August 14, 2025 • 29 mins
3. Socialist and Communist Literature. 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 by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Read by Mark F. Smith. 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.. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Read by Mark F. Smith. 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 a 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
of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
(00:25):
Section three. Socialist and Communist literature one reactionary socialism a
feudal socialism. Owing to their historical position, it became the
vocation of the aristocracies of France and England to write
(00:47):
pamphlets against modern bourgeois society. In the French Revolution of
July eighteen thirty and in the English Reform agitation, these
aristocracies again succumbed to the hateful of start. Thenceforth, a
serious political contest was altogether out of the question. A
(01:07):
literary battle alone remained possible. But even in the domain
of literature, the old cries of the Restoration period had
become impossible. In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy were
obliged to lose sight, apparently of their own interests, and
to formulate their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interests
(01:30):
of the exploited working class alone. Thus the aristocracy took
their revenge by singing lampoons on their new master and
whispering in his ears sinister prophecies of coming a catastrophe.
In this way arose feudal socialism, half lamentation, half lampoon,
(01:51):
half echo of the past, half menace of the future,
at times by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking
the bourgeoisie to the very heart's core, but always ludicrous
in its effect. Through total incapacity to comprehend the march
of modern history, the aristocracy, in order to rally the
(02:15):
people to them, waived the proletarian alms bag in front
for a banner, but the people, so often as it
joined them, saw on their hind quarters the old feudal
coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.
One section of the French legitimists and Young England exhibited
(02:38):
this spectacle in pointing out that their mode of exploitation
was different to that of the bourgeoisie. The feudalists forget
that they exploited under circumstances and conditions that were quite
different and that are now antiquated. In showing that under
their rule, the modern proletariat never existed. They forget, forget
(03:00):
that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of their
own form of society. For the rest, so little do
they conceal the reactionary character of their criticism, that the
chief accusation against the bourgeoisie amounts to this, that under
the bourgeois regime a class is being developed which is
destined to cut up, root and branch the old order
(03:23):
of society. What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not
so much that it creates a proletariat, as that it
creates a revolutionary proletariat. In political practice. Therefore they join
in all coercive measures against the working class, and in
ordinary life, despite their high falutin phrases, they stoop to
(03:45):
pick up the golden apples dropped from the tree of industry,
and to barter truth, love and honor for traffic and wool, beetroot, sugar,
and potato spirits. As the parson has ever gone hand
in hand with the landlord, so has clerical socialism with
feudal socialism. Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism
(04:09):
a socialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property,
against marriage, against the state. Has it not preached in
the place of these charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification
of the flesh, monastic life and mother church. Christian socialism
(04:30):
is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates
the heart burnings of the aristocrat b petty bourgeois socialism.
The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was
ruined by the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions
of existence pined and perished in the atmosphere of modern
(04:52):
bourgeois society. The medieval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors
were the precursors of the modern b bourgeoisie. In those
countries which are but little developed industrially and commercially, these
two classes still vegetate side by side with the rising bourgeoisie.
In countries where modern civilization has become fully developed, a
(05:15):
new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between
proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a supplementary
part of bourgeois society. The individual members of this class, however,
are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the
action of competition, and as modern industry develops, they even
(05:40):
see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as
an independent section of modern society, to be replaced in manufactures,
agriculture and commerce by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen. In countries
like France, where the peasants constitute far more than half
(06:01):
of the population, it was natural that writers who sided
with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie should use in their
criticism of the bourgeois regime the standard of the peasant
and petty bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intermediate
classes should take up the cudgels for the working class.
(06:22):
Thus arose petty bourgeois socialism. Sismondi was the head of
this school, not only in France but also in England.
This school of socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions
in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the
hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved incontrovertibly the disastrous effects
(06:49):
of machinery and division of labor, the concentration of capital
and land in a few hands, over production of crises.
It pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois
and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production,
the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial
(07:11):
war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds,
of the old family relations of the old nationalities. In
its positive aims, however, this form of socialism aspires either
to restoring the old means production and of exchange, and
with them the old property relations and the old society,
(07:35):
or to cramping the modern means of production and of
exchange within the framework of the old property relations that
have been and were bound to be exploded by those means.
In either case, it is both reactionary and utopian. Its
last words are corporate guilds for manufacture, patriarchal relations in agriculture. Ultimately,
(08:02):
when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of
self deception, this form of socialism ended in a miserable
fit of the blues c German or true socialism. The
socialist and communist literature of France, a literature that originated
(08:26):
under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and that
was the expression of a struggle against this power was
introduced into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie in
that country had just begun its contest with feudal absolutism.
German philosophers would be philosophers, and beau Sprie eagerly seized
(08:48):
on this literature, only forgetting that when these writings immigrated
from France into Germany, French social conditions had not immigrated
along with them. In act with German social conditions, this
French literature lost all its immediate practical significance and assumed
a purely literary aspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of
(09:12):
the eighteenth century, the demands of the First French Revolution
were nothing more than the demand's practical reason in general,
and the utterance of the will of the revolutionary French
bourgeoisie signified in their eyes the law of pure will
of will, as it was bound to be of true
human will. Generally, the world of the German literate consisted
(09:37):
solely in bringing the new French ideas into harmony with
their ancient philosophical conscience, or rather in annexing the French
ideas without deserting their own philosophic point of view. This
annexation took place in the same way in which a
foreign language is appropriated, namely by translation. It is well
(10:01):
known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic saints
over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient
Heathendom had been written. The German literate reversed this process
with the profane French literature. They wrote their philosophical nonsense
beneath the French original. For instance, beneath the French criticism
(10:21):
of the economic functions of money they wrote alienation of humanity,
and beneath the French criticism of the bourgeois state they
wrote defronement of the category of the general, and so forth.
The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of
the French historical criticisms they dubbed philosophy of action, true socialism,
(10:43):
German science of socialism, philosophical foundation of socialism, and so on.
The French socialist and communist literature was thus completely emasculated,
and since it ceased in the hands of the German
to express the struggle of one class with the other,
he felt conscious of having overcome French one sidedness and
(11:05):
of representing not true requirements, but the requirements of truth,
not the interests of the proletariat, but the interests of
human nature of man in general. Who belongs to no class,
has no reality, who exists only in the misty realm
of philosophical fantasy. This German socialism, which took its schoolboy
(11:28):
tasks so seriously and solemnly and extolled its poor stock
in trade in such mantebank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its
pedantic innocence. The fight of the German and especially of
the Prussian bourgeoisie against feudal aristocracy and absolute monarchy. In
(11:49):
other words, the liberal movement became more earnest. By this,
the long wished for opportunity was offered to true socialism
of confronting the political movement with the socialist demands, of
hurling the traditional anaphemers against liberalism, against representative government, against
(12:10):
bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois
liberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that
they had nothing to gain and everything to lose. By
this bourgeois movement, German socialism forgot, in the nick of
time that the French criticism, whose silly echo it was
(12:33):
presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its corresponding
economic conditions of existence, and the political constitution adapted there too,
the very things whose attainment was the object of the
pending struggle in Germany. To the absolute governments, with their
following of parsons, professors, country squires and officials, it served
(12:56):
as a welcome scarecrow against the threatening bodieeoisie. It was
a sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings and
bullets with which those same governments just at that time
dosed the German working class risings. While this true socialism
thus served the governments as a weapon for fighting the
(13:17):
German bourgeoisie, it at the same time directly represented a
reactionary interest, the interest of the German philistines. In Germany,
the pitty bourgeois class, a relic of the sixteenth century
and since then constantly cropping up again under various forms,
is the real social basis of the existing state of things.
(13:40):
To preserve this class is to preserve the existing state
of things. In Germany. The industrial and political supremacy of
the bourgeoisie threatens it with certain destruction on the one hand,
from the concentration of capital, on the other, from the
rise of a revolutionary proletariat. Socialism appeared to kill these
(14:02):
two birds with one stone. It spread like an epidemic
the robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric,
steeped in the dew of sickly sentiment. This transcendental robe
in which the German socialists wrapped their sorry eternal troops
all skin and bone, served to wonderfully increase the sale
(14:24):
of their goods amongst such a public. And on its part,
German socialism recognized more and more its own calling as
the bombastic representative of the petty bourgeois philistine. It proclaimed
the German nation to be the model nation, and the
German petty philistine to be the typical man. To every
(14:46):
villainous meanness of this model man, it gave a hidden
higher socialistic interpretation the exact contrary of its real character.
It went to the extreme length of directly opposing the
brutally destructive tendency of communism and of proclaiming its supreme
and impartial contempt of all class struggles. With very few exceptions,
(15:11):
all the so called socialist and communist publications that now
eighteen forty seven circulating Germany belong to the domain of
this foul and enervating literature. Two. Conservative or bourgeois socialism,
a part of the bourgeoisie, is desirous of addressing social
(15:34):
grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.
To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the
condition of the working class, organizers of charity, members of
societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics,
(15:56):
whole and corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form
of socialism has moreover been worked out into complete systems.
We may cite prudence philosophy de la misire as an
example of this form. The socialistic bourgeois want all the
(16:16):
advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers
necessarily resulting therefrom They desire the existing state of society
minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a
bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world
(16:37):
in which it is supreme to be the best, and
bourgeois socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or
less complete systems in requiring the proletariat to carry out
such a system and thereby to march straight away into
the social new Jerusalem. It but requires in reality that
(16:58):
the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society,
but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.
A second and more practical, but less systematic form of
this socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the
eyes of the working class by showing that no mere
(17:20):
political reform, but only a change in the material conditions
of existence in economic relations, could be of any advantage
to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence,
this form of socialism, however, by no means, understands abolition
of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can
(17:42):
be affected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms based
on the continued existence of these relations, reforms therefore that
in no respect affect the relations between capital and labor,
but at best lessen the cost and simplify the administrative
(18:03):
work of bourgeois government. Bourgeois socialism attains adequate expression when
and only when it becomes a mere figure of speech.
Free trade for the benefit of the working class, protective
duties for the benefit of the working class, prison reform
(18:25):
for the benefit of the working class. This is the
last word, and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism.
It is summed up in the phrase the bourgeois is
a bourgeois for the benefit of the working class. Three
critical utopian socialism and communism. We do not here refer
(18:48):
to that literature which, in every great modern revolution has
always given a voice to the demands of the proletariat,
such as the writings of Babeuf and others. The first
direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends,
made in times of universal excitement when feudal society was
being overthrown. These attempts necessarily failed, owing to the then
(19:13):
undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to the
absence of the economic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that
had yet to be produced and could be produced by
the impending bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that accompanied
these first movements of the proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character.
(19:37):
It inculcated universal asceticism and social leveling in its crudest form.
The socialist and communist systems properly so called those of
Saint Simon, Fourier, Owen and others, spring into existence in
the early undeveloped period described above of the struggle between
(19:58):
proletariat and bourgeoisie see section one Bourgeois and Proletarians. The
founders of these systems see indeed the class antagonisms, as
well as the action of the decomposing elements in the
prevailing form of society. But the proletariat, as yet in
its infancy, offers to them the spectacle of a class
(20:21):
without any historical initiative or any independent political movement. Since
the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the
development of industry, the economic situation, as they find it,
does not as yet offer to them the material conditions
for the emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search after
(20:44):
a new social science, after new social laws that are
to create these conditions. Historical action is to yield to
their personal inventive action historically created conditions of emancipation, to
fantastic ones and the gradual, spontaneous class organization of the
proletariat to the organization of society specially contrived by these inventors.
(21:10):
Future history resolves itself, in their eyes into the propaganda
and the practical carrying out of their social plans. In
the formation of their plans, they are conscious of caring
chiefly for the interests of the working class, as being
the most suffering class. Only from the point of view
(21:31):
of being the most suffering class does the proletariat exist
for them. The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as
well as their own surroundings, causes socialists of this kind
to consider themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They
want to improve the condition of every member of society,
(21:52):
even that of the most favored. Hence they habitually appeal
to society at large without distinctunction of class, nay by
preference to the ruling class. For how can people, when
once they understand their system, fail to see in it
the best possible plan of the best possible state of society.
(22:14):
Hence they reject all political and especially all revolutionary action.
They wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, and
endeavor by small experiments necessarily doomed to failure, and by
the force of example, to pave the way for the
new social gospel. Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted
(22:39):
at a time when the proletariat is still in a
very undeveloped state and has but a fantastic conception of
its own position, correspond with the first instinctive yearnings of
that class for a general reconstruction of society. But these
socialist and communist publications contain also a critical element. They
(23:00):
attack every principle of existing society. Hence they are full
of the most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the
working class. The practical measures proposed in them, such as
the abolition of the distinction between town and country, of
the family, of the carrying on of industries for the
account of private individuals and of the wage system, the
(23:22):
proclamation of social harmony, the conversion of the functions of
the state into a mere superintendency production. All these proposals
point solely to the disappearance of class antagonisms, which were
at the time only just cropping up, and which in
these publications are recognized in their earliest indistinct and undefined forms. Only.
(23:48):
These proposals, therefore, are of a purely utopian character. The
significance of critical utopian socialism and communism bears an inverse
relation historical development, in proportion, as the modern class struggle
develops and takes definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from
(24:09):
the contest, these fantastic attacks on it lose all practical
value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of
these systems were in many respects revolutionary, their disciples have
in every case formed mere reactionary sects. They hold fast
(24:31):
by the original views of their masters in opposition to
the progressive historical development of the proletariat. They therefore endeavor
and that consistently to deaden the class struggle and to
reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dream of experimental realization
of their social utopias, are founding isolated Falan stairs, of
(24:56):
establishing homer colonies, of setting up a little Icaria duodecimo
editions of the new Jerusalem. And to realize all these
castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal to
the feelings and purses of the bourgeois. By degrees they
sink into the category of the reactionary conservative socialists depicted above,
(25:19):
differing from these only by a more systematic pedantry and
by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the miraculous effects
of their social science. They therefore violently oppose all political
action on the part of the working class. Such action,
according to them, can only result from blind unbelief in
(25:43):
the New Gospel. The Owenites in England and the Furyaists
in France, respectively oppose the Chartists and the Reformists. Section four.
Position of the Communists in relation to the various existing
opposition parties. Section two has made clear the relations of
(26:05):
the Communists to the existing working class parties, such as
the Chartists in England and the agrarian reformers in America.
The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims,
for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class,
but in the movement of the present they also represent
(26:27):
and take care of the future of that movement. In France,
the Communists ally themselves with the social Democrats against the
conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take
up a critical position in regard to phrases and illusions
traditionally handed down from the Great Revolution. In Switzerland, they
(26:51):
support the radicals without losing sight of the fact that
this party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of democratic socas
in the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois. In Poland,
they support the party that insists on the agrarian revolution
as the prime condition for national emancipation, that party which
(27:14):
fomented the insurrection of Krakau in eighteen forty six. In Germany,
they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a
revolutionary way against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and
the petty bourgeoisie. But they never cease for a single
instant to instill into the working class the clearest possible
(27:37):
recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in
order that the German workers may straightway use, as so
many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions
that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy,
(27:58):
and in order that after the fall of the reactionary
classes in Germany, the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may
immediately begin. The communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany,
because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois
revolution that is bound to be carried out under more
advanced conditions of European civilization, and with a much more
(28:20):
developed proletariat than that of England was in the seventeenth
and of France in the eighteenth century, And because the
bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to
an immediately following proletarian revolution. In short, the communists everywhere
support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political
(28:45):
order of things. In all these movements they bring to
the front as the leading question in each the property question,
no matter what its degree of development at the time. Finally,
they labor everywhere for the union, an agreement of the
democratic parties of all countries. The communists disdain to conceal
(29:07):
their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends
can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all
existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a
communistic revolution, the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.
They have a world to win. Working men of all
(29:33):
countries unite. The end of the Manifesto of the Communist
Party
This is a 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
of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
(00:25):
Section three. Socialist and Communist literature one reactionary socialism a
feudal socialism. Owing to their historical position, it became the
vocation of the aristocracies of France and England to write
(00:47):
pamphlets against modern bourgeois society. In the French Revolution of
July eighteen thirty and in the English Reform agitation, these
aristocracies again succumbed to the hateful of start. Thenceforth, a
serious political contest was altogether out of the question. A
(01:07):
literary battle alone remained possible. But even in the domain
of literature, the old cries of the Restoration period had
become impossible. In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy were
obliged to lose sight, apparently of their own interests, and
to formulate their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interests
(01:30):
of the exploited working class alone. Thus the aristocracy took
their revenge by singing lampoons on their new master and
whispering in his ears sinister prophecies of coming a catastrophe.
In this way arose feudal socialism, half lamentation, half lampoon,
(01:51):
half echo of the past, half menace of the future,
at times by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking
the bourgeoisie to the very heart's core, but always ludicrous
in its effect. Through total incapacity to comprehend the march
of modern history, the aristocracy, in order to rally the
(02:15):
people to them, waived the proletarian alms bag in front
for a banner, but the people, so often as it
joined them, saw on their hind quarters the old feudal
coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.
One section of the French legitimists and Young England exhibited
(02:38):
this spectacle in pointing out that their mode of exploitation
was different to that of the bourgeoisie. The feudalists forget
that they exploited under circumstances and conditions that were quite
different and that are now antiquated. In showing that under
their rule, the modern proletariat never existed. They forget, forget
(03:00):
that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of their
own form of society. For the rest, so little do
they conceal the reactionary character of their criticism, that the
chief accusation against the bourgeoisie amounts to this, that under
the bourgeois regime a class is being developed which is
destined to cut up, root and branch the old order
(03:23):
of society. What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not
so much that it creates a proletariat, as that it
creates a revolutionary proletariat. In political practice. Therefore they join
in all coercive measures against the working class, and in
ordinary life, despite their high falutin phrases, they stoop to
(03:45):
pick up the golden apples dropped from the tree of industry,
and to barter truth, love and honor for traffic and wool, beetroot, sugar,
and potato spirits. As the parson has ever gone hand
in hand with the landlord, so has clerical socialism with
feudal socialism. Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism
(04:09):
a socialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property,
against marriage, against the state. Has it not preached in
the place of these charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification
of the flesh, monastic life and mother church. Christian socialism
(04:30):
is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates
the heart burnings of the aristocrat b petty bourgeois socialism.
The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was
ruined by the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions
of existence pined and perished in the atmosphere of modern
(04:52):
bourgeois society. The medieval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors
were the precursors of the modern b bourgeoisie. In those
countries which are but little developed industrially and commercially, these
two classes still vegetate side by side with the rising bourgeoisie.
In countries where modern civilization has become fully developed, a
(05:15):
new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between
proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a supplementary
part of bourgeois society. The individual members of this class, however,
are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the
action of competition, and as modern industry develops, they even
(05:40):
see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as
an independent section of modern society, to be replaced in manufactures,
agriculture and commerce by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen. In countries
like France, where the peasants constitute far more than half
(06:01):
of the population, it was natural that writers who sided
with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie should use in their
criticism of the bourgeois regime the standard of the peasant
and petty bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intermediate
classes should take up the cudgels for the working class.
(06:22):
Thus arose petty bourgeois socialism. Sismondi was the head of
this school, not only in France but also in England.
This school of socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions
in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the
hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved incontrovertibly the disastrous effects
(06:49):
of machinery and division of labor, the concentration of capital
and land in a few hands, over production of crises.
It pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois
and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production,
the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial
(07:11):
war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds,
of the old family relations of the old nationalities. In
its positive aims, however, this form of socialism aspires either
to restoring the old means production and of exchange, and
with them the old property relations and the old society,
(07:35):
or to cramping the modern means of production and of
exchange within the framework of the old property relations that
have been and were bound to be exploded by those means.
In either case, it is both reactionary and utopian. Its
last words are corporate guilds for manufacture, patriarchal relations in agriculture. Ultimately,
(08:02):
when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of
self deception, this form of socialism ended in a miserable
fit of the blues c German or true socialism. The
socialist and communist literature of France, a literature that originated
(08:26):
under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and that
was the expression of a struggle against this power was
introduced into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie in
that country had just begun its contest with feudal absolutism.
German philosophers would be philosophers, and beau Sprie eagerly seized
(08:48):
on this literature, only forgetting that when these writings immigrated
from France into Germany, French social conditions had not immigrated
along with them. In act with German social conditions, this
French literature lost all its immediate practical significance and assumed
a purely literary aspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of
(09:12):
the eighteenth century, the demands of the First French Revolution
were nothing more than the demand's practical reason in general,
and the utterance of the will of the revolutionary French
bourgeoisie signified in their eyes the law of pure will
of will, as it was bound to be of true
human will. Generally, the world of the German literate consisted
(09:37):
solely in bringing the new French ideas into harmony with
their ancient philosophical conscience, or rather in annexing the French
ideas without deserting their own philosophic point of view. This
annexation took place in the same way in which a
foreign language is appropriated, namely by translation. It is well
(10:01):
known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic saints
over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient
Heathendom had been written. The German literate reversed this process
with the profane French literature. They wrote their philosophical nonsense
beneath the French original. For instance, beneath the French criticism
(10:21):
of the economic functions of money they wrote alienation of humanity,
and beneath the French criticism of the bourgeois state they
wrote defronement of the category of the general, and so forth.
The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of
the French historical criticisms they dubbed philosophy of action, true socialism,
(10:43):
German science of socialism, philosophical foundation of socialism, and so on.
The French socialist and communist literature was thus completely emasculated,
and since it ceased in the hands of the German
to express the struggle of one class with the other,
he felt conscious of having overcome French one sidedness and
(11:05):
of representing not true requirements, but the requirements of truth,
not the interests of the proletariat, but the interests of
human nature of man in general. Who belongs to no class,
has no reality, who exists only in the misty realm
of philosophical fantasy. This German socialism, which took its schoolboy
(11:28):
tasks so seriously and solemnly and extolled its poor stock
in trade in such mantebank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its
pedantic innocence. The fight of the German and especially of
the Prussian bourgeoisie against feudal aristocracy and absolute monarchy. In
(11:49):
other words, the liberal movement became more earnest. By this,
the long wished for opportunity was offered to true socialism
of confronting the political movement with the socialist demands, of
hurling the traditional anaphemers against liberalism, against representative government, against
(12:10):
bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois
liberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that
they had nothing to gain and everything to lose. By
this bourgeois movement, German socialism forgot, in the nick of
time that the French criticism, whose silly echo it was
(12:33):
presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its corresponding
economic conditions of existence, and the political constitution adapted there too,
the very things whose attainment was the object of the
pending struggle in Germany. To the absolute governments, with their
following of parsons, professors, country squires and officials, it served
(12:56):
as a welcome scarecrow against the threatening bodieeoisie. It was
a sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings and
bullets with which those same governments just at that time
dosed the German working class risings. While this true socialism
thus served the governments as a weapon for fighting the
(13:17):
German bourgeoisie, it at the same time directly represented a
reactionary interest, the interest of the German philistines. In Germany,
the pitty bourgeois class, a relic of the sixteenth century
and since then constantly cropping up again under various forms,
is the real social basis of the existing state of things.
(13:40):
To preserve this class is to preserve the existing state
of things. In Germany. The industrial and political supremacy of
the bourgeoisie threatens it with certain destruction on the one hand,
from the concentration of capital, on the other, from the
rise of a revolutionary proletariat. Socialism appeared to kill these
(14:02):
two birds with one stone. It spread like an epidemic
the robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric,
steeped in the dew of sickly sentiment. This transcendental robe
in which the German socialists wrapped their sorry eternal troops
all skin and bone, served to wonderfully increase the sale
(14:24):
of their goods amongst such a public. And on its part,
German socialism recognized more and more its own calling as
the bombastic representative of the petty bourgeois philistine. It proclaimed
the German nation to be the model nation, and the
German petty philistine to be the typical man. To every
(14:46):
villainous meanness of this model man, it gave a hidden
higher socialistic interpretation the exact contrary of its real character.
It went to the extreme length of directly opposing the
brutally destructive tendency of communism and of proclaiming its supreme
and impartial contempt of all class struggles. With very few exceptions,
(15:11):
all the so called socialist and communist publications that now
eighteen forty seven circulating Germany belong to the domain of
this foul and enervating literature. Two. Conservative or bourgeois socialism,
a part of the bourgeoisie, is desirous of addressing social
(15:34):
grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.
To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the
condition of the working class, organizers of charity, members of
societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics,
(15:56):
whole and corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form
of socialism has moreover been worked out into complete systems.
We may cite prudence philosophy de la misire as an
example of this form. The socialistic bourgeois want all the
(16:16):
advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers
necessarily resulting therefrom They desire the existing state of society
minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a
bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world
(16:37):
in which it is supreme to be the best, and
bourgeois socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or
less complete systems in requiring the proletariat to carry out
such a system and thereby to march straight away into
the social new Jerusalem. It but requires in reality that
(16:58):
the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society,
but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.
A second and more practical, but less systematic form of
this socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the
eyes of the working class by showing that no mere
(17:20):
political reform, but only a change in the material conditions
of existence in economic relations, could be of any advantage
to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence,
this form of socialism, however, by no means, understands abolition
of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can
(17:42):
be affected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms based
on the continued existence of these relations, reforms therefore that
in no respect affect the relations between capital and labor,
but at best lessen the cost and simplify the administrative
(18:03):
work of bourgeois government. Bourgeois socialism attains adequate expression when
and only when it becomes a mere figure of speech.
Free trade for the benefit of the working class, protective
duties for the benefit of the working class, prison reform
(18:25):
for the benefit of the working class. This is the
last word, and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism.
It is summed up in the phrase the bourgeois is
a bourgeois for the benefit of the working class. Three
critical utopian socialism and communism. We do not here refer
(18:48):
to that literature which, in every great modern revolution has
always given a voice to the demands of the proletariat,
such as the writings of Babeuf and others. The first
direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends,
made in times of universal excitement when feudal society was
being overthrown. These attempts necessarily failed, owing to the then
(19:13):
undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to the
absence of the economic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that
had yet to be produced and could be produced by
the impending bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that accompanied
these first movements of the proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character.
(19:37):
It inculcated universal asceticism and social leveling in its crudest form.
The socialist and communist systems properly so called those of
Saint Simon, Fourier, Owen and others, spring into existence in
the early undeveloped period described above of the struggle between
(19:58):
proletariat and bourgeoisie see section one Bourgeois and Proletarians. The
founders of these systems see indeed the class antagonisms, as
well as the action of the decomposing elements in the
prevailing form of society. But the proletariat, as yet in
its infancy, offers to them the spectacle of a class
(20:21):
without any historical initiative or any independent political movement. Since
the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the
development of industry, the economic situation, as they find it,
does not as yet offer to them the material conditions
for the emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search after
(20:44):
a new social science, after new social laws that are
to create these conditions. Historical action is to yield to
their personal inventive action historically created conditions of emancipation, to
fantastic ones and the gradual, spontaneous class organization of the
proletariat to the organization of society specially contrived by these inventors.
(21:10):
Future history resolves itself, in their eyes into the propaganda
and the practical carrying out of their social plans. In
the formation of their plans, they are conscious of caring
chiefly for the interests of the working class, as being
the most suffering class. Only from the point of view
(21:31):
of being the most suffering class does the proletariat exist
for them. The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as
well as their own surroundings, causes socialists of this kind
to consider themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They
want to improve the condition of every member of society,
(21:52):
even that of the most favored. Hence they habitually appeal
to society at large without distinctunction of class, nay by
preference to the ruling class. For how can people, when
once they understand their system, fail to see in it
the best possible plan of the best possible state of society.
(22:14):
Hence they reject all political and especially all revolutionary action.
They wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, and
endeavor by small experiments necessarily doomed to failure, and by
the force of example, to pave the way for the
new social gospel. Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted
(22:39):
at a time when the proletariat is still in a
very undeveloped state and has but a fantastic conception of
its own position, correspond with the first instinctive yearnings of
that class for a general reconstruction of society. But these
socialist and communist publications contain also a critical element. They
(23:00):
attack every principle of existing society. Hence they are full
of the most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the
working class. The practical measures proposed in them, such as
the abolition of the distinction between town and country, of
the family, of the carrying on of industries for the
account of private individuals and of the wage system, the
(23:22):
proclamation of social harmony, the conversion of the functions of
the state into a mere superintendency production. All these proposals
point solely to the disappearance of class antagonisms, which were
at the time only just cropping up, and which in
these publications are recognized in their earliest indistinct and undefined forms. Only.
(23:48):
These proposals, therefore, are of a purely utopian character. The
significance of critical utopian socialism and communism bears an inverse
relation historical development, in proportion, as the modern class struggle
develops and takes definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from
(24:09):
the contest, these fantastic attacks on it lose all practical
value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of
these systems were in many respects revolutionary, their disciples have
in every case formed mere reactionary sects. They hold fast
(24:31):
by the original views of their masters in opposition to
the progressive historical development of the proletariat. They therefore endeavor
and that consistently to deaden the class struggle and to
reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dream of experimental realization
of their social utopias, are founding isolated Falan stairs, of
(24:56):
establishing homer colonies, of setting up a little Icaria duodecimo
editions of the new Jerusalem. And to realize all these
castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal to
the feelings and purses of the bourgeois. By degrees they
sink into the category of the reactionary conservative socialists depicted above,
(25:19):
differing from these only by a more systematic pedantry and
by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the miraculous effects
of their social science. They therefore violently oppose all political
action on the part of the working class. Such action,
according to them, can only result from blind unbelief in
(25:43):
the New Gospel. The Owenites in England and the Furyaists
in France, respectively oppose the Chartists and the Reformists. Section four.
Position of the Communists in relation to the various existing
opposition parties. Section two has made clear the relations of
(26:05):
the Communists to the existing working class parties, such as
the Chartists in England and the agrarian reformers in America.
The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims,
for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class,
but in the movement of the present they also represent
(26:27):
and take care of the future of that movement. In France,
the Communists ally themselves with the social Democrats against the
conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take
up a critical position in regard to phrases and illusions
traditionally handed down from the Great Revolution. In Switzerland, they
(26:51):
support the radicals without losing sight of the fact that
this party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of democratic socas
in the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois. In Poland,
they support the party that insists on the agrarian revolution
as the prime condition for national emancipation, that party which
(27:14):
fomented the insurrection of Krakau in eighteen forty six. In Germany,
they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a
revolutionary way against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and
the petty bourgeoisie. But they never cease for a single
instant to instill into the working class the clearest possible
(27:37):
recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in
order that the German workers may straightway use, as so
many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions
that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy,
(27:58):
and in order that after the fall of the reactionary
classes in Germany, the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may
immediately begin. The communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany,
because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois
revolution that is bound to be carried out under more
advanced conditions of European civilization, and with a much more
(28:20):
developed proletariat than that of England was in the seventeenth
and of France in the eighteenth century, And because the
bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to
an immediately following proletarian revolution. In short, the communists everywhere
support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political
(28:45):
order of things. In all these movements they bring to
the front as the leading question in each the property question,
no matter what its degree of development at the time. Finally,
they labor everywhere for the union, an agreement of the
democratic parties of all countries. The communists disdain to conceal
(29:07):
their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends
can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all
existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a
communistic revolution, the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.
They have a world to win. Working men of all
(29:33):
countries unite. The end of the Manifesto of the Communist
Party
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