The Communist Manifesto
by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
(London: Penguin Books, 2004)
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power?
Page 2.
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. … in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another.
Page 2.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted form the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, ne forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
Pages 3-43.
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
Page 4.
Steam and machinery revolutionized industrial production.
Pages 4-5.
Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way.
Page 5.
The modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.
Page 5.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.
Page 6.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
Page 7.
Constant revolutionizing of production uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
Page 7.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe.
Page 7.
As in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and f rom the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
Page 8.
The bourgeois, by the rapid improvement of al instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even he most barbarian, nations into civilization.
Page 8.
It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt their bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e.to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
Page 8.
The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons - the modern working class - the proletarians.
Page 11.
Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker.
Pages 12-13.
The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.
Page 13.
The proletariat is recruited form all classes of the population.
Page 13.
With the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more.
Page 14.
Every class struggle is a political struggle.
Page 15.
The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries.
Page 16.
Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.
Page 17.
The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.
Page 18.
All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.
Page 18.
The struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.
Page 18.
Hitherto, every form of society has been based … on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes.
Page 19.
The bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an overriding law.
Page 19.
Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.
Page 19.
The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.
Page 22.
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property.
Page 22.
The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
Page 22.
Does wage labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital.
Page 23.
Capital is, therefore, not a personal, it is a social power.
Page 23.
In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.
Page 24.
The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.
Page 24.
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 non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths.
Page 25.
Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation.
Page 26.
Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of clad property is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.
Page 26.
The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents be and child becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.
Page 28.
Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common.
Page 29.
The working men have no country.
Page 29.
National differences and antagonisms between propels are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.
Page 29.
In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.
Page 30.
The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
Page 30.
The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.
Page 31.
The first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.
Pages 31-32.
Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another.
Page 33.
Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism 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 is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.
Page 37.
The medieval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie.
Page 37.
A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances, in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.
Page 43.
The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom.
Page 44.
The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best.
Page 44.
The development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the development of industry.
Page 46.
The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class.
Page 50.
The Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.
Page 51.
The Communist Manifesto had as its object the proclamation of the inevitably impending dissolution of modern bourgeois property.
Page 57.
The basic thought running through the |Manifesto - that economic production and the structure of society of every historical epoch necessarily arising therefrom constitute the foundation for the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently … all history has been a history of class struggles, of struggles between dominated and dominating classes t various stages of social development; that this struggle, however, has now reached a stage where the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie), without at the same time for ever freeing the whole of society from exploitation, oppression and class struggles.
Page 59.
Marx who drew up this programme to the satisfaction of all parties entirely trusted to the intellectual development of the working class, which was sure to result from combined action and mutual discussion.
Pages 62-63.
The history of the Manifesto reflects, to a great extent, the history of the modern working-class movement; at present it is undoubtedly the most widespread, the most international production of all Socialist literature, the common platform acknowledged by millions of working men from Siberia to California.
Page 64.
Socialism was, in 1847, a middle-class movement, Communism, a working-class movement.
Page 65.
The Manifesto has become a historical document which we have no longer any right to alter.
Page 67.
European immigration fitted North America for a gigantic agricultural production, whose competition is shaking the very foundations of European landed property - large and small. In addition it enabled the United States to exploit its tremendous industrial resources with an energy and on a scale that must shortly break the industrial monopoly of Western Europe.
Page 69.
In 1847 two kinds of people were considered Socialists On the on hand were the adherents of the various Utopian systems, notably the Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France … On the other, the manifold types of social quacks who wanted to eliminate social abuses through their various universal panaceas and all kinds of patchwork, without hurting capital and profit in the least.
Pages 73-74.
Not only the state of the labour movement but also the degree of development of large-scale industry can be measured with fair accuracy in every country by the number of copies of the Manifesto circulated in the language of that country.
Page 76.
A sincere international collaboration of the European nations is possible only if each of these nations is fully autonomous in its own house.
Page 77.
Without restoring autonomy and unity to each nation, it will be impossible to achieve the international union of the proletariat, or the peaceful and intelligent cooperation of these nations towards common aims.
Page 80.
The Manifesto does full justice to the revolutionary part played by capitalism in the past.
Page 81.
Unheroic as bourgeois society is, it still required heroism, self-sacrifice, terror, civil war, and battles in which whole nations were engaged, to bring it into the world.
Page 87.
Proletarian revolutions, however, such as those of the nineteenth century, constantly engage in self-criticism, and in repeated interruptions of their own course. They return to what has apparently already been accomplished in order to begin the task again.
Pages 90-91.
All that exists deserves to perish.
Page 92.
Just as the Bourbons were eh dynasty of big landed property and the Orleans the dynasty of money, so the Bonapartes are the dynasty of the peasant, i.e. of the mass of the French people.
Page 105.
The bourgeoisie itself violently strengthened the imperialist leaning of the peasant class.
Page 109.
The bourgeoisie is naturally bound to fear the stupidity of the masses as long as they remain conservative, and the discernment of the masses as soon as they become revolutionary.
Page 109.
The interests of the peasants are therefore no longer consonant with the interests of the bourgeoisie … They therefore find their natural ally and leader in the urban proletariat, whose task is the overthrow of the bourgeois order.
Page 112.
Taxation is the source of life for the bureaucracy, the army, the priests and the court, in short, it is the source of life for the whole executive apparatus. Strong government and heavy taxes are identical.
Page 112.
The political centralization that modern society requires can arise only on the debris of the military and bureaucratic government machinery originally forged in opposition to feudalism.
Page 115.