Manifesto of the Communist Party

53 

Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith 

This category of reactionary socialists, for all their seeming partisanship and their scalding tears 

for the misery of the proletariat, is nevertheless energetically opposed by the communists for the 

following reasons:  

(i) It strives for something which is entirely impossible.  

(ii) It seeks to establish the rule of the aristocracy, the guildmasters, the small 

producers, and their retinue of absolute or feudal monarchs, officials, soldiers, and 

priests – a society which was, to be sure, free of the evils of present-day society 

but which brought it at least as many evils without even offering to the oppressed 

workers the prospect of liberation through a communist revolution.  

(iii) As soon as the proletariat becomes revolutionary and communist, these 

reactionary socialists show their true colors by immediately making common 

cause with the bourgeoisie against the proletarians.  

[ Bourgeois Socialists: ]  

The second category consists of adherents of present-day society who have been frightened for its 

future by the evils to which it necessarily gives rise. What they want, therefore, is to maintain this 

society while getting rid of the evils which are an inherent part of it.  

To this end, some propose mere welfare measures – while others come forward with grandiose 

systems of reform which, under the pretense of re-organizing society, are in fact intended to 

preserve the foundations, and hence the life, of existing society.  

Communists must unremittingly struggle against these bourgeois socialists because they work for 

the enemies of communists and protect the society which communists aim to overthrow.  

[ Democratic Socialists: ]  

Finally, the third category consists of democratic socialists who favor some of the same measures 

the communists advocate, as described in Question 18, not as part of the transition to 

communism, however, but as measures which they believe will be sufficient to abolish the misery 

and evils of present-day society.  

These democratic socialists are either proletarians who are not yet sufficiently clear about the 

conditions of the liberation of their class, or they are representatives of the petty bourgeoisie, a 

class which, prior to the achievement of democracy and the socialist measures to which it gives 

rise, has many interests in common with the proletariat.  

It follows that, in moments of action, the communists will have to come to an understanding with 

these democratic socialists, and in general to follow as far as possible a common policy with them 

– provided that these socialists do not enter into the service of the ruling bourgeoisie and attack 

the communists.  

It is clear that this form of co-operation in action does not exclude the discussion of differences.  

– 25 –  

What is the attitude of the communists to the 

other political parties of our time? 

This attitude is different in the different countries.  

In England, France, and Belgium, where the bourgeoisie rules, the communists still have a 

common interest with the various democratic parties, an interest which is all the greater the more 

closely the socialistic measures they champion approach the aims of the communists – that is, the 

more clearly and definitely they represent the interests of the proletariat and the more they depend 

on the proletariat for support. In England, for example, the working-class Chartists

10

 are infinitely 

closer to the communists than the democratic petty bourgeoisie or the so-called Radicals.  

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54 

Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith 

In America, where a democratic constitution has already been established, the communists must 

make the common cause with the party which will turn this constitution against the bourgeoisie 

and use it in the interests of the proletariat – that is, with the agrarian National Reformers.

11

  

In Switzerland, the Radicals, though a very mixed party, are the only group with which the 

communists can co-operate, and, among these Radicals, the Vaudois and Genevese are the most 

advanced.  

In Germany, finally, the decisive struggle now on the order of the day is that between the 

bourgeoisie and the absolute monarchy. Since the communists cannot enter upon the decisive 

struggle between themselves and the bourgeoisie until the bourgeoisie is in power, it follows that 

it is in the interest of the communists to help the bourgeoisie to power as soon as possible in order 

the sooner to be able to overthrow it. Against the governments, therefore, the communists must 

continually support the radical liberal party, taking care to avoid the self-deceptions of the 

bourgeoisie and not fall for the enticing promises of benefits which a victory for the bourgeoisie 

would allegedly bring to the proletariat. The sole advantages which the proletariat would derive 

from a bourgeois victory would consist  

(i) in various concessions which would facilitate the unification of the proletariat 

into a closely knit, battle-worthy, and organized class; and  

(ii) in the certainly that, on the very day the absolute monarchies fall, the struggle 

between bourgeoisie and proletariat will start. From that day on, the policy of the 

communists will be the same as it now is in the countries where the bourgeoisie is 

already in power.  

  

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Demands of the Communist Party in Germany

 

“Demands of the Communist Party in Germany” were written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in 

Paris between March 21 (when Engels arrived in Paris from Brussels) and March 24, 1848. This 

document was discussed by members of the Central Authority, who approved and signed it as the. 

political programme of the Communist League in the revolution that broke out in Germany. In March 

it was printed as a leaflet, for distribution among revolutionary German emigrant workers who were 

about to return home. Austrian and German diplomats in Paris informed their respective governments 

about this as early as March 27, 28 and 29. (The Austrian Ambassador enclosed in his letter a copy of 

the leaflet which he dated “March 25”.) The leaflet soon reached members of the Communist League 

in other countries, in particular, German emigrant workers in London. 

Early in April, the “Demands of the Communist Party in Germany” were published in such German 

democratic papers as Berliner Zeitungs-Halle (special supplement to No. 82, April 5, 1848), 

Düsseldorfer Zeitung (No. 96, April 5, 1848), Mannheimer Abendzeitung (No. 96, April 6, 1848), 

Trier’sche Zeitung (No. 97, April 6, 1848, supplement), Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (No. 100, April 

9, 1848, supplement), and Zeitung für das deutsche Volk (No. 2 1, April 9, 1848). 

Marx and Engels, who left for Germany round about April 6 and some time later settled in Cologne, 

did their best along with their followers to popularise this programme document during the revolution. 

In 1848 and 1849 it was repeatedly published in the periodical press and in leaflet form. Not later than 

September 10, 1848, the “Demands” were printed in Cologne as a leaflet for circulation by the 

Cologne Workers’ Association both in the town itself and in a number of districts of Rhenish Prussia. 

In addition to minor stylistic changes, point 10 in the text of the leaflet was worded differently from 

that published in March-April 1848. At the Second Democratic Congress held in Berlin in October 

1848, Friedrich Beust, delegate from the Cologne Workers’ Association, spoke, on behalf of the social 

question commission, in favour of adopting a programme of action closely following the “Demands”. 

In November and December 1848, various points of the “Demands” were discussed at meetings of the 

Cologne Workers’ Association. Many editions of the “Demands” published during the revolution and 

after its defeat have survived to this day in their original form, some of them as copies kept in the 

police archives. 

At the end of 1848 or the beginning of 1849 an abridged version of the “Demands” was published in 

pamphlet form by Weller Publishers in Leipzig. The slogan at the beginning of the document, the 

second paragraph of point 9 and the last sentence of point 10 were omitted, and the words “The 

Committee” were not included among the signatories. In 1853, an abridged version of the “Demands” 

was printed, together with other documents of the Communist League, in the first part of the book Die 

Communisten-Verschworungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts published in Berlin for purposes of 

information by Wermuth and Stieber, two police officials, who staged a trial against the Communists 

in Cologne in 1852. Later Engels reproduced the main points of the “Demands” in his essay On the 

History of the Communist League, published in November 1885 in the newspaper Sozialdemokrat, and 

as an introduction to the pamphlet: K. Marx, Enthüllungen über den Kommunisten Prozess zu Köln, 

Hottingen-Zürich, 1885. 

English translations of the “Demands of the Communist Party in Germany” appeared in the 

collections: The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels with an introduction and 

explanatory notes by D. Ryazanoff, Martin Lawrence, London (1930); K. Marx, Selected Works, Vol. 

II, ed. V. Adoratsky, Moscow-Leningrad, Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the 

USSR (1936); ibid., New York (1 936); Birth of the Communist Manifesto, edited and annotated, with 

an Introduction by D. J. Struik, International Publishers, New York, 197 1, and in other publications. 

The text is from From MECW Volume 7, p. 3. 

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