Communist Manifesto
Detailed Notes on Marx & Engels's "Manifesto of the Communist Party"
I. Preamble: The "Spectre of Communism"
Communism is perceived as a powerful, threatening force ("spectre") across Europe.
All established powers (reactionary and progressive) have united to condemn it.
This universal opposition proves Communism is already a significant Power.
The purpose of the Manifesto is for Communists to publicly state their views, aims, and tendencies to counter this misrepresentation.
II. Bourgeois and Proletarians
Central Thesis: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."
This statement is later qualified by Engels to mean recorded history, acknowledging the subsequent discovery of early, classless, primitive communist societies.
A. The Historical Progression of Class Antagonism
Past societies were characterized by complex, multi-layered class hierarchies (e.g., patricians/plebeians in Rome; lords/vassals/guild-masters/journeymen/serfs in Middle Ages).
The modern bourgeois epoch has simplified these class antagonisms.
Society is increasingly splitting into two great hostile camps: the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat.
B. Definitions (Engels's Note)
Bourgeoisie: The class of modern Capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage-labour.
Proletariat: The class of modern wage-labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour-power to live.
C. The Historical Rise of the Bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie developed from the serfs of the Middle Ages, the chartered burghers of the earliest towns.
Key historical events accelerated its development:
The discovery of America and new sea routes, creating a world-market.
The expansion of trade, commerce, and navigation.
The industrial structure evolved to meet growing demand:
Feudal Guild System → Manufacturing System → Modern Industry(steam and machinery).
Each economic step was accompanied by a corresponding political advance for the bourgeoisie.
From an oppressed class, to an armed association (Commune), to a taxable "third estate," and finally to the exclusive political sway in the modern representative State.
Famous Quote: "The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."
III. The Revolutionary Role of the Bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie has played a "most revolutionary part" in history by:
A. Demolishing Feudal Relations
It has destroyed all "feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations."
It has replaced human ties with "naked self-interest" and "callous 'cash payment'."
It has drowned religious, chivalrous, and sentimental fervour in the "icy water of egotistical calculation."
It has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation for exploitation veiled by religious and political illusions.
B. Transforming Society and Culture
Devaluation of Professions: It has converted respected professions (physician, lawyer, priest, poet, scientist) into paid wage-labourers.
The Family: It has torn away the family's sentimental veil and reduced it to a mere money relation.
Constant Revolution: It cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby all social relations.
Famous Quote: "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned..."
Cosmopolitan Production: Chased by the need for expanding markets, it has given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption.
It has destroyed old national industries and created new, globally dependent ones.
This leads to universal interdependence.
C. Creating a Global, Centralized System
Urbanization: It has subjected the country to the rule of the towns, rescuing people from the "idiocy of rural life."
Centralization: It has agglomerated population, centralized means of production, and concentrated property in a few hands.
The political consequence is centralization into nation-states.
Colossal Productive Forces: In its short rule, it has created more massive productive forces than all preceding generations combined (e.g., machinery, chemistry, railways, telegraphs).
D. The Inherent Contradiction
The means of production and exchange that the bourgeoisie built upon were generated in feudal society.
At a certain stage, the feudal relations of property became a fetter on the developing productive forces.
They had to be burst asunder, which they were.
The text implies a similar process is now underway with bourgeois relations of property acting as fetters on the even more colossal productive forces they have created.
(Continued)
I. The Crisis of the Bourgeois Order
The development of the bourgeoisie's own productive forces has created a fundamental contradiction.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice Analogy: Modern bourgeois society is like a sorcerer who can no longer control the powers (the productive forces) he has conjured.
The Manifestation of Crisis: The history of industry and commerce is now the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against the existing property relations (bourgeois private property).
Commercial Crises: Periodically returning crises threaten the entire bourgeois society.
The "Epidemic of Over-production": Society is thrown into "momentary barbarism" because there is too much civilization, industry, and commerce. This is an absurdity unique to the capitalist epoch.
Cause: The productive forces have become too powerful for the bourgeois property relations that are their necessary condition. They act as fetters.
The Bourgeois "Solution": The bourgeoisie overcomes crises by:
Enforced destruction of productive forces.
Conquest of new markets.
More thorough exploitation of old ones.
Result: These "solutions" only pave the way for more extensive and destructive crises. The weapons (productive forces) used to defeat feudalism are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.
II. The Creation of its Own Gravediggers: The Proletariat
The bourgeoisie has not only forged the weapons of its own destruction (the crises) but has also called into existence the class that will wield them: the modern working class—the proletarians.
A. The Condition of the Proletariat
Labourers live only so long as they find work, and find work only so long as their labour increases capital.
They are a commodity, "who must sell themselves piece-meal," exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition.
Deskilling: Through machinery and the division of labour, work loses all individual character and charm. The worker becomes an appendage of the machine, performing simple, monotonous tasks.
Wages: The cost of production (and thus the price) of a worker is restricted almost entirely to the means of subsistence required for their maintenance and propagation.
Note 9: A later clarification states the worker sells labour-power, not labour.
Increasing Exploitation: As work becomes more repulsive, wages are driven down. The burden of toil increases through longer hours, more intense work, or faster machinery.
Factory Discipline: Masses of labourers are organized in factories under a military-like hierarchy of overseers. They are slaves to the bourgeois class, the state, the machine, and the individual manufacturer.
Equalization: Differences of age and sex lose social validity. All are mere instruments of labour, with their value determined by their cost of use.
Secondary Exploitation: After being exploited by the manufacturer, the worker is "set upon by other portions of the bourgeoisie" (landlord, shopkeeper, pawnbroker).
B. The Expansion of the Proletariat
The proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population as the lower strata of the middle class (small tradespeople, shopkeepers, artisans, peasants) are ruined by competition with large-scale Modern Industry and rendered obsolete by new production methods.
III. The Development of Class Consciousness and Organization
The proletariat goes through various stages of development.
A. Early, Immature Stages
The struggle begins with individual labourers, then workers of a single factory, then a single trade in one locality.
They attack the instruments of production themselves (e.g., destroying machinery, burning factories), seeking to restore the vanished status of the medieval workman.
At this stage, workers are an incoherent mass, broken up by mutual competition.
When they unite, it is often because the bourgeoisie mobilizes them to fight its enemies (remnants of absolute monarchy, landowners, etc.). Thus, early victories are actually victories for the bourgeoisie.
B. The Rise of a Modern, Revolutionary Class
With the development of industry, the proletariat:
Increases in number.
Becomes concentrated in greater masses.
Becomes stronger and feels its strength.
Sees its conditions equalized (low wages, deskilled work), which unifies its interests.
Workers begin to form combinations (Trades Unions) against the bourgeoisie to keep up wages and form permanent associations.
The contest breaks out into riots.
The Real Fruit: The real success of these battles is not the immediate result, but the ever-expanding union of the workers.
Improved communications (railways) allow for local struggles to be centralized into a national, class struggle.
Key Statement: "Every class struggle is a political struggle."
The workers organize into a class and consequently into a political party.
Although this organization is continually upset by competition among workers, it always re-emerges stronger, firmer, mightier (e.g., winning the Ten-Hours Bill in England).
IV. How the Bourgeoisie Itself Fuels the Proletarian Revolution
Intra-Class Bourgeois Conflict: The bourgeoisie's own battles (against the aristocracy, against antagonistic fractions of itself, against foreign bourgeoisies) force it to appeal to the proletariat for help, thereby dragging the workers into the political arena and supplying them with political and general education.
Recruitment from the Ruling Class: Sections of the ruling classes are precipitated into the proletariat by the advance of industry, bringing with them elements of "enlightenment and progress."
Defection of Bourgeois Ideologists: In times of decisive crisis, a section of the ruling class (especially bourgeois ideologists who comprehend the historical movement as a whole) cuts itself adrift and joins the revolutionary proletariat.
V. The Proletariat as the Only Truly Revolutionary Class
Unlike other classes (the lower middle class, small manufacturers, peasants) who are conservative or reactionary because they fight to preserve their existence as small proprietors, the proletariat has nothing of its own to secure and fortify.
The "dangerous class" (the social scum, lumpenproletariat) is generally a tool of reaction, not a revolutionary force.
The proletarian is stripped of all national character and sees law, morality, and religion as bourgeois prejudices hiding bourgeois interests.
The Historic Mission: All previous revolutionary classes aimed to fortify their particular mode of appropriation. The proletariat cannot take control of the productive forces without abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby every other previous mode of appropriation.
A Movement of the Immense Majority: All previous historical movements were movements of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority. Its revolution must necessarily explode the entire existing social structure.
(Continued)
I. The Inevitability of Proletarian Revolution
The development of the proletariat leads to a point where the "veiled civil war" within society breaks out into open revolution and the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie.
The Unique Destitution of the Proletariat:
Unlike the serf or petty bourgeois who could improve their condition within the existing system, the modern labourer sinks deeper below the conditions of his own class.
He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth.
The Bourgeoisie is Unfit to Rule: This destitution proves the bourgeoisie is unfit to rule because:
It can no longer assure its slave even a slave's existence.
It cannot prevent him from sinking into a state where it has to feed him (through poor relief, etc.), instead of being fed by him.
Conclusion: "Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie."
The Fundamental Contradiction:
The essential condition for the bourgeoisie is the formation and augmentation of capital.
The condition for capital is wage-labour.
Wage-labour rests on competition between the labourers.
However, the advance of industry, driven by the bourgeoisie, replaces this isolation and competition with the revolutionary combination of workers through association.
Final Conclusion: "What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable."
II. Proletarians and Communists
This section defines the role and aims of the Communists in relation to the broader working class.
A. The Relationship of Communists to the Proletariat as a Whole
Communists are not a separate party opposed to other working-class parties.
They have no interests separate from those of the proletariat as a whole.
They do not set up sectarian principles to mould the proletarian movement.
B. How Communists are Distinguished
Internationalism: In national struggles, they highlight the common interests of the entire proletariat, independent of nationality.
The Interests of the Movement as a Whole: In every stage of development, they represent the ultimate, general interests of the entire movement.
C. The Twofold Advantage of Communists
Practically: They are the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties, the group that pushes all others forward.
Theoretically: They have a theoretical advantage over the mass of the proletariat: a clear understanding of the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.
D. The Immediate Aim
The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as all proletarian parties:
Formation of the proletariat into a class.
Overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy.
Conquest of political power by the proletariat.
III. Theoretical Foundations: On the Abolition of Property
Communist theory is not based on invented ideas, but is the general expression of actual historical relations and the existing class struggle.
Abolition of Property Relations: This is not unique to Communism. All property relations have been subject to historical change (e.g., the French Revolution abolished feudal property for bourgeois property).
The Distinguishing Feature of Communism: It is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property.
Bourgeois property is the "final and most complete expression" of a system based on class antagonisms and the exploitation of the many by the few.
Summation: "the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property." (Meaning bourgeois private property).
IV. Defense Against Criticisms: The Nature of Property
A. What Property is Being Abolished?
Not the property of the petty artisan or small peasant ("hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned"). This is being destroyed daily by modern industry anyway.
The target is modern bourgeois private property.
B. Does Wage-Labour Create Property for the Labourer?
No. It creates capital—the kind of property that exploits wage-labour and depends on it for its own growth.
C. The Social Character of Capital
Capital is not a personal power, but a social power. It is a collective product, set in motion by the united action of many members of society.
Converting capital into common property (social property) does not transform personal property into social property. It only changes the social character of property, removing its class-character.
D. The Nature of Wage-Labour and Personal Appropriation
The wage-labourer's appropriation of products through his wages is minimal, merely sufficing to "prolong and reproduce a bare existence."
Communists do not intend to abolish this personal appropriation for life's maintenance and reproduction.
The goal is to abolish the miserable character of this appropriation, "under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital."
V. Bourgeois Society vs. Communist Society
Bourgeois Society: Living labour is a means to increase accumulated labour (capital). The past dominates the present. Capital is independent and has individuality; the living person is dependent and has no individuality.
Communist Society: Accumulated labour is a means to widen and enrich the life of the labourer. The present dominates the past.
VI. Rebuttals to Further Bourgeois Objections
A. On "Freedom"
Bourgeois freedom means free trade, free selling and buying.
This "freedom" has meaning only in contrast to the restricted trade of the Middle Ages. It is meaningless when contrasted with the Communist abolition of the bourgeois conditions of production that make this "freedom" possible.
B. On "Abolishing Property for the 9/10ths"
In existing society, private property is already abolished for nine-tenths of the population.
Its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence for the many.
Communists openly admit they intend to abolish bourgeois property: "Precisely so; that is just what we intend."
C. On "Abolishing Individuality"
The "individuality" the bourgeoisie defends is that of the bourgeois property-owner.
Communism does not deprive man of appropriating social products; it deprives him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by that appropriation.
D. On "Universal Laziness"
The objection that without private property no one will work is absurd. In bourgeois society, those who work acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work.
This objection is a tautology: it just says there is no wage-labour when there is no capital.
E. On "Abolishing Culture"
The "culture" whose loss the bourgeois laments is, for the vast majority, merely training to act as a machine.
F. On the Historical Nature of Bourgeois Ideas
Bourgeois ideas of freedom, culture, law, etc., are not eternal. They are the outgrowth of bourgeois production and property relations.
The bourgeoisie makes the mistake of every ruling class: it sees previous property forms (ancient, feudal) as historical, but insists its own is eternal and natural.
G. On the "Abolition of the Family"
The present, fully developed bourgeois family is based on capital and private gain.
Its complement is the practical absence of the family among the proletarians and public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish when capital vanishes.
Communists plead guilty to wanting to stop the exploitation of children. They seek to alter education, rescuing it from the influence of the ruling class, not to destroy education itself.
(Conclusion)
I. Rebuttal of Bourgeois Criticisms (Continued)
A. On the "Community of Women"
The bourgeoisie accuses Communists of wanting to introduce a "community of women."
Marx's Rebuttal:
The bourgeois already treats his wife as a "mere instrument of production."
Hearing that instruments of production are to be held in common, he naturally assumes the same for women, failing to see the goal is to abolish women's status as instruments.
The "virtuous indignation" is hypocritical. The bourgeoisie already practices a "system of wives in common" through adultery and the exploitation of proletarian women and prostitutes.
Bourgeois marriage is a form of concealed, hypocritical "community of women."
Communism would abolish the present system that produces both bourgeois marriage and prostitution.
B. On the Abolition of Country and Nationality
The Famous Statement: "The working men have no country."
This is a factual observation: under capitalism, workers are dispossessed and have no real stake in the nation-state, which is an instrument of bourgeois rule.
However, the proletariat must first constitute itself as the nation by seizing political power. It is therefore "national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word."
Internationalism: National differences are already vanishing due to the world-market and uniform capitalist production. The proletariat's rule will accelerate this.
Key Condition: "United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat."
The end of class antagonism within nations will lead to the end of hostility between nations.
C. On Ideological, Religious, and Philosophical Charges
These charges are "not deserving of serious examination" because they are based on a false, idealist understanding of history.
The Materialist Conception of History: "Man's consciousness changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence."
The Ruling Ideas: "The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class."
Revolutionary new ideas simply express the fact that new social elements are developing within the old society.
On "Eternal Truths": The accusation that Communism abolishes eternal truths (like Freedom, Justice) and all religion and morality is answered thus:
All past historical society has been based on class antagonisms and exploitation.
The social consciousness (morality, religion, etc.) of these epochs, despite its variety, moved within forms that reflected this class rule.
These "eternal truths" cannot vanish completely except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.
Conclusion: "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."
II. The Revolutionary Program: The Proletariat in Power
The First Step: "to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy."
The proletariat will then use its political supremacy to:
Wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie.
Centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State (i.e., the proletariat organized as the ruling class).
Increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Initial Measures: This will begin with "despotic inroads" on bourgeois property and production. These measures will seem economically insufficient but will necessitate further revolutionary steps.
The 10-Point Program (Applicable in most advanced countries):
Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Abolition of all right of inheritance.
Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
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.
Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country.
Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour. Combination of education with industrial production.
III. The Ultimate Goal: The Withering Away of Class Society
When class distinctions have disappeared and all production is concentrated in the hands of the "vast association of the whole nation," the public power will lose its political character.
Definition: "Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another."
By sweeping away the old conditions of production, the proletariat also sweeps away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally.
In doing so, it abolishes its own supremacy as a class.
The Vision of Communist Society: "In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."
IV. Socialist and Communist Literature: Reactionary Socialism
The Manifesto now critiques other, non-revolutionary socialist trends.
A. Feudal Socialism
Who: The French and English aristocracy, who had been defeated by the bourgeoisie (e.g., in the 1830 July Revolution).
Method: Unable to fight politically, they launched a literary critique. To gain popular sympathy, they framed their indictment of the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class.
Nature: Their socialism is a mix of "half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future." It is often witty but ultimately ludicrous due to its total incapacity to comprehend modern history.
Failure: The people, when rallied by them, saw the "old feudal coats of arms" on their hindquarters and deserted with laughter.
Examples: The French Legitimists and the "Young England" group in Britain.