The Communist Manifesto





The Communist Manifesto, first published on February 21, 1848 by Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels, is one of the world's most historically influential
political tracts. Commissioned by the Communist League (antecedent to the
Communist Party) and written by founding Communist theorists Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, it laid out the League's purposes and program. The
Manifesto suggested a course of action for a proletariat revolution to
overthrow "capitalism" and, ostensibly, to bring about a classless society.

     A spectre is haunting Europe -- the spectre of communism. All the
     powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this
     spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and
     German police-spies.

     Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as
     communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has
     not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more
     advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary
     adversaries?

The program described in the Manifesto -- that is to say, the policies the
Communists of its day sought to implement -- is termed socialism. These
policies included, among others, the abolition of land ownership and
inheritance, the progressive income tax, and the nationalization of means of
production and transportation. These policies, which would be implemented by
a revolutionary government, would (the authors believed) be a precursor to
communism, a stateless and classless society. The term "Communism" is also
used to refer to the beliefs and practices of the Communist Party, including
that of the Soviet era which differed substantially from Marx and Engels'
conception.

     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
     organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat
     during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of
     circumstances, to organize 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.

It is this concept of the transition from socialism to communism which many
critics of the Manifesto, particularly during and after the Soviet era, have
alighted upon. Anarchists, liberals, and conservatives have all asked how an
organization such as the revolutionary state could ever (as Marx put it
elsewhere) wither away. Both traditional understandings of the attraction of
political power and more recent theories of organizational behavior suggest
instead that a group or organization given political power and will tend to
preserve its privilege rather than to permit it to wither away into a state
of no privilege -- even if that privilege is given in the name of revolution
and of the establishment of equality.

The Manifesto went through a number of editions from 1872 to 1890. Written
for a lay audience -- indeed, addressed to the common workers -- it is one
of the most readable works of Marx. Historically speaking, it provides a
foundation for understanding the motives and policies of the Communists at
the beginning of their movement.

     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
     communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their
     chains. They have a world to win.

     Working men of all countries, unite!