The Communist Manifesto

Read the full text of the Communist Manifest: The Communist Manifest (German: Das Kommunistische Manifest), formerly known as Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, is a political pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels during the European Revolution in the mid-19th century. The Manifest was commissioned by the Communist League and published in London in 1848. It is still one of the most influential political documents in the world. It is widely regarded as the foundational work of the modern socialist and communist movements.

A ghost, the ghost of communism, wanders around Europe. In order to carry out a sacred encirclement of this ghost, all the forces in old Europe, the Pope and the Tsar, Metternich and Gizzo, the French radicals and the German police, all united.

Which opposition party is not criticized as a Communist by its ruled enemies? Which opposition party does not take the charge of communism to return the more progressive opposition and its reactionary enemies?

Two conclusions can be drawn from this fact:

Communism has been recognized as a force by all forces in Europe;

It is time for Communists to publicly explain their views, their purposes, their intentions to the world and use the party’s own manifesto to refute the myths about the ghost of communism.

For this purpose, the communists of various countries gathered in London and formulated the following declaration, which was published in English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish.

Bourgeois and proletarian

To this day, all the history of society is the history of class struggle.

Free people and slaves, nobles and civilians, lords and serfs, guild masters and helpers, in a word, oppressors and oppressed people are always in opposition, engaging in constant, sometimes hidden and sometimes open struggles, and the end of each struggle is that the entire society is revolutionized or the various classes of struggle die together.

In various historical eras in the past, we can see that society is completely divided into different levels almost everywhere, and that social status is divided into various levels. In ancient Rome, there were aristocrats, knights, civilians, and slaves. In the Middle Ages, there were feudal lords, servants, guild masters, helpers, and serfs, and there were some special classes within almost every class.

The modern bourgeois society that emerged from the demise of feudal society did not eliminate class opposition. It simply replaces the old with new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle.

However, our era, the bourgeois era, has one characteristic: it simplifies class opposition. The entire society is increasingly divided into two hostile camps and into two directly opposing classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

The citizens of Chengguan in the early cities emerged from the medieval serfs; the original bourgeois elements developed from this hierarchy.

The discovery of America and the sailing around Africa have opened up new worlds for the emerging bourgeoisie. The markets of East India and China, colonization of the Americas, trade with colonies, means of exchange and general commodities have led to unprecedented rise in commerce, navigation and industry, thus rapidly developing revolutionary factors within the collapsed feudal society.

The feudal or guild industrial management methods in the past can no longer meet the increasing demand with the emergence of new markets. Factory handicrafts replaced this business method. The guild masters were squeezed out by the intermediate level of industry; the division of labor among various industry organizations disappeared with the emergence of division of labor within each workshop.

However, the market is always expanding and demand is always increasing. Even factory handicrafts can no longer meet the needs. As a result, steam and machines led to a revolution in industrial production. Modern large-scale industry replaced factory handicrafts; the millionaires in industry, the leader of one industrial army, and modern bourgeoisie, replaced the intermediate ranks of industry.

Large industry established a world market prepared by discoveries in the Americas. The world market has brought great developments in commerce, navigation and land transportation. This development in turn promotes the expansion of industry. At the same time, with the expansion of industry, commerce, navigation and railways, the bourgeoisie has also developed to the same extent, increasing its own capital, and excluding all classes left over from the Middle Ages.

It can be seen from this that the modern bourgeoisie itself is the product of a long-term development process and the product of a series of changes in the mode of production and exchange.

Every stage of this development of the bourgeoisie is accompanied by corresponding political progress. It was an oppressed rank under the feudal rule, an armed and autonomous group in the commune, forming independent urban republics in some places, and a third rank of tax payments in the monarchy; later, during the workshop handicrafts period, it was a force that competed with the nobles in the hierarchy or autocratic monarchy, and was the main basis of the great monarchy; finally, from the time of the establishment of the great industry and the world market, it had seized exclusive political rule in the modern representative state. The modern state regime is nothing more than a committee that manages the common affairs of the entire bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie once played a very revolutionary role in history.

The bourgeoisie destroyed all feudal, patriarchal and pastoral relations in the places where it had already ruled. It ruthlessly cut off all kinds of feudal bonds that tie people to natural elders, and it makes people have no other connections except for naked interests and cold and ruthless "cash transactions". It drowns the sacred attacks of religious piety, knightly enthusiasm, and petty public sentimental sadness in the ice water of egoism. It turns human dignity into exchange value, replacing countless franchised and self-earned freedoms with a kind of conscience-free trade freedom. In short, it replaces exploitation covered by religious and political fantasies with open, shameless, direct, and explicit exploitation.

The bourgeoisie erased the divine halo of all vocations that have always been respected and awesome. It turns doctors, lawyers, priests, poets and scholars into wage workers it pays for.

The bourgeoisie tore off the veil of warmth that posed on family relations and turned this relationship into a purely monetary relationship.

The bourgeoisie revealed that the barbaric use of human power, which was highly praised by the reactionaries in the Middle Ages, was supplemented by extreme laziness. It is the first to prove what kind of achievements a person can achieve in his activities. It created miracles completely different from Egyptian pyramids, Roman waterways and Gothic churches; it completed an expedition that was completely different from the great national migration and the crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot survive unless it continuously revolutionizes the tools of production, and thus the relations of production, and thus the entire social relations. On the contrary, maintaining the old mode of production intact is the primary condition for the survival of all industrial classes in the past. The continuous changes in production, the constant turmoil of all social conditions, eternal instability and change, this is where the bourgeois era is different from all the past eras. All fixed and rigid relationships and the concepts and opinions that are appropriate to them are eliminated, and all newly formed relationships will become outdated before they are fixed. All the hierarchical and fixed things disappeared, and all the sacred things were desecrated. People finally have to look at their living status and their relationship with a calm perspective.

The need to continuously expand product sales has driven the bourgeoisie to travel around the world. It must settle everywhere, develop everywhere, and establish connections everywhere.

The bourgeoisie, by opening up the world market, has made the production and consumption of all countries global. What made the reactionaries very regretful was that the bourgeoisie had dug up the national foundation under the feet of industry. The ancient national industry has been destroyed and is still being destroyed every day. They are squeezed out by new industries, and the establishment of new industries has become a critical issue for all civilized nations; these industries process no longer local raw materials, but raw materials from extremely distant regions; their products are not only for consumption in their own country, but also for consumption around the world. The old needs that rely on domestic products are replaced by new needs that rely on products from extremely distant countries and regions. The state of self-sufficiency and self-conservation in the past was replaced by the mutual exchanges and mutual dependence of all ethnic groups. This is true for material production and so is spiritual production. The spiritual products of all ethnic groups have become public property. The one-sidedness and limitations of nations are becoming increasingly impossible, so many ethnic and local literature have formed a world literature.

The bourgeoisie, due to the rapid improvement of all production tools and the extremely convenient transportation, has brought all nations and even the most barbaric nations into civilization. The cheap price of its goods is the heavy artillery it uses to destroy all the Great Wall and conquer the most tenacious xenophobic ones of the barbarians. It forces all nations—if they do not want to perish—to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it forces them to promote what is called civilization in themselves, that is, to become bourgeois. In a word, it creates a world for itself according to its own appearance.

The bourgeoisie surrendered the countryside to the rule of the city. It created huge cities, greatly increasing the urban population than the rural population, thus freeing a large number of residents from the ignorant state of rural life. Just as it subjugates the countryside to the city, it subjugates the uncivilized and semi-civilized states to the civilized states, the peasant nations to the bourgeois nations, and the East to the West.

The bourgeoisie eliminated the dispersion of means of production, property and population day by day. It concentrates the population, the means of production, and the property is gathered in the hands of a few people. The inevitable result is political concentration. Each region with independent, almost only alliances, different interests, different laws, different governments, and different tariffs has now been combined into a unified nation with a unified government, unified laws, unified national class interests and unified tariffs.

The productivity created by the bourgeoisie in its less than a hundred years of class domination is more and greater than the total productivity created by all generations in the past. The conquest of natural forces, the adoption of machines, the application of chemistry in industry and agriculture, the driving of ships, the passage of railways, the use of telegraphs, the reclamation of the entire continent, and the navigation of rivers, as if the large population called out from the underground by magic. - In the past century, which century had expected such productivity to be contained in social labor?

It can be seen from this that the means of production and means of exchange that the bourgeoisie relies on were caused in feudal society. At a certain stage of the development of these means of production and means of exchange, the relationship between production and exchange in feudal society, the feudal agriculture and factory handicraft organization, in a word, the feudal ownership relationship no longer adapts to the already developed productivity. This relationship is already hindering production rather than promoting it. It becomes a shackle that binds production. It has to be blown up, it has been blown up.

Instead, free competition and social and political systems that are compatible with free competition, and the economic and political rule of the bourgeoisie.

Now, similar movements are taking place before us. The bourgeoisie's production relations and exchange relations, the bourgeois ownership relations, this modern bourgeois society that once created such a huge means of production and exchange means with magic, is now like a magician that can no longer control the devil he calls out with magic. The decades of history of industry and commerce are nothing more than the history of modern productivity resisting modern production relations and resisting ownership relations as conditions of existence for the bourgeoisie and its rule. It is enough to point out the commercial crisis that increasingly endangers the survival of the entire bourgeois society in the periodic repetition. During a business crisis, not only is a large part of the product made, but a large part of the productivity that has been created is destroyed. During the crisis, a social plague that seemed absurd in all eras in the past, that is, an plague of overproduction occurred. Society suddenly found itself back to a temporary barbarism; it seemed like a famine, a general devastating war, which caused society to lose all its means of living; it seemed that industry and commerce were destroyed, - what is the reason? Because society is too civilized, there are too many living materials, and industry and commerce are too developed. The productivity possessed by society can no longer promote the development of the relationship between bourgeois civilization and bourgeois ownership; on the contrary, the productivity has become so strong that it cannot adapt to that relationship, and it has been hindered by this relationship; and when it tries to overcome this obstacle, it will put the entire bourgeois society into chaos and threaten the existence of bourgeois ownership. The relationship between the bourgeoisie is too narrow to accommodate the wealth it creates. ——What method did the bourgeoisie use to overcome this crisis? On the one hand, we have to eliminate a large amount of productivity, and on the other hand, we have to seize new markets and make more thorough use of the old markets. What kind of method is this? This is nothing more than a way for the bourgeoisie to prepare for a more comprehensive and fierce crisis, but only a way for preventing it less and less.

The weapon used by the bourgeoisie to overthrow the feudal system is now aimed at the bourgeoisie itself.

But the bourgeoisie not only forged weapons that killed themselves; it also produced those who were to use such weapons—the modern workers, i.e. the proletariat.

With the development of the bourgeoisie, that is, capital, the proletariat, that is, the modern working class, also developed to the same extent; modern workers can survive only when they find jobs, and can only find jobs when their labors increase capital. These workers who have to sell themselves sporadically, like any other goods, are also a commodity, so they are also affected by all changes in competition and all fluctuations in the market.

Due to the promotion of machines and division of labor, the proletarian labor has lost any independent nature and therefore has lost any appeal to the workers. The worker became a simple accessory of the machine, and all he was asked to do was an extremely simple, extremely monotonous and extremely easy to learn. Therefore, the expenses spent on workers are almost limited to the living materials necessary to maintain workers' lives and to continue the worker's descendants. However, the price of commodities, and thus the price of labor, is equal to its production costs. Therefore, the more disgusting labor makes people feel, the less wages will be. Not only that, the more the machine is promoted, the more meticulous the division of labor, the more the amount of labor will increase. This is either due to the extension of working hours, or the increase in labor required within a certain period of time, the acceleration of machine operation, etc.

Modern industry has turned paternalist-style masters' small workshop into large factories for industrial capitalists. The workers crowded in the factory were organized like soldiers. They are ordinary soldiers of the Industrial Army and are under layers of surveillance by sergeants and officers at all levels. They are not just slaves to the bourgeois and bourgeois states, they are enslaved by machines, supervisors, and first of all the bourgeoisie who run factories. The more openly this autocratic system declares profit as its ultimate goal, the more despicable, hateful and hateful it will be.

The less skills and strength required for hand operation, in other words, the more developed the modern industry, the more male workers are excluded by female workers and child workers. For the working class, the difference between gender and age has no social significance. They are all just tools of labor, but they require different costs due to their age and gender.

When the factory owners' exploitation of workers came to an end and the workers received the wages paid in cash, another part of the bourgeoisie - the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnshop owner, etc. - rushed towards them.

The lower classes of the former middle ranks, namely small industrialists, small merchants and small veterinarians, handicraftsmen and peasants, all of these classes have descended into the proletariat's ranks, some because their small capital is not enough to operate large industries and cannot withstand the competition of larger capitalists; some because their craft has been made worthless by new methods of production. This is how the proletariat is complemented by all classes of the inhabitants.

The proletariat has gone through various stages of development. Its struggle against the bourgeoisie began at the same time as its existence.

Initially, they were single workers, then workers from a factory, and then workers from a certain labor department in a certain place, fighting against the individual bourgeois who directly exploited them. They attack not only the bourgeois production relations, but also the production tools themselves; they destroy foreign goods that come to compete, destroy machines, burn factories, and try to restore the status of the lost medieval workers.

At this stage, workers are masses scattered across the country and divided by competition. The large-scale assembly of workers was not the result of their own union, but the result of the bourgeois union, which at that time must and temporarily be able to mobilize the entire proletariat in order to achieve its political goals. Therefore, at this stage, the proletariat is not fighting against its own enemies, but against its own enemies, that is, against the remnants of the autocratic monarchy, the landlords, non-industrial bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. Therefore, the entire historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory achieved under such conditions is the victory of the bourgeoisie.

But with the development of industry, not only did the proletariat increase in its population, but it combined into a larger collective, its power grew, and it felt more and more its power. Machines make the difference in labor smaller and smaller, and make wages almost everywhere lower, so the interests and living conditions within the proletariat are becoming more and more consistent. The increasing competition between bourgeoisie and the resulting business crisis has made workers' wages increasingly unstable; the rapid and continuous improvement of machines has made workers' overall living status increasingly unsecured; the conflict between individual workers and individual bourgeoisie has become increasingly conflicting in the nature of two classes. Workers began to form alliances against the bourgeoisie; they united to defend their wages. They even set up regular groups in order to prepare food for possible resistance. In some places, struggle broke out into an uprising.

Workers sometimes win, but this victory is only temporary. The real outcome of their struggle is not the direct success, but the increasingly expanding union of workers. This union was developed due to the increasingly developed means of transportation created by large industries, which connected workers from all over the world. As long as this connection is achieved, many local struggles of the same nature can be combined into national struggles and into class struggles. And all class struggles are political struggles. The medieval citizens had to achieve a coalition that took hundreds of years to rely on country roads, and modern proletarians could achieve it in just a few years to use the railway.

The proletarian organization becomes a class, and thus becomes a political party, is constantly undermined by the self-competition of the workers. However, this tissue is always regenerated and is stronger, stronger, stronger and more powerful at a time. It exploits the division within the bourgeoisie, forcing them to recognize the individual interests of workers in legal form. The UK’s Ten Hours Working Day Act is an example.

All the conflicts within the old society promoted the development of the proletariat in many ways. The bourgeoisie is in constant struggle: initially opposing the aristocracy; later opposing the part of the bourgeoisie that conflicts with industrial progress; often opposing all foreign bourgeoisie. In all these struggles, the bourgeoisie had to appeal to the proletariat and demand proletariat assistance, thus entangling the proletariat into the political movement. Therefore, the bourgeoisie itself gave its own educational factor, namely its weapons against itself.

Secondly, we have seen that industrial progress has thrown the entire group of members of the ruling class into the proletarian ranks, or at least threaten their living conditions. They also brought a lot of educational factors to the proletariat.

Finally, when the class struggle is approaching the decisive battle, the process of disintegration within the ruling class and the entire old society has reached a very strong and sharp level, and even a small number of people in the ruling class leave the ruling class and surrender to the revolutionary class, that is, the class that controls the future. Therefore, just as some of the aristocrats in the past have turned to the bourgeoisie, now there are also some of the bourgeois thinkers, especially some of the bourgeois thinkers who have improved to the theoretical understanding of the entire historical movement, have turned to the proletariat.

Among all the classes currently opposed to the bourgeoisie, only the proletariat is the truly revolutionary class. The rest of the classes are becoming increasingly declining and perishing with the development of large-scale industry, but the proletariat is a product of large-scale industry itself.

The intermediate hierarchy, namely, small industrialists, small merchants, handicraftsmen, and peasants, fought against the bourgeoisie in order to maintain the survival of their intermediate hierarchy to avoid destruction. So, they are not revolutionary, but conservative. Not only that, they are even reactionary because they try to reverse the wheel of history. If they are revolutionary, it is because they are about to transfer into the proletariat, so that they will not safeguard their current interests, but their future interests, and they will leave their original position and stand on the proletariat's stand.

The rogue proletariat is the negative and corrupt part of the lowest class of the old society. They were also swept into the movement by the proletarian revolution in some places. However, due to their overall living conditions, they are more willing to be bought and do reactionary activities.

In the living conditions of the proletariat, the living conditions of the old society have been eliminated. The proletariat have no property; their relationship with their wives and children has nothing in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industrial labor and modern capital oppression, whether in England or France, whether in the United States or Germany, have caused the proletariat to lose any nationality. In their opinion, law, morality, and religion are all bourgeois prejudice, and all those hidden behind these prejudices are bourgeois interests.

After all classes in the past fought for rule, they always obeyed the entire society to their conditions for wealth and prosperity, in an attempt to consolidate the living status they had obtained. Only by abolishing their existing possession methods and thus abolishing all existing possession methods can proletariat gain social productivity. Proletarians have nothing to protect their own things, they must destroy everything that protects and protects private property to this day.

All movements in the past were movements for a few people or for the benefit of a few people. The movement of the proletariat is an independent movement for the vast majority of people and for the benefit of the vast majority. The proletariat, the lowest class of today's society, cannot raise its head and straighten its chest if it does not blow up the entire upper class that constitutes the official society.

If not in terms of content and form, the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie is first and foremost a struggle within a country. The proletariat in every country should of course first defeat the bourgeoisie in its own country.

In narrating the most general stage of the development of the proletariat, we explore the more or less hidden civil war within the existing society, until this war breaks out into an open revolution, where the proletariat uses violence to overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish its own rule.

We have seen that all so far are based on the oppressed class and the oppressed class. However, in order to oppress a class, it is necessary to ensure that this class has at least the conditions for barely maintaining its slave-like survival. Serfs once struggled to be members of the commune under the serf system, and petty bourgeoisies once struggled to be members of the commune under the constraints of feudal autocratic system. On the contrary, modern workers did not rise with the progress of industry, but fell more and more below the living conditions of their class. Workers become extremely poor, and poverty grows faster than population and wealth. From this we can clearly see that the bourgeoisie can no longer be the ruling class of society, and can no longer impose the living conditions of its own class on society as the law that dominates everything. The bourgeoisie cannot rule because it cannot even guarantee that its slaves will maintain their lives, because it has to let its slaves fall to the point where they cannot support it but want it to support it. Society can no longer survive under its rule, that is, its survival is no longer compatible with society.

The fundamental condition for the survival and rule of the bourgeoisie is the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the people, the formation and proliferation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labor. Employment labor is entirely based on the self-competition of workers. The industrial progress caused by the bourgeoisie and unable to resist was made by revolutionary union achieved by workers through associations, which replaced their dispersion caused by competition. As a result, with the development of large-scale industry, the basis on which the bourgeoisie relies on to produce and possess products was dug out from its feet. It first produces its own gravedigger. The demise of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

Proletarians and Communists

What is the relationship between the Communists and all proletarians?

Communists are not special parties that are opposed to other workers' parties.

They have no interests that are different from those of the entire proletariat.

They did not propose any special principles to shape the movement of the proletariat.

The difference between the Communists and other proletarian parties is only that: on the one hand, in the struggle between the different nations of the proletariat, the Communists emphasized and upheld the common interests of the entire proletariat without distinction; on the other hand, in the various development stages experienced by the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the Communists always represent the interests of the entire movement.

Therefore, in practice, the Communists are the most determined and always-driven part of the working parties in all countries; in theory, what they outperforms the rest of the proletarian masses is their understanding of the conditions, processes and general outcomes of the proletarian movement.

The closest purpose of the Communists is to form the proletariat into a class, overthrow the bourgeois rule, and seize power from the proletariat.

The theoretical principles of the Communists are by no means based on the ideas and principles invented or discovered by this or that world reformer.

These principles are nothing more than a general expression of the true relationship between the existing class struggle and the historical movement before us. The abolition of preexisting ownership relations is not a unique feature of communism.

All ownership relations have undergone frequent historical changes and frequent historical changes.

For example, the French Revolution abolished the feudal ownership and replaced it with the bourgeois ownership.

The characteristic of communism is not to abolish general ownership, but to abolish the bourgeois ownership.

However, modern bourgeois private ownership is a final and complete manifestation of the production and possession of products based on class antagonism and exploitation of others by some.

In this sense, Communists can summarize their own theory into one sentence: eliminate private ownership.

Some people blame us Communists for destroying the property we earn and the property we obtain from our own labor, and to eliminate the property that constitutes the basis of all freedom, activities and independence of our individuals.

What kind of property you get from labor, earn yourself, and earn yourself! Are you talking about the petty bourgeoisie and small peasants’ property before the emergence of bourgeois property? That kind of property does not need us to eliminate. The development of industry has eliminated it, and it is being eliminated every day.

Or, are you talking about the private property of the modern bourgeoisie?

But will hiring labor, the labor of the proletariat create property for the proletariat? Something is nothing. The capital created by this labor, namely, the exploitation of the property of wage labor, can only be proliferated under the conditions of continuous generation of new wage labor to re-exploitation. This kind of property today is moving in the opposition between capital and wage labor. Let's take a look at two aspects of this opposition.

Being a capitalist means that he not only occupies a purely personal position in production, but also a social position. Capital is a product of the collective. It can only be moved through the common activities of many members of society, and in the final analysis, only through the common activities of all members of society.

Therefore, capital is not a personal force, but a social force.

Therefore, turning capital into public property belonging to all members of society does not turn personal property into social property. All that is changed here is the social nature of property. It will lose its class nature.

Now, let's take a look at hiring labor.

The average price of wages is the minimum wage, the amount of living materials necessary for workers to maintain their workers' lives. Therefore, what the employed worker possesses through his own labor is only enough to barely maintain the reproduction of his life. We will never intend to eliminate the personal possession of this labour product for direct life reproduction, which does not leave anything left behind to make it possible for people to dominate other people's labor. All we want to eliminate is the pitiful nature of this possession, under which the workers live only to proliferate capital, and can only live when the interests of the ruling class require him to live.

In bourgeois society, living labor is only a means to proliferate accumulated labor. In a communist society, the accumulated labor is only a means to expand, enrich and improve the lives of workers.

Therefore, in bourgeois society, the past dominates the present, and in communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society, capital has independence and personality, while the moving individuals do not have independence and personality.

But the bourgeoisie calls the elimination of this relationship the elimination of personality and freedom! That's right. Indeed, it is precisely to eliminate the personality, independence and freedom of the bourgeoisie.

Within the scope of today's bourgeois production relations, freedom is free trade and free trading.

However, once the transaction disappears, free transactions will also disappear. The remarks about free trade, like all other big talk about freedom in our bourgeoisie, are meaningful to the enslaved citizens of the Middle Ages, but are meaningless to communism's desire to eliminate trade, to the bourgeois production relations and the bourgeoisie itself.

If we want to eliminate private ownership, you will panic. However, in your existing society, private property has been wiped out for nine out of ten members; this private property exists precisely because private property no longer exists for nine out of ten members. It can be seen that you blame us for saying that we want to eliminate the ownership system that requires the majority of people in society to have no property.

In short, you blame us because we want to eliminate your ownership. Indeed, we are going to do this.

From the time when labor can no longer be transformed into capital, currency, or land rent, in a word, it can no longer be transformed into a monopoly social force, that is, from the time when personal property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, you say that personality has been eliminated.

From this we can see that you are acknowledging that the personality you understand is nothing more than bourgeoisie and bourgeois private owners. Such personality should indeed be eliminated.

Communism does not deprive anyone of the right to possess social products, it only deprives the right to use this possession to enslave other people's labor.

Some people refute that once private ownership is eliminated, all activities will stop and the wind of laziness will arise.

In this way, bourgeois society should have perished due to laziness, because in this society, those who work hard do not get, and those who get won do not get it. All these concerns can be attributed to the synonym of repetition: once there is no capital, there will be no wage labor anymore.

All these rebukes on the possession and production of communist material products are also extended to the possession and production of spiritual products. Just as the end of class ownership is the end of production itself to the bourgeoisie, the end of class education is in their view equal to the end of all education.

The kind of education that bourgeoisie fears to lose is the vast majority of people train people into machines.

However, since you use your bourgeois concepts about freedom, education, law, etc. to measure the abolition of bourgeois ownership, please do not argue with us. Your concept itself is the product of the bourgeoisie's production relations and ownership relations, just as your law is nothing more than the will of your class who is regarded as law, and the content of this will is determined by the material living conditions of your class.

Your self-interested concept has enabled you to turn your own production relations and ownership relations from a historical and temporary relationship in the production process to an eternal natural and rational law, a concept of self-interested that is shared by you and all the perished ruling classes. When talking about the ancient ownership, what you can understand, what you can understand when talking about feudal ownership, you can never understand it again when talking about bourgeois ownership.

Eliminate the family! Even the extreme radicals expressed indignation at the shameful intentions of the Communists.

On what basis are modern, bourgeois families built? It is based on capital and on private wealth. This family exists only in the bourgeoisie in its full development form, and the forced living alone and open prostitution of the proletariat are its complement.

The family of the bourgeoisie will naturally disappear with the disappearance of its replenishment, and both will disappear with the disappearance of capital.

Are you blaming us for eliminating our parents' exploitation of our children? We admit this crime.

But, you say that we use social education instead of family education to eliminate people’s closest relationships.

And isn’t your education also determined by society? Isn’t it also determined by the social relationship you are in when you educate? Isn’t it also determined by direct or indirect interference conducted by society through schools, etc.? The Communists did not invent the role of society on education; they simply wanted to change the nature of this role and to free education from the influence of the ruling class.

The more all family connections of proletarians are destroyed by the development of large industries, the more their children are turned into simple commodities and tools of labor due to this development, the more disgusting the bourgeois empty talk about family and education, about intimate relationships between parents and children.

But you Communists must implement the public wife system, and the entire bourgeoisie shouted at us in unison.

Bourgeois sees his wife as a pure tool of production. They heard that production tools would be used in public, so they naturally had to think that women would suffer the same fate.

They didn't expect that the problem was to prevent women from being in a mere production tool.

In fact, it is ridiculous that our bourgeoisie pretends to be hypocritical and expresses surprise at the so-called formal public wife system of Communists. The public wife system does not need to be implemented by the Communists, it has almost always existed.

Our bourgeoisie does not satisfy their proletarian wives and daughters at their domination, let alone formal prostitution, they also enjoy seducing wives from each other as their greatest pleasure.

Bourgeois marriage is actually a public wife system. At best, people can only blame the Communists for their desire to replace the hypocritical hidden public wife system with formal and open public wife system. In fact, it goes without saying that with the elimination of the current production relations, the public wife system that arises from this relationship, namely formal and informal prostitution, has disappeared.

Some people also blame the Communists for abolishing the motherland and the nation.

Workers have no motherland. Never take away what they don't have. Because the proletariat must first obtain political rule, rise to a national class, and organize itself into a nation, so it is still national, although it is not the meaning understood by the bourgeoisie.

With the development of the bourgeoisie, with the realization of trade freedom and the establishment of the world market, and with the tendency of industrial production and the corresponding living conditions, ethnic separation and opposition between the peoples of various countries are increasingly disappearing.

The rule of the proletariat will make them disappear faster. Joint action, at least the joint action of civilized countries, is one of the primary conditions for the liberation of the proletariat.

Once people's exploitation of people is eliminated, the nation's exploitation of people will be eliminated.

Once class opposition within the nation disappears, hostile relations between nations will disappear.

The various criticisms raised against communism from the perspectives of religion, philosophical and all ideological aspects are not worth discussing in detail.

People’s ideas, opinions and concepts, in a word, people’s consciousness changes with changes in people’s living conditions, people’s social relations, and people’s social existence. Does this require deep thought to understand?

What else does the history of thought prove in addition to proving that spiritual production is transformed with the transformation of material production? The ruling thought of any era is always just the ruling class.

When people talk about the idea of ​​revolutionizing the entire society, they only show the fact that the factors that have formed a new society within the old society, and the collapse of the old ideas is in step with the collapse of the old living conditions.

When the ancient world was about to perish, various ancient religions were defeated by Christianity. When Christian thought was defeated by Enlightenment in the 18th century, feudal society was in a desperate struggle against the revolutionary bourgeoisie at that time. The idea of ​​freedom of faith and religious freedom only shows that competition dominates the realm of faith.

"But", some people will say, "religious, moral, philosophical, political, legal concepts, etc. are certainly constantly changing in the process of historical development, but religion, moral, philosophy, politics and law are always preserved in this change.

In addition, there are eternal truths shared by all social states, such as freedom, justice, etc. But communism wants to abolish eternal truth, it wants to abolish religion and morality, rather than innovate it, so communism is inconsistent with all historical developments so far. ”

Why does this blame come down to? All social history so far has been moved in class opposition, and this opposition has different forms in different eras.

However, no matter what form of class opposition takes, the exploitation of another part of people in society by some people in society is a common fact in the past centuries. It is no surprise, therefore, that the social consciousness of centuries, despite its various and varied forms, always moves in some common forms, which, only disappear completely when class opposition completely disappears.

The communist revolution is the most thorough break with the traditional ownership relationship; it is no surprise that it must be the most thorough break with traditional concepts in its own development process.

However, let us put aside the bourgeoisie's alleged criticism of communism.

We have seen earlier that the first step of the workers' revolution is to elevate the proletariat to the ruling class and strive for democracy.

The proletariat will use its political rule to seize all the capital of the bourgeoisie step by step, concentrate all the tools of production in the hands of the proletariat, that is, the proletariat organized into the ruling class, and increase the total amount of productivity as quickly as possible.

To do this, of course, it is necessary to first impose mandatory interference in ownership and bourgeois production relations, that is, to take measures that seem economically insufficient and ineffective, but in the course of the movement they will transcend themselves and are essential as a means to change the entire mode of production.

These measures will of course be different in different countries.

However, almost all the most advanced countries can take the following measures:

1. Deprive real estate and use land rent for state expenditure.

2. High progressive taxes are imposed.

3. Abolish the inheritance right.

4. Confiscate all exiles and rebels' property.

5. Concentrate credit in the hands of the state through the state’s bank that owns state capital and monopoly rights.

6. Concentrate all transportation industries in the hands of the country.

7. Add national factories and production tools according to the overall plan, reclaim wasteland and improve soil.

8. Implement the universal labor obligation system and establish an industrial army, especially in agriculture.

9. Combine agriculture and industry to promote the gradual elimination of urban-rural confrontation.

10. Public and free education is implemented for all children. Abolish this form of factory labor for children. Combine education with material production, etc.

When class differences have disappeared in the process of development and all production is concentrated in the hands of united individuals, public power loses its political nature. Political power in the original sense is organized violence used by one class to oppress another. If the proletariat must unite as a class in the struggle against the bourgeoisie, if it makes itself a ruling class through revolution and uses violence to eliminate the old production relations with the qualifications of the ruling class, then while it eliminates this production relations, it also eliminates the conditions of existence of class opposition, eliminates the conditions of existence of the class itself, and thus eliminates the rule of its own class.

Replacing the old bourgeois society where class and class opposition exists will be such a consortium, where the free development of everyone is the condition for the free development of all people.

Socialist and communist literature

Reactionary socialism

Feudal Socialism

The French and British aristocrats, according to their historical status, were to write works that criticized modern bourgeois society. In the July Revolution of 1830 in France and the British reform movement, they were once again defeated by the hateful nouveau riche. From then on, there will be no serious political struggle. All they can do is just a struggle with words. However, even in terms of writing, it is impossible to replay the old tune of the Restoration Period. In order to arouse sympathy, the nobles had to pretend, as if they no longer cared about their own interests, but wrote an indictment against the bourgeoisie only for the interests of the exploited working class. Their method of venting anger was to sing songs that curse their new ruler and to whisper to him some more or less dangerous prophecies.

This gave rise to feudal socialism, half an elegy, half a slander, half an echo of the past, half a threat of the future; it can sometimes stimulate the hearts of the bourgeoisie with spicy, playful and sarcastic comments, but it is always ridiculous because it is completely unable to understand the process of modern history.

In order to win over the people, the nobles waved the proletariat's begging bags as flags. However, whenever the people followed them, they found that their hips had old feudal heralds, so they laughed and scattered.

Some French orthodox and "Young Britain" have performed this drama.

The feudal lords said that their exploitation methods were different from those of the bourgeoisie, and they just forgot that they exploited them under completely different, currently outdated conditions. They said that under their rule, there was no modern proletariat, and they just forgot that the modern bourgeoisie is the inevitable product of their social system.

However, they did not hide the reactionary nature of their criticism, and their main crime against the bourgeoisie was that under the rule of the bourgeoisie there was a class that would blow up the entire old social system.

They blame the bourgeoisie, not so much because it produced the proletariat, but rather because it produced the revolutionary proletariat.

Therefore, in political practice, they participate in all violent measures taken against the working class, and in daily life, they violate their own set of high-sounding words, condescending to pick up golden apples, and trade wool, beets and souvenirs regardless of faith, benevolence and reputation.

Just as monks always walk hand in hand with feudal lords, monks' socialism is always walk hand in hand with feudal socialism.

It is easier to paint Christian asceticism with a socialist color. Isn’t Christianity also fiercely opposed private property, marriage, and the state? Doesn’t it advocate replacing all of this with good deeds and begging, celibacy and abstinence, practice and worship? Christian socialism is nothing more than the holy water used by monks to make the nobles resentful.

Pet bourgeois socialism

Feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was overthrown by the bourgeoisie and whose living conditions were deteriorating and disappearing in modern bourgeois society. The medieval hierarchy of Chengguan citizens and small peasants was the predecessor of the modern bourgeoisie. In countries with underdeveloped industry and commerce, this class is still barely surviving next to the emerging bourgeoisie.

In the country where modern civilization has developed, a new petty bourgeoisie has been formed, which swings between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and is constantly reorganized as a supplementary part of the bourgeois society. However, members of this class are often thrown into the proletarian ranks by competition, and, with the development of large industries, they even realize that they will soon lose their position as an independent part of modern society, and will soon be replaced by supervisors and employees in commerce, industry and agriculture.

In countries where the peasant class is far more than half of the population, for example in France, writers who oppose the bourgeoisie on the proletariat naturally criticize the bourgeois system using the standards of petty bourgeoisie and peasants, and speak for workers from the standpoint of petty bourgeoisie. This formed petty bourgeois socialism. Sismondi was the leader of such writers not only for France but also for Britain.

This socialism analyzes the contradictions in modern production relations very thoroughly. It exposes the hypocritical whitewashing of economists. It proves with a firm demonstration of the destructive effect of machines and division of labor, the accumulation of capital and real estate, overproduction, crisis, the inevitable decline of petty bourgeoisie and small peasants, the poverty of the proletariat, the anarchy of production, the extremely uneven distribution of wealth, the devastating industrial wars between the nations, and the disintegration of old fashions, old family relations and old nationalities.

However, in its actual content, this socialism is either an attempt to restore the old means of production and means of exchange, thereby restoring the old ownership relations and the old society, or an attempt to re-stamp the modern means of production and means of exchange into the frame of the old ownership relations that have been broken by them and must be broken by them. It is reactionary on both occasions and also vague.

The guild system in industry, the patriarchal economy in agriculture,—this is its conclusion.

This trend of thought turned into a cowardly lament in its subsequent development.

German or "real" socialism

The French socialist and communist literature was produced under the oppression of the dominant bourgeoisie and was a written expression of the struggle against this rule, when the document was moved to Germany, the bourgeoisie there had just begun to fight against the feudal autocracy.

German philosophers, semi-philosophers and beautiful writers greedily grasped this document, but they forgot that when this work was moved from France to Germany, the living conditions of France did not move there at the same time. Under the German conditions, French literature completely lost its direct practical significance and only had the form of pure literature. It must be manifested as meaningless thinking about the real society and the realization of human nature. In this way, the requirements of the first French Revolution, in the eyes of the 18th century German philosophers, were nothing more than the requirements of general "practical reason", and the manifestation of the will of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie is in their minds the laws of pure will, original will, and true human will.

The only job of German writers is to reconcile the new French thought with their old philosophical beliefs, or rather, to master the French thought from their philosophical point of view.

This kind of mastery, like mastering a foreign language, is translated.

As we all know, monks once wrote absurd biography of Catholic saints on manuscripts of ancient pagan scriptures. German writers took the opposite approach to secular French literature. They wrote their own philosophical nonsense under the original French book. For example, they wrote "the externalization of human nature" under the French criticism of monetary relations, and the so-called "the subversion of the rule of abstract universal things" under the French criticism of bourgeois state, etc.

This practice of putting their own philosophical words and sentences under the French discourse is called "philosophy of action", "real socialism", "socialist science in Germany", "philosophical argumentation of socialism", and so on.

French socialist and communist literature was thus completely castrated. Since this kind of document no longer expresses the struggle of one class against another in the hands of the Germans, the Germans believe that they have overcome the "one-sided nature of the French". They do not represent the demands of truth, but the demands of truth, but the interests of the proletariat, but the essential interests of man, that is, the interests of ordinary people. Such people do not belong to any class, do not exist in the real world at all, but only exist in the space of philosophical fantasy filled with clouds.

This German socialism, which once solemnly looked at his own poor primary school homework and boasted about it, has now gradually lost its self-taught innocence.

The bourgeoisie in Germany, especially Prussia, opposed the feudal lords and autocratic dynasties. In a word, the liberal movement became increasingly serious.

Therefore, "real" socialism has a good opportunity to oppose the socialist requirements with the political movement, curse liberalism with the traditional method of cursing heresy, curse the representative state, curse the competition of the bourgeoisie, the freedom of press and publishing of the bourgeoisie, the law of the bourgeoisie, the freedom and equality of the bourgeoisie, and promote it to the people, saying that in this bourgeois movement, the people will not only gain nothing, but will lose everything. German socialism happened to be forgotten. France's criticism (German socialism is the pitiful echo of this criticism) was based on the modern bourgeois society, the corresponding material living conditions and the equivalent political system, and all these premises were still to be fought for in Germany at that time.

This socialism became a scarecrow of the autocratic governments of the German states and their entourages - monks, teachers, Junkers and bureaucrats who were unable to seek and scare the fierce bourgeoisie.

This socialism is a sweet addition to the vicious whip and gun bullets used by these governments to suppress the uprising of German workers.

Since "real" socialism has become the weapon of these governments against the German bourgeoisie, it directly represents a reactionary interest, namely the interests of the German petty citizens. In Germany, the petty bourgeoisie left over from the 16th century and often reappeared in different forms since then, is the real social basis of the existing system.

To preserve this petty bourgeoisie is to preserve the existing system of Germany. This class was terrified to wait for an inescapable demise from the industrial and political rule of the bourgeoisie, which was due to the accumulation of capital and the rise of the revolutionary proletariat on the other hand. In its view, "real" socialism can kill two birds with one stone. "Real" socialism has become popular like a plague.

German socialists put their shriveled "eternal truth" on a coat of flowers embroidered with gorgeous words and sweet nectar soaked with sweet and sweet dew. This dazzling coat only increases sales of their goods among these customers.

At the same time, German socialism is increasingly aware that its mission is to act as the spokesperson for such a petty citizen's boastful talk.

It declared that the German nation was a model nation and that the German petty citizens were a model people. It adds a mysterious, noble, socialist meaning to every ugly deed of these petty citizens, making it the exact opposite. It develops to the end, directly opposes the "barbaric destructive" tendency of communism and declares itself to be impartially above any class struggle. All the so-called socialist and communist works that are popular in Germany today, with a very few exceptions, belong to this kind of despicable and depressing document.

Conservative or bourgeois socialism

Some people in the bourgeoisie want to eliminate social ills in order to ensure the survival of bourgeois society.

This group of people includes: economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, working class improvementists, charity organizers, members of the Animal Protection Association, sponsors of the Alcohol Association, and various small improvementists. This bourgeois socialism is even made into some complete system.

We can take Proudhon's "Philosophy of Poverty" as an example.

Socialist bourgeoisie is willing to have the living conditions of modern society, but do not have the struggles and dangers that are inevitable by these conditions. They are willing to have existing society, but do not have the factors that revolutionize and disintegrate this society. They are willing to want the bourgeoisie, but not the proletariat. In the eyes of the bourgeoisie, the world it ruled is naturally the best. Bourgeois socialism makes this comforting concept into a half or a whole system. It requires the proletariat to realize its system and enter the new Jerusalem. In fact, it only requires the proletariat to stay in the present society, but to abandon their abominable ideas about this society.

Another insular but more practical form of socialism, which strives to make the working class hate all revolutionary movements, and insists that it is not one or another political reform that can bring benefits to the working class, but only the changes in material living conditions, that is, economic relations. However, the change of material living conditions understood by socialism is definitely not the abolition of the bourgeois production relations that can only be achieved through revolutionary channels, but the administrative improvements implemented on the basis of such production relations, so that they will not change the relationship between capital and wage labor at all, and at most they will only reduce the cost of the bourgeoisie's rule and simplify its financial management.

Bourgeois socialism only gains its proper expression when it becomes a pure rhetoric of speech.

Free trade! For the interests of the working class; protect tariffs! For the benefit of the working class; single cell! For the benefit of the working class. ——This is the only last thing that bourgeois socialism seriously said.

Bourgeois socialism is such a conclusion: the bourgeoisie is for the benefit of the working class.

Critical utopian socialism and communism

Here, we will not talk about the documents that have expressed the proletarian demands in all modern revolutions (the works of Babev et al.).

The initial attempt of the proletariat to directly realize its class interests in an era of general excitement and in the period of overthrowing feudal society were inevitably failed. This was because the proletariat itself was not developed enough at that time, and because the material conditions for the liberation of the proletariat were not yet met, these conditions were only the product of the bourgeois era. The revolutionary literature that emerged with these early proletarian movements must be reactionary in terms of its content. This literature advocates universal asceticism and crude egalitarianism.

The original socialist and communist system, the system of Saint Simon, Fourier, Irving and others, appeared in the initial period when the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie had not yet developed. We have already described this period before (see "The Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat").

It is true that the inventors of these systems see the role of class opposition and the disintegration factors in the dominant society itself. But they do not see any historical initiative on the proletariat, nor any political movements that are unique to it.

Since the development of class opposition is in line with the development of industry, it is impossible for these inventors to see the material conditions for the liberation of the proletariat, so they explore some social sciences and social laws in order to create these conditions.

Social activities should be replaced by their personal invention activities, the historical conditions for liberation should be replaced by fantasy conditions, and the gradual organization of the proletariat into a class should be replaced by a specially designed social organization. In their view, future world history is nothing more than publicity and implementation of their social plans.

Indeed, they also realized that their plans were primarily representative of the interests of the working class, the most suffering class. In their minds, the proletariat is just a class that suffers the most.

However, because class struggle does not develop and because of their own living conditions, they think they are above this class opposition. They want to improve the living conditions of all members of society, including even the best-living members. Therefore, they always appeal to the entire society indiscriminately, and mainly to the ruling class. They think that as long as people understand their system, they will recognize that it is the best plan for the best society.

Therefore, they reject all political actions, especially all revolutionary actions; they want to achieve their goals through peaceful means, and attempt to open the way for the new social gospel through some small, certainly unsuccessful experiments, through the power of demonstration.

This portrayal of the future society, when the proletariat is still not developing and therefore its understanding of its own status is still based on fantasy, is in line with the proletariat's initial instinctive desire for universal social transformation.

However, these socialist and communist works also contain critical elements. These works criticize the entire foundation of existing society. Therefore, they provide extremely valuable materials to inspire workers' awareness. Their positive claims about future societies, such as eliminating urban-rural opposition, eliminating family, eliminating private profits, eliminating wage labor, promoting social harmony, and turning the state into a pure production management agency, all of which only indicate the eliminating class opposition, which was just beginning to develop at that time, and all they knew was the early, inconspicuous, uncertain form of this opposition. Therefore, these claims themselves also have a purely vague nature.

The significance of critical utopian socialism and communism is inversely proportional to the development of history. The more class struggle develops and has a certain form, the more this fantasy that transcends class struggle, the more it loses any practical significance and any theoretical basis. So, while the founders of these systems were revolutionary in many ways, their followers always formed some reactionary sects. These believers ignore the historical progress of the proletariat and stick to the old views of their teachers. Therefore, they have always attempted to weaken class struggle and reconcile opposition. They also always dream of using experimental methods to realize their social fantasies, founding individual Faronstairs, establishing domestic immigration areas, creating Little Igaria, the pocket-sized version of New Jerusalem, and in order to build all these castles in the air, they had to call on the bourgeoisie to be kind and generous. They gradually fell into the group of reactionary or conservative socialists, the difference was that they showed off their knowledge more systematically and fanatically superstitious about the extraordinary effects of their social sciences.

Therefore, they fiercely opposed all political movements of the workers, believing that such movements only happened due to blind disbelief of the new gospel.

In Britain, there were Irvings opposed the Charterists, and in France, there were Fouriers against the Reformers.

The attitudes of the Communists towards various opposition parties

After reading Chapter 2, you can understand the relationship between the Communists and the working party that has been formed, and thus the relationship between them with the British Charterists and the North American Agrarian Reformers.

The Communists fought for the recent purposes and interests of the working class, but they represented the future of the movement at the same time in the current movement. In France, the Communists united with the Socialist Democratic Party against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, but did not give up the right to take a critical attitude towards empty talk and fantasy inherited from the revolutionary tradition.

In Switzerland, the Communists supported the radicals, but did not ignore that the party was composed of contradictory elements, partly a French-style democratic socialist and partly a radical bourgeoisie.

Among the Poles, the Communists supported the party that regarded the agrarian revolution as a condition for national liberation, that was the party that launched the 1846 Krakow Uprising.

In Germany, as long as the bourgeoisie takes revolutionary action, the Communist Party will join it in opposing autocratic monarchy, feudal land ownership and the reactionary nature of the petty citizens.

However, the Communist Party did not neglect to educate workers to be as clear as possible to be aware of the hostile opposition between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, so that German workers could immediately use the social and political conditions necessary to bring about the bourgeois rule as weapons against the bourgeoisie, so that the struggle against the bourgeoisie itself will begin immediately after the overthrow of the German reactionary class.

The Communists focused their main attention on Germany, because Germany was on the eve of the bourgeois revolution, because compared with Britain in the 17th century and France in the 18th century, Germany would have a much more developed proletariat to achieve this change under the conditions of more progress in European civilization, and therefore the bourgeois revolution in Germany could only be the direct prelude to the proletariat's revolution.

In short, the Communists supported all revolutionary movements against the existing social and political systems everywhere.

In all these movements, they stressed that the issue of ownership is the basic problem of movement, regardless of the extent to which this problem develops.

Finally, the Communists struggle everywhere to strive for unity and coordination among democratic parties around the world.

Communists disdain to conceal their views and intentions. They publicly declared that their purpose can only be achieved by violent overthrow of all existing social systems. Let the ruling class tremble in the face of the communist revolution. All the proletariat lost in this revolution is chain. What they will get will be the whole world.

Proletarians all over the world, unite!