Art and Arch Manifestos

“A manifesto is a communication made to the whole world, whose only pretension is to the
discovery of an instant cure for political, astronomical, artistic, parliamentary, agronomical and
literary syphilis. It may be pleasant, and good-natured, it's always right, it's strong, vigorous and
logical.”
Tristan Tzara's
Feeble Love & Bitter Love, II
ART MANIFESTO
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, “Futurist Manifesto”, in Gazzetta dell'Emilia in Bologna
Theo van Doesburg “Manifest I of The Style" (De Stijl), from De Stijl, vol. II, no. 1
“The Vorticist Manifesto” in Blast, number 1
“The Situationist Manifesto”, Internationale Situationniste number 4
Theo van Doesburg “Base de la peinture concrète”, Art Concret, no. 1 (April 1930).
MarxEngels, "The Communist Manifesto"
D.H.L Lawrence, in Exit Utopia, Architectural Provocations
ARCHITECTURE MANIFESTO (IN METROPOLIS BOOK)
Bernard Tshchumi, “Violence of Architecture” in Architeture and Disjunction
Peter Cook, “Editorial from Archigram 3”, in Archigram, edited by Peter Cook
Robert Venturi, “Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture”, in Re-Reading Perspecta
Super Studio, “Twelve Cautionary Tales for Christmas”, in Peter Lang and William Menking
Superstudio: Life without Objects
06/10/13 The Futurist Manifesto
The Futurist Manifesto

F. T. Marinetti, 1909
We have been up all night, my friends and I, beneath mosque lamps whose brass cupolas are bright as our
souls, because like them they were illuminated by the internal glow of electric hearts. And trampling underfoot
our native sloth on opulent Persian carpets, we have been discussing right up to the limits of logic and
scrawling the paper with demented writing.
Our hearts were filled with an immense pride at feeling ourselves standing quite alone, like lighthouses or like
the sentinels in an outpost, facing the army of enemy stars encamped in their celestial bivouacs. Alone with the
engineers in the infernal stokeholes of great ships, alone with the black spirits which rage in the belly of rogue
locomotives, alone with the drunkards beating their wings against the walls.
Then we were suddenly distracted by the rumbling of huge double decker trams that went leaping by,
streaked with light like the villages celebrating their festivals, which the Po in flood suddenly knocks down and
uproots, and, in the rapids and eddies of a deluge, drags down to the sea.
Then the silence increased. As we listened to the last faint prayer of the old canal and the crumbling of the
bones of the moribund palaces with their green growth of beard, suddenly the hungry automobiles roared
beneath our windows.
"Come, my friends!" I said. "Let us go! At last Mythology and the mystic cult of the ideal have been left
behind. We are going to be present at the birth of the centaur and we shall soon see the first angels fly! We
must break down the gates of life to test the bolts and the padlocks! Let us go! Here is they very first sunrise
on earth! Nothing equals the splendor of its red sword which strikes for the first time in our millennial
darkness."
We went up to the three snorting machines to caress their breasts. I lay along mine like a corpse on its bier,
but I suddenly revived again beneath the steering wheel — a guillotine knife — which threatened my stomach.
A great sweep of madness brought us sharply back to ourselves and drove us through the streets, steep and
deep, like dried up torrents. Here and there unhappy lamps in the windows taught us to despise our
mathematical eyes. "Smell," I exclaimed, "smell is good enough for wild beasts!"
And we hunted, like young lions, death with its black fur dappled with pale crosses, who ran before us in the
vast violet sky, palpable and living.
And yet we had no ideal Mistress stretching her form up to the clouds, nor yet a cruel Queen to whom to
offer our corpses twisted into the shape of Byzantine rings! No reason to die unless it is the desire to be rid of
the too great weight of our courage!
We drove on, crushing beneath our burning wheels, like shirt-collars under the iron, the watch dogs on the
steps of the houses.
Death, tamed, went in front of me at each corner offering me his hand nicely, and sometimes lay on the
ground with a noise of creaking jaws giving me velvet glances from the bottom of puddles.
"Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into
the immense mouth and breast of the world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich
vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/T4PM/futurist-manifesto.html 1/4
the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!"
As soon as I had said these words, I turned sharply back on my tracks with the mad intoxication of puppies
biting their tails, and suddenly there were two cyclists disapproving of me and tottering in front of me like two
persuasive but contradictory reasons. Their stupid swaying got in my way. What a bore! Pouah! I stopped
short, and in disgust hurled myself — vlan! — head over heels in a ditch.
Oh, maternal ditch, half full of muddy water! A factory gutter! I savored a mouthful of strengthening muck
which recalled the black teat of my Sudanese nurse!
As I raised my body, mud-spattered and smelly, I felt the red hot poker of joy deliciously pierce my heart. A
crowd of fishermen and gouty naturalists crowded terrified around this marvel. With patient and tentative care
they raised high enormous grappling irons to fish up my car, like a vast shark that had run aground. It rose
slowly leaving in the ditch, like scales, its heavy coachwork of good sense and its upholstery of comfort.
We thought it was dead, my good shark, but I woke it with a single caress of its powerful back, and it was
revived running as fast as it could on its fins.
Then with my face covered in good factory mud, covered with metal scratches, useless sweat and celestial
grime, amidst the complaint of staid fishermen and angry naturalists, we dictated our first will and testament to
all the living men on earth.
MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM
1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
3. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt
movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the
blow with the fist.
4. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A
racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a
roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of
Samothrace.
5. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its
orbit.
6. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of
the primordial elements.
7. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry
must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
8. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment
when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We
are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
9. We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture
of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
10. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian
cowardice.
11. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and
polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the
workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking
serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of
gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon;
great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle,
and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause
of enthusiastic crowds.
It is in Italy that we are issuing this manifesto of ruinous and incendiary violence, by which we today are
founding Futurism, because we want to deliver Italy from its gangrene of professors, archaeologists, tourist
guides and antiquaries.
Italy has been too long the great second-hand market. We want to get rid of the innumerable museums which
cover it with innumerable cemeteries.
Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other.
Public dormitories where you sleep side by side for ever with beings you hate or do not know. Reciprocal
ferocity of the painters and sculptors who murder each other in the same museum with blows of line and
color. To make a visit once a year, as one goes to see the graves of our dead once a year, that we could
allow! We can even imagine placing flowers once a year at the feet of the Gioconda! But to take our sadness,
our fragile courage and our anxiety to the museum every day, that we cannot admit! Do you want to poison
yourselves? Do you want to rot?
What can you find in an old picture except the painful contortions of the artist trying to break uncrossable
barriers which obstruct the full expression of his dream?
To admire an old picture is to pour our sensibility into a funeral urn instead of casting it forward with violent
spurts of creation and action. Do you want to waste the best part of your strength in a useless admiration of
the past, from which you will emerge exhausted, diminished, trampled on?
Indeed daily visits to museums, libraries and academies (those cemeteries of wasted effort, calvaries of
crucified dreams, registers of false starts!) is for artists what prolonged supervision by the parents is for
intelligent young men, drunk with their own talent and ambition.
For the dying, for invalids and for prisoners it may be all right. It is, perhaps, some sort of balm for their
wounds, the admirable past, at a moment when the future is denied them. But we will have none of it, we, the
young, strong and living Futurists!
Let the good incendiaries with charred fingers come! Here they are! Heap up the fire to the shelves of the
libraries! Divert the canals to flood the cellars of the museums! Let the glorious canvases swim ashore! Take
the picks and hammers! Undermine the foundation of venerable towns!
The oldest among us are not yet thirty years old: we have therefore at least ten years to accomplish our task.
When we are forty let younger and stronger men than we throw us in the waste paper basket like useless
manuscripts! They will come against us from afar, leaping on the light cadence of their first poems, clutching
the air with their predatory fingers and sniffing at the gates of the academies the good scent of our decaying
spirits, already promised to the catacombs of the libraries.
But we shall not be there. They will find us at last one winter's night in the depths of the country in a sad
hangar echoing with the notes of the monotonous rain, crouched near our trembling aeroplanes, warming our
hands at the wretched fire which our books of today will make when they flame gaily beneath the glittering
flight of their pictures.
They will crowd around us, panting with anguish and disappointment, and exasperated by our proud
indefatigable courage, will hurl themselves forward to kill us, with all the more hatred as their hearts will be
drunk with love and admiration for us. And strong healthy Injustice will shine radiantly from their eyes. For art
can only be violence, cruelty, injustice.
The oldest among us are not yet thirty, and yet we have already wasted treasures, treasures of strength, love,
courage and keen will, hastily, deliriously, without thinking, with all our might, till we are out of breath.
Look at us! We are not out of breath, our hearts are not in the least tired. For they are nourished by fire,
hatred and speed! Does this surprise you? it is because you do not even remember being alive! Standing on
the world's summit, we launch once more our challenge to the stars!
Your objections? All right! I know them! Of course! We know just what our beautiful false intelligence
affirms: "We are only the sum and the prolongation of our ancestors," it says. Perhaps! All right! What does it
matter? But we will not listen! Take care not to repeat those infamous words! Instead, lift up your head!
Standing on the world's summit we launch once again our insolent challenge to the stars!
(Text of translation taken from James Joll, Three Intellectuals in Politics)
07/10/13 Situationist International Online
text archives > situationist international texts >
Situa tionist M a nifesto

17 May 1960
reprinted in Internationale Situationniste #4 (June 1960)
pre-situationist archive
Translated by Fabian Thompsett
situationist international archive
THE EXISTING FRAMEWORK cannot subdue the new human force that is
post-situationist archive increasing day by day alongside the irresistible development of technology
and the dissatisfaction of its possible uses in our senseless social life.
situationist chronology
Alienation and oppression in this society cannot be distributed amongst a
protagonists
range of variants, but only rejected en bloc with this very society. All real
progress has clearly been suspended until the revolutionary solution of the
terminology
present multiform crisis.
links
What are the organizational perspectives of life in a society which
authentically "reorganizes production on the basis of the free and equal
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association of the producers"? Work would more and more be reduced as an
exterior necessity through the automation of production and the socialization
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of vital goods, which would finally give complete liberty to the individual. Thus
liberated from all economic responsibility, liberated from all the debts and
notes & sources
responsibilities from the past and other people, humankind will exude a new
surplus value, incalculable in money because it would be impossible to
contact
reduce it to the measure of waged work. The guarantee of the liberty of each
and of all is in the value of the game, of life freely constructed. The exercise of
this ludic recreation is the framework of the only guaranteed equality with
non-exploitation of man by man. The liberation of the game, its creative
autonomy, supersedes the ancient division between imposed work and
passive leisure.
The church has already burnt the so-called witches to repress the primitive
ludic tendencies conserved in popular festivities. Under the existing dominant
society, which produces the miserable pseudo-games of non-participation, a
true artistic activity is necessarily classed as criminality. It is semi-
clandestine. It appears in the form of scandal.
So what really is the situation? It's the realization of a better game, which
more exactly is provoked by the human presence. The revolutionary
gamesters of all countries can be united in the S.I. to commence the
emergence from the prehistory of daily life.
Henceforth, we propose an autonomous organization of the producers of the

new culture, independent of the political and union organizations which
currently exist, as we dispute their capacity to organize anything other than
the management of that which already exists.
From the moment when this organization leaves the initial experimental stage
for its first public campaign, the most urgent objective we have ascribed to it
is the seizure of U.N.E.S.C.O. United at a world level, the bureaucratization of
art and all culture is a new phenomenon which expresses the deep inter-
relationship of the social systems co-existing in the world on the basis of
eclectic conservation and the reproduction of the past. The riposte of the
revolutionary artists to these new conditions must be a new type of action. As
the very existence of this managerial concentration of culture, located in a
single building, favors a seizure by way of putsch; and as the institution is
www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/manifesto.html 1/2
07/10/13 Situationist International Online
completely destitute of any sensible usage outside our subversive

perspective, we find our seizure of this apparatus justified before our
contemporaries. And we will have it. We are resolved to take over
U.N.E.S.C.O., even if only for a short time, as we are sure we would quickly
carry out work which would prove most significant in the clarification of a long
series of demands.
What would be the principle characteristics of the new culture and how would
it compare with ancient art?
Against the spectacle, the realized situationist culture

introduces total participation.
Against preserved art, it is the organization of the directly lived

moment.
Against particularized art, it will be a global practice with a

bearing, each moment, on all the usable elements. Naturally
this would tend to collective production which would be without
doubt anonymous (at least to the extent where the works are
no longer stocked as commodities, this culture will not be
dominated by the need to leave traces.) The minimum
proposals of these experiences will be a revolution in behavior
and a dynamic unitary urbanism capable of extension to the
entire planet, and of being further extensible to all habitable
planets.
Against unilateral art, situationist culture will be an art of

dialogue, an art of interaction. Today artists — with all culture
visible — have been completely separated from society, just as
they are separated from each other by competition. But faced
with this impasse of capitalism, art has remained essentially
unilateral in response. This enclosed era of primitivism must be
superseded by complete communication.
At a higher stage, everyone will become an artist, i.e., inseparably a

producer-consumer of total culture creation, which will help the rapid
dissolution of the linear criteria of novelty. Everyone will be a situationist so to
speak, with a multidimensional inflation of tendencies, experiences, or
radically different "schools" — not successively, but simultaneously.
We will inaugurate what will historically be the last of the crafts. The role of
amateur-professional situationist — of anti-specialist — is again a
specialization up to the point of economic and mental abundance, when
everyone becomes an "artist," in the sense that the artists have not attained
the construction of their own life. However, the last craft of history is so close
to the society without a permanent division of labor, that when it appeared
amongst the SI, its status as a craft was generally denied.
To those who don't understand us properly, we say with an irreducible scorn:

"The situationists of which you believe yourselves perhaps to be the judges,
will one day judge you. We await the turning point which is the inevitable
liquidation of the world of privation, in all its forms. Such are our goals, and
these will be the future goals of humanity."
www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/manifesto.html 2/2
11_C Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "The Communist Manifesto," in The Marx-Engels Reader, Ed. Robert c. Tucker, New York, 1972, pp.469-500
,.; ~:.~
.........
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Manifesto of the Communist Party
MARX AND ENGELS
In 1836 German radical workers living in Paris formed a secret association

called "League of the Just." At con~resses in London in 1847 it changed
its name to "Communist League" and commissioned Marx and Engels,
who had recently become !Ilembers, to draw up a manifesto on its behalf.
Both men prepared first drafts. Engels' draft. preserved under the title
"The Principles of Communism," was in the form of a catechism with
twenty·five questions and answers. Marx is believed to have had the greater
a
hand in giving the Communist Manifesto its final form as both program
matic statement and a compressed summary of the Marxian theory of his
tory. It was originally published in London in February, 1848, and brought
out in a French translation in Paris shortly before the insurrection of June,
1848, there. It .has become the most widely read and influential single doc·
ument of modern socialism. The text given here is that of the English edi
tion of 1888, edited by Engels .
.~
-.1
Preface to the German Edition of 1872

The Communist League, an international association of workers,
which could of course be only a secret one under the conditions
obtaining at ,the time, commissioned the undersigned, at ~he Con
gress held in London in November 1847, to draw up for publica
tion a detailed theoretical and practical programme of the Party.
Such was the origin of the following Manifesto, the manuscript of
which travelled to London, to be prin ted, a few weeks before the
Febn,JaFY Revolution. l First published in ' German, it has been
republished . in that language in at least twelve different ' eqitions in
Germany, England and America. It was published in English for
the first time in 1850 in the Red Republican, London, translated
by Miss Helen Macfarlane, and in 1871 in at least three different ·
t'ranslations in America. A French version first appeared in Paris
shortly before the June insurrection of 1848 and recently in Le Soci
1. Tbe February Revolution in France, 1848.
469
-
M
("'
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I .r:,.
'7, ." - .'
.I
472 Revolutionary Program and Strategy Manifesto of the Communist Party 473
' I
de,.e!op, more than half the land owned in common by the peas
ants . Now the question is: Can the Russian obshchina,' though MANIFESTO
greatly undermined, yet a form of the primeval common ownership

of land, pass directly to the higher form of communist common OF THE COlVIMUNIST PARTY
ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same
process of dissolution as constitutes the histori cal evolution of the A spectre is haunting Europe-the spectre of Communism. All "
the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exor
West? cise this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French
The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian
Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the

Radicals and German police-spies.
\Vest , so that both complement each other, the present Ru ssian
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as
common ownership of land may serve as the starting· point for a
Communistic by its opponents in power? Where the Opposition
that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism,
communist development.
Friedrich Engels
against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its
Karl Marx reactionary adversaries?
London, january 21, 1882
Two things result from this fact.
I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powers
Preface to the German Edition of 188 3 to be itself a Power.
II. Ii: is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of
The preface t o the present edition 1 must , alas, sign alone. Marx, the whole world, publish . their views, their aims, their tendencies,
the man to whom the whole working class of Europe and America and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a
owes more than to anyone else, rests at Highgate Cemetery and Manifesto of the party itself.
over his grave the fi rst grass is already growing. Since his death, To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled
the.re can be even less thought of revising or supplementing the in London, and sketched the following Manifesto, to be published
M anifesto. All the more do I con sider it necessary again to state here in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish lan
·~
guages.
the following expressl y : that
The basic thought running through the lVlanifesto- eco
~ nomi c production and the structure of sOCIety of every historical
cpoch necessa ril y ar is ing therefrom constitute the foundation for I. Bourgeois and Proletarians~
the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that conse
The history of all hitherto existing society6 is the history of class
quentl y (ever since the dissolution of th e primeval communal owner

ship of bnd ) all hi story has been a histo.ry of class struggles, of struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, .
struggles between exploited an d exploiting, between dominated and

dominating classes at various stages of social development ; th at this 5. By bourgeoisie is meant the class of been the prim itive form of society
modern Capitalists, owners of the everywhere from India to Ireland. The
st ruggle, h owever, has now reached a stage where th e exploited and means of social production and employ inner organisation of this primitive
oppressed class ( the proletariat ) can no longer emancipate itself ers of wage-labour. By proletariat, the Communistic ~ociety was taid bare, in
class or modern wage·labourers who, its typical form, by Morgan's crowning
hom th e class which exploits and oppresses it. (the bourgeoisie) , baving no means of producti.on of their di.!)( overy of the tru.e nature of the
without at the same time forever freeing the whole of society from OVi'Tl., are reduced t9 selling their la· g CfJ S and its relation to th e tribe. \Vith
bour-power in order to live. {Engels, the dissolution of these prim.aeval com
exploitation, oppression and class struggles-this basic thought EngliJh edition of 1888] munities ·society begins to be differen
0. That is, all written history. In \847 , tiated into separate and finally antag
belongs solely and ex clusively to l'v"1arx . the.. pre.history of society, the social or onistic cia-sses. 1 have attempted to
I ha\"C alread y stated this many times; but precisely now it is ganisation existing previous to recorded retrace this process of dissolution in:
f
. hislory, was all but unknown. Since HDer Ursprung der Familie, des Pri vat
necessary that it also stand in front of the Manifesto itselJ. then, Haxthausen discovered common eigenthums und des Staats" [The Ori
Friedrich Engels ownership of land in Russia, Maurer gin of the Family, Private Property
L ondon, june 28, 18 8 3 proved it to be the social foundation and the Statel , 2nd edition , Stuttgart
1886. [Eng els, Eng/ish edition of
from which all Teutonic races started
in history, and by and by village com 1888]
4 . Villag e community. munities were found to be, or to ha ve
Revolutionary Program and Strategy Manifesto of the Communist Party 475

474
Modern industry has established the world-market, for which the
guild-master 7 and jou rnevl11Jn, in a word, oppressor and oppressed,
discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an
stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninter
immense developffi_e nt to commerce, to navigation, to communica
rupted, ;"lOW h idden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended,
tion by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the
either in a re \'olutionar\' re-constitution of society at large, or in
extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce,
the common ruin of the contending classes.
In the e~;lier epochs of history, we find ,"lmost e\'erywhere a navigation, railwavs extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoi
complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold sie developed, increased its capital , and pushed in to the background
every class handed down from the Middle Ages.
gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians,
knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, . We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the prod.
uct of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in
guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in Jlmost all of these
the modes of production and of exchange.
classes, again, subordinate gradations. Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompa
The modern bourgeois society that has sproutedfrol11 the rums
of feuda l society has not done away with clash antagonisms. It has nied by a corresponding political ad va nce of that class. An
but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and
self-governing association in the mediaeval commune;8 here inde
forms of struggle in place of thc old ones.
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, hO\\,<:;\'e r, th is penden t urban republic (as in Italv and Germany), there taxable
distinetilc fe<,turc : it ha s simplified thc class antagonisms: Society "third estate" of the monarchy (as in Fr:11lce ) , afterwards, in the
as a whole is more and 1110re splitting up into two great hostile period of manufacture proper, serving either the semi-feudal or. the
camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in
fact, corner-stone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoi
and Proktariat. sie has at last. since the establishment of Modern Industry and of
From the ,;erfs of the Middle Ages sprang the ehartercd burghers
of the earliest towns . From thcse burgesses the first elements of the the world-market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative
State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern State is
bourgeoisie were developed.
~ The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up but a committee for manag-ing the common affairs of the whole
C' fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie . The East-Indian and bourgeoisie.
Chinese markets, th e colonisahon of America. trade with the colo The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary
nies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities part.
generallv, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, f11l impulse The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an
never bdore known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations.-'{~an itilessl»4orn
asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "naturJJ supe
the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.
The feud~l system of industry, under which industrial production riors," and has left remaining no other nexus between man and
was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the man than naked self-interest, thall callous "cash payment." It ha.s
growing w,mts at the; new markets. The mal1ufactnring s)'stem took drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervo ur, of chival
its place. Thc guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manu rous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of
facturing middle class; division of labour between the different egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange
corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each value, ahd in place of the numberless indefeasible ch~lft ere d free- .
dams, has set up that s ingle....J.!ll<Jlm.Q.onable...Jr.eedom..~.E.~e.
single workshop. hq)ne_.:vord, for exploita tion.J_veil.ed by relig io u£_aruL_PQJiti<:!lUllu
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever
rising. Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, stca m ~lld sions, it has substituted naked, shamel_e,:;~-,- di rec t , bJutal exploitatiQJl.
8. "Commune!) was the name taken, in development. France . [EO/ge/s, Eng /i'"
machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manu France, by the nescent towns even be edition 0/ 1888J
facture was taken by the giant, IVlodern Industry, the place of the fore they had conquered from their This was the name g iven th eir urban
industrial middle clas~, bv industrial millionaires, the leaders of feudal lords and masters local self
government and political rights as the
communities by the townsmen of Italy
and France, aiter they had purchased
whole industrial armies, th~ modern bourgeois. I/Third Estate." Generally speaking,
for the economical development of the
or wre!-ted their initial rights of self
.c:overnment from their feudal lords.
bo.urgeoisie, England is here taken as [EnKe/ s, German edition 0/ 18 00]
i. Guild-mooter, that is, a full member of a guild. [Engel" English editioll 01 the t)'pical country; for its political
of a ~uild, • mas ter within, nut a head 18 081
J.
Manifesto of the Communist Party 477

476 Revolutionary Program and Strategy
of individual nations become common property. National one-sided
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its hal o every occupation hitherto ness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible,
hon oured Jnd looked up to with re\'erent awe. It has converted the and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a .
physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet. the man of science, into world literature.
its paid wage-labourers . The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimmtal production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication,
veil , and ha; reduced the familv 'relation to a mere Illone\' relation . draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that 'the brutal cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it
displa v of vigour in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists so much batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians'
admire, found its fitting compl ement in the most slothful indo intenselY obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all
lence . It has been the first to sh ow what man's activity can bring nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of pro
about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pvra· duction; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into
mids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it
expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations creates a world after its own image.
and crusades . The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the
The bourgeois ie canllot exist with out constantly revolution ising towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the
the in struments of production. and th ereby the relations of produc urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued
tion, and with them the whole rebtions of societ\·. Consen'ation of a considerable part of the populat'ion from the idiocy of rural life.
the old modcs of production in unaltered form , \V~s, on the contrary, Just as it has made the country dependent on ~he towns, so it· has
the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes . Con· made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civ
stant re\'olutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all ilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the Eas.t
social conditioJls, p. verlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish on the West.
the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. :\11 fixed, fast-frozen rela· The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scat
tions, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opin- tered state of the population, of the means of production, and of
N ions, are swept away, all new· formed ones become antiquated before
~ property. It has agglomerated population, centralised means of pro
they can ossify . All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is pro duction, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The neces
faned. amI man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his sary conseguence of this was political centralisation. Independent,
reOlI conchtions of life. and his relations with his kind. or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws,
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into
the bourgeoisie over the whole surfacc of the globe. It I11l1St nestle one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national
everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions ever:'where. class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff.
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has
given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in .created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have
every country. To the great chagrin of Reactioni sts, it has drawn all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to
from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agricul- .
stood . All old-established n~tional industries have been destroyed or ture, steam.naviga tion, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing' of
,He daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new ind~stries, \vhole continents for cultiva tion, canalisation of rivers, whole popu
whose introduction becomcs a life and dcath question for all civi lations conjured out of the ground- what earlier century had even a
lised nation s, by industries that no longer work up indigen ous raw presentiment that such productive forces slumpered in the lap of
material, but raw material drawn frum the remotest zones; indus· social labour?
tries whuse products are consum ed, not onlv at home, but in e\'ery . We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on
quarter of the globe . In place of the old wants. sat isfied bv the pro' whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in
ductions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satiS' feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means
faction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal
local and nation~l seclusion and self·sufficiency, we have intercourse . produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agricul
in every directi on, universal inter-dependence of nations . And as in , ·I.~e and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations
material, so also in intellectual production . The intellectual f'TPohonS 't::'.
of property became no longer compatible with the already devel same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, devel
oped productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to oped-a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work,
be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital.
Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a These labourers, who must sell themselves piece-meal, are a com
social and political constitution adapted to it, and by the economi modity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently
cal and politica] sway of the bourgeois class. exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations
A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern of the market.
bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour,
of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and
production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appen
able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called dage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monoto
up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and nous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of .him.
commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost
forces against modem conditions of production, against the prop entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for his mainte
erty relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bour nance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a com
geoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial modity, and therefore also of labour,9 is equal to its cost of produc
crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more tion. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work
threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society. In these increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of
crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion
previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the
these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, working hours, by increase of the work exacted in a given time or by
would have seemed an absurdity-the epidemic of over-production. increased speed of the machinery, etc.
Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary bar Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriar
~ barism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had
cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and com
chal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses
of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As
N
merce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much privates of the industrial army they are placed under the comma.nd
civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they
much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are
longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bour daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and,
geois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The
for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they more openlv this despotism proclaims gain to be its cnd and aim,
overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bour the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.
geois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The con The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual
ditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealtli labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes devel
e oped, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women.
createdoy·tIiem:-And how does tfie omrrgeolsie--get-ovet"-1:l1'!!'I
crIses? On UleOne hand bv enforced destruction of a mass of pro Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social
ductive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or
by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.
by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufac
and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented. turer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he
The weapons with which the bourgeoisie fdled feudalism to the is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord,
ground are nOW turned against the bourgeoisie itself. tHe shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring The lower strata of the middle class-the small tradespeople,
death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generall y, the handicraftsmen
wield those weapons-the modern working class-the proletarians.
Marx pointed out that the worker sells no t his labour but his
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the
~_ 'S :~~
480 Revolutionary Program and Strategy Manifesto of the Communist Party fBi
and peasants- all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time.
becaLlse their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but
which l'vfodern Industrv is carried on, and is swamped in the com· in the ever-expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on
petition with the large capitalists, partlv because their specialised by the improved means of communication that are created by
skill is rendered worthless bv new methods of production. Thus the modem industry and that place the workers of different localities in
proletariat is recruited from 'all classes of the population. contact with one another. It was just this con tact that was needed
The proletari~t goes through various stages of development. \Vith to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character,
its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest into one natiQnal struggle between classes. But every class struggle is
is carned rm bv indi\'idual labourers, then bv the workpeople of a a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of
factorY, then bv the operati\'es of one trade, in one locality, against the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries,
the indiv]clual bourgeois who directl), exploits them. Thev direct the mbdem proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.
their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and conse
against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy quently into a political party, is continually being upset again by
Imported wares that compete with their labol)[, they smash to pieces the competition between the workers themselves, But it ever rises
machinerv, thev set factories ablne, thev seek to restore by force up again, stronger, firme.r, mightier. It compels legislative recogni
the vanished st~tus of the workman of the' Middle Ages, . tion of particular in terests of the workers, by taking advan tage of the
At this stage the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus the ten-hours' bill in
over the whole country, and broken up by their mLltual competi· England was carried.
tion. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further,
not vet the C0nseq Llence of their own active union, but of the union in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. Tpe
of the bourgeoisie, which dass, in order to attain its own political bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with
ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie
morermcr vet. for a t1lne, able to do so, At this stage. therefore, the itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of
~
VJ
proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their
enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the
industry; at all times, with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In
all these battles it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat,
non·industrial bOLlrgeois, the petty bourgeoisie. Thus the whole his. to ask for its help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The
tonc81 movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own ele
every victorv so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie. ments of political and general education, in other words, it fur.
But with the development of industry the proletariat not only nishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.
incre.ases in number; it become·s concentrated in greater masses, its Further, as we have already seen, en tire sections of the ruling
strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests classes are, by the advance of 'industry, precipitated i.nto the prole.
and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more tariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence.
anel more equalised. in proportion as machinery obliterates all dis· These also supply the proletaria t with fresh elements of enlighten
tinctions of' labour, and neadv everywhere reduces wages to the ment and progress.
same Jow le\'el. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour,
the resulting commercial crises, make tlie wages of the workers ever the process of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact
more fluctuating. The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever within the whole range of society, assumes such a violent, glaring
more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more pre· character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift,
carious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in
bOllrgeois toke more and more the character of collisions between its hands, Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the
two classes, Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bour
(Trades Unions j <Igoinst the bourgeois; they club together in order geoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of
to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in the bourgeois ·ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of
order to make pro\'ision beforehand for these occasional revolts. comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.
Here and there the contest breaks out into riots. Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie
Revolutionary Program and Strategy Manifesto of the Communist Party 483

482
today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other proletariat, we tmced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within
classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industr\'; existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into
open revolution, ,md where the violent ove rthrow of the bourgeoisie
the proletariat is its special and essential product. .
The lower middle class, the small manufactnrer. tile shopkeeper. lavs the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.
the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie. to Hitherto, every form of society has been based, 8S we have
save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. alread)' seen, on the antagonism of 'oppressing and oppressed classes.
Thev are therefore not revolutionary, but consef\·ative. Nav more, But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions mtlst be assured
the; are reactionarv, for thev t rv to ;011 back the wheel of history, If to it uncleJ which it can, at least, continue its sb\'ish existence. The
by chance they ar~ re\'olutiona'rv, they me so only in \'iew of their serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to mem bership in the
impending transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the \loke of feudal
present, but their future interests. thev desert their own standpoint absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern
labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of
to place themselves at that of the proletariat.
The "dangerous class," the soci'11 scum, that passiw:h' rotting industrv, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of cxistence
mass thrown off bv the lowest lavers of old societv, mal', here and of his own class, He becomes ~ pauper, and pauperis m develops
there, be swept into the movement by 8 proletari~n re;'olution; its more rapidl)' than population and wealth, And here it becomes eVI'
conditions of life, however, prepare it 'fm more for the part of a dent, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any JQnger to be the ruling class
in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as
bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.
In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old socictv at large an over·riding law . It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to
are already virtu811y swamped, The proletarian is witllout property; assure an existence to its sla\'e within his s]a\'erv. because it cannot
his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in help letting him sink into sllch a state. that it has to feed him,
common with the bourgeois family·rcl3tions ; modern industrial instead of being fed bv him . Society can no longer Jive under this
labour, modern subjection to capit31. the same in England as in bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible
~ France, in America as in GermanI', has stripped him of evcry trace with societv,
~ of national character. Law, morality. religion, are to him so manv The essential condition for the existence. imd for the sway of the
boutgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as m3m' bourgeois class, is ,the formation and augment~tion of capital; the
condition for capital is wage·labour. vVage.labour rests exclusively
bourgeois interests, on competition between the labourers, The advance of industry,
All the preceding classes that got th e upper h3nd. sought to for·
tify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to whose inyolllntary promoter is the homgeoisie, replaces the isolation
their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become of the labourers, due to competition. by their revolutionary combi·
masters of the productive forces of societv. except bv abolishing nation, due to association. The development of Modern Industry,
their own previous mode of appropriation, 3nd thereby also e\'erv therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the
other previous mode of appropriation . They have nothing of their bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products, \Vhat the bourgeoi·
own to secure and to fortifv; their mission is to dcstro\' all DTeViOllS sie, therefore, produces, ahovc all, is its own grave·diggers , Its f311
securities for, and insuranc;s of, individual property. ' . and the victory of the proletari~t are equ ,\IJy inevitable,
All previous historical movements were movements of minorities,
or in the interests of minorities . The proletarian movemcnt is the II, Proletarians and Communists
self.conscious, independent movement of thc immense majority, in
the interests of the immense majoritv, TIle proletariat. tIle 101l'est In what relation do the Communists stand to the prolet;nians as
stratum of om present society. cannot stir, c~nnot r~ise itself up, a whole?
without the whole superincumbent strata of offici,ll societl' being The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other
working-class parties .
sprung into the air,
Though not in substance, vet in form, the struggle of thc prole. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the pro·
tariat with the bourgeoisie is 3t first a nation al struggle, The prole· letariat as a whole.
tariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by wh.i.ch
to shape and mould the proletarian movement,
its own bourgeoisie,
In depicting the most general phases of the development of the The Communists are distinguished from the other working·class
,~ .(,~
484 Revolutionary Program and Strategy Manifesto of ·the Communist Party .: 485
partics hI' this only: ( 1) In the national struggles of the proletari property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to
;ms of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent
the common intcrests of the entire proletariat, independently of all already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily. .
nationality . (2 ) In the various stages of development which the Or do you mean modern bourgeois private property?
Itruggle of the working class against the bourgoisie has to pass But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a
through, they alw~ys and everywhere represent the interests of the bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits
1Il0vement as a whole.7 wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of
The Communists,therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Prop,
Illost advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of erty, in its present foml, is based on the antagonism of capital and
cve.ry country, that section which pushes forward all others: on the wage-labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.
other han d, theoreticallv, thev have over the great masS of the prole To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but 'a
tariat th e ,ld\',m tagc of dearl v understanding the line of march, the social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only
conditions, ,md the ultimate general results of the proletarian move by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only
ment. by the united action of all members of society, can it be set,in
j
CTh e immediate aim of the Communist.s is the same aLthaLol all motion.
the other proletarian -p-arties: formati on of the proletariat int(L.a .g.~~l is, therefore not a personal. it is a social po.wex,
Jass, ()verthrow of the..b.our~~I.e.J:llilcr..... _G.oJ1quest of politi<:al \Vhen, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into
1'000000v the proletariat) - the property of all members of society, personal property is not.
The th eoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no wav thereby transformed into social property. It is only the sQcial charac
h"sed on ideas or principles that ha\'e been invented, or discovered, ter of the property that is changed. It loses its class-character.
hy this ()r that would-be universal reforme r. Let us now take wage-labour.
They merelv express, in general terms, acttlal relations springing The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i,e., that
~ from an existing class strnggle. from a historical movement going on . quantum of the means of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite
~ IIndcr ou r ycrv c)'cs.vl.'he aboliti()n of existing property relations is to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer. What, there
\.f\ not at all" distinctive feature of Communism . fore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his labour, merely
All property relations in the past h8\'e continnallv been subject to -sttfllcc~ ~ ~OlOlI~l1d leprodOce 3 bare exlSfence. We by no means .
II iltorica l change cOllScquent upon the change in historical condi -i'ii'rei1O to abolisli this _ ersonal a ro riation of the products of
firms. a our, an appropriation t at IS made or the mamtenance and
Th e French Re\olution, for example, aholished feudal property reproduction of human life, and that leaves no su . Ius wherewiTh to
in favour of bourgeois property. cornman tea our 0 ot erS. t at we want to 0 away Wit ,is
[:the distinguishing fe~ture of Communism is not the abolition t1le mIserable character of tillS appropriation, under which the
of property genera lly, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only
1110dern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.
expression of th e system of producing and appropriating products, In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accu
that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many mulated labour. In Commuriist society, accumulated labour is but a
hv the feW, means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.
. 111 this sense, the t~n'.. of the Communists may be summed up In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in
in the single sentence: AJlohtlOn of pciva.t.e..PLQ~..rty. Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois
'vVc Communists ha\'c been reproached with the desire of ahol society capital is independent and has individuality, while the
ishing the right of pcr~onal1y acquiring property as the fruit of a living person is dependent and has no individuality.
lI1an's own lahol1r, which property is alleged to be the groundwork And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bour
of all persona I freedom, activity and independence. geois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The
Hard-IVon , ~cJ f-'lcquired, self-earned property! Do yo u mean the abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and
j1ropert~' of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.
By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditiom Of ance of class property is the disappearance of production itself, so
production, free trade, free selling and buying. the disappearance of class culture is to him identical with the disap
But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying dis pearance of all culture.
appears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous
other "brave words" of our bourgeoisie about freedom in general, majority, a mere training to act as a machine.
have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and But don't wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended
buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have nK abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois
meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying notions of freedom, culture, law, &c. Your very ideas are but the
and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bour
bourgeoisie itself. geois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class
You are horrified at our intending to do away with private prop made into a law for all, a will, whose essential character and direc- .
erty. But in your existing society, private property is already done tion are determined by the economical conditions of existence of
away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the vour class.
few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine . The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into
tenths. You- reproach us, therefore, with intending to do awav with · eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from
a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is your present mode of production and form of property-historical
the non-existence of any property for the immense l'1ajority of relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production-this
society. misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded
In one word, you reproach us with intending to do a ~' ay with you . \Vhat you see clearly in the case {)f ancient property, what you
your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend . admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to
From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.
capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monop Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this in
~ olised, i.e ., from the moment when individual property can np famous proposal of the Communists .
() longer be transformed in_to bourgeois property, into capital, from On what foundation is the presen t famil y, the bourgeois family,
that moment, you say, individuality vanishes . based? On capital, on private gain. Tn its completely developed
You must, therefore, confess that by "individual" you mean no form this family exists only among the bourgeOisie. But this state of
other person than the bourgeois, tha~ the middle-ciass owner of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family
property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
made impossible. The bourgeois family will vanish <I S a matter of course when its
Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of
products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to capital.
subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation. ~. / Do you charge us with wanting to stop the expl oitation of chil
It has been objected that upon the abohtlOn of pnvate proper~. dren by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.
all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us . But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when
According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to ha ve gone we replace home education by social.
to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who And your education! Is not that also social , and determined bv
work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention',
work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Com
tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there munists have not invented the intervention of society in education;
is no longer any capital. fhey do but seek to alter the character of that intervention , and to
All objections urged against the Communistic mode of producing rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.
and appropriating material products, haye, in the same way, been The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about
urged against the Communistic modes of producing and appropriat the hallowed co-relation of parent and child, becomes all the more
ing intelJectual products . Just as. to the bomgeois, the disappear- disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all famil y
,... ;., ..
, .\ .~ S. ..
488 Revolutionary Program and Strategy Manifesto of the Communist Party · 489
ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to an
transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of other will come to an end,
labour. The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philo
But vou Communists would introduce communitv of women sophical, and, generally, .from an ideological standpoint, are not de
screams' the whole bourgeoisie in chorus. . , serving of serious examina tion.
The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere in strum en t of production. Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas,
He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in views and conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness, changes
common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than that with ,every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his
the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women. social relations and in his social life?
He has not e\'en a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual
away with the status of women as mere instruments of production. production changes its character in proportion a,s material produc
For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indigo tion is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the
nation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they ideas of its ruling class.
pretend, is to be openly and officiall y established b), the Commu· 'W hen people speak of ideas that revolutionise society, they do
nists. The Communists ha\'e no need to introduce community of but express the fact, that within the old society, the elemei-tts of a
women; it has existed almost from time immemorial. new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old Ideas
Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of exist c
of their proletarians at their disposal, .not to speak of common .pros ence.
titutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives, When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient reli
Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common and gions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas suc
thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be re cumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society
proached with, is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The
hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised communi tv of women. ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave ex
~
For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present sys pression to the sway of free competition within the domain of
tem of production must bring WIth it the abolition of the commu knowledge.
-.J nit)' of women springing from that system, i,e., of prostitution both "Undoubtedly," it will be said, "religious, moral, philosophical
public and private. and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical de
The Communists are further reproached with desiring to \·e!opment. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and
abolish countries and nationality. law, constantly survived this change."
The working men have no country. We cannot take from them "There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc.,
what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all ac that are common to all states of societv. But Communism abolishes
quire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the eternal truths, it abolishes all religion: and all morality, instead of
nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national, wnstituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction
though not in the bourgeois sense of the word . to all past historical experience."
National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all
more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bour past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms,
geoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world-market, to uniformity . antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.
in the mode of production and in the conditions of life correspond But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to
ing thereto, aU past ages, viz., the expl(litation of one part of society by the
The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still other. No _wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages,
faster . United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within cer
one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat. tain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely van
In proportion as the exploitation of one incii\'idual b~ another is ish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.
put an end to, the exploitltion of one nation by another will The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with tradi
also be put an end to . In proportion as the antagonism between ~al property ~ions; no wonder that its development involves
490 Revolutionary Program and Strateg), Manifesto of the Communist Part)' 491
the most radical rupture with traditional ideas. iat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force
But let us ha ve done with the bourgeo is objections to Commu of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means af a revo
nIsm_ lution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps 8way by
We have seen above, that the first step in the revolutio n bv the force the old conditions of production , then it will, along with these
working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling conditions, ha\'e swept away the conditions for the existence of class
class, to win the battle of democracy. antagonisms and of classes genera]] \" and will thereby ha ve abol
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, bv de ished its own supremacy as a class.
grees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to ~J~lILLl}str':l..r.n.ents In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class an
of production in the hands of the Stale, i.e., of the- proletariat or tagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the fre e develop
ganised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive ment of each is the condition for the free de velopment of all.
forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by
means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the con III. Socialist and Communist Literature
ditions of bourgeois production; by mcans of measurcs, th'erefore, 1. REACTIONARY SOCIALISM
which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in
the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further A. Feudal Socialism
inroads upon the old social order, and are una voidable as a means of
Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of the
entirely revolutionising the mode of production .
aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against
These measures will of course be different in different countries.
modem bourgeois society. In the French revolution of July ]830,
Nevertheless in the most ad\'anced countries, the following will
and in the English reform agi ta tion, these aristocracies again suc
be pretty generally applicable.
cumbed to the hateful upstart. Thenceforth, ~ serious political con
1 . :\bolition of property in land and application of all rents of
test was altogether out of the question. A literary battle alone re
~
land to public purposes.
mained possible. But even in the domain of literature the old cries
~ 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax .
of the restoration period] had become impossible.

G> 3. Abolition of all right of inheritance .
In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy were obliged to lose
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
sight, apparently, of their own interests, and to formulate their in
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, bv mcans of
dictmen t against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited
a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
working class alone. Thus th e aristocracy took their revenge by sing
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and tr,msport
ing lampoons on their new master, and whispering in his ears sinis
in the hands of the State. ter prophecies of coming cat<lstrophe.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by
In this way arose Feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half lam
the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the im
poon; half echo of the past, h~lf menace of the future; at times, by
provement of the soil generall v in accordance with a common plan.
its bitter, wittv and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the
8. Equal liability of all to hlbour. Establish ment of industrial ar
very heart's core; but alwa ys ludricrous in its effect, through total in
mies, especially for agriculture.
capacity to comprehend the march of modern history.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries;
The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them , waved the
gradual abolition of the distinction between town and cOllntry, bv a
proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often
more equable distribution of the population 0\'Cr the country.
as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of
arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.
children's factory labour in its present form . Combination of eduea
One section of the French Legitimists 2 and "Yo ung England"3
tion with industrial production, &c., &c. exhibited this spectacle.
When, in the course of development, class distincti ons have dis
1. Not tbe English Restoration 1660 to Bourbon dynasty.
appeared, and all production has bee.n concentrated in the hands of 1689. but the French Restoration 1814 3. A group of British Conservatives
a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its to ' 1830. [Engels, English edition of
1888] aristocrats and men 01 politics and
political c.haracter. Political power, propedv so called, is merel y the literature-formed about 1842. Prom
2. The party of the noble landowners, inent among them were Disracli, Thom.
organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletar- _ who advocated the restoration of the as Carlyle, and others .
.,
. . .: , ....
}. . " .
In pointing out that th eir m ode of exploitation w~s different to supplementary pa rt of bourgeois society . The individual members of
tha t of the bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that th ey exploited this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the prole
under circumstances and conditions that were quite different, and tariat by the acti on of competition, and, as modern industry devel
that are now antiquated. In showing th at, under their rule, the ops, they e\'en see the moment approaching when they will com
. modern proletariat never existed, they forget that the modem bour pletely disappear as an independent section of modern society, to be
geoisie is the nec es ~ arv offspring of their own form of society . replaced, in manufactures, agriculture an d commerce, by overlook
F or the rest , so little do thev conceal the reactionary chara cter of ers, bailiffs and shopmen.
their criticism that their chief accusation against the bourgeoisie . In countries like France, where· the peasants constitute far more
amounts to this, that under the b ourgeois regi me a class is being de than half of the population , it was natural that writers who sided
veloped, which is destined to cut up root and branch the old order with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, should use, in their crit
of society. icism of the bourgeois regime, the standard of the peasant and
V/hat the)' upbr~1id the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it petty bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intennediate
creates a proletariat, as that it creates a revolutionary proletariat. classes should take up the cudgels for the working class. Thus arose
In political practice, therefore , the\' join in all coercive measures petty-bourgeois Socialism . Sismondi was the head of this school, n ot
against the working class; and in ord inary life , despite their high fa on·ly in France but also in England . .
lutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped from This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the con
the tree of industrv, and to barter truth, love, and hon our for traffic tradictions in the conditions of modem production . It laid bare the
in wool, beetroot-s~\gar, and potato sp irits .~ hypocritical apologies of economists . It pro ved, incontrovertibly, the
As the parson has ever gone han d in h and with tbe landlord, so disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the concen
h as Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism. tration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and
N othing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and
tinge. Has not Christianit v dec];\imed against private property, peasant, the misery of the prol etariat, the anarchy in production,
~ agai nst marriage, against the State? Has it not preached in the place
of these, cha ritv and poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh,
the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial
war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral
~
m onastic life and Mother Church? Christian Socialism is but the bonds, of the old famil y relations, of the old nationalities.
holv water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either '
the aristocrat. to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with
them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping
B. Pettv-Bou rgeols Socialism the modem means of production and of exchange, within the
fram ework of the old property relations that have been, and were
The feud al aristocracy was not the onlv class that was ruined by bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both
the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of existence reactionary and Utopian .
pined and perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society. Its last words are : corporate guilds for manufacture, patriarchal
The mediaeval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the relations in agriculture.
precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those countries which are Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts h ad dispersed all intox
but little developed , industrially and commercially, these t wo classes icating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a
still vegetate side by side with the rising bourgeoisie. miserable fit of the blues.
In countries where modern civilisation has become fulll' devel
oped, a new class of petty bourgeois h as been formed, fluctuating C. German, or "True," Socialism
betwcen prole tariat and bou rgeo isie and e\'er rcnewing itself as a
4. This applies chiefly to Ge rman y ier British aristocracy are, as yr.' , The Socialist and Communist literature of France, a literature
where the landed aristocracy and squire· rat her above that: but t hey, too, know that originated under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and
archy have large portions of their es· holY to make up for decli nin g rtnts by
tates cul tiv ated for their own accoun t· lending their names to fioaters o f more that was the expression of the struggle against this power, was intro
by stewards. and are, mo reover, exten· or less shady joint·s tock companies. duced into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie, in that coun
sive beetroot·sugar manufacturers and [Engels, En gl ish edilio', 01 1888 ]
distillers of pota to spirits . The wealth try, had just begun its contest with feudal absolutism .
German philosophers, would-be philosophers, and beaux esprits, By thi s, the long wished-for opportunity was offered to "True"
eagerly seized on this literature, only forgetting, that when these Socialism of confronting the political movement With the Socialist
writings immigrated from France into Germany, French social con demands, of hurling the traditional anathemas against liberalism,
ditions had not immigrated along with them. In contact with against representative government, against bourgeois competition,
German social conditions, this French literature lost all its immedi bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois lib
ate practical significance, and assumed a purelv literary aspect. erty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that th ey had
Thus, to the German philosophers of the eighteenth century, the nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this bourgeois move
demands of the first French Revolution were nothing more than the ment. German Socialism forgot, in the nick of time, that the
demands of "Practical Reason" in general, and the utterance of the French criticism, whose silly echo it was, presupposed the existence
will of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie signified in their eyes of modern bourgeois society, with its corresponding economic con
the law of pure Will, of 'Will as it was bound to be, of true human ditions of existence, and the political constitution adapted thereto,
Will generally. the very things whose attainment was the object of the pending
The work of the German literati consisted solely in bringing the struggle in Germany.
new French ideas into harmony with their ancient philosophical To the absolute governments , with their following of parsons,
conscience, or rather, in annexing the Frenc.h ideas without desert professors, country squires and officials, it served as a welcome Scare
ing their own philosophic point of view . crow against the threatening bourgeoisie.
This annexation took place in the same wav in which a foreign It was a sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings and bullets
language is appropriated, namely, by translation. with which these same governments , iust at that time, dosed the
It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic German working-class risings.
Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works· of ancient While this "True" Socialism thus served the governments as a
heathendom had been written. The German literati reversed this weapon for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time,
process with the profane French literature. They wrote their philo directly represented a reactionary interest, the interest of the
sophical nonsense beneath the French original. For instance, German Philistines. In Germany the petty-bourgeois class, a relic of
beneath the French criticism of the economic functions of money, the sixteenth century, and since then constantly cropping up again
a they wrote "Alienation of Humanity," and beneath the French crit under various forms , is the real social basis of the exi sting state of
icism of the bourgeois State they wrote " dethronement of the Cate things.
gory of the General," and so forth. To preserve this class is to preserve the existing state of things in
The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of Germany. The industrial and political supremacy of the bourgeoisie
the French historical criticisms they dubbed "Philosophy of threatens it with certain destruction; on the one hand, from the con
Action," "True Socialism," "German Science of Socialism," "Phil centration of capital; on the other, from the rise of a revolutionary
osophical Foundation of Socialism," and so on. proletariat. " True" Socialism appeared to kill these two birds with
The French Socialist and Communist literature was thus com one stone . It spread like an epidemic.
pletely emasculated. And , since it ceased in the hands of the Ger The robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of
man to express th e struggle of one class with the other, he felt rhetoric, steeped in the dew of sickly sentiment, this transcendental
conscious of having overcome "French one-sidedness" and of repre robe in which the German Socialists wrapped their sorry "eternal
senting, not true requirements, but thc requirements of truth; not truths," all skin and bone, served to wonderfully incre:1se the sale of
the interests of the proletariat , but the interests of Human Nature, their goods amongst such a public .
of Man in general, who belongs to no class, has no reality, who And on its part, German Socialism recognised, more and more,
exists only in the misty realm of philosophical fantasy. its own calling as the bombastic representative of the petty-bour
This German Socialism , which took its schoolboy task so seriously geois Philistine.
and solemnly, and extolled its poor stock-in-trade in such mounte It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and
bank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic innocence . the German petty Philistine to be the typical man . To every villain
The fight of the German, and especially, of the Pruss ian bourgeoi ous meanness of this model man it gave a hidden, higher, Socialistic
sie, against feudal aristocracy and absolute monarch y, in other interpretation , the exact contrary of its real character. It went to the
words, the liberal movement, became more earnest. extreme length of directly opposing the " brutally destructive" tend
ency of Communism, and of proclaiming its supreme and impartial relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the
contempt of all class struggles. \Vith very few exceptions, all the cost, and simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois govern
so-called Socialist and Communist publications that now ( 1847) ment.
circulate in Germany belong to the domain of this foul <lnd enervat Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression, when, and only
ing literature.5 I when, it becomes a mere figure of ~peech .
2 CONSERVATIVE. OR BOURGEOIS, SOCIALISM

!. Free trade : for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties:
for the benefit of the working cJass. Prison Reform: for the benefit
of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously
A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social griev meant word of bourgeois Socialism.
ances, in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois-for
society. the benefit of the working class .
To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitari- I
ans, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of I' 3· CRITICAL-UTOPIAN SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM
charity, members of societies for the prevention of cr.uelty to ani
mals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imagi We do not here refer to that literature which, in every great
nable kind. This form of Socialism has, moreover, been worked out modern revolut'ion, has always given voice to the demands of the
into complete systems. proletariat, such as the writings of Babeuf and others.
\Ve may site Proudhon's Philosobhie de la Misere as an exam- The first direct aHempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends,
ple of thi~·form . . made in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was
The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern being overthrown, these attempts necessarily failed, owing tQ the
social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily then undeveloped state of the proJetariat, as well as to the absence
resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society minus of the economic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that
\i' its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bour had yet to be produced, and could be produced by the impending
- geoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives

t.he world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois
Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or
less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out mch
bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that accompa
nied these firsf movements of the proletariat had necessarily a reac
tionary character. It inculcated universal asceticism and social level
ling in its crudest form.
a svstem, and thereby to march stT3ightway into the social New The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those of
ferusalerii, it but requires in real1ity, that the proletariat should Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen and others, spring into existence in the
remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast 8\vav early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle between
all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie. proletariat and bourgeoisie (see Section 1. Bourgeois and Proletar
A second and more practical, but less systematic, form of this ians) .
Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the The founders of these systems see, indeed, the cla.ss -antagonisms,
eyes of the working class, by showing that no mere political reform, as well as the action of the decomposing elements, in the prevailing
but onl), a change in the material conditions of existence, in eco form of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to
nomical relations, could be of an y advantage to them . By changes in them the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any
the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, how independent political movement.
ever, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace
of production, an abolition that can be effected only by a revolu with the development of industry, the economic situation, as they
tion, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence find it, does not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the
of these relations; reforms, therefore , that in no respect affect the emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search after a new
5. The revolutionary storm of 1848 chie f representative and classical type social science, after new social laws, that are to create these condi
swept away this whole shabby tendenc), of this tendcnc), is Herr Ka rl Grlin. tions. .
and cured its protagon ists of the desire [Enge/s, German edition 0/ 18 90)
to dabbl e further in Socialis m. The Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive action, his-
torically created conditions of emancipation to fantas tic ones, and revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed mere reac
the gradual, spontaneous class-organisation of the proletariat to the tionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters,
organisation of society specially contrived b)! tllcse im·entors. Future in opposition to the progressive historical development of t~e prole
history resolves itself, in their eyes, into the propag;!nda and the tariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and that consistently, to deaden
practical carrying out of their social plans. the class struggle and to reconcile the cl ass antagonisms. The)1 still
In the formation of their plans they are conscious of caring dream of experimental realisation of their social Utopias, of found
chiefly for the interests of the working class, as being the most suffer· ing isolated "!Jhalansteres," of establishing "Home Colonies," of
ing class. Only from the point of \·iew of being the most suffering setting lip a "Little Icaria"6-duodccimo editions of the N ew Jeru
class does the p.rolet"riat exist ·for them. salem-and to realise all these castles in the air, they are compelled
The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois . By degrees
surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves they sink into the category of the reactionary conservative Socialists
far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the COil· depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic pedan
dition of every member of societv, C\'en that of the most fa voured. try, and by their fanatical and superstitious beJief in the miracu
Hence, thev habitually appeal to societv at large, without distinc· lous effects of their social science.
tion of class; nav, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part
people. when onc.e they und.erst"ncl their s\'stem, f"il to scc in it the o.f the working class; such acti on, acC'Ord ing to them, can onlv result
best possible plan of the best possible state of society? from blind unbelief in the new Gospel.
Hence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionarv, The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respec
action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, and endeav tively, oppose the Chartists "nd the Reformistes.7
our, by small experimcnts, necessarilv doomed to failure, and by
the force of example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel.
s--.. Such fantastic pictures of future societv, painted at a timc when
D the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but;] fan IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the
~j tastic conception of its own position correspond with the first Various Existing Opposition Parties
instinctive yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction of
society. Section II has made clear the relations of the COlllmunists to the
But these Socialist and Communist publications contain "Iso a existing working-class p"rties, sllch as the Ch"rtists in England and
the Agrarian Reformers in America.
critical element. Thcy attack every principle of existing society.
Hence they are full of the most v"lu"blc Ill "tcrials for thc enlighten The Communists fight for the attainment of tIle immediate aims,
ment of the working class. The practic<ll measures proposed in them for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working
-such "s the abolition of the distinction bctween town and coun class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and
take care of the future of tll"t movement. In france the Commu
try, of the family, of the carrying on of industries for the aCcolmt of
private individuals, and of the. wage system, the proclamation of nists ally themselves WIth the Soci"I-Democrats,8 against the con
social harmony, the conversion of thc functions of the Sl"te into a servative "nd radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to
mere superintendence of production, all theSE propos"ls, point 6. Phala J.st~,.£s were SOcLaJist colonies 8. The party then represented in Par
on the plan of Charles Fou rier ; icaria liamen t by Lt.·dru-Rollin, in literature
solely to the disappearance of class antagonisms wllich were, at that was the name given by Cabet to his by LO ll is Blanc. in the da ily press by
time, only just cropping up, and ",hidl, in these public"tiom, are Utopia and, later on, to his American
Communist colony. [Enge/s, Eag/ish
the Rtlorme. The name of Social
Democracy signified, with these its in
recognised in their e"rliest, indistinct J'nd undefined forms only. edilion 01 1888] ventors, a section of the Democratic or
These proposals, therefore, are of a purely Utopian char'lcter. uHome colonies" wrre what Owen Republican part)' more or less ting ed
called his Communist model socielies . with Sociali s m. [Engels, English edi
The significance of Critical-Utopian Soci:!lism <1:Jd Communism Phalatute.res was the name of the tion of 1888)
bears an inverse rebtion to historical development. In proportion as public palaces planned by Fourier . /ca The party in France which at that
ria was the name given to the Utopian time called itself Socialist-Democratic
the modern class struggle develops and takes definite shape, this land of fancy, whose Communist illsti. was represen ted in political life by
tUlions Cabet portrayed. [Engels, Ger Ledru-Rollin and in 1itera~u_re by Louis
fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic attacks on "'an edition 01 1890] Blanc : th us it differed immeasurably
it, lose all practical value and all theoretical justification . Therefore, 7. This refers to the adherents of lhe from present-day German Social
ntl\'Spaper La Rt/orm e, which was Democracy . [E,zgels, Ge,.man e.dition oj
althougll thp. origin'ltors of these svs tClllS wcrc, in lll"nv respects, published in Paris from l843 to 185 0. 1890]
500 Revolutionary Program and Strategy

takc up a critical position in reg;mi to phrases and illusiolls tradition
;Illy hand ed down from the great Rel'ol ution,
In Switzerland thcv support the Radi cals, without losing sight of
thc bct th:lt this partv consists of antagonistic clemcnts, partlv of Address of the Central Committee
DCil1() cr~lti c Socialists, in the French ~cn:)e. P,Hth- of radi cal bo ur
geois, to the Communist League
In Pobnd they support the p::Irtv th ,l t illsists on an :lgr;Hian re\'o
lution as the primc condition for mtional emancipation. that party
which fomented th e insurre ction of C r;1Cow in 'I S46, MARX AND ENGELS
In Gcrm ;n1\' thev fight witl! the bonrgeoisic ,,"hcncH'f it acts in a
rc\'ollltiulIJrY W;l\'. ag;linst th e ah~() ll1t e T!101l ;HChl. the femJaI sq\Jirc
arch:', and tile petti' hourgcoisie ,j ,
In 18 48 mo~t of the German Iyorkers in the Communist League returned
But thev ncver c.case. for ,1 singk instant. to in stil into the work
to their homdaml, and some pla yed prominent parts in the revolu tionary
ing class th e clearest possihle recogl1i ti lln of the host ile <1nt;]gonis m events th cre, In early 1850 , wh en the wave of revolu tion had subsided but
beh\'ccn bourgeoi sie nnc! prol<:Jariat. in order that the German hope still existed for a IlC\\' wave, i\,Iarx and Engels \\Tote this Address and
workers mal' str;iight\\';I\' me. ;) $ so ll1all\' \\GlpOll S agzlin st the bour dispatched it with an emissary to Germany for ci rculation among League
geoisic, th e s()c i.t! ;I nd politic )l conclition s th ,1I the hourgcoisie must members. In it they presented a radi cal political strategy for use ill event of
llccess:Jrih illtroe!IIC'(; ~l()llg with it, snp rclluc\', and in order that, a resurgence of revolution in Gcrlllan)" ;J .\trategv aimed at "nwking the rev.
aftcr the fall of the reactionar\' classes in Gcrman\', the fight clgainst olution permanent." This meant preventin g the "pettv bourgeois dem oc.
the bourgcoisic itself IlJav inrmccli,ltcl" bc£;in, ra cy," which would inevitably lead the initial phase of a new revolutionary
Th e COIl1llll111ist<; [U;'lI their :l1 t~' lIti(l1l chiefly to Germany, wave, fr OIll consolidating its ascend.IllCY Jnd keeping the movement in
pure])' reformist cha nn cls, Looki ng back in 188 5, in his essay "On th e His.
lx'causc that Coulltr)' is all th e evc of a hOlilgeois revolutr911 that is
tory of the Communist League," Engels wrote that th e Address "is still of
houne! to hc c:uricd Olll limie r 11l ( JlC ;ICIl-;1I1CC(\ conditions of Euro
interest tod;I)'. bccause pcttr-bourgc()JS dem ocracv is even now the party
pean civilisation, ,Inel \rith a much more c1eH'loped proletarint. than whi ch must certainly be the first to come to power in Germany as the sav
tklt of England \\'as in the sc\'Cnt eenth , ,1lIel of France in the eight ior of society from th e communist work ers on tllc occasion of th e next Eu
eenth CClltur)', and becallse th c hourgc(lis rn'olutiol1 in CeTman}, ropean uphcavaI l]OW soon due ( It he European revolutions, 181 5, 18 30,
\\'ill bc bllt th c prelude to an ilTlIll cdi;ltcly following proletar iall rev 18 48-5:, 1870 , have occurred at intcrvah of fifteen to eighteen years in
OllltiOIi. our century) ,"
In short. the CO llll1lun ists e\c rnvlw rc support eyerv rCI'()ll.ltionary
movcment ;lg:Jinst the cx isting soc ial and political orelcr nf things.
In ;]11 thc-;(' 1l1O\'CIIlCll h thc'\' bring to the front , :IS the leading
qu estion in cach , th e propert\' qu es ti on, no matter what its degree
of deveiopmcnt nt the time.
final lv, thc\' labour l'verywh cre fo r the llniOll and agreem ent of
thc del1locratic p~lrtic s of all ('olll1tric~. BrotherS I In the two revolutionary years 1848-49 the League
The _Gom l llllli isJ LJli.sclai.ll~ j ' () cOluc:+l-tLci( viC)\'s and aims. proved itsclf in double fashion: first, in that its members energeti
Thc):. op.enl\LdcchHs:J,klt their cncls...,C: 1I1J2.C ~t!.:in ed on l" b\' the forc cally took part in the movement in all placcs, that in the press, on
ible o"ertIHo\\' of ;111 e xi ~ t ing S ()cj ~S' Ol~litii)ll s, Let the ru ling the barricades ane! on the hJttleficlds, the\ stooc1 in the front r,l11ks
c:bsscs tremble ,1t d Communistic revojution, T he proktariam h~lVe of the only deCidedly revolutionary c1<;ss, the proletariat. The
Tiothing to lose hut th eir ch"ins , T hey have a w()rld tn Will, League further proved itself in that its conception of the movement
as laid down in the circulars of the congres~cs and of the Central
Committec of 1847 as well as in the Communist lvlanifcsto turned
R K I~ C r--IEN 0 1' ,\1.L CUUNT RIES. U[\ITE! out to be the only correct one, that the expectations expressed III
those documcnts were completely fulfilled and the conception of
9. Klriilbiir gt:rci in the G~ rman origi. d(5cribe thr reacti onary elemen ts of the
nal. :\1 arX and Engels used this (erm to ur ban petty bourgeois ie , 501
II

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“A manifesto is a communication made to the whole world, whose only pretension is to the

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, “Futurist Manifesto”, in Gazzetta dell'Emilia in Bologna

“The Vorticist Manifesto” in Blast, number 1

“The Situationist Manifesto”, Internationale Situationniste number 4

MarxEngels, "The Communist Manifesto"

D.H.L Lawrence, in Exit Utopia, Architectural Provocations

ARCHITECTURE MANIFESTO (IN METROPOLIS BOOK)

Bernard Tshchumi, “Violence of Architecture” in Architeture and Disjunction

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The Futurist Manifesto

the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!"

(Text of translation taken from James Joll, Three Intellectuals in Politics)

text archives > situationist international texts >

Situa tionist M a nifesto

Henceforth, we propose an autonomous organization of the producers of the

completely destitute of any sensible usage outside our subversive

Against the spectacle, the realized situationist culture

Against preserved art, it is the organization of the directly lived

Against particularized art, it will be a global practice with a

Against unilateral art, situationist culture will be an art of

At a higher stage, everyone will become an artist, i.e., inseparably a

To those who don't understand us properly, we say with an irreducible scorn:

Manifesto of the Communist Party

MARX AND ENGELS

In 1836 German radical workers living in Paris formed a secret association

Preface to the German Edition of 1872

greatly undermined, yet a form of the primeval common ownership

Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the

Preface to the German Edition of 188 3 to be itself a Power.

quentl y (ever since the dissolution of th e primeval communal owner­

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, .

struggles between exploited an d exploiting, between dominated and

modern Capitalists, owners of the everywhere from India to Ireland. The

class or modern wage·labourers who, its typical form, by Morgan's crowning

bour-power in order to live. {Engels, the dissolution of these prim.aeval com­

Revolutionary Program and Strategy Manifesto of the Communist Party 475

and France, aiter they had purchased

.c:overnment from their feudal lords.

bo.urgeoisie, England is here taken as [EnKe/ s, German edition 0/ 18 00]

Manifesto of the Communist Party 477

Revolutionary Program and Strategy Manifesto of the Communist Party 483

ment. by the united action of all members of society, can it be set,in

of the restoration period] had become impossible.

2 CONSERVATIVE. OR BOURGEOIS, SOCIALISM

- geoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives

500 Revolutionary Program and Strategy

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quentl y (ever since the dissolution of th e primeval communal owner

bour-power in order to live. {Engels, the dissolution of these prim.aeval com