Manifesto of the Communist Party

45 

Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith 

– 10 –  

In what way do proletarians differ from manufacturing 

workers? 

The manufacturing worker of the 16th to the 18th centuries still had, with but few exception, an 

instrument of production in his own possession – his loom, the family spinning wheel, a little plot 

of land which he cultivated in his spare time. The proletarian has none of these things.  

The manufacturing worker almost always lives in the countryside and in a more or less 

patriarchal relation to his landlord or employer; the proletarian lives, for the most part, in the city 

and his relation to his employer is purely a cash relation.  

The manufacturing worker is torn out of his patriarchal relation by big industry, loses whatever 

property he still has, and in this way becomes a proletarian.  

– 11 –  

What were the immediate consequences of the industrial 

revolution and of the division of society into bourgeoisie 

and proletariat? 

First, the lower and lower prices of industrial products brought about by machine labor totally 

destroyed, in all countries of the world, the old system of manufacture or industry based upon 

hand labor.  

In this way, all semi-barbarian countries, which had hitherto been more or less strangers to 

historical development, and whose industry had been based on manufacture, were violently 

forced out of their isolation. They bought the cheaper commodities of the English and allowed 

their own manufacturing workers to be ruined. Countries which had known no progress for 

thousands of years – for example, India – were thoroughly revolutionized, and even China is now 

on the way to a revolution.  

We have come to the point where a new machine invented in England deprives millions of 

Chinese workers of their livelihood within a year’s time. 

In this way, big industry has brought all the people of the Earth into contact with each other, has 

merged all local markets into one world market, has spread civilization and progress everywhere 

and has thus ensured that whatever happens in civilized countries will have repercussions in all 

other countries.  

It follows that if the workers in England or France now liberate themselves, this must set off 

revolution in all other countries – revolutions which, sooner or later, must accomplish the 

liberation of their respective working class.  

Second, wherever big industries displaced manufacture, the bourgeoisie developed in wealth and 

power to the utmost and made itself the first class of the country. The result was that wherever 

this happened, the bourgeoisie took political power into its own hands and displaced the hitherto 

ruling classes, the aristocracy, the guildmasters, and their representative, the absolute monarchy.  

The bourgeoisie annihilated the power of the aristocracy, the nobility, by abolishing the 

entailment of estates – in other words, by making landed property subject to purchase and sale, 

and by doing away with the special privileges of the nobility. It destroyed the power of the 

guildmasters by abolishing guilds and handicraft privileges. In their place, it put competition – 

that is, a state of society in which everyone has the right to enter into any branch of industry, the 

only obstacle being a lack of the necessary capital.  

The introduction of free competition is thus public declaration that from now on the members of 

society are unequal only to the extent that their capitals are unequal, that capital is the decisive 

power, and that therefore the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, have become the first class in society.  

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46 

Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith 

Free competition is necessary for the establishment of big industry, because it is the only 

condition of society in which big industry can make its way.  

Having destroyed the social power of the nobility and the guildmasters, the bourgeois also 

destroyed their political power. Having raised itself to the actual position of first class in society, 

it proclaims itself to be also the dominant political class. This it does through the introduction of 

the representative system which rests on bourgeois equality before the law and the recognition of 

free competition, and in European countries takes the form of constitutional monarchy. In these 

constitutional monarchies, only those who possess a certain capital are voters – that is to say, only 

members of the bourgeoisie. These bourgeois voters choose the deputies, and these bourgeois 

deputies, by using their right to refuse to vote taxes, choose a bourgeois government.  

Third, everywhere the proletariat develops in step with the bourgeoisie. In proportion, as the 

bourgeoisie grows in wealth, the proletariat grows in numbers. For, since the proletarians can be 

employed only by capital, and since capital extends only through employing labor, it follows that 

the growth of the proletariat proceeds at precisely the same pace as the growth of capital.  

Simultaneously, this process draws members of the bourgeoisie and proletarians together into the 

great cities where industry can be carried on most profitably, and by thus throwing great masses 

in one spot it gives to the proletarians a consciousness of their own strength.  

Moreover, the further this process advances, the more new labor-saving machines are invented, 

the greater is the pressure exercised by big industry on wages, which, as we have seen, sink to 

their minimum and therewith render the condition of the proletariat increasingly unbearable. The 

growing dissatisfaction of the proletariat thus joins with its rising power to prepare a proletarian 

social revolution.  

– 12 –  

What were the further consequences of the industrial 

revolution? 

Big industry created in the steam engine, and other machines, the means of endlessly expanding 

industrial production, speeding it up, and cutting its costs. With production thus facilitated, the 

free competition, which is necessarily bound up with big industry, assumed the most extreme 

forms; a multitude of capitalists invaded industry, and, in a short while, more was produced than 

was needed.  

As a consequence, finished commodities could not be sold, and a so-called commercial crisis 

broke out. Factories had to be closed, their owners went bankrupt, and the workers were without 

bread. Deepest misery reigned everywhere.  

After a time, the superfluous products were sold, the factories began to operate again, wages rose, 

and gradually business got better than ever.  

But it was not long before too many commodities were again produced and a new crisis broke 

out, only to follow the same course as its predecessor.  

Ever since the beginning of this (19th) century, the condition of industry has constantly fluctuated 

between periods of prosperity and periods of crisis; nearly every five to seven years, a fresh crisis 

has intervened, always with the greatest hardship for workers, and always accompanied by 

general revolutionary stirrings and the direct peril to the whole existing order of things.  

– 13 –  

What follows from these periodic commercial crises? 

First:  

That, though big industry in its earliest stage created free competition, it has now 

outgrown free competition;  

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