'The Manifesto of the Communist Party' (), usually referred to as 'The Communist Manifesto', was first published on
February 21,
1848, and is one of the world's most influential
political tracts. Commissioned by the
Communist League and written by
communist theorists
Friedrich Engels and
Karl Marx, it laid out the League's purposes and program. The ''Manifesto'' suggested a course of action for a
proletarian (
working class) revolution to overthrow the
bourgeois social order and to eventually bring about a
classless and
stateless society.
Authorship
The Communist Manifesto
Although the names of both Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx appear on the title page alongside the "persistent assumption of joint-authorship", Engels, in the preface introduction to the 1883 German edition of the Manifesto, said that the ''Manifesto'' was "essentially Marx's work" and that "the basic thought... belongs solely and exclusively to Marx."
[1] McLellan, along with many other scholars, believes that "the actual drafting of The Communist Manifesto was done exclusively by Marx."
It is claimed in the text itself to have been sketched by a group of Communists from various countries that gathered together in London.
[2]
Textual history
The ''Communist Manifesto's initial publication, in
1848 (in
London), was in German. The first English translation was produced by Helen MacFarlane in 1850. The ''Manifesto'' went through a number of editions from 1872 to
1890; notable new prefaces were written by Marx and Engels for the 1872 German edition, the 1882 Russian edition, the 1883 German edition, and the 1888 English edition. This edition, translated by Samuel Moore with the assistance of Engels, has been the most commonly used English text since.
However, some recent English editions, such as Phil Gasper's annotated "road map" (
Haymarket Books,
2006), have used a slightly modified text in response to criticisms of the Moore translation made by
Hal Draper in his 1994 history of the ''Manifesto'', ''The Adventures of the "Communist Manifesto"'' (Center for Socialist History,
1994).
Contents
The ''Manifesto'' is divided into an introduction, three substantive sections, and a conclusion.
Preamble
The introduction begins with the notable comparison of communism to a "
spectre," claiming that across Europe communism is feared, but not understood, and thus communists ought to make their views known with a manifesto:
:''A spectre is haunting
Europe—the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of
old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre:
Pope and
Czar,
Metternich and
Guizot,
French Radicals and
German police-spies.''
:''Where is the
party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its
opponents in
power? Where is the
Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced
opposition parties, as well as against its
reactionary adversaries?''
I. Bourgeois and Proletarians
The first section, "Bourgeois and Proletarians", puts forward Marx's
historical materialism, claiming that
:''The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of
class struggles.''
:''
Freeman and slave,
patrician and
plebeian, lord and serf,
guild-master and
journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.''
The section goes on to argue that the class struggle under capitalism is between those who own the means of production, the
ruling class or
bourgeoisie, and those who labor for a wage, the working class or
proletariat. Though the bourgeoisie has played a progressive role in destroying
feudalism, according to Marx and Engels, it has also brought about the conditions for its own impending downfall by creating a contradiction within capitalism between the
forces of production and the
relations of production:
:''The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It ... has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment” ... for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation ... Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.''
However:
:''The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers.''
II. Proletarians and Communists
The second section, "Proletarians and Communists," starts by outlining the relationship of conscious communists to the rest of the working class:
:''The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties.''
:''They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.''
:''They do not set up any special principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.''
:''The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.''
It goes on to defend communism from various objections, such as the claim that communists advocate "
free love," and the claim that people will not perform labor in a communist society because they have no incentive to work.
The section ends by outlining a set of short-term demands. These included, among others, the abolition of both
land ownership and of the right to
inheritance, a progressive
income tax, universal
education, centralization of the means of
communication and
transport under state management, and the expansion of the
means of production owned by the state. The implementation of these policies, would, the authors believed, be a precursor to the
stateless and
classless society.
One particularly controversial passage deals with this transitional period:
:''When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole
nation, the public power will lose its
political character.
Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.''
It is this concept of the transition from socialism to communism which many critics of the ''Manifesto'', particularly during and after the Soviet era, have highlighted. Anarchists, liberals, and conservatives have all asked how an organization such as the revolutionary state could ever (as Engels put it elsewhere) "wither away."
In a related dispute, later Marxists, particularly supporters of the
USSR, made a separation between "
socialism," a society ruled by workers, and "
communism," a classless society. Engels wrote little and Marx wrote less on the specifics of the transition to communism, so the authenticity of this distinction remains a matter of dispute.
10 Planks of the Communist Manifesto
# 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.
# Centralization 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, by a more equable
distribution of the population over the country.
#
Free education for all children in
public schools. Abolition of
children's factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c., &c.
[3]
According to the Communist Manifesto, all these were prior conditions for a transition from capitalism to communism (but Marx and Engels later rejected this passage
[4]).
III. Socialist and Communist Literature
The third section, "Socialist and Communist Literature," distinguishes communism from other socialist doctrines prevalent at the time the ''Manifesto'' was written. While the harshness of Marx's and Engels' attacks varies, and their debt to "
utopian socialists" such as
Fourier,
Proudhon, and
Owen is acknowledged, all rival views are eventually dismissed for advocating
reformism and failing to recognize the key role of the working class. Partly because of Marx's critique, most of the specific ideologies described in this section became politically negligible by the end of the nineteenth century.
IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties
The concluding section, "Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties," briefly discusses the communist position on struggles in specific countries in the mid-nineteenth century. It then ends with a call to action:
:''The Communists disdain to conceal 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.''
:''
PROLETARIANS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!''
References
1. Marx and Engels, ''The Communist Manifesto'', introduction by Martin Malia (New York: Penguin group, 1998), pg. 35 ISBN 0451527100
2. Marx and Engels, ''The Communist Manifesto'', pg. 49 ISBN 0451527100
3. The Communist Manifesto at Project Gutenberg accessed on January 24 2007
4. Preface to the 1872 German Edition on The Marxists Internet Archives accessed at March 19 2007
See also
★
Communism
★
Erwin Schulhoff
★
List of Communist Nations
External links
★ Full text of the
'''The Communist Manifesto''' English edition of 1888 from the Marxists Internet Archive in all formats: PDF, Audio, HTML, Word, Text, etc.
★ —
English edition of
1888, edited by
Friedrich Engels
★
Free audiobook from
LibriVox (
Also available in German)
★
A Marxism resource page
★ Only remaining page of the
first draft of the Manifesto in Marx's handwriting from the Marx papers at the International Institute of Social History.
★
Images of English versions
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