by means of progressive taxation, high inheritance taxes, abolition of inheritance by collateral lines (brothers, nephews, etc.), compulsory loans and so forth.
2. Gradual expropriation of landed proprietors, factory-owners, railway and shipping magnates, partly through competition on the
50oart of state industry and partly directly through compensation in assignations.
3. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels against the majority of the people.
4. Organisation of the labour or employment of the proletarians On national estates, in national factories and workshops, thereby outting an end to competition among the workers themselves and compelling the factory-owners, as long as they still exist, to pay the same increased wages as the State.
5. Equal liability to work for all members of society until complete abolition of private ownership. Formation of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
6. Centralisation of the credit and banking systems in the hands of the State by means of a national bank with state capital and the suppression of all private banks and bankers.
7. Increase of national factories, workshops, railways, and ships, cultivation of all uncultivated land and improvement of land already cultivated in the same proportion in which the capital and workers at the disposal of the nation increase.
8. Education of all children, as soon as they are old enough to do without the first maternal care, in national institutions and at the expense of the nation. Education combined with production.
9. The erection of large palaces on national estates as common dwellings for communities of citizens engaged in industry as well as agriculture, and combining the advantages of both urban and rural life without the one-sidedness and disadvantages of either.
10. The demolition of all insanitary and badly built dwellings and town districts.
11. Equal right of inheritance to be enjoyed by illegitimate and legitimate children.
12. Concentration of all means of transport in the hands of the nation.
Of course, all these measures cannot be carried out at once. But one will always lead on to the other. Once the first radical onslaught upon private ownership has been made, the proletariat will see itself compelled to go always further, to concentrate all capital, all agriculture, all industry, all transport, and all exchange more and more in the hands of the State. All these measures work towards such results; and they will become realisable and will develop their centralising consequences in the same proportion in which the productive forces of the country will be multiplied by the labour of the proletariat. Finally, when all capital, all production,
51and all exchange are concentrated in the hands of the nation, private ownership will automatically have ceased to exist, money will have become superfluous, and production will have so increased and men will be so much changed that the last forms of the old social relations will also be able to fall away.
Question 19: Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone?
Answer: No. Large-scale industry, already by creating the world market, has so linked up all the peoples of the earth, and especially the civilised peoples, that each people is dependent on what happens to another. Further, in all civilised countries large-scale industry has so levelled social development that in all these countries the bourgeoisie and the proletariat have become the two decisive classes of society and the struggle between them the main struggle of the day. The communist revolution will therefore be no merely national one; it will be a revolution taking place simultaneously in all civilised countries, that is, at least in England, America, France and Germany. In each of these countries it will develop more quickly or more slowly according to whether the country has a more developed industry, more wealth, and a more considerable mass of productive forces. It will therefore be slowest and most difficult to carry out in Germany, quickest and easiest in England. It will also have an important effect upon the other countries of the world, and will completely change and greatly accelerate their previous manner of development. It is a world-wide revolution and will therefore be world-wide in scope.^^8^^
Question 20: What will be the consequences of the final abolition of private ownership?
Answer: Above all, through society's taking out of the hands of the private capitalists the use of all the productive forces and means of communication as well as the exchange and distribution of products and managing them according to a plan corresponding to the means available and the needs of the whole of society, all the evil consequences of the present running of large-scale industry will be done away with. There will be an end of crises; the extended production, which under the present system of society means overproduction and is such a great cause of misery, will then not even be adequate and will have to be expanded much further. Instead of creating misery, over-production beyond the immediate needs of society will mean the satisfaction of the needs of all, create new needs and at the same time the means to satisfy them. It will be the condition and the cause of new advances, and it will achieve these
52advances without thereby, as always hitherto, bringing the order of society into confusion. Once liberated from the pressure of private ownership, large-scale industry will develop on a scale that will make its present level of development seem as paltry as seems the manufacturing system compared with the large-scale industry of our time. This development of industry will provide society with a sufficient quantity of products to satisfy the needs of all. Similarly agriculture, which is also hindered by the pressure of private ownership and the parcelling of land from introducing the improvements already available and scientific advancements, will be given a quite new impulse, and place at society's disposal an ample quantity of products. Thus society will produce enough products to be able so to arrange distribution that the needs of all its members will be satisfied. The division of society into various antagonistic classes will thereby become superfluous.. Not only will it become superfluous, it is even incompatible with the new social order. Classes came into existence through the division of labour and the division of labour in its hitherto existing form will entirely disappear. For in order to bring industrial and agricultural production to the level described, mechanical and chemical aids alone are not enough; the abilities of the people who set these aids in motion must also be developed to a corresponding degree. Just as in the last century the peasants and the manufactory workers changed their entire way of life, and themselves became quite different people when they were drawn into large-scale industry, so also will the common management of production by the whole of society and the resulting new development of production require and also produce quite different people. The common management of production cannot be effected by people as they are today, each one being assigned to a single branch of production, shackled to it, exploited by it, each having developed only one of his abilities at the cost of all the others and knowing only one branch, or only a branch of a branch of the total production. Even present-day industry finds less and less use for such people. Industry carried on in common and according fo plan by the whole of society presupposes moreover people of all-round development, capable of surveying the entire system of production. Thus the division of labour making one man a peasant, another a shoemaker, a third a factory worker, a fourth a stockjobber, which has already been undermined by machines, will completely disappear. Education will enable young people quickly to go through the whole system of production, it will enable them to pass
53from one branch of industry to another according to the needs of society or their own inclinations. It will therefore free them from that one-sidedness which the present division of labour stamps on each one of them. Thus the communist organisation .of society will give its members.the chance of an all-round exercise of. abilities that have received all-round development. With this, the various classes will necessarily disappear. Thus the communist organisation of society is, on the one hand, incompatible with the existence of classes and, on the other, the very establishment of this society furnishes the means to do away with these class differences.
It follows from this that the antagonism between town and country will likewise disappear. The carrying on of agriculture and industrial production by the same people, instead of by two different classes, is already for purely material reasons an essential condition of communist association. The scattering of the agricultural population over the countryside, along with the crowding of the industrial population into the big towns, is a state which corresponds only to an undeveloped stage of agriculture and industry, an obstacle to all further development which is already now making itself very keenly felt.
The general association of all members of society for the common and planned exploitation of the productive forces, the expansion of production to a degree where it will satisfy the needs of all, the termination of the condition where the needs of some are satisfied at the expense of others, the complete annihilation of classes and their antagonisms, the all-round development of the abilities of all the members of society through doing away with the hitherto existing division of labour, through industrial education, through change of activity, through the participation of all in the enjoyments provided by all, through the merging of town and country---such are the main results of the abolition of private ' property.
__ALPHA_LVL1__ KARL MARXA spectre is haunting Europe---the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power? Where the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
Two things result from this fact:
I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powers to be itself a Power.
II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.
To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London, and sketched the following Manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and 'Danish languages.
Written at the end of October 1847
Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 6, pp. 348-54
__NUMERIC_LVL2__ I __ALPHA_LVL2__ BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS*The history of all hitherto existing-society** is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild.master*** and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed,
*By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern Capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage-labour. By proletariat, the class of modern wage-labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour-power in order to live. [Note by Engels to the English edition of 1888 J
**That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organisation existing previous to recorded history, .was all but unknown. Since then, Haxthausen discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and by and by village communities were found to be, or to have been the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this primitive Communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Morgan's crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of these primeval communities society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retrace this process of dissolution in Der Urspruns der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Stoats, 2nd edition, Stuttgart, ISSd^Note by Engels to the English edition of 1888, and--- less the last sentence---to the German edition of 1890.]
***Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a master within, not a head of a guild. [Note by Engels to the English edition of 1888.]
56stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations. •.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.
The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.
The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place of the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
57Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.
Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. A!n oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune*; here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany), there taxable "third estate" of the monarchy (as in ,France), afterwards, in the period of manufacture proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural
superiors", and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom---Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.
* ``Commune'' was the name taken, in France, by the nascent towns even before they had conquered from their feudal lords and masters local selfgovernment and political rights as the "Third Estate". Generally speaking, for the economical development of the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country; for its political development, France. BVbte by Engels to the English edition 0/1888.']
This was the name given their urban communities by the townsmen of Italy and France, after, they had purchased or wrested their initial rights of self-government from their feudal lords. [Note by Engels to the German edition of 1890]
58 59The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. AH old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place ' of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation ; into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.
The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The
necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces with separate interests, laws, governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff. The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground---what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?
We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.
Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted to it, and by the economical and political sway of the bourgeois class.
A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society. In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity---the epidemic of over-
61 60production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.
The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons---the modern working class---the proletarians.
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed---a class of labourers who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.
Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour,^^10^^
62is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by increase of thework exacted in a given time or by increased speed of the machinery, etc.
Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.
The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.
No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the- manufacturer, so far, at an end, and he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.
The lower strata of the middle class---the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants---all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.
The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits
63them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.
At this stage the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie. Thus the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.
But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations (Trades' Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there the contest breaks out into riots.
Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry and that place the workers of different localities
in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.
This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus the tenhours' bill in England was carried.^^11^^
Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for its help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.
Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling classes are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.
Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the process of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes; such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.
643-477
65Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.
The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.
The "dangerous class", the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.
In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industrial labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.
All the preceding classes that got the upper hand, sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.
All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.
Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.
In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.
Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impbse its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.
The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
66 67ir
The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered by this or that would-be universal reformer.
They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of Communism.
All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.
The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But •modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man's own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.
Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.
Or do you mean modern bourgeois private property?
But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage-labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.
To be a capitalist is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.
Capital is, therefore, not a personal, it is a social power.
69 __NUMERIC_LVL2__ II __ALPHA_LVL2__ PROLETARIANS AND COMMUNISTSIn what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties.
They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.
They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.
The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.
The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.
The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.
68When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character.
Let us now take wage-labour.
The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer. What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.
In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.
In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.
And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.
By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.
But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other "brave words"' of our bourgeoisie about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.
You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already
70done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those ninetenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.
In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.
From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.
You must, therefore, confess that by ``individual'' you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.
Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation.
It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.
According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.
All objections urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating material products, have, in the same way, been urged against the Communistic modes of producing and appropriating intellectual products. Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.
That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous majority, a mere training to act as a machine.
But don't wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, &c. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of
71your class made into a law for all, a will, whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.
The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property--- historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production---this misconception you share with every, ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.
Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.
On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.
But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.
And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the charaeter^of that intervention, and to rescue education from the in fluence of the ruling class.
The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parent and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.
But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the whole bourgeoisie in chorus.
The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in
72common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.
He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.
For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.
Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the, greatest pleasure in seducing each other's
wives. Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common and
thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with, is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.
The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.
The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.
National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.
The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still, faster. United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.
In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.
The charges against Communism made from a religious, a
73philosophical, and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.
Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views and conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?
What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
When people speak of ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express the fact, that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.
When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.
``Undoubtedly," it will be said, "religious, moral, philosophical and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.
``There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.''
What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs. But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms. The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.
74But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.
We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.
These measures will of course be different in different countries.
Nevertheless in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable:
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common
plan.
8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c., &c.
75When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
KARL MARX
FREDERICK ENGELS
ADDRESS
OF THE
CENTRAL COMMITTEE
TO THE
COMMUNIST LEAGUE^^12^^
MARCH 1850
The Central Committee
to the League
Brothers! In the two revolutionary years 1848-49 the League proved itself in double fashion: first, in that its members energetically took part in the movement in all places, that in the press, on the barricades and on the battle-fields, they stood in the front ranks of the only decidedly revolutionary class, the proletariat. The League further proved itself in that its conception of the movement as laid down in the circulars of the congresses and of the Central Committee of 1847 as well as in the Communist Manifesto turned out to be the only correct one, that the expectations expressed in those documents were completely fulfilled and the conception of present-day social conditions, previously propagated only in secret by the League, is now on everyone's lips and is openly preached in the market places. At the same time the former firm organisation of the League was considerably slackened. A large part of the members who directly participated in the revolutionary movement believed the time for secret societies to have gone by and public activities alone sufficient. The individual circles and communities allowed their connections with the Central Committee to become loose and gradually dormant. Consequently, while the democratic party, the party of the petty bourgeoisie, organised itself more and more in Germany, the workers' party lost its only firm foothold, remained organised at the most in separate localities for local purposes and in the general movement thus came completely under the domination and leadership of the pettybourgeois democrats. An end must be put to this state of affairs, the independence of the workers must be restored. The Central Committee realised this necessity and therefore already in the winter of 1848-49 it sent an emissary, Josef Moll, to Germany for
77Written in December 1847-January 1848
Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 6 pp. 481-506
the reorganisation of the League. Moll's mission, however, was without lasting effect, partly because the German workers at that time had not acquired sufficient experience and partly because it was interrupted by the insurrection of the previous May. Moll himself took up the musket, entered the Baden-Palatinate army and fell on July 19ain the encounter at the Murg. The League lost in him one of its oldest, most active and most trustworthy members, one who had been active in all the congresses and Central Committees and even prior to this had carried out a series of missions with great success. After the defeat of the revolutionary parties of Germany and France in July 1849, almost all the members of the Central Committee came together again in London, replenished their numbers with new revolutionary forces and set about the reorganisation of the League with renewed zeal.
Reorganisation can only be carried out by an emissary, and the Central Committee considers it extremely important that the emissary should leave precisely at this moment when a new revolution is impending, when the workers' party, therefore, must act in the most organised, most unanimous and most independent fashion possible if it is not to be exploited and taken in tow again by the bourgeoisie as in 1848.
Brothers! We told you as early as 1848 that the German liberal bourgeois would soon come to power and would immediately turn their newly acquired power against the workers. You have seen how this has been fulfilled. In fact it was the bourgeois who, immediately after the March movement of 1848,^^13^^took possession of the state power and used this power to force back at once the workers, their allies in the struggle, into their former oppressed position. Though the bourgeoisie was not able to accomplish this without uniting with the feudal party, which had been disposed of in March, without finally even surrendering power once again to this feudal absolutist party, still it has secured conditions for itself which, in the long run, owing to the financial embarrassment of the government, would place power in its hands and would safeguard all its interests, if it were possible for the revolutionary movement to assume already now a so-called peaceful development. The bourgeoisie, in order to safeguard its rule, would not even need to make itself obnoxious by violent measures against the people, since all such violent steps have already been taken by the feudal counter-revolution. Developments, however, will not take "A mistake: should read "June 29".---Ed. 78
this peaceful course. On the contrary, the revolution, which will accelerate this development, is near at hand, whether it will be called forth by an independent uprising of the French proletariat or by an invasion of the Holy Alliance against the revolutionary
Babylon.
And the role, this so treacherous role which the German liberal bourgeois played in 1848 against the people, will in the impending revolution be taken over by the democratic petty bourgeois, who at present occupy the same position in the opposition as the liberal bourgeois before 1848. This party, the democratic party, which is far more dangerous to the workers than the previous liberal one, consists of three elements:
I. Of the most advanced sections of the big bourgeoisie, which pursue the aim of the immediate complete overthrow of feudalism and absolutism. This faction is represented by the one-time Berlin compromisers, by the tax resisters.
II. Of the democratic-constitutional petty bourgeois, whose main aim during the previous movement was the establishment of a more or less democratic federal state as striven for by their representatives, the Lefts in the Frankfort Assembly, and later by the Stuttgart parliament,^^1^^ "and by themselves in the campaign for the Reich Constitution.
III. Of the republican petty bourgeois, whose ideal is a German federative republic after the manner of Switzerland, and who now call themselves Red and Social-Democratic because they cherish the pious wish of abolishing the pressure of big capital on small capital, of the big bourgeois on the small bourgeois. The representatives of this faction were the members of the democratic congresses and committees, the leaders of the democratic associations, the editors of the democratic newspapers.
Now, after their defeat, all these factions call themselves Republicans or Reds, just as the republican petty bourgeois in France now call themselves Socialists. Where, as in Wurttemberg, Bavaria, etc., they still find opportunity to pursue their aims constitutionally, they seize the occasion to retain their old phrases and to prove by deeds that they have not changed in the least. It is evident, moreover, that the altered name of this party does not make the slightest difference in its attitude to the workers, but merely proves that they are now obliged to turn against the bourgeoisie, which is united with absolutism, and to seek support in the proletariat.
The petty-bourgeois democratic party in Germany is very
79powerful; it comprises not only the great majority of the bourgeois inhabitants of the towns, the small people in industry and trade and the guild-masters; it numbers among its followers also the peasants and the rural proletariat, in so far as the latter has not yet found a support in the independent urban proletariat.
The relation of the revolutionary workers' party to the pettybourgeois democrats is this: it marches together with them against the faction which it aims at overthrowing, it opposes them in everything whereby they seek to consolidate their position in their own interests.
Far from desiring to revolutionise all society for the revolutionary proletarians, the democratic petty bourgeois strive for a change in social conditions by means of which existing society will be made as tolerable and comfortable as possible for them. Hence they demand above all diminution of state expenditure by a curtailment of the bureaucracy and shifting the chief taxes on to the big landowners and bourgeois. Further, they demand the abolition of the pressure of big capital on small, through public credit institutions and laws against usury, by which means it will be possible for them and the peasants to obtain advances, on favourable conditions, from the state instead of from the capitalists; they also demand the establishment of bourgeois property relations in the countryside by the complete abolition of feudalism. To accomplish all this they need a democratic state structure, either constitutional or republican, that will give them and their allies, the peasants, a majority; also a democratic communal structure that will give them direct control over communal property and over a series of functions now performed by the bureaucrats.
The domination and speedy increase of capital is further to be counteracted partly by restricting the right of inheritance and partly by transferring as many jobs of work as possible to the state. As far as the workers are concerned, it remains certain above all that they are to remain wage-workers as before; the democratic petty bourgeois only desire better wages and a more secure existence for the workers and hope to achieve this through partial employment by the state and through charity measures; in short, they hope to bribe the workers by more or less concealed alms and to break their revolutionary potency by making their position tolerable for the moment. The demands of the petty-bourgeois democracy here summarised are not put forward by all of its factions at the same time and only a very few members of them
80consider that these demands constitute definite aims in their entirety. The further separate individuals or factions among them go, the more of these demands will they make their own, and those few who see their own programme in what has been outlined above might believe that thereby they have put forward the utmost that can be demanded from the revolution. But these demands can in no wise suffice for the party of the proletariat. While the democratic petty bourgeois wish to bring the revolution to a conclusion as quickly as possible, and with the achievement, at most, of the above demands, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent, until all more or less possessing classes have been forced out of their position of dominance, until the proletariat has conquered state power, and the association of proletarians, not only in one country but in all the dominant countries of the world, has advanced so far that competition among the proletarians of these countries has ceased and that at least the decisive productive forces are concentrated in the hands of the proletarians. For us the issue cannot be the alteration of private property but only its annihilation, not the smoothing over of class antagonisms but the abolition of classes, not the improvement of existing society but the foundation of a new one. That, during the further development of the revolution, the petty-bourgeois democracy will for a moment obtain predominating influence in Germany is not open to doubt. The question, therefore, arises as to what the attitude of the proletariat and in particular of the League ' will be in relation to it:
1. During the continuance of the present conditions where the petty-bourgeois democrats are likewise oppressed;
2. In the next revolutionary struggle, which will give them the upper hand;
3. After this struggle, during the period of preponderance over the overthrown classes and the proletariat.
1. At the present moment, when the democratic petty bourgeois are everywhere oppressed, they preach in general unity and reconciliation to the proletariat, they offer it their hand and strive for the establishment of a large opposition party which will embrace all shades of opinion in the democratic party, that is, they strive to entangle the workers in a party organisation in which general social-democratic phrases predominate, behind which their special interests are concealed and in which the particular demands of the proletariat may not be brought forward for the sake of beloved peace. Such a union would turn out solely to their
81advantage and altogether to the disadvantage of the proletariat. The proletariat would lose its whole independent, laboriously achieved position and once more sink down to being an appendage of official bourgeois democracy. This union must, therefore, be most decisively rejected. Instead of once again stooping to serve as the applauding chorus of the bourgeois democrats, the workers, and above all the League, must exert themselves to establish an independent, secret and public organisation of the workers' party alongside of the official democrats and make each section the central point and nucleus of workers' societies in which the attitude and interests of the proletariat will be discussed independently of bourgeois influences. How far the bourgeois democrats are from seriously considering an alliance in which the proletarians would stand side by side with them with equal power and equal rights is shown, for example, by the Breslau democrats who, in their organ, the Neue Oder-Zeitung, most furiously attack the independently organised workers, whom they style Socialists. In the case of a struggle against a common adversary no special union is required. As soon as such an adversary has to be fought directly, the interests of both parties, for the moment, coincide, and, as previously, so also in the future, this connection, calculated to last only for the moment, will arise of itself. It is self-evident that in the impending bloody conflicts, as in all earlier ones, it is the workers who, in the main, will have to win the victory by their courage, determination and self-sacrifice. As previously, so also in this struggle, the mass of the petty bourgeois will as long as possible remain hesitant, undecided and inactive, and then, as soon as the issue has been decided, will seize the victory for themselves, will call upon the workers to maintain tranquillity and return to their work, will guard against so-called excesses and bar the proletariat from the fruits of victory. It is not in the power of the workers to prevent the petty-bourgeois democrats from doing this, but it is in their power to make it difficult for them to gain the upper hand as against the armed proletariat, and to dictate such conditions to them that the rule of the bourgeois democrats will from the outset bear within it the seeds of their downfall, and that their subsequent extrusion by the rule of the proletariat will be considerably facilitated. Above all things, the workers must counteract, as much as is at all possible, during the conflict and immediately after the struggle, the bourgeois endeavours to allay the storm, and must compel the democrats to carry out their present terrorist phrases. Their actions must be so aimed as to prevent the direct revolutionary
82excitement from being suppressed again immediately after the victory. On the contrary, they must keep it alive as long as possible. Far from opposing so-called excesses, instances of popular revenge against hated individuals or public buildings that are associated only with hateful recollections, such instances must not only be tolerated but the leadership of them taken in hand. During the struggle and after the struggle, the workers must, at every opportunity, put forward their own demands alongside of the demands of the bourgeois democrats. They must demand guarantees for the workers as soon as the democratic bourgeois set about taking over the government. If necessary they must obtain these guarantees by force and in general they must see to it that the new rulers pledge themselves to all possible concessions and promises---the surest way to compromise them. In general, they must in every way restrain as far as possible the intoxication of victory and the enthusiasm for the new state of things, which make their appearance after every victorious street battle, by a calm and dispassionate estimate of the situation and by unconcealed mistrust in the new government. Alongside of the new official governments they must establish simultaneously their own revolutionary workers' governments, whether in the form of municipal committees and municipal councils or in the form of workers' clubs or workers' committees, so that the bourgeoisdemocratic governments not only immediately lose the support of the workers but from the outset see themselves supervised and threatened by authorities which are backed by the whole mass of the workers. In a word, from the first moment of victory, mistrust must be directed no longer against the conquered reactionary party, but against the workers' previous allies, against the party that wishes to exploit the common victory for itself alone.
2. But in order to be able energetically and threateningly to oppose this party, whose treachery to the workers will begin from the first 'hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organised. The arming of the whole proletariat with rifles, muskets, cannon and munitions must be put through at once, the revival of the old Citizens' Guard directed against the workers must be resisted. However, where the latter is not feasible the workers must attempt to organise themselves independently as a proletarian guard with commanders elected by themselves and with a general staff of their own choosing, and to put themselves at the command not of' the state authority but of the revolutionary community councils which the workers will have managed to get adopted. Where workers are
83employed at the expense of the state they must see that they are armed and organised in separate corps with commanders of their own choosing or as part of the proletarian guard. Arms and ammunition must not be surrendered on any pretext; any attempt at disarming must be frustrated, if necessary by force. Destruction of the influence of the bourgeois democrats upon the workers, immediate independent and armed organisation of the workers and the enforcement of conditions as difficult and compromising as possible upon the inevitable momentary rule of the bourgeois democracy---these are the main points which the proletariat and hence the League must keep in view during and after the impending insurrection.
3. As soon as the new governments have consolidated their positions to some extent, their struggle against the workers will begin. Here, in order to be able to offer energetic opposition to the democratic petty bourgeois, it is above all necessary that the workers shall be independently organised and centralised in clubs. After the overthrow of the existing governments, the Central Committee will, as soon as it is at all possible, betake itself to Germany, immediately convene a congress and put before the latter the necessary proposals for the centralisation of the workers' clubs under a leadership established in the chief seat of the movement. The speedy organisation of at least a provincial interlinking of the workers' clubs is one of the most important points for the strengthening and development of the workers' party; the immediate consequence of the overthrow of the existing governments will be the election of a national representative assembly. Here the proletariat must see to it:
I. That no groups of workers are barred on any pretext or by any kind of trickery on the part of local authorities or government commissioners.
II. That everywhere workers' candidates are put up alongside of the bourgeois-democratic candidates, that they should consist as far as possible of members of the League, and that their election is promoted by all possible means. Even where there is no prospect whatsoever of their being elected, the workers must put up their own candidates in order to preserve their independence, to count their forces and to bring before the public their revolutionary attitude and party standpoint. In this connection they must not allow themselves to be seduced by such arguments of the democrats as, for example, that by so doing they are splitting the democratic party and making it possible for the reactionaries to
84win. The ultimate intention of all such phrases is to dupe the proletariat. The advance which the proletarian party is bound to make by such independent action is infinitely more important than the disadvantage that might be incurred by the presence of a few reactionaries on the representative body. If the democracy from the outset comes out resolutely and terroristically against the reaction, the influence of the latter in the elections will be destroyed in advance.
The first point on which the bourgeois democrats will come into conflict with the workers will be the abolition of feudalism. As in the first French Revolution, the petty bourgeois will give the feudal lands to the peasants as free property, that is to say, try to leave the rural proletariat in existence and form a petty-bourgeois peasant class which will go through the same cycle of impoverishment and indebtedness which the French peasant is now still going through.
The workers must oppose this plan in the interest of the rural proletariat and in their own interest. They must demand that the confiscated feudal property remain state property and be converted into workers' colonies cultivated by the associated rural proletariat with all the advantages of large-scale agriculture, through which the principle of common property immediately obtains a firm basis in the midst of the tottering bourgeois property relations. Just as the democrats combine with the peasants so much the workers combine with the rural proletariat. Further, the democrats will work either directly for a federative republic or, if they cannot avoid a single and indivisible republic, they will at least attempt to cripple the central government by the utmost possible autonomy and independence for the communities and provinces. The workers, in opposition to this plan, must not only strive for a single and indivisible German republic, but also within this republic for the most determined centralisation of power in the hands of the state authority. They must not allow themselves to be misguided by the democratic talk of freedom for the communities, of selfgovernment, etc. In a country like Germany where there are still so many relics of the Middle Ages to be abolished, where there is so much local and provincial obstinacy to be broken, it must under no circumstances be permitted that every village, every town and every province should put a new obstacle in the path of revolutionary activity, which can proceed with full force only from the centre. It is not to be tolerated that the present state of affairs should be renewed, that Germans must fight separately in every town and in
85every province for one and the same advance. Least of all is it to be tolerated that a form of property, namely, communal property, which still lags behind modern private property and which everywhere is necessarily passing into the latter, together with the quarrels resulting from it between poor and rich communities, as well as communal civil law, with its trickery against the workers, that exists alongside of state civil law, should be perpetuated by a so-called free communal constitution. As in France in 1793 so today in Germany it is the task of the really revolutionary party to carry through the strictest centralisation.*
We have seen how the democrats will come to power with the next movement, how they will be compelled to propose more or less socialistic measures. It will be asked what measures the workers ought to propose in reply. At the beginning of the movement, of course, the workers cannot yet propose any directly communistic measures. But they can:
1. Compel the democrats to interfere in as many spheres as possible of the hitherto existing social order, to disturb its regular course and to compromise themselves as well as to concentrate the utmost possible productive forces, means of transport, factories, railways, etc., in the hands of the state;
2. They must drive the proposals of the democrats, who in any case will not act in a revolutionary but in a merely reformist manner, to the extreme and transform them into direct attacks upon private property; thus, for example, if the petty bourgeois
propose purchase of the railways and factories, the workers must demand that these railways and factories shall be simply confiscated by the state without compensation as being the property of reactionaries. If the democrats propose proportional taxes, the workers must demand progressive taxes; if the democrats themselves put forward a moderately progressive tax, the workers must insist on a tax with rates that rise so steeply that big capital will be ruined by it; if the democrats demand the regulation of state debts, the workers must demand state bankruptcy. Thus, the demands of the workers must everywhere be governed by the concessions and measures of the democrats.
If the German workers are not able to attain power and achieve their own class interests without completely going through a lengthy revolutionary development, they at least know for a certainty this time that the first act of this approaching revolutionary drama will coincide with the direct victory of their own class in France and will be very much accelerated by it.
But they themselves must do the utmost for their final victory by clarifying their minds as to what their class interests are, by taking up their position as an independent party as soon as possible and by not allowing themselves to be seduced for a single moment by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeois into refraining from the independent organisation of the party of the proletariat. Their battle cry must be: The Revolution in Permanence.
* It must be recalled today that this passage is based on a misunderstanding. At that time---thanks to the Bonapartist and liberal falsifiers of history---it was considered as established that the French centralised machine of administration had been introduced by the Great Revolution and in particular that it had been operated by the Convention as an indispensable and decisive weapon for defeating the royalist and federalist reaction and the external enemy. It is now), however, a well-known fact that throughout the whole revolution up the eighteenth Brumaire the whole administration of the departments, arrondissements and communes consisted of authorities elected by the respective constituents themselves, and that these authorities acted with complete freedom within the general state laws; that precisely this provincial and local self-government, similar to the American, became the most powerful lever of the revolution and indeed to such an extent that Napoleon, immediately after his coup d'etat of the eighteenth Brumaire, hastened to replace it by an administration by prefects, which still exists and which, therefore, was a pure instrument of reaction from the beginning. But just as little as local and provincial self-government is in contradiction to political, national centralisation, so is it to an equally small extent necessarily bound up with that narrow-minded, cantonal or communal self-seeking which strikes us as so repulsive in Switzerland, and which all the South German federal republicans wanted to make the rule hi Germany in 1849. [Note byEngds to the 1885 edition.}
86London, March 1850
Marx and Engels, Selected Works in'3 vols., Vol. 1, Moscow, 1976, pp. 175-85
__ALPHA_LVL1__ KARL MARXIn an article which appeared in your newspaper on June 22 of this year you rebuke me for advocating the domination and dictatorship of the working class, while you, on the contrary, urge the general abolition of class differences. I do not understand this amendment.
You knew very well that the Manifesto of the Communist Party (published before the February revolution of 1848), p. 16 reads: "If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions.have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class''.
You know that, in opposing Proudhon, I advocated this very same view in the Misere de la philosophic prior to February 1848.
Finally, the article which you criticise (p. 32, No. 3 of the Neue RheinischeZeitung) itself states: "This socialism (i.e. communism) is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionising of all the ideas that result from these social relations".^^15^^
__ALPHA_LVL1__ FREDERICK ENGELSIn revolution, as in war, it is always necessary to show a strong front, and he who attacks is in the advantage; ... in revolution, as in war, it is of the highest necessity to stake everything on the decisive moment, whatever the odds may be. There is not a single successful revolution in history that does not prove the truth of these axioms.
Insurrection is an art quite as much as war or any other, and subject to certain rules of proceeding, which, when neglected, will produce the ruin of the party neglecting them. Those rules, logical deductions from the nature of the parties and the circumstances one has to deal with in such a case, are so plain and simple that the short experience of 1848 had made the Germans pretty well acquainted with them. Firstly, never play with insurrection unless you are fully prepared to face the consequences of your play. Insurrection is a calculus with very indefinite magnitudes, the value of which may change every day; the forces opposed to you have all the advantage of organisation, discipline and habitual authority; unless you bring strong odds against them, you are defeated and ruined. Secondly, the insurrectionary career once entered upon, act with the greatest determination, and on the offensive. The defensive is the death of every armed rising; it is lost before it measures itself with its enemies. Surprise your antagonists while their forces are scattering, prepare new successes, however small but daily; keep up the moral ascendant which the first successful rising has given to you; rally thus those vacillating elements to your side which always follow the strongest impulse, and which always
89Written in June 1850
K. Marx
Marx/Engels, Werke, Bd. 7, S. 323
a) English translation ©Progress Publishers 1978
look out for the safer side; force your enemies to a retreat before they can collect their strength against you; in the words of Danton, the greatest master of revolutionary policy yet known: de I'audace, de I'audace, encore de I'audacel
__ALPHA_LVL1__ KARL MARXWritten in August 1851- September 1852
Marx and Engels, Selected Works in 3 vols., Vol. 1, Moscow, 1976, pp. 361, 377
Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Caussidiere for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the Nephew for the Uncle. And the same caricature occurs in the circumstances attending the second edition of the eighteenth Brumaire!^^16^^
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionising themselves and things, in creating something that has never yet existed, precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them names, battle cries and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-honoured disguise and this borrowed language. Thus Luther donned the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789 to 1814 draped itself alternately as the Roman republic and the Roman empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 17.93 to 1795. In like manner a beginner who has learnt a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he has assimilated the spirit of the new language and can freely express himself in it only when he finds his way in it without recalling the old and forgets his native tongue in the use of the new.
91Consideration of this conjuring up of the dead of world history reveals at once a salient difference. Camille Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre, Saint-Just, Napoleon, the heroes as well as the parties and the masses of the old French Revolution, performed the task of their time in Roman costume and with Roman phrases, the task of unchaining and setting up modern bourgeois society. The first ones knocked the feudal basis to pieces and mowed off the feudal heads which had growji on it. The other created inside France the conditions under wvhich alone free corripetition could be developed, parcelled landed property exploited and the unchained industrial productive power of the nation employed; and beyond the French borders he everywhere swept the feudal institutions away, so far as was necessary to furnish bourgeois society in France with a suitable up-to-date environment on the European Continent. The new social formation once established, the antediluvian Colossi disappeared and with them resurrected Romanity---the Brutuses, Gracchi, Publicolas, the tribunes, the senators, and Caesar himself. Bourgeois society in its sober reality had begotten its true interpreters and mouthpieces in the Says, Cousins, Royer-Collards, Benjamin Constants and Guizots; its real military leaders sat behind the office desks, and the hogheaded Louis XVIII was its political chief. Wholly absorbed in the production of wealth and in peaceful competitive struggle, it no longer comprehended that ghosts from the days of Rome had watched over its cradle. But unheroic as bourgeois society is, it nevertheless took heroism, sacrifice, terror, civil war and battles of peoples to bring it into being. And in the classically austere traditions of the Roman republic its gladiators found the ideals and the art forms, the selfdeceptions that they needed in order to conceal from themselves the bourgeois limitations of the content of their struggles and to keep their enthusiasm on the high plane of the great historical tragedy. Similarly, at another stage of development, a century earlier, Cromwell and the English people had borrowed speech, passions and illusions from the Old Testament for their bourgeois revolution. When the real aim had been achieved, when the bourgeois transformation of English society had been accomplished, Locke supplanted Habakkuk.
Thus the awakening of the dead in those revolutions served the purpose of glorifying the new struggles, not of parodying the old; of magnifying the given task in imagination, not of fleeing from its solution in reality; of finding once more the spirit of revolution, not of making its ghost walk about again.
From 1848 to 1851 only the ghost of the old revolution walked about, from Marrast, the republicain en gants jaunes,* who disguised himself as the old Bailly, down to the adventurer, who hides his commonplace repulsive features under the iron death mask of Napoleon. An entire people, which had imagined that by means of a revolution it had imparted to itself an accelerated power of motion, suddenly finds itself set back into a defunct epoch and, in order that no doubt as to the relapse may be possible, the old dates arise again, the old chronology, the old names, the old edicts, which had long become a subject of antiquarian erudition, and the old minions of the law, who had seemed long decayed. The nation feels like that mad Englishman in Bedlam who fancies that he lives in the times of the ancient Pharaohs and daily bemoans the hard labour that he must perform in the Ethiopian mines as a gold digger, immured in this subterranean prison, a dimly burning lamp fastened to his head, the overseer of the slaves behind him with a long whip, and at the exits a confused welter of barbarian mercenaries, who understand neither the forced labourers in the mines nor one another, since they speak no common language. "And all this is expected of me," sighs the mad Englishman, "of me, a freeborn Briton, in order to make gold for the old Pharaohs." "In order to pay the debts of the Bonaparte family," sighs the French nation. The Englishman, so long as he was in his right mind could not get rid of the fixed idea of making gold. The French, so long as they were engaged in revolution, could not get rid of the memory of Napoleon, as the election of December 10^^17^^ proved. They hankered to return from the perils of revolution to the fleshpots of Egypt, and December 2, 1851 was the answer. They have not only a caricature of the old Napoleon, they have the old Napoleon himself, caricatured as he must appear in the middle of the nineteenth century.
The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped off all superstition in regard to the past. Earlier revolutions required recollections of past world history in order to drug themselves concerning their own content. In order to arrive at its own content, the revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead. There the phrase went beyond the content; here the content goes beyond the phrase.
The February Revolution was a surprise attack, a taking of the old society unawares, and the people proclaimed this unexpected
a Republican in yellow gloves.---Ed.
92 93stroke as a deed of world importance, ushering in a new epoch. On December 2 the February Revolution is conjured away by a cardsharper's trick, and what seems overthrown is no longer the monarchy but the liberal concessions that were wrung from it by centuries of struggle. Instead of society having conquered a new content for itself, it seems that the state only returned to its oldest form, to the shamelessly simple domination of the sabre and the cowl. This is the answer to the coup de main of February 1848, given by the coup de tete of December 1851. Easy come, easy go. Meanwhile the interval of time has not passed by "unused. During the years 1848 to 1851 French society has made up, and that by an abbreviated because revolutionary method, for the studies and experiences which, in a regular, so to speak, textbook course of development, would have had to precede the February Revolution, if it was to be more than a ruffling of the surface. Society now seems to have fallen back behind its point of departure; it has in truth first to create for itself the revolutionary point of departure, the situation, the relations, the conditions under which alone modern revolution becomes serious.
Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth century, storm swiftly from success to success; their dramatic effects outdo each other; men and things seem set in sparkling brilliants; ecstasy is the everyday spirit; but they are short-lived; soon they have attained their zenith, and a long crapulent depression lays hold of society before it learns soberly to assimilate the results of its stormand-stress period. On the other hand, proletarian revolutions, like those of the nineteenth century, criticise themselves constantly, interrupt themselves continually in their own course, come back to the apparently accomplished in order to begin it afresh, deride with unmerciful thoroughness the inadequacies, weaknesses and paltrinesses of their first attempts, seem to throw down their adversary only in order that he may draw new strength from the earth and rise again, more gigantic, before them, recoil ever and anon from the indefinite prodigiousness of their own aims, until a situation has been created which makes all turning back impossible, and the conditions themselves cry out:
Hie Rhodus, hie salta!
Here is the rose, here dance!^^18^^
For the rest, every fairly competent observer, even if he had not followed the course of French development step by step, must have had a presentiment that an unheard-of fiasco was in store for the revolution. It was enough to hear the self-complacent howl of
94victory with which Messieurs the Democrats congratulated each other on the expected gracious consequences of the second Sunday in May 1852.^^19^^ In their minds the second Sunday in May 1852 had become a fixed idea, a dogma, like the day on which Christ should reappear and the millennium begin, in the minds of the Chiliasts. As ever, weakness had taken refuge in a belief in miracles, fancied the enemy overcome when he was only conjured away in imagination, and it lost all understanding of the present in a passive glorification of the future that was in store for it and of the deeds it had in petto but which it merely did not want to carry out as yet. Those heroes who seek to disprove their demonstrated incapacity by mutually offering each other their sympathy and getting together in a crowd had tied up their bundles, collected their laurel wreaths in advance and were just then engaged in discounting on the exchange market the republics in partibus^^3^^' for which they had already providently organised the government personnel with all the calm of their unassuming disposition. December 2 struck them like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, and the peoples that in periods of pusillanimous depression gladly let their inward apprehension be drowned out by the loudest bawlers will perchance have convinced themselves that the times are past when the cackle of geese could save the Capitol.
The Constitution, the National Assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue and the red republicans, the heroes of Africa, the thunder from the platform, the sheet lightning of the daily press, the entire literature, the political names and the intellectual reputations, the civil law and the penal code, the liberte, egalite, fraternite and the second Sunday in May 1852---all has vanished like a phantasmagoria before the spell of a man whom even his enemies do not make out to be a magician. Universal suffrage seems to have survived only for a moment, in order that with its own hand it may make its last will and testament before the eyes of all the world and declare in the name of the people itself: All that exists deserves to perish.^^20^^
It is not enough to say, as the French do, that then- nation was taken unawares. A nation and a woman are not forgiven the unguarded hour in which the first adventurer that came along
a In partibus infidelium (literally, in the country of the infidels)----an addition to the title of Catholic bishops appointed to a purely nominal dioceses in non-Christian countries. This expression is frequently used in Marx's and Engels' writings to describe emigre governments formed abroad ignoring the real situation in a country.---Ed.
95could violate them. The riddle is not solved by such turns of speech, but merely formulated differently. It remains to be explained how a nation of thirty-six millions can be surprised and delivered unresisting into captivity by three swindlers.
Let us recapitulate in general outline the phases that the French Revolution went through from February 24, 1848, to December 1851.
Three main periods are unmistakable: the February period; May 4, 1848, to May 28, 1849: the period of the constitution of the republic, otofthe Constituent National Assembly; May 28, 1849, to December 2,1851: the period of the constitutional republic or of the Legislative National Assembly.
The first period, from February 24, or the overthrow of Louis Philippe, to May 4,1848, the meeting of the Constituent Assembly, the February period proper, may be described as the prologue to the revolution. Its character was officially expressed in the fact that the government improvised by it itself declared that it was provisional and, like the government, everything that was mooted, attempted or enunciated during this period proclaimed itself to be only provisional. Nothing and nobody ventured to lay claim to the right of existence and of real action. All the elements that had prepared or determined the revolution, the dynastic opposition, the republican bourgeoisie, the democratic-republican petty bourgeoisie and the social-democratic workers, provisionally found their place in the February government.
It could not be otherwise. The February days originally intended
an electoral reform, by which the circle of the politically privileged
among the possessing class itself was to be widened and the
exclusive domination of the aristocracy of finance- overthrown.
When it came to the actual conflict, however, when the people
mounted the barricades, the National Guard maintained a passive
attitude, the army offered no serious resistance and the monarchy
ran away, the republic appeared to be a matter of course. Every
party construed it in its own way. Having secured it arms in hand,
the proletariat impressed its stamp upon it and proclaimed it to be
a social republic. There was thus indicated the general content of
the modern revolution, a content which was in most singular
contradiction to everything that, with the material available, with
the degree of education attained by the masses, under the given
circumstances and relations, could be immediately realised in
practice. On the other hand, the claims of all the remaining
elements that had collaborated in the February Revolution were
96recognised by the lion's share that they obtained in the government. In no period do we, therefore, find a more confused mixture of high-flown phrases and* actual uncertainty and clumsiness, of more enthusiastic striving for innovation and more deeply-rooted domination of the old routine, of more apparent harmony of the whole of society and more profound estrangement of its elements. While the Paris proletariat still revelled in the vision of the wide prospects thajt had opened before it and indulged in seriously-meant discussions on social problems, the old powers of society had grouped themselves, assembled, reflected and found unexpected support in the mass of the nation, the peasants and petty-bourgeois, who all at once stormed on to the political stage, after the barriers of the July monarchy had fallen.
The second period, from May 4, 1848, to the end of May 1849, is the period of the constitution, the foundation, of the bourgeois republic. Directly after the February days not only had the dynastic opposition been surprised by the republicans and the republicans by the Socialists, but all France by Paris. The National Assembly, which met on May 4, 1848, had emerged from the national elections and represented the nation. It was a living protest against the pretensions of the February days and was to reduce the results of the revolution to the bourgeois scale. In vain the Paris proletariat, which immediately grasped the character of this National Assembly, attempted on May 15, a few days after it met, forcibly to negate its existence, to dissolve it, to disintegrate again into its constituent parts the organic form in which the proletariat was threatened by the reacting spirit of the nation. As is known, May 15 had no other result save that of removing Blanqui and his comrades, that is, the real leaders of the proletarian party, from the public stage for the entire duration of the cycle we are considering.2i
,The bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe can be followed only by a bourgeois republic, that is to say, whereas a limited section of the bourgeoisie ruled in the name of the king, the whole of the bourgeoisie will now rule on behalf of the people. The demands of the Paris proletariat are Utopian nonsense, to which an end must be put. To this declaration of the Constituent National Assembly the Paris proletariat replied with the June Insurrection?^^2^^ the most colossal event in the history of European civil wars. The bourgeois republic triumphed. On its side stood the aristocracy of finance, the industrial bourgeoisie, the middle class, the petty bourgeois, the army, the lumpenproletariat organised as the Mobile Guard,
S44-477
97the intellectual lights, the clergy and the rural population. On the side of the Paris proletariat stood none but itself. More than three thousand insurgents were butchered after the victory, and fifteen thousand were transported without trial. With this defeat the proletariat passes into the background of the revolutionary stage. It attempts to press forward again on every occasion, as soon as the movement appears to make a fresh start, but with ever decreased expenditure of strength and always slighter results. As soon as one of the social strata situated above it gets into revolutionary ferment, the proletariat enters into an alliance with it and so shares all the defeats that the different parties suffer, one after another. But these subsequent blows become the weaker, the greater the surface of society over which they are distributed. The more important leaders, of the proletariat in the Assembly and in the press successively fall victims to the courts, and ever more equivocal figures come to head it. In part it throws itself into doctrinaire experiments, exchange banks and workers' associations, hence into a movement in which it renounces the revolutionising of the old world by means of the latter's own great, combined resources, and seeks, rather, to achieve its salvation behind society's back, in private fashion, within its limited conditions of existence, and hence necessarily suffers shipwreck. It seems to be unable either to rediscover revolutionary greatness in itself or to win new energy from the connections newly entered into, until all classes with which it contended hi June themselves lie prostrate beside it. But at least it succumbs with the honours of the great, world-historic struggle; not only France, but all Europe trembles at the June earthquake, while the ensuing defeats of the upper classes are so cheaply bought that they require barefaced exaggeration by the victorious party to be able to pass for events at all, and become the more ignominious the further the defeated party is removed from the proletarian party.
The defeat of the June insurgents, to be sure, had now prepared, had levelled the ground on which the bourgeois republic could be founded and built up, but it had shown at the same time that in Europe the questions at issue are other than that of "republic or monarchy". It had revealed that here bourgeois republic signifies the unlimited despotism of one class over other classes. It had proved that in countries with an old civilisation, with a developed formation of classes, with modern conditions of production and with an intellectual consciousness in which all traditional ideas have been dissolved by the work of centuries, the republic signifies
98in general only the political form of revolution of bourgeois society and not its conservative form of life, as, for example, in the United States of North America, where, though classes already exist, they have not yet become fixed, but continually change and interchange their elements in constant flux, where the modern means of production, instead of coinciding with a stagnant surplus population, rather compensate for the relative deficiency of heads and hands, and where, finally, the feverish, youthful movement of material production, which has to make a new world its own, has left neither time nor opportunity for abolishing the old spirit
world.
During the June days all classes and parties had united in the Party of Order against the proletarian class as the party of Anarchy, of socialism, of communism. They had ``saved'' society from "the enemies of society". They had given out the watchwords of the old society, "property, family, religion, order", to their army as passwords and had proclaimed to the counter-revolutionary crusaders: "By this sign thou shalt conquer!" From that moment, as soon as one of the numerous parties which had gathered under this sign against the June insurgents seeks to hold the revolutionary battlefield in its own class interest, it goes down before the cry: "Property, family, religion, order". Society is saved just as often as the circle of its rulers contracts, as a more exclusive interest is maintained against a wider one. Every demand of the simplest bourgeois financial reform, of the most ordinary liberalism, of the most formal republicanism, of the most shallow democracy, is simultaneously castigated as an "attempt on society" and stigmatised as ``socialism''. And, finally, the high priests of "the religion of order" themselves are driven with kicks from their Pythian tripods, hauled out of their beds in the darkness of night, put in prison-vans, thrown into dungeons or sent into exile; their temple is razed to the ground, their mouths are sealed, their pens broken, their law torn to pieces in the name of religion, of property, of the family, of order. Bourgeois fanatics for order are shot down on their balconies by mobs of drunken soldiers, their domestic sanctuaries profaned, their houses bombarded for amusement--- hi the name of property, of the family, of religion and of order. Finally, the scum of bourgeois society forms the holy phalanx of order and the hero Crapulinski?3 installs himself in the Tuileries as the "saviour of society"....
On the threshold of the February Revolution, the social republic appeared as a phrase, as a prophecy. In the June days of 1848, it
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