August 14, 2025 • 27 mins
2. Proletarians and Communists. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto was conceived as an outline of the basic beliefs of the Communist movement. The authors believed that the European Powers were universally afraid of the nascent movement, and were condemning as "communist," people or activities that did not actually conform to what the Communists believed. This Manifesto, then, became a manual for their beliefs. In it we find Marx and Engel's rehearsal of the idea that Capital has stolen away the work of the artisan and peasant by building up factories to produce goods cheaply. The efficiency of Capital depends, then, on the wage laborers who staff the factories and how little they will accept in order to have work. This concentrates power and money in a Bourgeois class that profits from the disunity of workers (Proletarians), who only receive a subsistence wage. If workers unite in a class struggle against the bourgeois, using riot and strikes as weapons, they will eventually overthrow the bourgeois and replace them as a ruling class. Communists further believe in and lay out a system of reforms to transform into a classless, stateless society, thus distinguishing themselves from various flavors of Socialism, which would be content to have workers remain the ruling class after the revolution. The Manifesto caused a huge amount of discussion for its support for a forcible overthrow of the existing politics and society.
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto was conceived as an outline of the basic beliefs of the Communist movement. The authors believed that the European Powers were universally afraid of the nascent movement, and were condemning as "communist," people or activities that did not actually conform to what the Communists believed. This Manifesto, then, became a manual for their beliefs. In it we find Marx and Engel's rehearsal of the idea that Capital has stolen away the work of the artisan and peasant by building up factories to produce goods cheaply. The efficiency of Capital depends, then, on the wage laborers who staff the factories and how little they will accept in order to have work. This concentrates power and money in a Bourgeois class that profits from the disunity of workers (Proletarians), who only receive a subsistence wage. If workers unite in a class struggle against the bourgeois, using riot and strikes as weapons, they will eventually overthrow the bourgeois and replace them as a ruling class. Communists further believe in and lay out a system of reforms to transform into a classless, stateless society, thus distinguishing themselves from various flavors of Socialism, which would be content to have workers remain the ruling class after the revolution. The Manifesto caused a huge amount of discussion for its support for a forcible overthrow of the existing politics and society.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by John Ingram. The Manifesto
(00:21):
of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Section two Proletarians and Communists. In what relation do the
Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The Communists
(00:43):
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 secretarian principles of their own by which
to sh shape and mold the proletarian movement. The Communists
(01:04):
are distinguished from the other working class parties by this only. First,
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. Second,
(01:27):
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 one hand,
practically the most advanced and resolute section of the working
(01:50):
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
(02:11):
general results of the proletarian movement. The immediate aim of
the communist 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
(02:31):
the proletariat. The theoretical conclusions of the communists are in
no way based on our 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
(02:56):
going on under our very eyes. 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.
(03:19):
The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favor
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
(03:44):
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
(04:05):
with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring
property as the fruit of a man's own labor, which
property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom,
activity and independence. Hard one self acquired, self earned property?
(04:27):
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 labor
(04:53):
create any property for the laborer? Not a bit It
creates capital i e. That kind of property which exploits
wage labor, and which cannot increase except upon condition of
begetting a new supply of wage labor for fresh exploitation.
(05:13):
Property in its present form is based on the antagonism
of capital and wage labor. 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
(05:38):
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. When therefore capital is
converted into common property, into the property of all members
(06:02):
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 labor. The average price of wage labor is
(06:22):
the minimum wage i e. That quantum of the means
of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite in bare existence as
a laborer. What therefore the wage laborer appropriates by means
of his labor merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a
(06:44):
bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this
personal appropriation of the products of labor, 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
(07:05):
is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the
laborer 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,
(07:29):
accumulated labor is but a means to widen, to enrich,
to promote the existence of the laborer. In bourgeois society, therefore,
the past dominates the present. In communist society, the present
dominates the past. In bourgeois society, capital is independent and
(07:53):
has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has
no individual uality. 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,
(08:15):
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
(08:38):
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 compared to the communistic abolition of buying and selling,
(09:01):
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 done away with for nine tenths of the population.
Its existence for the few is solely due to its
(09:24):
non existence in the hands of those nine tenths. 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
(09:45):
to do away with your property, precisely so that is
just what we intend from the moment when labor can
no longer be converted into capital money, or into a
social power capable of being monopolized, i e. From the
(10:06):
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
(10:28):
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
(10:49):
subjugate the labor 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
(11:11):
its members who work acquire nothing, and those who acquire
anything do not work. The whole of this objection was
but another expression of the tautology that there can no
longer be any wage labor when there is no longer
any capital. All objections urged against the communistic mode of
(11:35):
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
(11:57):
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,
(12:21):
so long as you apply to our intended abolition of
bourgeois property the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law,
et cetera. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of
the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just
(12:42):
as your jurisprudence is but the will of your 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
(13:02):
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 rule and class that has preceded you. What you
(13:25):
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.
(13:47):
On what foundation is the present family? The bourgeois family
based on capital, on private gain. In its completely developed
this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state
of things finds its complement in the practical absence of
(14:09):
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
(14:32):
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,
(14:57):
et cetera. The communists have not what invented the intervention
of society in education. They do but seek to alter
the character of that intervention and to rescue education from
the influence of the ruling class. The bourgeois clap trap
about the family and education, about the hallowed correlation of
(15:19):
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 the instruments of labour. But
e communists, with introduced community of women, screams the whole
(15:43):
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 common, and naturally can
come to no other conclusion than that the lot of
being common to all will likewise fall to the women.
(16:07):
He has not even a suspicion that the real point
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
(16:28):
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
(16:52):
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
(17:13):
and openly legalized 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 approached with
(17:41):
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
(18:01):
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 people are daily
more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie,
(18:23):
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 civilized countries,
at least is one of the first conditions for the
(18:44):
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
(19:06):
another will come to an end. The charges against communism
made from a religious, a philosophical, 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.
(19:28):
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
and proportion as material production is changed. The ruling ideas
(19:51):
of each age have ever been the ideas of its
ruling class. When people speak of ideas that revolutionize 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
(20:14):
pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.
When the ancient world was in its last froze, the
ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed
in the eighteenth century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought
(20:34):
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
(20:58):
have been modified in the course of hisay historical development.
But religion morality, philosophy, political science, and law constantly survived
this change. There are besides eternal truths such as freedom, justice,
et cetera, that are common to all states of society.
(21:19):
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
(21:42):
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
(22:02):
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
(22:23):
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. But let us
have done with the bourgeois objections to communism. We have
(22:44):
seen above that the first step in the revolution by
the working class is to raise the proletariat to the
position of ruling. As to win the battle of democracy,
the proletariat will use its political supremacy to rest by
degrees all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments
(23:07):
of production in the hands of the state, i e.
Of the proletariat organized 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
(23:29):
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
(23:50):
a means of entirely revolutionizing 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. Number One, abolition of property in land and
(24:12):
application of all rents of land to public purposes. Number two,
a heavy progressive or gradated income tax. Number three. Abolition
of all right of inheritance. Number four. Confiscation of the
(24:34):
property of all emigrants and rebels. Number five. Centralization of
credit in the hands of the state by means of
a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
Number six. Centralization of the means of communication and transport
(24:57):
in the hands of the state. Number seven. 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. Number eight.
Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies,
(25:22):
especially for agriculture. Number nine. 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.
(25:43):
Number ten. Free education for all children in public schools.
Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form, combination
of education with industrial production, et cetera, et cetera. When
in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared and
(26:06):
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 organized power of one class for pressing another.
If the proletariat, drawing its contest with the bourgeoisie, is
(26:31):
compelled by the force of circumstances, to organize 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
(26:52):
existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will
thereby have abolished its own super embassy 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
(27:14):
free development of all. The end of Section two of
the Communist Manifesto
This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by John Ingram. The Manifesto
(00:21):
of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Section two Proletarians and Communists. In what relation do the
Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The Communists
(00:43):
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 secretarian principles of their own by which
to sh shape and mold the proletarian movement. The Communists
(01:04):
are distinguished from the other working class parties by this only. First,
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. Second,
(01:27):
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 one hand,
practically the most advanced and resolute section of the working
(01:50):
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
(02:11):
general results of the proletarian movement. The immediate aim of
the communist 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
(02:31):
the proletariat. The theoretical conclusions of the communists are in
no way based on our 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
(02:56):
going on under our very eyes. 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.
(03:19):
The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favor
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
(03:44):
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
(04:05):
with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring
property as the fruit of a man's own labor, which
property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom,
activity and independence. Hard one self acquired, self earned property?
(04:27):
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 labor
(04:53):
create any property for the laborer? Not a bit It
creates capital i e. That kind of property which exploits
wage labor, and which cannot increase except upon condition of
begetting a new supply of wage labor for fresh exploitation.
(05:13):
Property in its present form is based on the antagonism
of capital and wage labor. 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
(05:38):
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. When therefore capital is
converted into common property, into the property of all members
(06:02):
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 labor. The average price of wage labor is
(06:22):
the minimum wage i e. That quantum of the means
of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite in bare existence as
a laborer. What therefore the wage laborer appropriates by means
of his labor merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a
(06:44):
bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this
personal appropriation of the products of labor, 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
(07:05):
is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the
laborer 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,
(07:29):
accumulated labor is but a means to widen, to enrich,
to promote the existence of the laborer. In bourgeois society, therefore,
the past dominates the present. In communist society, the present
dominates the past. In bourgeois society, capital is independent and
(07:53):
has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has
no individual uality. 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,
(08:15):
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
(08:38):
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 compared to the communistic abolition of buying and selling,
(09:01):
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 done away with for nine tenths of the population.
Its existence for the few is solely due to its
(09:24):
non existence in the hands of those nine tenths. 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
(09:45):
to do away with your property, precisely so that is
just what we intend from the moment when labor can
no longer be converted into capital money, or into a
social power capable of being monopolized, i e. From the
(10:06):
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
(10:28):
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
(10:49):
subjugate the labor 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
(11:11):
its members who work acquire nothing, and those who acquire
anything do not work. The whole of this objection was
but another expression of the tautology that there can no
longer be any wage labor when there is no longer
any capital. All objections urged against the communistic mode of
(11:35):
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
(11:57):
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,
(12:21):
so long as you apply to our intended abolition of
bourgeois property the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law,
et cetera. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of
the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just
(12:42):
as your jurisprudence is but the will of your 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
(13:02):
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 rule and class that has preceded you. What you
(13:25):
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.
(13:47):
On what foundation is the present family? The bourgeois family
based on capital, on private gain. In its completely developed
this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state
of things finds its complement in the practical absence of
(14:09):
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
(14:32):
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,
(14:57):
et cetera. The communists have not what invented the intervention
of society in education. They do but seek to alter
the character of that intervention and to rescue education from
the influence of the ruling class. The bourgeois clap trap
about the family and education, about the hallowed correlation of
(15:19):
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 the instruments of labour. But
e communists, with introduced community of women, screams the whole
(15:43):
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 common, and naturally can
come to no other conclusion than that the lot of
being common to all will likewise fall to the women.
(16:07):
He has not even a suspicion that the real point
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
(16:28):
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
(16:52):
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
(17:13):
and openly legalized 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 approached with
(17:41):
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
(18:01):
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 people are daily
more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie,
(18:23):
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 civilized countries,
at least is one of the first conditions for the
(18:44):
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
(19:06):
another will come to an end. The charges against communism
made from a religious, a philosophical, 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.
(19:28):
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
and proportion as material production is changed. The ruling ideas
(19:51):
of each age have ever been the ideas of its
ruling class. When people speak of ideas that revolutionize 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
(20:14):
pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.
When the ancient world was in its last froze, the
ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed
in the eighteenth century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought
(20:34):
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
(20:58):
have been modified in the course of hisay historical development.
But religion morality, philosophy, political science, and law constantly survived
this change. There are besides eternal truths such as freedom, justice,
et cetera, that are common to all states of society.
(21:19):
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
(21:42):
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
(22:02):
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
(22:23):
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. But let us
have done with the bourgeois objections to communism. We have
(22:44):
seen above that the first step in the revolution by
the working class is to raise the proletariat to the
position of ruling. As to win the battle of democracy,
the proletariat will use its political supremacy to rest by
degrees all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments
(23:07):
of production in the hands of the state, i e.
Of the proletariat organized 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
(23:29):
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
(23:50):
a means of entirely revolutionizing 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. Number One, abolition of property in land and
(24:12):
application of all rents of land to public purposes. Number two,
a heavy progressive or gradated income tax. Number three. Abolition
of all right of inheritance. Number four. Confiscation of the
(24:34):
property of all emigrants and rebels. Number five. Centralization of
credit in the hands of the state by means of
a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
Number six. Centralization of the means of communication and transport
(24:57):
in the hands of the state. Number seven. 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. Number eight.
Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies,
(25:22):
especially for agriculture. Number nine. 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.
(25:43):
Number ten. Free education for all children in public schools.
Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form, combination
of education with industrial production, et cetera, et cetera. When
in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared and
(26:06):
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 organized power of one class for pressing another.
If the proletariat, drawing its contest with the bourgeoisie, is
(26:31):
compelled by the force of circumstances, to organize 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
(26:52):
existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will
thereby have abolished its own super embassy 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
(27:14):
free development of all. The end of Section two of
the Communist Manifesto
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