Manifesto of the Communist Party

26 

Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists 

society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious 

liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within 

the domain of knowledge.  

“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been 

modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political 

science, and law, constantly survived this change.”  

“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of 

society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, 

instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical 

experience.”  

What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the 

development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.  

But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation 

of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, 

despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general 

ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.  

The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no 

wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.  

But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.  

We have seen above, that 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.  

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the 

bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the 

proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as 

possible.  

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the 

rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, 

therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the 

movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are 

unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.  

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.  

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.  

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public 

purposes.  

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.  

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.  

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.  

5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank 

with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.  

6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the 

State.  

7. 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.  

8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for 

agriculture.  

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of 

all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the 

---

27 

Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists 

populace over the country.  

10. 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.  

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.  

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an 

association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of 

all.  

 

---

III. Socialist and Communist Literature 

1. Reactionary Socialism  

A. Feudal Socialism  

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

4

, 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 and conditions that were quite different 

and that are now antiquated. In showing that, under their rule, the modern proletariat never 

existed, they forget that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of their own form of 

society.  

For the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionary character of their criticism that their chief 

accusation against the bourgeois amounts to this, that under the bourgeois régime a class is being 

developed which is destined to cut up root and branch the old order of society.  

What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it creates a proletariat as that it creates 

a revolutionary proletariat.  

In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive measures against the working class; and in 

ordinary life, despite their high-falutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped 

from the tree of industry, and to barter truth, love, and honour, for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar, 

and potato spirits.

†

  

As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has Clerical Socialism with 

Feudal Socialism.  

                                                      

*

 Not the English Restoration (1660-1689), but the French Restoration (1814-1830). [Note by Engels to the English 

edition of 1888.]  

†

 This applies chiefly to Germany, where the landed aristocracy and squirearchy have large portions of their estates 

cultivated for their own account by stewards, and are, moreover, extensive beetroot-sugar manufacturers and distillers 

of potato spirits. The wealthier British aristocracy are, as yet, rather above that; but they, too, know how to make up for 

declining rents by lending their names to floaters or more or less shady joint-stock companies. [Note by Engels to the 

English edition of 1888.]  

---