Communist Manifesto 1848 main ideas. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: The Communist Manifesto. Translations into Russian

In this work, with brilliant clarity and brightness, a new worldview is outlined, consistent materialism, which also embraces the field of social life, dialectics, as the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of development, the theory of the class struggle and the world-historical revolutionary role of the proletariat, the creator of a new, communist society.

1. Bourgeois and proletarians
2. Proletarians and Communists
3. Socialist and communist literature
   1. reactionary socialism
      1. Feudal socialism
      2. Petty-bourgeois socialism
      3. German or "true" socialism
   2. Conservative or bourgeois socialism
   3. Critically utopian socialism and communism
4. Attitude of communists towards various opposition parties

Meaning

In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels, for the first time in social science, defined a place in the history of mankind, showed its progressiveness in comparison with previous formations and the inevitability of its death. The founders of scientific communism showed that the entire history of society, with the exception of the primitive communal system (as Engels added in the preface to the German edition of the Manifesto, 1883), was the history of class struggle. In bourgeois society, an irreconcilable struggle between themselves is waged by two main classes hostile to each other - and. Having become the economically dominant class, the bourgeoisie has seized state power and is using it as a weapon to defend its selfish class interests and to suppress the working people. Marx and Engels revealed in the Manifesto the irreconcilable internal contradictions of bourgeois society. The capitalist relations of production, which contributed to the enormous growth of the productive forces, at a certain stage become an obstacle to the further development of production. The contradiction between the social character of production and the private form of appropriation - the main contradiction of capitalism - gives rise to economic crises, during which a significant part of finished products and productive forces are constantly destroyed.

In The Communist Manifesto, the world-historical role of the proletariat as the gravedigger of capitalist society and the builder of communism, the only completely consistent revolutionary class acting in the interests of all working people, is open and comprehensively substantiated. It is the working class that will deliver society from the yoke of capitalism by destroying the capitalist form of property and replacing it with public property. But to accomplish this task, the authors of the Manifesto point out, the working class can only use revolutionary violence against the bourgeoisie, through the proletarian socialist revolution. Marx and Engels substantiated the need to create a political party of the proletariat, revealed its historical role, defined its tasks, and explained the relationship between the party and the working class. In practice, the Communists, wrote the authors of the Manifesto,

“... they are the most resolute part of the workers’ parties of all countries, always encouraging them to move forward, and in theoretical terms they have an advantage over the rest of the mass of the proletariat in understanding the conditions, course and general results of the proletarian movement”

Although Marx and Engels in the "Manifesto" did not yet use the term "", however, the idea of ​​the proletarian dictatorship in this work was already expressed and substantiated by them.

“... The first step in the workers' revolution,” wrote Marx and Engels, “is the transformation of the proletariat into the ruling class, the conquest of democracy. The proletariat uses its political domination to wrest all capital from the bourgeoisie step by step, to centralize all the instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., the proletariat organized as the ruling class, and to increase the sum of the productive forces as quickly as possible.

The "Manifesto of the Communist Party" emphasizes that the destruction of the capitalist system, the elimination of the exploitation of man by man will put an end to national oppression and ethnic hatred. Marx and Engels noted that one of the main principles of the revolutionary activity of communists in various countries is their mutual assistance and support in the struggle against social oppression and exploitation, due to their common goals. The substantiation of this principle - the principle of proletarian internationalism - permeates the entire content of the Manifesto. Explaining the great and humane goals of the communists, Marx and Engels showed the complete groundlessness of the attacks on the communists by bourgeois ideologists, revealed the class limitations and self-serving nature of the bourgeoisie's ideas about marriage, morality, property, fatherland, etc.

In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels subjected the socialist and communist literature of those years to scientific criticism; they revealed the class essence of the concepts underlying feudal socialism, petty-bourgeois socialism, so-called German or "true" socialism, as well as conservative or bourgeois socialism. The founders of scientific communism expressed their attitude towards the systems of critical utopian socialism, showed the unreality of these systems and at the same time revealed rational elements in the views of utopian socialists -,. Marx and Engels put forward important propositions on the tactics of the proletarian party. Communists, the Manifesto explained, are members of a consistently revolutionary party. They

“...they fight for the immediate goals and interests of the working class, but at the same time, in the movement of today, they also defend the future of the movement”

The "Manifesto of the Communist Party" opened the way to a new era in the history of mankind, marked the beginning of a great revolutionary movement for the socialist transformation of the world. This little book, - V. I. Lenin wrote about the "Manifesto", - is worth whole volumes: the entire organized and fighting proletariat of the civilized world still lives and moves in its spirit.

Specificity of transformations

When presenting the content of the measures carried out by the proletariat, it is stipulated that in different countries their set may be different. Thus, in the most advanced countries, the following measures can be applied:

1. Expropriation of landed property and conversion of land rent to cover public expenditures.
2. High progressive tax.
3. Cancellation of inheritance rights.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state through a national bank with state capital and with an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of all transport in the hands of the state.
7. An increase in the number of state factories, tools of production, clearing for arable land and improvement of land according to the general plan.
8. The same obligation of labor for all, the establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. The connection of agriculture with industry, the promotion of the gradual elimination of the distinction between town and country.
10. Public and free education of all children. Elimination of factory labor of children in its modern form. The combination of education with material production, etc.

Recognizing that "arbitrary interference with property rights and bourgeois production relations" are measures "which seem economically insufficient and untenable", the authors of the Manifesto emphasized that in the course of the movement (these processes) these measures "outgrow themselves", and that they are inevitable as "a means for a revolution in the whole mode of production", and not as an end in themselves. It is significant that Marx at the same time harshly criticized the utopian "crude and ill-conceived communism" of those who simply extended the principle of private property to everyone ("common private property"). Crude communism, according to Marx, is the product of "worldwide envy".

Editions

The Manifesto is one of the most widespread works of scientific and political thought. In terms of the number of publications, it can be compared, perhaps, only with. The Communist Manifesto was first published in 1848 in London in German. It has been published in at least 70 countries, in more than 100 languages, over 1,000 times, with a total circulation of over 30 million copies. Almost 120 years ago, Engels already had every reason to state that “The history of the Manifesto largely reflects the history of the modern labor movement; at present it is undoubtedly the most widespread, the most international work of all socialist literature, a common program recognized by millions of workers from Siberia to California..

According to incomplete data, during the period 1848-71 there were about 770 editions in 50 languages. In the USSR, as of January 1, 1973, 447 editions of the Communist Manifesto were published with a total circulation of 24,341,000 copies in 74 languages.

Translations into Russian

• 1869 - the first edition of the "Manifesto" in Russian in Geneva. The authorship of the translation is attributed, although the translator was not indicated on the book itself. The translation distorted the most important provisions of this document
• 1882 - edition of the "Manifesto" in translation. With a special preface by Marx and Engels.
• 1948 - anniversary edition of the "Manifesto" by IMEL (the translation of 1939 has been updated)
• 1955 - Volume 4 of the "Works" of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (2nd edition) prepared by the Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin Institute under the Central Committee of the CPSU is published. The volume includes the latest translation of the Communist Manifesto.

Notes

The page is blocked. Your IP address has been transferred to the Federal Security Service in connection with visiting extremist websites.

Price Realized: $127,115

MARX, Karl (1818-1893) & ENGELS, Friedrich (1820-1895). Manifest der kommunistischen Partei. Veröffentlicht im Februar 1848. Londres: imprimé par la "Bildungs=Gesellschaft für Arbeiter" de J.E. Burghard, 1848. PMM 326.

Care: €97,000. Auction Christie "s. Collection Jean Lignel Dessins et manuscrits, Livres anciens et livres d" artists. December 11, 2008. Paris. Lot number 12.

French description of the lot: Plaquette in-8 (214x137 mm.). 23 pages (titre inclus dans la pagination). Couverture originale, imprimée sur papier vert, titre dans un encadrement typographique formé de 26 (sens vertical) et 13 (sens horizontal) éléments (demi-cercles avec une couronne radiale), aux angles trois demi-cercles composés de 3 pièces typographiques avec une couronne radiale (agrafes enlevées et remplacées par une couture, insérés dans une couverture protectrice de papier japon et papier peigne), étui moderne en cartonnage vert.

Provenance : The copy has already been sold 2 times at auctions - bibliothèque Schocken - Hauswedell & Nolte (vendu en 1976) - Vente à Paris en 1979.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto (German: Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei) is a legendary work in which they declare and justify the goals, objectives and methods of struggle of the emerging communist organizations and parties. The authors proclaim the inevitability of the death of capitalism at the hands of the proletariat. The manifesto begins with the words: "A ghost haunts Europe - the ghost of communism", and ends with the famous historical slogan: "Proletarians of all countries, unite!" First published February 21, 1848 in London. By the way, there were a decent number of copies of the first "Manifesto" in the Soviet Union. One got the impression that it was a deliberate policy of the country's party leadership to buy them at international auctions. Perhaps they were brought by workers of the Comintern, or receipts as a gift during the visit of officials. In short, left behind the scenes.

I.Bourgeois and proletarians

II.Proletarians and Communists

III.Socialist and communist literature

1. reactionary socialism

a.Feudal socialism

b.Petty-bourgeois socialism

c.German or "true" socialism

2. Conservative or bourgeois socialism

3. Critically utopian socialism and communism

IV.Attitude of communists towards various opposition parties

A ghost haunts Europe - the ghost of communism. All the forces of old Europe have united for the sacred persecution of this ghost: the pope and the tsar, Metternich and Guizot, the French radicals and the German policemen. Where is the opposition party that its opponents in power would not slander as communist? Where is the opposition party which, in its turn, does not throw the stigmatizing accusation of communism both at the more advanced representatives of the opposition and at its reactionary opponents? Two conclusions follow from this fact. Communism is already recognized as a force by all European forces. It is time for the communists to openly state their views, their goals, their aspirations before the whole world, and to oppose the tales of the specter of communism with the manifesto of the party itself. To this end, communists of various nationalities gathered in London and drew up the following "Manifesto", which is published in English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish. The history of all hitherto existing societies has been the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, landowner and serf, master and apprentice, in short, oppressor and oppressed, were in eternal antagonism to each other, waged an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open struggle, which always ended in a revolutionary reorganization of the entire public edifice or in the common death of those fighting. classes.

The second congress of the "Union of Communists" was held from November 29 to December 8, 1847 in London. K. Marx and F. Engels were instructed to write the program document of the Union. The basis was the developments made earlier by F. Engels (Project of the communist creed and the principles of communism). In mid-December, F. Engels was forced to leave London for Paris, and K. Marx continued his work. And F. Schapper urged on. The text of the Manifesto of the Communist Party was sent to the leaders of the "Union of Communists" in early February from Brussels (i.e. K. Marx), the Association of German Workers had to borrow 25 pounds, buy a Gothic type and a circulation of 1,000 copies of the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" was printed February 21, 1848. The printer (member of the "Union of Communists") J. Burchardt printed a green brochure (with typographical errors) with a volume of 23 pages and dimensions of 21.5 by 13.4 cm in his own bookstore. After the beginning of the revolution in France in February 1848, the "Manifesto ..." began to be secretly sent to other countries and the community of the "Union of Communists" in Amsterdam received 100 copies - and during the dispersal of one of the workers' demonstrations, arrests were made and a copy of the "Manifesto .. On March 24, 1848, he fell into the hands of the police. In the same year, there were reprints of the "Manifesto ..." in France, Italy, Denmark with prefaces in the respective languages, and in December 1848 the first translation of the "Manifesto ..." itself into Swedish was made. The first translation of the "Manifesto ..." into Russian was made by M. Bakunin. Since then, the number of translations and editions of this document is incalculable. In Germany, an edition was made in Braille - for the blind.

Workers of the world, unite!!! This fatal paradigm completely captured many minds in Russia for almost 100 years! “This little book is worth whole volumes: the entire organized and fighting proletariat of the civilized world still lives and moves in its spirit,” wrote V.I. Lenin on the Manifesto. This is the first policy document of scientific communism, which outlines the main ideas of Marxism; written by K. Marx and F. Engels on behalf of the 2nd Congress (1847) of the League of Communists as a program of this union. “In this work, with brilliant clarity and brightness, a new worldview is outlined, consistent materialism, covering the area of ​​social life, dialectics, as the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of development, the theory of the class struggle and the world-historical revolutionary role of the proletariat, the creator of a new, communist society” . In "M. K. p. " Marx and Engels, for the first time in social science, determined the place of the capitalist formation in the history of mankind, showed its progressiveness in comparison with previous formations and the inevitability of its death. The founders of scientific communism showed that the entire history of society, with the exception of the primitive communal system (as Engels added in the preface to it, the edition of the Manifesto, 1883), was the history of class struggle. In bourgeois society, an irreconcilable struggle is waged between two main classes hostile to each other - the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Having become the economically dominant class, the bourgeoisie has seized state power and is using it as a weapon to defend its selfish class interests and to suppress the working people. Marx and Engels revealed in M. K. p. " irreconcilable internal contradictions of bourgeois society. Under the capitalist mode of production, the relations that contributed to the enormous growth of the productive forces turn at a certain stage into an obstacle to the further development of production.

The contradiction between the social character of production and the private form of appropriation - the main contradiction of capitalism - gives rise to economic crises, during which part of the finished products and productive forces are constantly destroyed. In "M. K. p. " the world-historical role of the proletariat as the grave-digger of capitalist society and the builder of communism, the only completely consistent revolutionary class acting in the interests of all working people, is openly and comprehensively substantiated. It is the working class and its trade unions that will deliver society from the yoke of capitalism by destroying the capitalist form of property and replacing it with public property. But to complete this task, the authors of “M. Communist Party,” the working class can only by using revolutionary violence against the bourgeoisie, by proletarian socialist revolution. Marx and Engels substantiated the need to create a political party of the proletariat, revealed its historical role, defined its tasks, and explained the relationship between the party and the working class. In practice, the communists, - wrote the authors of "M. K. p. ",- "... they are the most resolute part of the workers' parties of all countries, always impelling to move forward, and theoretically they have an advantage over the rest of the mass of the proletariat in understanding the conditions, course and general results of the proletarian movement."

Although Marx and Engels in M. K. p. " have not yet used the term "dictatorship of the proletariat", but the idea of ​​the proletarian dictatorship in this work has already been expressed and substantiated by them. “... The first step in the workers' revolution,” wrote Marx and Engels, “is the transformation of the proletariat into the ruling class, the conquest of democracy. The proletariat uses its political dominance to wrest all capital from the bourgeoisie step by step, to centralize all the instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., the proletariat organized as the ruling class, and to increase the sum of the productive forces as quickly as possible.” In "M. K. p. " it is emphasized that the destruction of the capitalist system, the elimination of the exploitation of man by man will put an end to national oppression and interethnic hostility. Marx and Engels noted that one of the main principles of the revolutionary activity of communists in various countries is their mutual assistance and support in the struggle against social oppression and exploitation, conditioned by common goals. The substantiation of this principle - the principle of proletarian internationalism - permeates the entire content of "M. K. p. Explaining the great and humane goals of the communists, Marx and Engels showed in M. K. p. " the complete groundlessness of the attacks on the communists by bourgeois ideologists, revealed the class limitations and self-serving nature of the bourgeoisie's ideas about marriage, morality, property, fatherland, etc. In M. K. p. " Marx and Engels subjected the socialist and communist literature of those years to scientific criticism; they revealed the class essence of the concepts underlying feudal socialism, petty-bourgeois socialism, the so-called. German or "true" socialism, as well as conservative or bourgeois socialism. The founders of scientific communism also expressed their attitude towards the systems of critical utopian socialism, showed the unreality of these systems and at the same time revealed rational elements in the views of the utopian socialists - A. K. Saint-Simon, C. Fourier, R. Owen. Marx and Engels put forward important propositions in M. K. p. " on the tactics of the proletarian party. Communists, the Manifesto explained, are members of a consistently revolutionary party. They "...fight in the name of the immediate goals and interests of the working class, but at the same time, in the movement of today, they also defend the future of the movement." "M. K. p. " opened the way to a new era in the history of mankind, laid the foundation for a great revolutionary movement for the socialist transformation of the world. In 1869 the first Russian edition of M. K. p. " translated by M.A. Bakunin, in which the most important provisions of this work were distorted. It was printed in the former printing house of A.I. Herzen (in 1866 it passed to the Polish revolutionary émigré, Herzen's collaborator L. Chernetsky) without indicating the names of the authors and the translator. The translation is attributed to M.A. Bakunin, but in recent years this version has been called into question: many consider N.N. Lubavin. From a letter from L. Chernetsky to N.P. Ogarev dated September 27, 1869 knows that Ogarev handed over the manuscript of the translation to the printing house and asked to print 1000 copies. Already on November 8, 1869, copies of the "Manifesto" were discovered by Russian postal censors. In 1882 a new Russian, so-called Marxist edition, M. K. p. " translated by G.V. Plekhanov, with a special preface by Marx and Engels. In his preface, G.V. Plekhanov, in particular, says that M.A. Bakunin, the first Russian translation of the "Manifesto" contains a number of distortions, which he corrects.

Current page: 1 (total book has 3 pages)

Font:

100% +

Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels
Communist Manifesto 1
The Communist Manifesto is the greatest programmatic document of scientific communism. “This little booklet is worth entire volumes: the whole organized and fighting proletariat of the civilized world still lives and moves in its spirit” (Lenin). Written by K. Marx and F. Engels as a program of the Communist League, the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" was first published in London in February 1848 in a separate edition of 23 pages. In March-July 1848, the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" was published in the democratic organ of German emigrants "Deutsche Londoner Zeitung" ("German London newspaper"). The German text was reprinted in London in the same 1848 as a separate pamphlet of 30 pages, in which some typographical errors of the first edition were corrected and punctuation improved. This text was subsequently put by Marx and Engels as the basis for subsequent authorized editions. In 1848, the Manifesto was also translated into a number of European languages ​​(French, Polish, Italian, Danish, Flemish and Swedish). The names of the authors of the Manifesto were not mentioned in the editions of 1848; for the first time they were listed in print in 1850 with the publication of the first English translation in the Chartist organ "Red Republican") ("Red Republican") in a preface written by the editor of this journal, J. Gurney.
In 1872 a new German edition of the Manifesto was published with minor corrections by the author and with a preface by Marx and Engels. This edition, like the subsequent German editions of 1883 and 1890, came out under the title The Communist Manifesto.
The first Russian edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party was published in 1869 in Geneva in a translation by Bakunin, who distorted the contents of the Manifesto in a number of places. The shortcomings of the first edition were eliminated in the edition published in Geneva in 1882 in Plekhanov's translation. The Plekhanov translation marked the beginning of the widespread dissemination of the ideas of the Manifesto in Russia. Attaching great importance to the propaganda of Marxism in Russia, Marx and Engels wrote a special preface to this edition.
After Marx's death, a number of editions of the Manifesto came out, reviewed by Engels: in 1883 a German edition with a preface by Engels; in 1888 an English edition translated by S. Moore, edited by Engels and supplied by him with a preface and notes; in 1890 a German edition with a new preface by Engels. Engels also wrote several notes to the latest edition. In 1885, the newspaper Socialiste (Socialist) published a French translation of the Manifesto, made by Marx's daughter Laura Lafargue and reviewed by Engels. Engels wrote a preface to the Polish edition of the Manifesto in 1892 and to the Italian edition of 1893. – 419.

A ghost haunts Europe - the ghost of communism. All the forces of old Europe have united for the sacred persecution of this ghost: the pope and the tsar, Metternich and Guizot, the French radicals and the German policemen.

Where is the opposition party that its opponents in power would not slander as communist? Where is the opposition party which, in its turn, does not throw the stigmatizing accusation of communism both at the more advanced representatives of the opposition and at its reactionary opponents?

Two conclusions follow from this fact.

Communism is already recognized as a force by all European forces.

It is time for the communists to openly state their views, their goals, their aspirations before the whole world, and to oppose the tales of the specter of communism with the manifesto of the party itself.

To this end, Communists of various nationalities gathered in London and drew up the following "Manifesto", which is published in English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish.

I
BOURGEOS AND PROLETARIANS 2
The bourgeoisie is understood as the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production, using hired labor. By the proletariat is meant the class of modern wage-workers who, deprived of their own means of production, are compelled to sell their labor power in order to live. (Engels' note to the 1888 English edition)

History of all hitherto existing societies 3
That is, the whole history that has come down to us in written sources. In 1847, the prehistory of society, the social organization that preceded all written history, was still almost completely unknown. During the time that has elapsed since then, Haxthausen discovered communal ownership of land in Russia, Maurer proved that it was the social basis that served as the starting point for the historical development of all Germanic tribes, and it gradually became clear that the rural community with common ownership of land is or was in the past everywhere primitive form of society, from India to Ireland. The internal organization of this primitive communist society, in its typical form, was elucidated by Morgan, who crowned the matter with his discovery of the true nature of the clan and its position in the tribe. With the disintegration of this primitive community, the stratification of society into special and ultimately antagonistic classes begins. I have tried to follow this process of decomposition in Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staats, 2. Aufl., Stuttgart, 1886 (The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, 2nd ed., Stuttgart, 1886) . (Engels' note to the 1888 English edition) (218)

It was a history of class struggle. 4
Engels included this note also in the German edition of the Communist Manifesto of 1890, omitting only the last sentence. - 424.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, landowner and serf, master 5
The workshop foreman is a full member of the workshop, the master inside the workshop, and not his foreman. (Engels' note to the 1888 English edition)

And the apprentice, in short, the oppressor and the oppressed were in eternal antagonism to each other, waged an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open struggle, which always ended in a revolutionary reorganization of the entire social edifice or in the general death of the struggling classes.

In previous historical epochs we find almost everywhere the complete dismemberment of society into different classes, a whole ladder of different social positions. In ancient Rome we meet patricians, horsemen, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages - feudal lords, vassals, guild masters, apprentices, serfs, and besides, in almost each of these classes - there are still special gradations.

Coming out of the bowels of the lost feudal society, modern bourgeois society has not eliminated class contradictions. It only put new classes, new conditions of oppression and new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, differs, however, in that it has simplified class contradictions: society is more and more splitting into two large hostile camps, into two large classes facing each other—the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages came the free population of the first cities; from this class of townspeople developed the first elements of the bourgeoisie.

The discovery of America and the sea route around Africa created a new field of activity for the rising bourgeoisie. The East Indian and Chinese markets, the colonization of America, exchange with the colonies, the increase in the number of means of exchange and goods in general, gave an impetus hitherto unheard of to trade, navigation, industry, and thus caused the rapid development of the revolutionary element in the disintegrating feudal society.

The former feudal or guild organization of industry could no longer satisfy the demand that grew with the new markets. Manufactory took its place. The guild masters were supplanted by the industrial middle class; the division of labor between the various corporations disappeared, giving way to a division of labor within the individual workshop.

But the markets were growing, the demand was increasing. Manufactory could no longer satisfy him. Then steam and the machine revolutionized the industry. The place of manufacture has been taken by modern large-scale industry, the place of the industrial middle class has been taken by millionaire industrialists, the leaders of entire industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

Large-scale industry has created a world market, prepared by the discovery of America. The world market has caused a colossal development of trade, navigation and means of overland communication. This, in turn, had an effect on the expansion of industry, and in the same measure that industry, trade, navigation, railways grew, the bourgeoisie developed, it increased its capitals and pushed into the background all the classes inherited from the Middle Ages.

We see, therefore, that the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long process of development, of a series of revolutions in the mode of production and exchange.

Each of these stages in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political success. The oppressed estate under the rule of the feudal lords, the armed and self-governing association in the commune, 6
"Communes" were called in France emerging cities even before the time when they won back local self-government and political rights of the "third estate" from their feudal lords and masters. Generally speaking, here England is taken as a typical country of the economic development of the bourgeoisie, and France as a typical country of its political development. (Engels' note to the 1888 English edition)
Commune - this is how the citizens of Italy and France called their urban community, after they bought or won the first rights of self-government from their feudal lords. (Note by Engels to the German edition of 1890)

Here - an independent city republic, there - the third, taxable estate of the monarchy, 7
In the English edition of 1888, edited by Engels, after the words "independent city republic" the words are inserted: "(as in Italy and Germany)", and after the words "the third, taxable estate of the monarchy" - "(as in France)". Ed.

Then, in the period of manufacture, as a counterbalance to the nobility in the estate or in the absolute monarchy and the main basis of large monarchies in general, finally, since the establishment of large-scale industry and the world market, it has won itself exclusive political dominance in the modern representative state. Modern state power is only a committee that manages the common affairs of the entire bourgeois class.

The bourgeoisie has played an extremely revolutionary role in history.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has achieved dominance, has destroyed all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. She ruthlessly tore apart the motley feudal fetters that tied a person to his "natural masters", and left no other connection between people, except for bare interest, a heartless "chistogan". In the icy water of selfish calculation, she drowned the sacred awe of religious ecstasy, chivalrous enthusiasm, petty-bourgeois sentimentality. It has transformed the personal dignity of man into an exchangeable value, and has replaced innumerable freedoms granted and acquired with one unscrupulous freedom of trade. In a word, it has replaced exploitation covered by religious and political illusions with open, shameless, direct, callous exploitation.

The bourgeoisie deprived of the sacred halo all kinds of activity, which until then were considered honorable and which were looked at with reverent awe. She turned a doctor, a lawyer, a priest, a poet, a man of science into her paid employees.

The bourgeoisie tore off their touchingly sentimental veil from family relations and reduced them to purely monetary relations.

The bourgeoisie has shown that the crude display of strength in the Middle Ages, which is so admired by the reactionaries, found its natural complement in laziness and immobility. She showed for the first time what human activity can achieve. She created marvels of art, but of a very different kind than Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; she made completely different campaigns than the migration of peoples and the crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly causing upheavals in the instruments of production, without revolutionizing, consequently, production relations, and, consequently, the totality of social relations. On the contrary, the first condition for the existence of all former industrial classes was the preservation of the old mode of production unchanged. Incessant upheavals in production, the constant upheaval of all social relations, eternal uncertainty and movement distinguish the bourgeois era from all others. All frozen, rusted relationships, together with their accompanying, centuries-honored ideas and views, are destroyed, all newly emerging ones turn out to be outdated before they have time to harden. Everything classy and stagnant disappears, everything sacred is defiled, and people finally come to the need to look with sober eyes at their life situation and their mutual relations.

The need for ever-increasing sales of products is driving the bourgeoisie all over the globe. Everywhere it must infiltrate, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.

The bourgeoisie, by exploiting the world market, has made the production and consumption of all countries cosmopolitan. To the great chagrin of the reactionaries, it tore the national soil from under the feet of industry. The original national industries have been destroyed and continue to be destroyed every day. They are supplanted by new branches of industry, the introduction of which is becoming a matter of life for all civilized nations - branches that no longer process local raw materials, but raw materials brought from the most remote regions of the globe, and produce factory products that are consumed not only within a given country, but also in all parts of the world. Instead of the old needs, which were satisfied by domestic products, new ones arise, for the satisfaction of which the products of the most remote countries and the most diverse climates are required. The old local and national isolation and existence at the expense of the products of one's own production are being replaced by all-round communication and all-round dependence of nations on each other. This applies equally to both material and spiritual production. The fruits of the spiritual activity of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and out of the multitude of national and local literatures one world literature is formed.

The bourgeoisie, by its rapid improvement of all the instruments of production and the endless facilitation of the means of communication, draws into civilization all, even the most barbarous, nations. The cheap prices of her goods are the heavy artillery with which she destroys all the Chinese walls and forces the barbarians' most stubborn hatred of foreigners to capitulate. Under pain of death, it forces all nations to adopt the bourgeois mode of production, forces them to introduce so-called civilization, i.e., to become bourgeois. In a word, she creates the world for herself in her own image and likeness.

The bourgeoisie subordinated the countryside to the rule of the city. It created huge cities, increased the urban population to a high degree in comparison with the rural population, and in this way wrested a significant part of the population from the idiocy of village life. Just as she made the countryside dependent on the city, so she made the barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized countries, the peasant peoples on the bourgeois peoples, the East on the West.

The bourgeoisie is more and more destroying the fragmentation of the means of production, property and population. It condensed the population, centralized the means of production, concentrated property in the hands of a few. A necessary consequence of this was political centralization. Independent, almost exclusively allied regions with different interests, laws, governments and customs duties, turned out to be united into one nation, with one government, with one legislation, with one national class interest, with one customs border.

The bourgeoisie, in less than a hundred years of its class rule, has created more numerous and more grandiose productive forces than all previous generations put together. The conquest of the forces of nature, machine production, the use of chemistry in industry and agriculture, shipping, railways, the electric telegraph, the development of entire parts of the world for agriculture, the adaptation of rivers for navigation, whole masses of the population, as if summoned from underground, - what of the former centuries could have suspected that such productive forces lay dormant in the depths of social labor!

So we have seen that the means of production and exchange, on the basis of which the bourgeoisie was formed, were created in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and exchange, the relations in which the production and exchange of feudal society, the feudal organization of agriculture and industry, in a word, the feudal property relations, took place no longer corresponded to the developed forces of production. They slowed down production instead of developing it. They have become his shackles. They had to be broken, and they were broken.

Their place was taken by free competition, with a corresponding social and political system, with the economic and political domination of the bourgeois class.

A similar movement is taking place before our very eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its bourgeois relations of production and exchange, bourgeois property relations, which has created, as if by magic, such powerful means of production and exchange, is like a magician who is no longer able to cope with the underground forces caused by his spells. For several decades now the history of industry and commerce has been nothing but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern production relations, against those property relations which are the condition for the existence of the bourgeoisie and its domination. It suffices to point out the commercial crises which, recurring from time to time, more and more menacingly call into question the existence of the entire bourgeois society. During commercial crises, each time a significant part of not only manufactured products is destroyed, but even the productive forces that have already been created. During crises, a social epidemic breaks out, which would have seemed absurd to all previous eras - an epidemic of overproduction. Society is suddenly thrown back to a state of sudden barbarism, as if famine, a general devastating war, deprived it of all means of subsistence; it seems that industry, trade are destroyed - and why? Because society has too much civilization, too many means of subsistence, too much industry and commerce. The productive forces at his disposal no longer serve the development of bourgeois property relations; on the contrary, they have become unreasonably large for these relations, bourgeois relations retard their development; and when the productive forces begin to overcome these barriers, they throw the whole of bourgeois society into disarray, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. Bourgeois relations became too narrow to contain the wealth they created. – How does the bourgeoisie overcome crises? On the one hand, through the forced destruction of a whole mass of productive forces, on the other hand, through the conquest of new markets and the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. What, therefore? In that it prepares more comprehensive and more crushing crises and reduces the means of counteracting them.

The weapon with which the bourgeoisie overthrew feudalism is now directed against the bourgeoisie itself.

But the bourgeoisie has not only forged weapons that bring death to them; it has also given birth to people who will use this weapon against it - modern workers, proletarians.

To the same extent that the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, develops, so does the proletariat, the class of modern workers, who can only exist when they find work, and find it only as long as their labor increases capital. These workers, compelled to sell themselves by the piece, are as much a commodity as any other article of trade, and are therefore equally subject to all the accidents of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

As a result of the increasing use of machinery and the division of labor, the labor of the proletarians lost all independent character, and at the same time all attractiveness for the worker. The worker becomes a mere appendage of the machine; only the simplest, most monotonous, most easily assimilated methods are required of him. The cost of the worker is therefore reduced almost exclusively to the means of subsistence necessary for his maintenance and procreation. But the price of every commodity, and consequently of labour, 8
In the works of a later period, Marx and Engels used, instead of the concepts "value of labor", "price of labor", more precise concepts introduced by Marx - "value of labor power", "price of labor power" (see the preface to this volume, p. IX ). – 431.

Equal to the cost of its production. Therefore, to the same extent that the unattractiveness of work increases, wages decrease. Moreover, to the same extent that the use of machinery and the division of labor increase, so does the quantity of labor, either through an increase in the number of working hours, or as a result of an increase in the amount of labor required at any given time interval, the acceleration of machines, etc. d.

Modern industry has transformed the small workshop of the patriarchal craftsman into the large factory of the industrial capitalist. The masses of workers crowded into the factory are organizing like soldiers. Like the rank and file of an industrial army, they are placed under the supervision of a whole hierarchy of non-commissioned officers and officers. They are slaves not only of the bourgeois class, of the bourgeois state; daily and hourly they are enslaved by the machine, by the overseer, and above all by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. This despotism is the more petty, the more hateful, the more it hardens, the more frankly its goal is to gain.

The less skill and strength manual labor requires, that is, the more modern industry develops, the more male labor is supplanted by female and child labor. In relation to the working class, distinctions of sex and age lose all social significance. There are only working tools that require different costs depending on age and sex.

When the exploitation of the worker by the manufacturer ends and the worker finally receives his wages in cash, other parts of the bourgeoisie—the house owner, the shopkeeper, the usurer, etc.—pounce on him.

The lower strata of the middle class: small industrialists, small merchants and rentiers, artisans and peasants - all these classes sink into the ranks of the proletariat, partly because their small capital is not enough to run large industrial enterprises and it cannot compete with larger capitalists, partly because that their professional skills are devalued as a result of the introduction of new methods of production. This is how the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.

The proletariat passes through various stages of development. Its struggle against the bourgeoisie begins with its existence.

First the struggle is waged by individual workers, then by the workers of one factory, then by the workers of one branch of labor in one locality against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. The workers direct their blows not only against bourgeois production relations, but also against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy competing foreign goods, smash cars, set fire to factories, try to restore by force the lost position of the medieval worker.

At this stage, the workers form a mass scattered throughout the country and fragmented by competition. The rallying of the working masses is not yet the result of their own unification, but only the result of the unification of the bourgeoisie, which, in order to achieve its own political aims, must, and still can, set the entire proletariat in motion. At this stage, the proletarians are fighting, therefore, not against their enemies, but against the enemies of their enemies—the remnants of the absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. The entire historical movement is thus concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory won under such conditions is a victory for the bourgeoisie.

But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only grows in numbers; he accumulates in large masses, his strength grows, and he feels it more and more. The interests and conditions of life of the proletariat are more and more equalized in proportion as the machines more and more blur the distinctions between the individual types of labor and reduce wages almost everywhere to an equally low level. The growing competition of the bourgeoisie among themselves and the commercial crises that it causes lead to the fact that the wages of the workers become more and more unstable; the ever faster developing, continuous improvement of machines makes the living situation of the proletarians ever less secure; clashes between the individual worker and the individual bourgeois are increasingly taking on the character of clashes between two classes. Workers start by forming coalitions 9
In the English edition of 1888, after the word "coalitions" is inserted: "(trade unions)". Ed.

Against the bourgeois; they act together to protect their wages. They even establish permanent associations in order to provide themselves with the means in case of possible collisions. In some places, the struggle turns into open uprisings.

The workers win from time to time, but these victories are only temporary. The real result of their struggle is not an immediate success, but an ever-widening union of the workers. It is facilitated by all the growing means of communication created by large-scale industry and establishing links between the workers of different localities. Only this connection is required in order to centralize the many local centers of struggle, which are everywhere of the same character, and to merge them into one national, class struggle. And every class struggle is a political struggle. And the unification, for which it took centuries for medieval townspeople with their country roads, is achieved by modern proletarians, thanks to railways, within a few years.

This organization of the proletarians into a class, and thus into a political party, is destroyed again every minute by competition among the workers themselves. But it arises again and again, each time becoming stronger, stronger, more powerful. It compels the individual interests of the workers to be recognized by law, using for this the strife between individual sections of the bourgeoisie. For example, the law on the ten-hour working day in England.

In general, clashes within the old society contribute in many respects to the development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie wages a continuous struggle: first against the aristocracy, later against those parts of the bourgeoisie itself whose interests come into conflict with the progress of industry, and constantly against the bourgeoisie of all foreign countries. In all these battles it is compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to call on its help and thus draw it into the political movement. It therefore itself transmits to the proletariat the elements of its own education, 10
In the English edition of 1888, instead of the words "elements of one's own education", it is printed: "elements of one's own political and general education." Ed.

That is, a weapon against itself.

Further, as we have seen, the progress of industry pushes whole sections of the ruling class into the ranks of the proletariat, or at least threatens their living conditions. They also bring to the proletariat a large number of elements of education.

Finally, in those periods when the class struggle approaches its denouement, the process of disintegration within the ruling class, within the entire old society, assumes such a stormy, such a sharp character that a small part of the ruling class renounces it and joins the revolutionary class, the class that belongs to the future. That is why, just as before a part of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a part of the bourgeoisie is going over to the proletariat, namely, a part of the bourgeois-ideologists who have risen to a theoretical understanding of the entire course of the historical movement.

Of all the classes that now oppose the bourgeoisie, only the proletariat is the truly revolutionary class. All other classes decline and are destroyed with the development of large-scale industry, while the proletariat is its own product.

The middle classes: the small industrialist, the small tradesman, the artisan and the peasant - they all fight against the bourgeoisie in order to save their existence from destruction as the middle classes. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Even more, they are reactionary: they want to turn back the wheel of history. If they are revolutionary, it is insofar as they are about to pass into the ranks of the proletariat, insofar as they defend not their present, but their future interests, insofar as they leave their own point of view in order to take the point of view of the proletariat.

The lumpen proletariat, that passive product of the decay of the lowest strata of the old society, is in some places drawn into the movement by the proletarian revolution, but by virtue of its entire position in life it is much more inclined to sell itself to reactionary machinations.

The living conditions of the old society have already been destroyed in the living conditions of the proletariat. The proletarian has no property; his attitude towards his wife and children has nothing more to do with bourgeois family relations; modern industrial labour, the modern yoke of capital, the same in England as in France, as in America as in Germany, has wiped out all national character from him. Laws, morality, religion - all this for him is nothing more than bourgeois prejudices, behind which bourgeois interests are hidden.

All the former classes, having won their dominance, sought to consolidate the position they had already acquired in life, subjecting the whole of society to conditions that ensured their mode of appropriation. The proletarians, on the other hand, can conquer the social productive forces only by destroying their own present mode of appropriation, and thereby the entire mode of appropriation that has hitherto existed as a whole. The proletarians have nothing of their own that they need to protect, they must destroy everything that has hitherto protected and ensured private property.

All the movements that have taken place so far have been movements of a minority, or in the interests of a minority. The proletarian movement is the independent movement of the vast majority in the interests of the vast majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of modern society, cannot rise, cannot straighten itself without the entire superstructure rising above it from the strata that make up official society is blown into the air.

If not in content, then in form, the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of every country must, of course, first do away with its own bourgeoisie.

Describing the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we have traced the more or less covert civil war within existing society up to the point where it turns into an open revolution and the proletariat establishes its rule through the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie.

All hitherto existing societies have been based, as we have seen, on the antagonism between the oppressor and the oppressed classes. But in order to be able to oppress any class, it is necessary to provide conditions under which it could drag out at least its slavish existence. The serf in the state of serfdom has risen to the position of a member of the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, has risen to the position of a bourgeois. On the contrary, with the progress of industry, the modern worker does not rise, but sinks more and more below the conditions of existence of his own class. The worker becomes a pauper, and pauperism grows even faster than population and wealth. This clearly shows that the bourgeoisie is incapable of remaining the ruling class of society any longer and of imposing on the whole of society the conditions for the existence of its class as a regulating law. She is incapable of dominating because she is unable to provide her slave with even a slave level of existence, because she is forced to let him sink to a position where she herself must feed him, instead of being fed at his expense. Society can no longer live under her rule, that is, her life is no longer compatible with society.

The main condition for the existence and domination of the bourgeois class is the accumulation of wealth in the hands of private individuals, the education and increase of capital. The condition for the existence of capital is hired labor. Wage labor rests solely on the competition of workers among themselves. The progress of industry, the involuntary bearer of which is the bourgeoisie, powerless to resist it, replaces the disunity of the workers by competition with their revolutionary unification through association. Thus, with the development of large-scale industry, the very foundation on which it produces and appropriates products breaks out from under the feet of the bourgeoisie. It produces above all its own grave-diggers. Its death and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

The manifesto begins with the words: "A ghost haunts Europe - the ghost of communism", and ends with the famous historical slogan: "Proletarians of all countries, unite!".

A program of transition from capitalism to communism

In chapter II. Proletarians and Communists” provides a brief program of transition from the capitalist social formation to the communist one, carried out by the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat by force.

The proletariat uses its political dominance to wrest all capital from the bourgeoisie step by step, to centralize all the instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., the proletariat organized as the ruling class, and to increase the sum of the productive forces as quickly as possible.

This can, of course, only come about at first by means of despotic intervention in the right of property and in bourgeois production relations, i.e., with the help of measures that seem economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outgrow themselves and are inevitable as a means of overturning. throughout the production process.

The program itself contains 10 items:

These activities will, of course, be different in different countries.

However, in the most advanced countries, the following measures can be applied almost universally:

1. Expropriation of landed property and conversion of land rent to cover public expenditures.
2. High progressive tax.
3. Cancellation of inheritance rights.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state through a national bank with state capital and with an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of all transport in the hands of the state.
7. An increase in the number of state factories, tools of production, clearing for arable land and improvement of land according to the general plan.
8. The same obligation of labor for all, the establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. The connection of agriculture with industry, the promotion of the gradual elimination of the distinction between town and country.
10. Public and free education of all children. Elimination of factory labor of children in its modern form. The combination of education with material production, etc.

After the elimination of capitalist relations, the dictatorship of the proletariat will exhaust itself, and will have to give way to the "association of individuals." The essence of this association, the principles of its organization and functioning are not defined in the Manifesto.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions disappear and all production is concentrated in the hands of an association of individuals, then public power will lose its political character. Political power in the proper sense of the word is the organized violence of one class to suppress another. If the proletariat, in the struggle against the bourgeoisie, unfailingly unites into a class, if by means of revolution it transforms itself into the ruling class and, as the ruling class, by force abolishes the old production relations, then together with these production relations it destroys the conditions for the existence of class opposition, destroys classes in general, and thus itself and its own dominance as a class.

In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms comes an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

Heritage

Some of the goals outlined in the Manifesto have already been achieved in a number of countries, for example:

• free public education and the prohibition of child labor;

Other goals were not achieved. For example:

• overcoming the alienation of labor and human relations;
• overcoming the "dictatorship of the minority (the ruling classes) over the majority (the proletariat)";
• the destruction of the state as an instrument of violence in the hands of the ruling class;
• the free development of each through the free development of all.

In general, the Manifesto is the basic program document of the communist parties of all countries.

Ratings

Translations into Russian

• 1869 - the first edition of the "Manifesto" in Russian in Geneva. The authorship of the translation is attributed to Mikhail Bakunin, although the translator was not indicated on the book itself.
• 1882 - publication of the "Manifesto" translated by Georgy Plekhanov.
• 1903 - translation of the "Manifesto" by Vladimir Posse.
• 1906 - The Manifesto is published, translated by Vaclav Vorovsky.
• 1932 - translation of the "Manifesto" by Vladimir Adoratsky
• 1939 - collective translation of the Manifesto by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute
• 1948 - anniversary edition of the "Manifesto" by IMEL (the translation of 1939 has been updated)
• 1955 - Volume 4 of the "Works" of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (2nd edition) prepared by the Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin Institute under the Central Committee of the CPSU is published. The volume includes the latest translation of the Communist Manifesto.

Notes

Links

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010 .

See what the "Communist Manifesto" is in other dictionaries:

- "Manifesto of the Communist Party" The original "Manifesto of the Communist Party" (German: Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei) is a work first published on February 21, 1848. It begins with the words: “A ghost haunts Europe, the ghost of communism,” and ... ... Wikipedia

The work of Marx and Engels, the first policy document of Marxism. Completes the history the process of formation of Marxism and gives a concise presentation of the main. scientific provisions. communism, the strategy and tactics of the communists and their dialectic worldview. And… … Philosophical Encyclopedia

The first program document scientific. communism, which outlines the main. ideas of Marxism; written by K. Marx and F. Engels in Dec. Jan 1847 1848 on behalf of the 2nd Congress of the Union of Communists as a program of this first international ... ... Philosophical Encyclopedia

The work of K. Marx and F. Engels, written at the request of the 2nd Congress of the Union of Communists and which became the first program document of the international communist movement. Published in London at the beginning. 1848. They received their classic ... ... Philosophical Encyclopedia

A program document written by K. Marx and F. Engels on behalf of the 2nd Congress (1847) of the "Union of Communists" as a program of this union, which outlines the main ideas of communism. Political Science: Dictionary Reference. comp. Prof Paul... Political science. Dictionary.

Communist Manifesto- (Communist Manifesto), the program of the international. organization Union of Communists, written in 1848 by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It became the founding document of the international slave. movement. It stated that all previous history ... ... The World History

- (“Manifesto of the Communist Party”), the first program document of scientific communism, which outlines the main ideas of Marxism; written by K. Marx and F. Engels on behalf of the 2nd Congress (1847) of the Union of Communists (See Union ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

The first program document scientific. communism, in which the basics are outlined. ideas of Marxism; written by K. Marx and F. Engels on behalf of the 2nd Congress (1847) of the Union of Communists as a program of this Union. In M. K. p. Marx and Engels for the first time in ... ... Soviet historical encyclopedia