33
Chapter III: Socialist and Communist Literature
But these Socialist and Communist publications contain also a critical element. They attack every
principle of existing society. Hence, they are full of the most valuable materials for the
enlightenment of the working class. The practical measures proposed in them – such as the
abolition of the distinction between town and country, of the family, of the carrying on of
industries for the account of private individuals, and of the wage system, the proclamation of
social harmony, the conversion of the function of the state into a more superintendence of
production – all these proposals point solely to the disappearance of class antagonisms which
were, at that time, only just cropping up, and which, in these publications, are recognised in their
earliest indistinct and undefined forms only. These proposals, therefore, are of a purely Utopian
character.
The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an inverse relation to
historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes definite
shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical
value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of these systems were,
in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary
sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive
historical development of the proletariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and that consistently, to
deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dream of experimental
realisation of their social Utopias, of founding isolated “phalansteres”, of establishing “Home
Colonies”, or setting up a “Little Icaria”
*
– duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem – and to
realise all these castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the
feelings and purses of the
bourgeois. By degrees, they sink into the category of the reactionary [or] conservative Socialists
depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic pedantry, and by their fanatical and
superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social science.
They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part of the working class; such action,
according to them, can only result from blind unbelief in the new Gospel.
The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respectively, oppose the Chartists and the
Réformistes.
*
Phalanstéres were Socialist colonies on the plan of Charles Fourier; Icaria was the name given by Cabet to his Utopia
and, later on, to his American Communist colony. [Note by Engels to the English edition of 1888.]
“Home Colonies” were what Owen called his Communist model societies. Phalanstéres was the name of the public
palaces planned by Fourier. Icaria was the name given to the Utopian land of fancy, whose Communist institutions
Cabet portrayed. [Note by Engels to the German edition of 1890.]
IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the
Various Existing Opposition Parties
Section II has made clear the relations of the Communists to the existing working-class parties,
such as the Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America.
The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the
momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent
and take care of the future of that movement. In France, the Communists ally with the Social-
Democrats
*
against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take
up a critical position in regard to phases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great
Revolution.
In Switzerland, they support the Radicals, without losing sight of the fact that this party consists
of antagonistic elements, partly of Democratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly of radical
bourgeois.
In Poland, they support the party that insists on an agrarian revolution as the prime condition for
national emancipation, that party which fomented the insurrection of Cracow in 1846.
In Germany, they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way, against the
absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie.
But they never cease, for a single instant, to instil into the working class the clearest possible
recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the
German workers may straightway use, as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social
and political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy,
and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight against the
bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin.
The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a
bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European
civilisation and with a much more developed proletariat than that of England was in the
seventeenth, and France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in
Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.
In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing
social and political order of things.
In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property
question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.
Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all
countries.
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.
Working Men of All Countries, Unite!
5
*
The party then represented in Parliament by Ledru-Rollin, in literature by Louis Blanc, in the daily
press by the Réforme. The name of Social-Democracy signifies, with these its inventors, a section of
the Democratic or Republican Party more or less tinged with socialism. [Engels, English Edition
1888]