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 Tsar, 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?
Two things result from this fact:
I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.
II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.
To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the
following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish
languages.
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
reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society
into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians,
knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen,
apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done
away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression,
new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has
simplified 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.
From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these
burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.
The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising
bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the
colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.
The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds,
now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system
took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class;
division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour
in each single workshop. i'm cutting out a lot to fit all the topics, ya fressh farmed queers
In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the 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 sectarian 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.
The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute
section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all
others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the
advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general
results of the proletarian movement.
The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties:
formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of
political power by the proletariat.
The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that
have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.
They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle,
from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property
relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism.
All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent
upon the change in historical conditions.
The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the
abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most
complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few. NEXT
Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of the aristocracies of France and
England to write pamphlets against modern bourgeois society. In the French Revolution of July
1830, and in the English reform agitation, these aristocracies again succumbed to the hateful
upstart. Thenceforth, a serious political struggle was altogether out of the question. A literary
battle alone remained possible. But even in the domain of literature the old cries of the restoration
period had become impossible.
In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight, apparently, of its own
interests, and to formulate their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited
working class alone. Thus, the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new
masters and whispering in his ears sinister prophesies of coming catastrophe.
In this way arose feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half an echo of the past, half
menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie
to the very heart’s core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend
the march of modern history.
The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarian alms-bag in front for a
banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats
of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.
One section of the French Legitimists and “Young England” exhibited this spectacle.
In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to that of the bourgeoisie, the
feudalists forget that they exploited under circumstances