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Workers Vanguard No. 941
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28 August 2009
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TROTSKY
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LENIN
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Communism and Human Liberation
(Quote of the Week)
The goal of Marxism is to open the road to a rationally planned
international division of labor based on material abundance unattainable under
the anarchic and irrational capitalist profit system. Writing in 1847 in
“Principles of Communism”—an alternative draft for the Communist
Manifesto—Friedrich Engels emphasized that future communist society will
liberate mankind from its subordination to the division of labor and thereby
from the antithesis between mental and physical labor. The precondition to that
is the forging of Marxist workers parties to fight for proletarian revolutions
worldwide to rip the means of production out of the hands of the capitalist
exploiters.
The common management of production cannot be effected by people as
they are today, each one being assigned to a single branch of production,
shackled to it, exploited by it, each having developed only one of
his abilities at the cost of all the others and knowing only one
branch, or only a branch of a branch of the total production. Even present-day
industry finds less and less use for such people. Industry carried on in common
and according to plan by the whole of society presupposes moreover people of
all-round development, capable of surveying the entire system of production.
Thus the division of labour making one man a peasant, another a shoemaker, a
third a factory worker, a fourth a stockjobber, which has already been
undermined by machines, will completely disappear. Education will enable young
people quickly to go through the whole system of production, it will enable them
to pass from one branch of industry to another according to the needs of society
or their own inclinations. It will therefore free them from that one-sidedness
which the present division of labour stamps on each one of them. Thus the
communist organisation of society will give its members the chance of an
all-round exercise of abilities that have received all-round development. With
this, the various classes will necessarily disappear. Thus the communist
organisation of society is, on the one hand, incompatible with the existence of
classes and, on the other, the very establishment of this society furnishes the
means to do away with these class differences.
—Friedrich Engels, “Principles of Communism” (1847)
************
Frederick Engels 1847
The Principles of Communism
— 1 —
What is Communism?
Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the
proletariat.
— 2 —
What is the proletariat?
The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale
of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and
woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor
– hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled
competition. The proletariat, or the class of proletarians, is, in a word, the
working class of the 19th century.[1]
— 3 —
Proletarians, then, have not always existed?
No. There have always been poor and working classes; and the working class
have mostly been poor. But there have not always been workers and poor people
living under conditions as they are today; in other words, there have not always
been proletarians, any more than there has always been free unbridled
competitions.
— 4 —
How did the proletariat originate?
The Proletariat originated in the industrial revolution, which took place in
England in the last half of the last (18th) century, and which has since then
been repeated in all the civilized countries of the world.
This industrial revolution was precipitated by the discovery of the steam
engine, various spinning machines, the mechanical loom, and a whole series of
other mechanical devices. These machines, which were very expensive and hence
could be bought only by big capitalists, altered the whole mode of production
and displaced the former workers, because the machines turned out cheaper and
better commodities than the workers could produce with their inefficient
spinning wheels and handlooms. The machines delivered industry wholly into the
hands of the big capitalists and rendered entirely worthless the meagre property
of the workers (tools, looms, etc.). The result was that the capitalists soon
had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers. This marked
the introduction of the factory system into the textile industry.
Once the impulse to the introduction of machinery and the factory system had
been given, this system spread quickly to all other branches of industry,
especially cloth- and book-printing, pottery, and the metal industries.
Labor was more and more divided among the individual workers so that the
worker who previously had done a complete piece of work now did only a part of
that piece. This division of labor made it possible to produce things faster and
cheaper. It reduced the activity of the individual worker to simple, endlessly
repeated mechanical motions which could be performed not only as well but much
better by a machine. In this way, all these industries fell, one after another,
under the dominance of steam, machinery, and the factory system, just as
spinning and weaving had already done.
But at the same time, they also fell into the hands of big capitalists, and
their workers were deprived of whatever independence remained to them.
Gradually, not only genuine manufacture but also handicrafts came within the
province of the factory system as big capitalists increasingly displaced the
small master craftsmen by setting up huge workshops, which saved many expenses
and permitted an elaborate division of labor.
This is how it has come about that in civilized countries at the present time
nearly all kinds of labor are performed in factories – and, in nearly all
branches of work, handicrafts and manufacture have been superseded. This process
has, to an ever greater degree, ruined the old middle class, especially the
small handicraftsmen; it has entirely transformed the condition of the workers;
and two new classes have been created which are gradually swallowing up all the
others. These are:
(i) The class of big capitalists, who, in all civilized
countries, are already in almost exclusive possession of all the means of
subsistance and of the instruments (machines, factories) and materials necessary
for the production of the means of subsistence. This is the bourgeois class, or
the bourgeoisie.
(ii) The class of the wholly propertyless, who are obliged to
sell their labor to the bourgeoisie in order to get, in exchange, the means of
subsistence for their support. This is called the class of proletarians, or the
proletariat.
— 5 —
Under what conditions does this sale of the
labor of the
proletarians to the bourgeoisie take place?
Labor is a commodity, like any other, and its price is therefore determined
by exactly the same laws that apply to other commodities. In a regime of big
industry or of free competition – as we shall see, the two come to the same
thing – the price of a commodity is, on the average, always equal to its cost of
production. Hence, the price of labor is also equal to the cost of production of
labor.
But, the costs of production of labor consist of precisely the quantity of
means of subsistence necessary to enable the worker to continue working, and to
prevent the working class from dying out. The worker will therefore get no more
for his labor than is necessary for this purpose; the price of labor, or the
wage, will, in other words, be the lowest, the minimum, required for the
maintenance of life.
However, since business is sometimes better and sometimes worse, it follows
that the worker sometimes gets more and sometimes gets less for his commodities.
But, again, just as the industrialist, on the average of good times and bad,
gets no more and no less for his commodities than what they cost, similarly on
the average the worker gets no more and no less than his minimum.
This economic law of wages operates the more strictly the greater the degree
to which big industry has taken possession of all branches of production.
— 6 —
What working classes were there before the industrial
revolution?
The working classes have always, according to the different stages of
development of society, lived in different circumstances and had different
relations to the owning and ruling classes.
In antiquity, the workers were the slaves of the owners, just as they still
are in many backward countries and even in the southern part of the United
States.
In the Middle Ages, they were the serfs of the land-owning nobility, as they
still are in Hungary, Poland, and Russia. In the Middle Ages, and indeed right
up to the industrial revolution, there were also journeymen in the cities who
worked in the service of petty bourgeois masters. Gradually, as manufacture
developed, these journeymen became manufacturing workers who were even then
employed by larger capitalists.
— 7 —
In what way do proletarians differ from slaves?
The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily
and hourly.
The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence,
however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual
proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his
labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence
is assured only to the class as a whole.
The slave is outside competition; the proletarian is in it and experiences
all its vagaries.
The slave counts as a thing, not as a member of society. Thus, the slave can
have a better existence than the proletarian, while the proletarian belongs to a
higher stage of social development and, himself, stands on a higher social level
than the slave.
The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he
abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the
proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.
— 8 —
In what way do proletarians differ from serfs?
The serf possesses and uses an instrument of production, a piece of land, in
exchange for which he gives up a part of his product or part of the services of
his labor.
The proletarian works with the instruments of production of another, for the
account of this other, in exchange for a part of the product.
The serf gives up, the proletarian receives. The serf has an assured
existence, the proletarian has not. The serf is outside competition, the
proletarian is in it.
The serf liberates himself in one of three ways: either he runs away to the
city and there becomes a handicraftsman; or, instead of products and services,
he gives money to his lord and thereby becomes a free tenant; or he overthrows
his feudal lord and himself becomes a property owner. In short, by one route or
another, he gets into the owning class and enters into competition. The
proletarian liberates himself by abolishing competition, private property, and
all class differences.
— 9 —
In what way do proletarians differ from handicraftsmen?
In contrast to the proletarian, the so-called handicraftsman, as he still
existed almost everywhere in the past (eighteenth) century and still exists here
and there at present, is a proletarian at most temporarily. His goal is to
acquire capital himself wherewith to exploit other workers. He can often achieve
this goal where guilds still exist or where freedom from guild restrictions has
not yet led to the introduction of factory-style methods into the crafts nor yet
to fierce competition But as soon as the factory system has been introduced into
the crafts and competition flourishes fully, this perspective dwindles away and
the handicraftsman becomes more and more a proletarian. The handicraftsman
therefore frees himself by becoming either bourgeois or entering the middle
class in general, or becoming a proletarian because of competition (as is now
more often the case). In which case he can free himself by joining the
proletarian movement, i.e., the more or less communist movement. [2]
— 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.
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;
that, for big industry, competition and generally the
individualistic organization of production have become a fetter which it must
and will shatter;
that, so long as big industry remains on its present footing,
it can be maintained only at the cost of general chaos every seven years, each
time threatening the whole of civilization and not only plunging the
proletarians into misery but also ruining large sections of the bourgeoisie;
hence, either that big industry must itself be given up, which
is an absolute impossibility, or that it makes unavoidably necessary an entirely
new organization of society in which production is no longer directed by
mutually competing individual industrialists but rather by the whole society
operating according to a definite plan and taking account of the needs of all.
Second: That big industry, and the limitless expansion of
production which it makes possible, bring within the range of feasibility a
social order in which so much is produced that every member of society will be
in a position to exercise and develop all his powers and faculties in complete
freedom.
It thus appears that the very qualities of big industry which, in our
present-day society, produce misery and crises are those which, in a different
form of society, will abolish this misery and these catastrophic depressions.
We see with the greatest clarity:
(i) That all these evils are from now on to be ascribed solely
to a social order which no longer corresponds to the requirements of the real
situation; and
(ii) That it is possible, through a new social order, to do
away with these evils altogether.
— 14 —
What will this new social order have to be like?
Above all, it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches
of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead
institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by
society as a whole – that is, for the common account, according to a common
plan, and with the participation of all members of society.
It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with association.
Moreover, since the management of industry by individuals necessarily implies
private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form
in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it
follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the
individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be
abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments
of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement
– in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods.
In fact, the abolition of private property is, doubtless, the shortest and
most significant way to characterize the revolution in the whole social order
which has been made necessary by the development of industry – and for this
reason it is rightly advanced by communists as their main demand.
— 15 —
Was not the abolition of private property possible at an earlier
time?
No. Every change in the social order, every revolution in property relations,
is the necessary consequence of the creation of new forces of production which
no longer fit into the old property relations.
Private property has not always existed.
When, towards the end of the Middle Ages, there arose a new mode of
production which could not be carried on under the then existing feudal and
guild forms of property, this manufacture, which had outgrown the old property
relations, created a new property form, private property. And for manufacture
and the earliest stage of development of big industry, private property was the
only possible property form; the social order based on it was the only possible
social order.
So long as it is not possible to produce so much that there is enough for
all, with more left over for expanding the social capital and extending the
forces of production – so long as this is not possible, there must always be a
ruling class directing the use of society’s productive forces, and a poor,
oppressed class. How these classes are constituted depends on the stage of
development.
The agrarian Middle Ages give us the baron and the serf; the cities of the
later Middle Ages show us the guildmaster and the journeyman and the day
laborer; the 17th century has its manufacturing workers; the 19th has big
factory owners and proletarians.
It is clear that, up to now, the forces of production have never been
developed to the point where enough could be developed for all, and that private
property has become a fetter and a barrier in relation to the further
development of the forces of production.
Now, however, the development of big industry has ushered in a new period.
Capital and the forces of production have been expanded to an unprecedented
extent, and the means are at hand to multiply them without limit in the near
future. Moreover, the forces of production have been concentrated in the hands
of a few bourgeois, while the great mass of the people are more and more falling
into the proletariat, their situation becoming more wretched and intolerable in
proportion to the increase of wealth of the bourgeoisie. And finally, these
mighty and easily extended forces of production have so far outgrown private
property and the bourgeoisie, that they threaten at any moment to unleash the
most violent disturbances of the social order. Now, under these conditions, the
abolition of private property has become not only possible but absolutely
necessary.
— 16 —
Will the peaceful abolition of private property be possible?
It would be desirable if this could happen, and the communists would
certainly be the last to oppose it. Communists know only too well that all
conspiracies are not only useless, but even harmful. They know all too well that
revolutions are not made intentionally and arbitrarily, but that, everywhere and
always, they have been the necessary consequence of conditions which were wholly
independent of the will and direction of individual parties and entire classes.
But they also see that the development of the proletariat in nearly all
civilized countries has been violently suppressed, and that in this way the
opponents of communism have been working toward a revolution with all their
strength. If the oppressed proletariat is finally driven to revolution, then we
communists will defend the interests of the proletarians with deeds as we now
defend them with words.
— 17 —
Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one
stroke?
No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be
multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society.
In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing
society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the
means of production are available in sufficient quantity.
— 18 —
What will be the course of this revolution?
Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the
direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat. Direct in England, where the
proletarians are already a majority of the people. Indirect in France and
Germany, where the majority of the people consists not only of proletarians, but
also of small peasants and petty bourgeois who are in the process of falling
into the proletariat, who are more and more dependent in all their political
interests on the proletariat, and who must, therefore, soon adapt to the demands
of the proletariat. Perhaps this will cost a second struggle, but the outcome
can only be the victory of the proletariat.
Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not
immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against
private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat. The main
measures, emerging as the necessary result of existing relations, are the
following:
(i) Limitation of private property through progressive
taxation, heavy inheritance taxes, abolition of inheritance through collateral
lines (brothers, nephews, etc.) forced loans, etc.
(ii) Gradual expropriation of landowners, industrialists,
railroad magnates and shipowners, partly through competition by state industry,
partly directly through compensation in the form of bonds.
(iii) Confiscation of the possessions of all emigrants and
rebels against the majority of the people.
(iv) Organization of labor or employment of proletarians on
publicly owned land, in factories and workshops, with competition among the
workers being abolished and with the factory owners, in so far as they still
exist, being obliged to pay the same high wages as those paid by the state.
(v) An equal obligation on all members of society to work until
such time as private property has been completely abolished. Formation of
industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
(vi) Centralization of money and credit in the hands of the
state through a national bank with state capital, and the suppression of all
private banks and bankers.
(vii) Increase in the number of national factories, workshops,
railroads, ships; bringing new lands into cultivation and improvement of land
already under cultivation – all in proportion to the growth of the capital and
labor force at the disposal of the nation.
(viii) Education of all children, from the moment they can
leave their mother’s care, in national establishments at national cost.
Education and production together.
(ix) Construction, on public lands, of great palaces as
communal dwellings for associated groups of citizens engaged in both industry
and agriculture and combining in their way of life the advantages of urban and
rural conditions while avoiding the one-sidedness and drawbacks of each.
(x) Destruction of all unhealthy and jerry-built dwellings in
urban districts.
(xi) Equal inheritance rights for children born in and out of
wedlock.
(xii) Concentration of all means of transportation in the hands
of the nation.
It is impossible, of course, to carry out all these measures at once. But one
will always bring others in its wake. Once the first radical attack on private
property has been launched, the proletariat will find itself forced to go ever
further, to concentrate increasingly in the hands of the state all capital, all
agriculture, all transport, all trade. All the foregoing measures are directed
to this end; and they will become practicable and feasible, capable of producing
their centralizing effects to precisely the degree that the proletariat, through
its labor, multiplies the country’s productive forces.
Finally, when all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought
together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own
accord, money will become superfluous, and production will so expand and man so
change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic
habits may remain.
— 19 —
Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one
country alone?
No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the
peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close
relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the
others.
Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized
countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat
have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great
struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be
a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized
countries – that is to say, at least in England, America, France, and Germany.
It will develop in each of these countries more or less rapidly, according as
one country or the other has a more developed industry, greater wealth, a more
significant mass of productive forces. Hence, it will go slowest and will meet
most obstacles in Germany, most rapidly and with the fewest difficulties in
England. It will have a powerful impact on the other countries of the world, and
will radically alter the course of development which they have followed up to
now, while greatly stepping up its pace.
It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range.
— 20 —
What will be the consequences of the
ultimate disappearance of
private property?
Society will take all forces of production and means of commerce, as well as
the exchange and distribution of products, out of the hands of private
capitalists and will manage them in accordance with a plan based on the
availability of resources and the needs of the whole society. In this way, most
important of all, the evil consequences which are now associated with the
conduct of big industry will be abolished.
There will be no more crises; the expanded production, which for the present
order of society is overproduction and hence a prevailing cause of misery, will
then be insufficient and in need of being expanded much further. Instead of
generating misery, overproduction will reach beyond the elementary requirements
of society to assure the satisfaction of the needs of all; it will create new
needs and, at the same time, the means of satisfying them. It will become the
condition of, and the stimulus to, new progress, which will no longer throw the
whole social order into confusion, as progress has always done in the past. Big
industry, freed from the pressure of private property, will undergo such an
expansion that what we now see will seem as petty in comparison as manufacture
seems when put beside the big industry of our own day. This development of
industry will make available to society a sufficient mass of products to satisfy
the needs of everyone.
The same will be true of agriculture, which also suffers from the pressure of
private property and is held back by the division of privately owned land into
small parcels. Here, existing improvements and scientific procedures will be put
into practice, with a resulting leap forward which will assure to society all
the products it needs.
In this way, such an abundance of goods will be able to satisfy the needs of
all its members.
The division of society into different, mutually hostile classes will then
become unnecessary. Indeed, it will be not only unnecessary but intolerable in
the new social order. The existence of classes originated in the division of
labor, and the division of labor, as it has been known up to the present, will
completely disappear. For mechanical and chemical processes are not enough to
bring industrial and agricultural production up to the level we have described;
the capacities of the men who make use of these processes must undergo a
corresponding development.
Just as the peasants and manufacturing workers of the last century changed
their whole way of life and became quite different people when they were drawn
into big industry, in the same way, communal control over production by society
as a whole, and the resulting new development, will both require an entirely
different kind of human material.
People will no longer be, as they are today, subordinated to a single branch
of production, bound to it, exploited by it; they will no longer develop
one of their faculties at the expense of all others; they will no longer
know only one branch, or one branch of a single branch, of production as
a whole. Even industry as it is today is finding such people less and less
useful.
Industry controlled by society as a whole, and operated according to a plan,
presupposes well-rounded human beings, their faculties developed in balanced
fashion, able to see the system of production in its entirety.
The form of the division of labor which makes one a peasant, another a
cobbler, a third a factory worker, a fourth a stock-market operator, has already
been undermined by machinery and will completely disappear. Education will
enable young people quickly to familiarize themselves with the whole system of
production and to pass from one branch of production to another in response to
the needs of society or their own inclinations. It will, therefore, free them
from the one-sided character which the present-day division of labor impresses
upon every individual. Communist society will, in this way, make it possible for
its members to put their comprehensively developed faculties to full use. But,
when this happens, classes will necessarily disappear. It follows that society
organized on a communist basis is incompatible with the existence of classes on
the one hand, and that the very building of such a society provides the means of
abolishing class differences on the other.
A corollary of this is that the difference between city and country is
destined to disappear. The management of agriculture and industry by the same
people rather than by two different classes of people is, if only for purely
material reasons, a necessary condition of communist association. The dispersal
of the agricultural population on the land, alongside the crowding of the
industrial population into the great cities, is a condition which corresponds to
an undeveloped state of both agriculture and industry and can already be felt as
an obstacle to further development.
The general co-operation of all members of society for the purpose of planned
exploitation of the forces of production, the expansion of production to the
point where it will satisfy the needs of all, the abolition of a situation in
which the needs of some are satisfied at the expense of the needs of others, the
complete liquidation of classes and their conflicts, the rounded development of
the capacities of all members of society through the elimination of the present
division of labor, through industrial education, through engaging in varying
activities, through the participation by all in the enjoyments produced by all,
through the combination of city and country – these are the main consequences of
the abolition of private property.
— 21 —
What will be the influence of communist society on the
family?
It will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private
matter which concerns only the persons involved and into which society has no
occasion to intervene. It can do this since it does away with private property
and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases
of traditional marriage – the dependence rooted in private property, of the
women on the man, and of the children on the parents.
And here is the answer to the outcry of the highly moral philistines against
the “community of women”. Community of women is a condition which belongs
entirely to bourgeois society and which today finds its complete expression in
prostitution. But prostitution is based on private property and falls with it.
Thus, communist society, instead of introducing community of women, in fact
abolishes it.
— 22 —
What will be the attitude of communism to existing
nationalities?
The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with
the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a
result of this association and thereby to dissolve themselves, just as the
various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of
their basis, private property.[3]
— 23 —
What will be its attitude to existing religions?
All religions so far have been the expression of historical stages of
development of individual peoples or groups of peoples. But communism is the
stage of historical development which makes all existing religions superfluous
and brings about their disappearance[4]
— 24 —
How do communists differ from socialists?
The so-called socialists are divided into three categories.
[ Reactionary Socialists: ]
The first category consists of adherents of a feudal and patriarchal society
which has already been destroyed, and is still daily being destroyed, by big
industry and world trade and their creation, bourgeois society. This category
concludes, from the evils of existing society, that feudal and patriarchal
society must be restored because it was free of such evils. In one way or
another, all their proposals are directed to this end.
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 are infinitely closer to the communists than the
democratic petty bourgeoisie or the so-called Radicals.
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.
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.
Footnotes
The following footnotes are from the Chinese Edition
of
Marx/Engels Selected Works
Peking, Foreign Languages Press,
1977.
with editorial additions by marxists.org
At the June 1847 Congress of the League of the Just, which
was also the founding conference of the Communist League, it was decided to
issue a draft “confession of faith” to be submitted for discussion to the
sections of the League. The document which has now come to light is almost
certainly this draft. Comparison of the two documents shows that Principles
of Communism is a revised edition of this earlier draft. In Principles
of Communism, Engels left three questions unanswered, in two cases with the
notation “unchanged” (bleibt); this clearly refers to the answers provided in
the earlier draft.
“Think over the Confession of Faith a bit. I believe we had
better drop the catechism form and call the thing: Communist Manifesto.
As more or less history has got to be related in it, the form it has been in
hitherto is quite unsuitable. I am bringing what I have done here with me; it is
in simple narrative form, but miserably worded, in fearful haste. ...”
At the second congress of the Communist League (November
29-December 8, 1847) Marx and Engels defended the fundamental scientific
principles of communism and were trusted with drafting a programme in the form
of a manifesto of the Communist Party. In writing the manifesto the founders of
Marxism made use of the propositions enunciated in Principles of Communism.
Engels uses the term Manufaktur, and its
derivatives, which have been translated “manufacture”, “manufacturing”, etc.,
Engels used this word literally, to indicate production by hand, not
factory production for which Engels uses “big industry”. Manufaktur
differs from handicraft (guild production in mediaeval towns), in that the
latter was carried out by independent artisans. Manufacktur is carried
out by homeworkers working for merchant capitalists, or by groups of
craftspeople working together in large workshops owned by capitalists. It is
therefore a transitional mode of production, between guild (handicraft) and
modern (capitalist) forms of production.
(Last paragraph paraphrased from the
Introduction by Pluto
Press, London, 1971)
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