Mark Cowling - The Communist Manifesto - A Modern Edition - Verso Books (1998)

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The Communist Manifesto
New Interpretations
Edited by Mark Cowling
Including, in full, The Manifesto of the Communist Party
translated by Terrell Carver
Edinburgh University Press

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Dedicated to the memory of
Wallis Arthur Suchting (19311997)
© in this edition, Edinburgh University Press, 1998
Copyright in the individual contributions is retained by the authors
Edinburgh University Press 22 George Square, Edinburgh
Typeset in 10½ on 12½ Bembo by Hewer Text Composition Services, Edinburgh, and printed and bound in Great Britain by The University Press, Cambridge
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 7486 1140 1 (hbk)
ISBN 0 7486 1035 9 (pbk)
The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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CONTENTS
Notes on Contributors vii
Preface xi
Acknowledgements xiii
Abbreviations xiv
Introduction 1
Mark Cowling
Manifesto of the Communist Party 14

Part 1 Text and Context
1 41
'The Hungry Forties': The Socioeconomic Context of the Communist
Manifesto
Michael Levin
2 51
Retranslating the Manifesto: New Histories, New Ideas
Terrell Carver
3 63
Past Receptions of the Communist Manifesto
Ian D. Thatcher

Part 2 The Manifesto and Revolution
4 77
The Communist Manifesto and the Idea of Permanent Revolution
John Hoffman
5 86
The Communist Manifesto, Marx's Theory of History and the Russian
Revolution
Steve Paxton
6 97
The Cunning of Production and the Proletarian Revolution in the Communist
Manifesto
Alexander Chryssis
7 106
Revolution? Reaction? Revolutionary Reaction?
Mark Neocleous

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Part 3 The Role of the Working Class
8 119
The Communist Manifesto and Workingclass Parties in Western Europe
Stuart WilksHeeg
9 132
The Communist Manifesto's Transgendered Proletarians
Mike Gane
10 142
Marx and Engels, Marxism and the Nation
Mark Cowling

Part 4 The Manifesto: Still Relevant Today?
11 157
What is Living and What is Dead in the Communist Manifesto?
Wal Suchting
12 166
A Capitalist State? Marx's Ambiguous Legacy
Paul Wetherly
13 177
The Communist Manifesto and the Crises of Marxism
Jules Townshend
14 190
The Communist Manifesto as International Relations Theory
Peter Burnham
Guide to Further Study 202
Index 205

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Peter Burnham lectures in Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. His main publications are The Political Economy of Postwar
Reconstruction (London, Macmillan, 1990), A Major Crisis? The Politics of Economic Policy in Britain in the 1990s (Aldershot, Dartmouth, 1995), The
Research Process in Politics and International Studies (London, Pinter, 1997). He has published articles in Capital and Class, Studies in Marxism, Review of
International Studies and Review of IPE .
Terrell Carver is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Bristol. He is the author of several textual and biographical studies of Marx and Engels, including
The Marx—Engels Intellectual Relationship (Brighton, Harvester/Wheatsheaf, 1983) and Friedrich Engels (London, Macmillan, 1989). His translations include
Marx: Later Political Writings (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996). In addition to his substantial intellectual output it is less wellknown that he
maintains a really useful website for his department.
Alexander Chryssis is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology in the Panteion University, Athens.
Mark Cowling teaches politics at the University of Teesside. He is the editor, with Lawrence Wilde, of Approaches to Marx (Milton Keynes, Open University
Press, 1989) and, with Ian D. Thatcher, of Studies in Marxism, an annual journal. He has written several articles on Marxism and on the welfare state, and is also the
author of Date Rape and Consent (Aldershot, Avebury, 1998).
Mike Gane teaches at Loughborough University. His publications include studies of Durkheim (Routledge) and Baudrillard (Routledge). He has published collections
on Foucault, and Durkheim and Mauss. He has written a study of theory, gender and personal relations published as Harmless Lovers? (London, Routledge, 1993).
He is a member of the editorial board of Economy and Society.

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John Hoffman teaches politics at the University of Leicester. He is the author of several books and articles which relate to Marxism, most recently Beyond the State
(Oxford, Polity, 1995).
Michael Levin teaches politics at Goldsmiths' College, University of London. He is the author of Marx, Engels and Liberal Democracy (London, Macmillan and
St Martin's Press, 1989), The Spectre of Democracy: The Rise of Modern Democracy as Seen by its Critics (New York, Macmillan and New York University
Press, 1992), The 'Condition of England' Question: Carlyle, Mill, Engels (London, Macmillan and St Martin's Press, 1998), and several book chapters or journal
articles in the areas of Marxism, socialism or communism.
Mark Neocleous teaches politics at Brunel University. He is the author of Administering Civil Society: Towards a Theory of State Power (London, Macmillan,
1996) and Fascism (Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1997) and several articles on social and political thought.
Steve Paxton is a graduate student at Oxford Brookes University. He is working on the application of Marx's theory of history to Soviet historical development.
Wal Suchting taught in philosophy at the University of Sydney. He was the author of several important articles on Marxism and science, and of Marx: An
Introduction (Brighton, Harvester, 1983) and Marxism and Philosophy (London, Macmillan, 1986).
Ian D. Thatcher lectures at the University of Glasgow in Russian and East European history. He is the editor of the annual journal Trotsky Studies and joint editor
with Mark Cowling of Studies in Marxism. He has published numerous articles on Russian history, largely focused on Trotsky.
Jules Townshend lectures at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is the author of numerous articles on liberal and Marxist theory, and of J. A. Hobson
(Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1990) and The Politics of Marxism, (Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1996).
Paul Wetherly teaches at the Metropolitan University of Leeds. He has published several articles on Marxism and edited Marx's Theory of History: The
Contemporary Debate (Aldershot, Avebury, 1992). He is completing a major study of theories of the state for St Martin's Press.
Stuart WilksHeeg currently teaches at Fachhochschule Rheinland Pfalz, having been a researcher and lecturer at several British universities. His

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publications include two edited books, Talking About Tomorrow: A New Radical Politics (London, Pluto Press, 1993) and (with H. Atkinson) Local
Government in Britain (Politics Association, 1996). He has published several articles on Marxism and on local, urban and European politics.

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PREFACE
This book is part of the work of the Political Studies Association (UK) Marxism Specialist Group. The group was set up in 1983, and now includes around 100
members worldwide. It studies the work of Marx, Engels and subsequent figures in the Marxist tradition, and investigates Marxist approaches to particular issues. Its
membership is open to all: its commitment is to open debate and academic quality.
The idea of a book on the Communist Manifesto was first proposed by Jules Townshend. The suggestion was taken up with great enthusiasm by many members.
This book contains contributions which we feel are most helpful for people in the early stages of a study of Marxism, but should also offer some interest to more
advanced students and researchers. A further collection of articles appears in Volume 4 of the group's annual volume, Studies in Marxism (1998).
It has been a great pleasure working on this volume with so many cooperative and friendly contributors. I would also like to pay tribute to Nicola Carr and the staff at
Edinburgh University Press, who have been most helpful.
Many thanks are also due to my family, who have been most helpful and remarkably tolerant about the intrusion of the spectre of communism into our annual holiday.
The only sad feature of this enterprise has been the death in January 1997 of one of the contributors, Wal Suchting. It is no insult to the other contributors to say that
Suchting was overwhelmingly the most scholarly. He had a deep commitment to gaining a profound understanding of Marxism and the philosophy of the natural
sciences, putting these together in a series of articles and in his books, Marx: An Introduction (Brighton, Harvester, 1983) and Marxism and Philosophy (London,
Macmillan, 1986). This commitment extended to studying texts in the original language (he learned Italian, German, Latin, Greek, Russian, French and Spanish). He
objected profoundly to the current pressure in academic life to turn out volumes of trendy nonsense to secure research funding; his output is therefore relatively

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small but really well worth reading, including his article on 'Marxism and Experiment' in Studies in Marxism, Volume 3. Along with all this he was widely known as a
friendly and conscientious person to work with. This volume is dedicated to his memory.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The editor and publishers wish to thank the following for permission to reprint previously published material in this book:
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, for Terrell Carver's translation of The Manifesto of the Communist Party, from: K. Marx, Later Political Writings, ed.
and trans. Terrell Carver, 1996.
International Publishers Co., Inc, New York, and Lawrence and Wishart, London, for numerous small extracts from K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works,
1975—(50 vols projected).

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ABBREVIATIONS
C.W. K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1975 ), 50
vols projected: a typical endnote reference would be C.W., Vol. 6, pp. 5560.
Manifesto Manifesto of the Communist Party.

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INTRODUCTION
Mark Cowling
It is now 150 years since the first publication of the Manifesto of the Communist Party (or Manifesto as it will be known in the rest of this book). The idea of a
volume of readings looking at major aspects of the work and its subsequent influence has attracted a great deal of interest: the Manifesto continues to mean a lot to
very many people. The reason for this is not hard to find: it is a short work, clearly and dramatically written, which introduces the major revolutionary ideas of Marxism
in a popular style. As the clearest short introduction to Marx and Engels's ideas it is usually considered the best of their writings with which to begin a study of
Marxism. In this introduction I explain briefly the origins of the Manifesto, summarise its contents and then introduce the other chapters of this book, all of which
expand on aspects of the text.
Origins of the Manifesto
Marx and Engels started to collaborate together regularly from the summer of 1844 when they met in Paris. Paris was at that time a major centre for revolutionaries,
including both a variety of French socialists and exiles from elsewhere, notably German artisans, and Marx and Engels mixed regularly in this milieu. Both men by this
stage thought of themselves as communists, but the exact meaning of this developed over the next few years. Both had been influenced by left Hegelianism, the
doctrine that reason was about to realise itself through world history. 1 Both had also been influenced by a critique of Hegelianism from a crude materialist standpoint
by Ludwig Feuerbach, although to exactly what extent and when is much disputed.2 Engels had spent some time in England, helping to manage his family's cotton
spinning business and accumulating materials on the English working class and the Chartist movement. Both had started familiarising themselves with political economy,
and Marx had been reading the works of French historians extensively. At the time they started their collaboration Engels appears to have had ideas closer to those
which appear in the Manifesto, despite his lifelong role as junior partner to Marx.

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Marx left Paris and moved to Brussels in February 1845 as a consequence of an expulsion order from the French government, under pressure from the Prussian
government. He and Engels clarified their ideas in The German Ideology, a polemic against various Left Hegelians, but including a more positive first part in which
they developed their own ideas in a critique of Feuerbach. This work was not published until the twentieth century. In Brussels in early 1846 Marx and Engels set up a
'Communist Corresponding Committee' intended to publicise and develop their views both internationally and among the revolutionary émigrés and German workers
with whom they mixed. This brought them into contact with a group of (mainly) German communists in London, the League of the Just. The League was a secret
society, whose members had been involved in an abortive uprising in France in 1839. 3
Discussions between Marx and Engels and the League continued, and Marx joined it in January 1847. In June 1847 a congress in London of members of the League
and of the Communist Corresponding Committee decided to set up a new organisation, the Communist League. This in turn held a congress in late 1847 at which it
commissioned Marx and Engels to prepare a statement of aims. Engels produced the first draft of this in the form of a catechism, aspects of which survive in the final
version, the Manifesto of the Communist Party. The Manifesto, much rewritten by Marx, was finally issued in February 1848, just in time for the revolutions which
swept Europe in that year. Despite its cogent ideas and striking prose its initial impact was slight; it is important because of what Marxism became, not because of the
way it was used.
Marx's own role in the revolutions of 1848 was chiefly as a democratic journalist in Cologne, followed by a brief attempt at communist organisation when it became
clear that the democratic revolutions in Germany were failing.
The Manifesto
To modern ears the term 'Manifesto' means an election Manifesto. The first point to note about the Manifesto is that when it was written the United Kingdom was
the only major European state with a functioning democracy, and even that was on such a narrow franchise as to exclude the working class. It is perhaps not surprising
that a doctrine developed in such circumstances has worked best in societies without modern Western democracy. In 1848 a political statement for the working class
had to be revolutionary.4 As such, the Manifesto covers a wide sweep of history.
It starts by stressing that the history of all past society is the history of class struggle.5 It immediately becomes clear that classes are defined by Marx and Engels in
terms of their relation to the means of production rather than in terms of selfimage or skill levels or prospects in life. In crude terms they see an oppressed class as one
which works and is exploited because its labour is not used for its own benefit.

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Modern society, they say, is becoming increasingly split between the proletariat, or working class, who own nothing but their labour, and the bourgeoisie, or capitalist
class, who own the means of production or private property. 6 (For Marx 'private property' means property in the means of production; there is no suggestion of
collectivising individuals' consumption goods.7 )
For readers who have an image of Marxists as people hostile to capitalism, Marx and Engels's praise of the revolutionary changes it brings as it destroys feudalism and
develops a world market comes as a surprise. The central point here is that capitalism greatly develops the forces of production, our capacity to produce things, which
in turn lays the basis for a socialist society. This is a major contrast between Marx and utopian socialists such as Fourier, who rejected industrial society.8
Capitalist property relations, however, have started to act as a fetter on the further development of the forces of production. This can be seen in commercial crises in
which too many goods have been produced, leading to the destruction of goods and means of production until profitability is restored—but in such a way that the
seeds of worse crises are sown.9 The implication here is that a planned economy could use the benefits of industrial society whilst avoiding the waste involved in
crises.
The class which suffers the effects of both thriving capitalism and of crises is the proletariat, whose work has lost 'all attraction', involving simple, monotonous labour at
increasing speed and for lengthening hours for bare subsistence pay.10 Capitalism increasingly brings the workers together, gives them the means to organise against
it,11 and, indeed, supplies them with a group of bourgeois ideologists (such as Engels) who go over to the proletariat, taking their understanding of history with them.12
The next section of the Manifesto introduces the communists, stressing that they are 'the most resolute and thrusting section of the workingclass parties of every
country', who have no special interests and whose major advantage is 'theoretical insight'.13 The picture is of communists joining existing workingclass parties and
openly advocating their views rather than entryism or setting up a small pure sect.
There follows a polemical response to various charges against communists. They want to abolish private property: yes, they do, but this will be no worse than the
abolition of feudal property and will spread some of the benefits of property to the proletariat.14 They want to abolish the family: if specifically social education and
stopping children working long hours in factories are what is meant, they plead guilty.15 They want to introduce community of women: no, this is what the bourgeoisie
practise now.16 Nations are on their way out anyway, and communism will accelerate the process.17 Major shifts of ideas have accompanied other changes in the
mode of production, and may be expected in the change from capitalism to communism.18

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But what do the communists actually want to do? The 'first step' is 'the advancement of the proletariat to ruling class, victory for democracy'. 19 Marx and Engels see
the proletariat as a majority class, so this slogan may well mean that they see a proletarian victory as linked to the introduction of universal suffrage. Such a view
certainly fits with Marx's actual behaviour in Germany during the revolution of 1848. The aim is to 'centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state . . .
and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible'.20 There follows a list of 'very generally applicable' measures,21 which are interesting in that most
of them were actually carried out by Old Labour governments and other similar social democratic parties.22 They by no means add up to complete nationalisation, as
seems to be promised in the last quotation.
Section III, on 'Socialist and Communist Literature' is less important for a basic understanding of the Manifesto. The section on 'German or true socialism' is of some
interest, as the sarcasm directed against the idea of 'the realisation of human essence' or 'the externalisation of human essence'23 could be seen as Marx and Engels
criticising their own ideas of 1844 in which the major critique of capitalism was in terms of the alienation of workers from their species being (i.e. human essence). On
the other hand some of the earlier description of work in the Manifesto24 is fairly similar to Marx's writings of 1844.25 The most important part of Section III at this
distance in time is the last part on utopian socialism, which offers a cursory critical account of Owen, SaintSimon and Fourier. Some of Marx and Engels's own ideas,
such as their views on the division of labour or their idea that the state would wither away under communism, are probably derived from these thinkers. Further, their
own theories retain utopian aspects, for example the confidence that all social problems would be solved by a plentiful supply of goods under communism. There is
thus an important issue here of the exact nature of Marx and Engels's relations with the utopians.26
The final short part of the Manifesto contains several interesting ideas. It starts with the point that the communists work in alliance with other groups, but without losing
sight of the need to overthrow the bourgeoisie in due course. Then there is the idea that the communists 'direct their attention chiefly to Germany', where 'the bourgeois
revolution . . . can be merely the immediate prelude to a proletarian revolution'.27 This was taken by Lenin and his followers as a suggestion that the revolution could
start in a relatively underdeveloped 'weakest link' of the capitalist chain, and that the proletarian revolution could follow swiftly on from the bourgeois one.
Finally comes the great call to proletarian unity which has been so fateful for the greatest part of the twentieth century: 'Proletarians of all countries unite!'

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Other Chapters
Part 1 is on the text and context of the Manifesto. We start with Michael Levin writing on 'The Hungry Forties'. This chapter shows that the Manifesto, and, indeed,
the origins of Marxism itself, can only be fully comprehended as the product of an unusually fraught decade. This was particularly evident in the two societies Marx and
Engels knew best. In Germany there were hunger riots, the 1844 Weavers' Revolt and mass emigration to the United States. In the United Kingdom the 1840s was
one of the most turbulent decades of modern British history. With the rise of Chartism and the repeal of the Corn Laws we have key moments in the emergence of
workingclass organisation, rising middleclass power and the threat to the landed interest. Large industrial cities were growing with a rapidity unmatched by the
development of welfare and health arrangements. Famine in Ireland led to the growth of what seemed unruly Irish minorities in the major industrial centres. To serious
observers both at home and abroad Britain seemed to have embarked on a dangerous experiment. Engels was just one, though perhaps the most prominent, of
commentators who, in his The Condition of the Working Class in England, argued that the novel combination of urban concentration and proletarian poverty was
inherently unstable. 28 Marx and Engels, though, were far from unique in their prediction of revolution. Levin shows that their hopes are mirrored in the fears of those
who contributed to the 'Condition of England' debate: Carlyle, Disraeli, Gaskell, Kingsley and Dickens.29
Next Terrell Carver, the translator of the Manifesto as it appears in this volume, reflects on his project. He makes some very interesting and important points about
the process of translation, arguing that it is, among other things, a process of reading. Students of English literature will recognise his claim that the major issue is the
relationship between the reader and the text. 'The author is dead', so that asking what were the real intentions of Marx and Engels is not appropriate: rather we have to
recognise that there will be a series of readings of any one text, and that there will be interesting arguments between adherents of particular readings. Among students
of English literature one line of departure from the idea that 'the author is dead' is that 'authors' face all sorts of constraints, for example existing genres, pressures from
publishers, the expectations of the public and so on. Carver notes constraints which are less usual in literary texts, notably joint authorship and having to write for a
committee.
On the issue of how to render Marx and Engels into English, he signals that his own intention is to allow Marx to sound somewhat (but not very) foreign, but in a way
which will convey an appropriate sense to modern English readers. It soon becomes clear that whatever decisions a translator makes are bound to be very
controversial.
A more traditional view of the translation process is that the 1888 Sam Moore

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translation, supervised by Engels, and found in most collections, should be seen as authoritative. This is the view taken by Hal Draper, who provides a very literal
English translation set in columns beside the German original and the Moore version. Readers who are interested in translation issues might like to set these versions
against Carver's. 30 Readers who have more or less learned parts of the standard translation of the Manifesto by heart will take a moment to recognise Carver's new
translation of their favourite passages. An important theme in Carver's work has been his contention that Engels put his own gloss on Marx's work after Marx's
death.31 A new translation of the Manifesto can be seen as a further development of the theme. The final issue Carver tackles is that of what should be counted as the
original German text of the Manifesto, a fraught question which further shows the travails of a translator.
Ian D. Thatcher's chapter looks at past receptions of the Manifesto. Particularly interesting is the debate between Vandervelde and Plekhanov on the fiftieth
anniversary of the Manifesto. Vandervelde, who accepted revisionist ideas similar to Bernstein's, criticised the Manifesto on three points: the iron law of wages, the
law of the concentration of capital, and the law of the correlation between economic supremacy and political power. As we saw above in the summary of the
Manifesto, Marx did not accept the idea of the iron law of wages, and by 1865 took the view that trade unions could raise real wages for worthwhile periods of time.
Whether Vandervelde actually had access to relevant sources is not clear. He was, as might be expected, attacked by the founder of Russian Marxism, Plekhanov.
From that time on Thatcher shows divisions about the Manifesto following fairly predictable political lines, with Soviet commentators arguing that the USSR was
following the approach it advocates, Western revisionists arguing that in fact they were implementing the Manifesto's programme, and Trotsky denouncing the Soviet
betrayal of permanent revolution in the Manifesto.
In Part 2 we look at the Manifesto and revolution. As I indicated above, the Bolsheviks placed great stress on the analysis at the end of the Manifesto of Germany as
an underdeveloped country where the bourgeois revolution would be immediately followed by a proletarian revolution. This was termed the concept of permanent
revolution.
In the first chapter on revolution, John Hoffman contends that this reading, although historically influential, oversimplifies the position of the Communist Manifesto in
two ways. In the first place the logic of Parts One and Two suggests that workers must be 'educated' by capitalism before they are able to overthrow the system—and
this argument is in tension with the permanent revolution thesis which appears to shortcircuit the time scale for revolutionary change. Second, there is evidence to
suggest that the permanent revolution argument was inserted in the Manifesto for opportunist or tactical reasons. Marx and Engels were anxious to placate the
Blanquistminded radicals who sponsored the document, and the

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permanent revolution thesis was a way of allaying 'leftwing' anxieties while getting across in the bulk of the Manifesto an argument for selfemancipation through the
education of capitalist 'circumstances'.
Hoffman's reservations about the most obvious form of the permanent revolution thesis in the Manifesto are strengthened by the fact that it is contradicted by
comments made elsewhere by Marx and Engels (even during the turbulent 18489 period).
In the next chapter Steve Paxton takes up the contradiction identified by John Hoffman, but in the specific context of the Russian Revolution. He stresses that the
Bolsheviks emphasised, above all else, the international aspect of the case for a permanent revolution. Certainly, Lenin and Trotsky repeatedly identified the
outbreak of proletarian revolutions in the West as essential to the survival of any socialist revolution in Russia—a position licensed by Marx and Engels's preface to the
1882 Russian edition of the Manifesto. Both these linked contributions may be seen as hostile to Stalin's idea of developing socialism in one country, Hoffman with his
emphasis on the working class's need for capitalist development, Paxton instead stressing the Trotskyist idea that the backwardness of the USSR required the
support of socialist revolution in the West to overcome it.
The next chapter, by Alexander Chryssis, looks at what may be a serious fracture at the heart of the Manifesto. The issue is addressed in various ways by Hoffman,
Paxton, WilksHeeg, Gane and Townshend. This chapter takes us most directly to the logical core of the issue, namely that Marx and Engels see the downfall of
capitalism as flowing from its own development as an increasingly crisisridden economic system on the one hand, but from the actions of a specific class on the other.
What is to say that the two will match up? Might not, for example, the capitalists find ways of regulating the economy in order to diminish crises?
Turning to the 'gravediggers', there is much in the Manifesto to suggest that proletarians end up as seriously damaged people, overworked to exhaustion, living in poor
conditions, illeducated. They certainly need revolutionary change, but the way they are described makes one sceptical that they would be up to ruling and
transforming a whole society. 32 It is worries of this sort which lead Hoffman to his argument that the only sort of permanent revolution which looks plausible is one
which takes in longterm changes to the proletariat under capitalism, and makes Paxton look to other countries to bail out the very underdeveloped proletariat of
Germany in 1848 or Russia in 1917. WilksHeeg and Townshend consider the problem of the development of revisionism later in the nineteenth century: of a working
class which had gained welfare benefits, education and some citizenship rights, and which therefore might well not want to engage in revolution. Gane points out that
the bulk of the proletariat were actually women at a time when what workingclass education and political skill there was tended to be concentrated among (indeed
guarded by) men.33

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Alexander Chryssis tackles the issue by arguing that a quasiHegelian account of the freedom and necessity underlies the Manifesto. Hegel argues that the
development of the World Spirit, of human culture in its widest sense, involves the 'cunning of reason'. This means that individuals pursue their own ends, or a set of
social objectives with a relatively narrow horizon, but in doing so are also advancing world history, without being fully aware of what they are doing. He argues that
this gets materialistically transmuted in Marx and Engels into a 'cunning of production' in which the bourgeoisie develop their own gravediggers, and the proletariat are
forced to dig graves for their erstwhile masters. Whilst this approach involves more Hegelian reasoning than many commentators would be happy to attribute to the
Manifesto, it is undeniable that Chryssis raises a very important problem and offers one possible solution to it. Chryssis is filling in an argument which is not made
explicitly in the text. In the chapters by Suchting and Townshend the reader can look at two other reconstructions of this argument.
Finally in the section on revolution comes Mark Neocleous, who starts from a problem which arises in writing about fascism: fascists describe themselves as
'revolutionary'—but also in lots of other ways. Is there a worthwhile sense in which fascism is revolutionary? Neocleous argues that the meaning given to 'revolution' in
the Manifesto is coherent, and, when used to examine fascism, shows that fascism does indeed bring about a 'reactionary' revolution—not analysed, of course, by
Marx and Engels—when it conquers power. Students reading this book as part of a general course on ideology will find some useful crossfertilisation here.
Part 3 of the book looks at the overt role of the working class and the undertheorised role of other social groups in the Manifesto. Stuart WilksHeeg pursues the
theme already mentioned, namely the problem of whether the working class is properly equipped and motivated to carry out the 'gravedigger' role which the
Manifesto gives it.
His chapter examines the relationship between the Manifesto and the subsequent development of workingclass parties in Western Europe. The first half of the
chapter shows how both the formation of social democratic and labour parties and the development of their early programmes were significantly influenced by the
Manifesto. Even the young British Labour Party, which is widely felt to have developed without notable Marxist influence, owed considerable debt to the Manifesto.
However, as will also be shown, these workingclass parties increasingly pursued a reformist road rather than playing the revolutionary role apparently assigned to
them in the Manifesto. In the second half of the chapter the reasons for the failure of workingclass parties to act as the key organisational agent in the overthrow of
capitalism are examined. WilksHeeg argues that paradoxically the Manifesto itself was central in setting workers on a reformist road, particularly as it was interpreted
fortyfive

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years later by Karl Kautsky in his book The Class Struggle (1892). Moreover, through a brief consideration of Eduard Bernstein's critique of Kautsky's orthodox
Marxism, WilksHeeg proposes that some of the reasons why workingclass parties did not maintain their revolutionary character can also be found within the text of
the Manifesto.
In the next chapter Mike Gane looks at a series of paradoxes concerning Marx's (and to a lesser extent Engels's) treatment of gender. It is very much a standard view
among feminists today that although Marxists may have offered some useful ideas about feminism their overall perspective is woefully inadequate. Gane looks at the
issue in the specific context of comments in the Manifesto and Capital that the industrial proletariat included large numbers of women. Marx and Engels take a series
of inconsistent attitudes to this: they deplore the effect on family life, they look to personal relationships in the proletariat as the model of the future, they present
currentday proletarians as an 'army', but the 'army' comprises very many women at private rank, largely governed by men. Gane's conclusion is in a way more radical
than the standard feminist one that Marx and Engels failed to get round to developing a theory of gender. His view is rather that they needed to sort out the issues in
this area in order to develop a coherent theory about the proletariat and its role in revolution; that is their neglect impaired their own theories.
In the next chapter Cowling takes up another historical weakness in the Manifesto and subsequent Marxist theory. The problem of nations was much more
immediately obvious than that of gender by the time of the First World War, and was tackled by several major Marxist figures. In his chapter Cowling describes
briefly Marx and Engels's account of nations and nationalism, starting with some statements in the Manifesto and moving on to a more general account. He then
introduces some of the ways subsequent Marxists have attempted to tackle the issue, stressing the continuing relevance of past debates in the context of a developing
European Union. He ends with a cursory reference to a controversy about Northern Ireland which has been very important in the United Kingdom since about 1970.
Part Four contains four chapters looking at the possible continuing relevance of the Manifesto today. In the first of these Wal Suchting goes over some of the same
ground as Chryssis, but from a viewpoint much more influenced by the methodology of the natural sciences, arguing that the nature and role of the proletariat is
insufficiently thought out in the Manifesto and that Hegelianism is stepping in to fill the gap. In the second half of his chapter Suchting looks more optimistically at the
possibilities for further socialist political projects.
Next Paul Wetherly takes the famous statement in the Manifesto that 'The power of the modern state is merely a device for administering the common affairs of the
whole bourgeois class', 34 spells out what it appears to mean, and then goes on to analyse other major approaches to the state in Marx, notably the

Page 10
idea of the state being relatively autonomous of any class and the idea of the state as largely determined by its role in maintaining a capitalist economy. He argues that
the simplistic formulation of the Manifesto is definitely not adequate as an account of the modern state, but that with the flexibility provided by combining the major
approaches in Marx a plausible theory is possible.
In his chapter Jules Townshend argues that a concept of teleology, that is, that history is working towards an inevitable goal, plays a central role in the Manifesto.
After showing the major elements of teleology in the text he examines two historical episodes where the teleology of Marx and Engels's arguments was challenged. In
the first of these Bernstein argued, as we saw, that the major empirical planks of the Manifesto's fabric had rotted. Because of this it was now necessary for socialists
to accept a role for ethics denied to it in the Manifesto. Townshend compares Bernstein's case with Rosa Luxemburg's attempted rebuttal of him, allowing Luxemburg
a victory on points. He then looks at a much more drastic challenge to the teleology of Marxism mounted by Laclau and Mouffe. Here he argues that they jettison
central concepts needed by any worthwhile social theory along with more dubious Marxist baggage. Effectively they abandon anything resembling a socialist project in
favour of an incoherent array of postmodern discourses quite inadequate to deal with the issues raised by a global economy.
The book ends on a challenging and optimistic note with a chapter by Peter Burnham arguing that the Manifesto contains the outlines of a theory of international
relations which can still stand on its own two feet today. In doing so he emphasises a series of implicitly international themes in the Manifesto.
Conclusion
A general conclusion to an introduction is not really appropriate, but, given that Marxism has become relatively unfashionable today, I cannot resist some very brief
comments: why is the study of the Manifesto, and of these chapters, worth while?
The historical justification is the least contestable: the late nineteenthcentury debate between Marxism and revisionism is very important for the history of socialist and
labour parties, and the history of the twentieth century would be incomprehensible without understanding the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.
But what of the present and the future? Does this book contribute to our understanding of politics and society? Apart from something of a lesson in what went wrong
with past theories, it also offers some ideas about ways of understanding the present. It offers some alternative to postmodernism, and reminds us of the defects of the
current triumphant liberalism. Specifically, the chapters by Wetherly, Townshend and Burnham offer pointers to worthwhile approaches, and several other chapters
offer distinctive contributions to discussions of gender, nationalism, fascism and socialist politics.

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Finally, what about real, practical political problems? Many of the contributors would, I think, agree with Townshend's view that in an era of unrestrained global
capitalism, in which European workers are told they must accept low pay, insecurity and reduced welfare benefits in order to compete with the tiger economies of the
Pacific Rim, some form of international class perspective remains urgent. The Manifesto, now seen as flawed in so many ways, at least offers the beginnings of such an
approach.
Notes
1. For an excellent account of the Left Hegelians (or Young Hegelians), see D. McLellan, The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx (London, Macmillan, 1969). For a
wider general background account which includes the Left Hegelians, see K. Löwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth Century Thought
(Garden City, New York, Doubleday, 1967).
2. A great deal has been written on the young Marx which treats of this issue. For an approachable introduction, see D. McLellan, Marx Before Marxism
(Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1972). For a good, erudite discussion, see C. Arthur, The Dialectics of Labour (Oxford, Blackwells, 1986).
3. For some discussion of the ideas of members of the League at this stage see John Hoffman's chapter below.
4. For more on this see WilksHeeg's chapter below.
5. Manifesto, p. 14.
6. Manifesto, p. 15. When Marx analyses political events in real capitalist societies he uses a much more subtle range of classes, including the petty bourgeoisie (small
artisans and traders who work and do not regularly employ others), the lumpenproletariat (displaced members of other classes with no regular means of support),
various categories of peasant, fractions of the bourgeoisie such as commercial or manufacturing capital, and groups held together by their ideology more than by their
social origins. See particularly The Class Struggles in France and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, and the chapters in Capital Vol. 3 on
ground rent. Some hints at this more elaborate picture may be found in Manifesto, p. 1920. Marx never collected his account of class together in one place. For
good brief accounts of his theory of class, see T. Bottomore, Classes in Modern Society (London, HarperCollins, 1991), Chapter 2, R. Dahrendorf, Class and
Class Conflict in Industrial Society (London, Routledge, 1959), chs 1 and 2. For a readable summary of some of the obvious problems of applying Marxist class
theory to modern capitalist societies, see F. Parkin, Marxism and Class Theory—A Bourgeois Critique (London, Tavistock, 1979). There is a much more
elaborate debate in this area featuring Carchedi, Poulantzas, Olin Wright, Hindess and so on—for details see a university library catalogue.
8. For Marx and Engels's own account of their relation to Utopian socialism, see the relevant part of the third section of the Manifesto and F. Engels, Socialism,
Utopian and Scientific.

Page 12
10. Manifesto, p. 19, 22. This image of absolute impoverishment is mitigated in Marx's later works, where a more complex view is held, allowing that working hours
had to be shortened if workers were to be able to survive and reproduce. Further, workers get poorer relative to the bourgeoisie, but may for long periods be getting
absolutely better off. See, particularly, 'Wages, Price and Profit', K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works in One Volume (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1970),
pp. 185226. The view in the Manifesto is similar to Lassalle's 'iron law of wages', which Marx attacks in his 'Critique of the Gotha Programme', ibid., p. 324.
11. In the Manifesto the picture is of trade unions being useful for bringing workers together but not in improving wages and conditions (Manifesto, p. 20.).
Consistent with the point above that real living standards can be improved for periods of time, the later Marx sees the unions as to some extent achieving their
declared ends—see the references in the previous note.
14. Manifesto, p. 24, 26.
16. Manifestoip. 27.
17. Ibid.
18. Manifesto, p. 27, 28.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. For more details see the chapters by Thatcher and WilksHeeg, below.
24. For example, Manifesto, p. 19.
25. The question of whether, to what extent, and why (or why not) Marx retained his youthful theories of alienation in his later writings has been much debated: he
combines explicit or implicit renunciations of the idea with fairly frequent apparent mentions of it. For an introduction to the issue which refers to much of the
secondary literature, see Mark Cowling, 'The Case for Two Marxes, Restated' in Mark Cowling and Lawrence Wilde, Approaches to Marx (Milton Keynes, Open
University Press, 1989), pp. 1432.
26. Three articles in Studies in Marxism, Vol. 4, 1996, are of particular interest on this part of the Manifesto. Neil Maycroft in 'Marx, Communism and Utopia'
looks generally at the relationship between Marxism and utopian thought. Filio Diamanti in 'The Influence of Étienne Cabet on the Communist Manifesto'
demonstrates that although Marx and Engels generally denounced Cabet as a utopian, parts of the Manifesto are effectively plagiarised from him. Ivan Avacumovic in
'The Revolutionary Communists in Paris in the 1840s' looks at communists who don't get denounced in the Manifesto, those sympathetic to Babeuf and Blanqui.
Marx and Engels very possibly would like to have been more critical of these conspiritorial communists, but were aware that some of them were active as the Willich
Schapper faction of the Communist League. On the theoretical implications of this, see Chapter 4 below by Hoffman.

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28. Mike Levin's more detailed account of Engels's views, 'Engels's Analysis of England in the 1840s' may be found in Studies in Marxism, Vol. 4, 1996.
29. Those interested in this literature will find Mac Daly's account of it in Studies in Marxism, Vol. 4, 1996, worth while.
30. For the Draper version see: Hal Draper, The Adventures of the Communist Manifesto (Berkeley CA, Center for Socialist History, 1994). One very interesting
point which emerges from this issue of translations is found in Cris Yelland, 'The Communist Manifesto—A Systemic Linguistic Analysis' in Studies in Marxism,
Vol. 4, 1996. Yelland's analysis of the structure of the English in the 1888 translation was retried on the Carver version and would not work.
31. See Terrell Carver, The MarxEngels Intellectual Relationship (Brighton, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1983), 'Marx, Engels and Dialectics' in Cowling and Wilde,
Approaches to Marx, pp. 4960.
32. Indeed, Alan Carter argues that the most obvious class to take over from the capitalists is the new middle class of managers and technicians, not the proletarians.
See A. Carter, 'Marxism/Leninism: The Science of the Proletariat?', Studies in Marxism, Vol. 1, 1994, pp. 12541.
33. See S. Walby, Patriarchy at Work (Oxford, Polity, 1985) for an account of exclusionary tactics by male trade unionists in the nineteenth century.

Page 14
MANIFESTO OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY
A spectre stalks the land of Europe—the spectre of communism. The powers that be—Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police—
are in holy alliance for a witchhunt.
Where is the opposition that has not been smeared as communistic by its enemies in government? Where is the opposition that has not retaliated by slandering more
progressive groups and reactionary opponents alike with the stigma of communism?
Two things follow from this fact.
I. Communism is already recognised as a force by all the European powers.
II. It is high time for communists to lay before the world their perspectives, their goals, their principles, and to counterpose to the horror stories of communism a Manifesto of the
party itself.
For this purpose communists of various nationalities have gathered together in London and have drawn up the following Manifesto, for publication in English, French,
German, Italian, Flemish and Danish.
I Bourgeois and Proletarians
The history of all society up to now is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in short, oppressor and oppressed stood in continual conflict with one another,
conducting an unbroken, now hidden, now open struggle, a struggle that finished each time with a revolutionary transformation of society as a whole, or with the
common ruin of the contending classes.
In earlier epochs of history we find almost everywhere a comprehensive division of society into different orders, a multifarious gradation of social rank. In ancient
Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the middle ages feudal lords, vassals, guildmasters, journeymen, serfs, and again in almost all of these classes
further fine gradations.

Page 15
Modern bourgeois society, which arose from the ruins of feudal society, has not transcended class conflict. It has merely established new classes, new conditions of
oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old.
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, is distinguished by the fact that it has simplified class conflict. Society as a whole is tending to split into two great hostile
encampments, into two great classes directly and mutually opposed bourgeoisie and proletariat.
From the serfs of the middle ages arose the petty traders of the first towns; from this class of petty traders the first elements of the bourgeoisie developed.
The discovery of America and the voyages round Africa provided fresh territory for the rising bourgeoisie. The East Indian and Chinese market, the colonisation of
America, the colonial trade, the general increase in the means of exchange and of commodities, all gave to commerce, to sea transport, to industry a boost such as
never before, hence quick development to the revolutionary element in a crumbling feudal society.
The feudal or guild system in industry could no longer satisfy the increasing demand from new markets. Smallscale manufacture took its place. The guildmasters were
squeezed out by the middle ranks in industry; the division of labour between different guild corporations gave way to the division of labour within the individual
workshop itself.
But markets were ever growing and demand ever rising. Even smallscale manufacture no longer sufficed to supply them. So steampower and machinery
revolutionised industrial production. In place of smallscale manufacture came modern largescale industry, in place of the middle ranks of industry came industrial
millionaires, the generals of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
Largescale industry has established a world market, for which the discovery of America prepared the way. The world market has given an immeasurable stimulus to
the development of trade, seatransport and land communications. This development has produced in turn an expansion of industry, and just as industry, commerce,
seatrade and railways have expanded, so the bourgeoisie has developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background all preexisting classes from the middle
ages onwards.
So we see how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long process of development, a series of revolutions in the modes of production and exchange.
Each of these stages of development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance. From an oppressed class under the rule of feudal
lords, to armed and selfadministering associations within the medieval city, here an independent urban republic, there a third estate taxable by the monarchy, then in
the era of smallscale manufacture a counterweight to the nobility in the estatessystem or in an absolute monarchy, in general the mainstay of the great

Page 16
monarchies, the bourgeoisie—with the establishment of largescale industry and the world market—has finally gained exclusive political control through the modern
representative state. The power of the modern state is merely a device for administering the common affairs of the whole bourgeois class.
The bourgeoisie has played a highly revolutionary role in history.
Where it has come to power the bourgeoisie has obliterated all relations that were feudal, patriarchal, idyllic. It has pitilessly severed the motley bonds of feudalism that
joined men to their natural superiors, and has left intact no other bond between one man and another than naked selfinterest, unfeeling 'hard cash'. It has drowned the
ecstasies of religious fervour, of zealous chivalry, of philistine sentiment in the icy waters of egoistic calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchangevalue, and
in place of countless attested and hardwon freedoms it has established a single freedom—conscienceless free trade. In a word, for exploitation cloaked by religious
and political illusions, it has substituted open, unashamed, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped the sanctity from all professions that were hitherto honourable and regarded with reverence. It has transformed the doctor, the lawyer,
the priest, the poet, the man of science into its paid workforce.
The bourgeoisie has torn the pathetic veil of sentiment from family relations and reduced them to purely monetary ones.
The bourgeoisie has revealed how the brutal exercise of power, which reactionaries admire so much in the middle ages, was suitably complemented by the dullest
indolence. Uniquely it has demonstrated what human activity can accomplish. It has executed marvels quite different from Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts and
Gothic cathedrals; it has carried out expeditions quite different from barbarian invasions and crusades.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without continually revolutionising the instruments of production, hence the relations of production, and therefore social relations as a
whole. By contrast the first condition of existence of all earlier manufacturing classes was the unaltered maintenance of the old mode of production. The continual
transformation of production, the uninterrupted convulsion of all social conditions, a perpetual uncertainty and motion distinguish the epoch of the bourgeoisie from all
earlier ones. All the settled, ageold relations with their train of timehonoured preconceptions and viewpoints are dissolved; all newly formed ones become outmoded
before they can ossify. Everything feudal and fixed goes up in smoke, everything sacred is profaned, and men are finally forced to take a downtoearth view of their
circumstances, their multifarious relationships.
The need for a constantly expanding outlet for their products pursues the bourgeoisie over the whole world. It must get a foothold everywhere, settle everywhere,
establish connections everywhere.
Through the exploitation of the world market the bourgeoisie has made the

Page 17
production and consumption of all countries cosmopolitan. It has pulled the national basis of industry right out from under the reactionaries, to their consternation.
Longestablished national industries have been destroyed and are still being destroyed daily. They are being displaced by new industries—the introduction of which
becomes a lifeanddeath question for all civilised nations—industries that no longer work up indigenous raw materials but use raw materials from the ends of the
earth, industries whose products are consumed not only in the country of origin but in every part of the world. In place of the old needs satisfied by home production
we have new ones which demand the products of the most distant lands and climes for their satisfaction. In place of the old local and national selfsufficiency and
isolation we have a universal commerce, a universal dependence of nations on one another. As in the production of material things, so also with intellectual production.
The intellectual creations of individual nations become common currency. National partiality and narrowness become more and more impossible, and from the many
national and local literatures a world literature arises.
Through rapid improvement in the instruments of production, through limitless ease of communication, the bourgeoisie drags all nations, even the most primitive ones,
into civilisation. Cutprice commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces undeveloped societies to abandon even
the most intense xenophobia. It forces all nations to adopt the bourgeois mode of production or go under; it forces them to introduce socalled civilisation amongst
themselves, i.e. to become bourgeois. In a phrase, it creates a world in its own image.
The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the town. It has created enormous cities, vastly inflated the urban population as opposed to the rural, and so
rescued a significant part of the population from the idiocy of living on the land. Just as it has made the country dependent on the town, so it has made the undeveloped
and semideveloped nations dependent on the civilised ones, peasant societies dependent on bourgeois societies, the East on the West.
Increasingly the bourgeoisie is overcoming the dispersal of the means of production, of landed property and of the population. It has agglomerated the population,
centralised the means of production, and concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Provinces that were
independent or scarcely even confederated, with different interests, laws, governments and taxes, were forced together into one nation, one government, one legal
system, one class interest nationally, one customs zone.
In scarcely one hundred years of class rule the bourgeoisie has created more massive and more colossal forces of production than have all preceding generations put
together. The harnessing of natural forces, machinery, the application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steamships, railways, the telegraph, clearance of whole
continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers,

Page 18
whole populations conjured up from the ground—what earlier century foresaw that such productive powers slumbered in the bosom of social labour.
This is what we have seen so far: the means of production and trade that formed the basis of bourgeois development were generated in feudal society. At a certain
level of development of these means of production and trade, the relations in which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and
smallscale manufacture, in a word feudal property relations, no longer corresponded to the forces of production already developed. They impeded production instead
of advancing it. They became just so many fetters. They had to be sprung open, they were sprung open.
In their place came free competition along with a complementary social and political constitution, the economic and political rule of the bourgeois class.
A similar movement is going on before our very eyes. The bourgeois relations of production and trade, bourgeois property relations, modern bourgeois society, which
has conjured up such powerful means of production and trade, resembles the sorcerer who could no longer control the unearthly powers he had summoned forth. For
decades the history of industry and commerce has been but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern relations of production, against
property relations that are essential for the bourgeoisie and its rule. It suffices to mention the commercial crises, returning periodically with ever increasing severity, that
place the very existence of bourgeois society in question. In these crises a large portion of the current product as well as previously generated forces of production are
regularly destroyed. During these crises an epidemic breaks out in society, one which would seem a paradox to all earlier epochs—the epidemic of overproduction.
Society is suddenly thrust back into a condition of temporary barbarism; a famine, a general war of annihilation appears to have cut off all means of life; industry and
commerce appear to be destroyed, and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too many goods, too much industry, too much commerce. The forces of
production available to society no longer serve for the advancement of bourgeois civilisation and the bourgeois relations of property; on the contrary, the forces of
production have become too powerful for these relations, they are impeded by them, and as soon as they overturn this impediment, they bring the whole of bourgeois
society into disorder and endanger the existence of bourgeois property. Bourgeois relations have become too narrow to encompass the wealth they produce.—And
how does the bourgeoisie surmount these crises? On the one hand through the enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other through the capture of
new markets and a more thoroughgoing exploitation of old ones. How exactly? By preparing more comprehensive and devastating crises and diminishing the means
for preventing them.
The weapons used by the bourgeoisie to strike down feudalism are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

Page 19
But the bourgeoisie has not only forged the weapons which bring it death; it has also produced the men who will wield these weapons—modern workers,
proletarians.
As the bourgeoisie, i.e. capital, develops, so in direct proportion does the proletariat, the class of modern workers who live only so long as they find work, and who
find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These workers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity like any other article of commerce and
equally exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.
Because of the extensive use of machinery and the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all the characteristics of autonomy and hence all attraction
for the workers. The worker becomes a mere appendage to the machine, and only the simplest, most monotonous, most reflexlike manual motion is required. The
costs occasioned by the worker are limited almost entirely to the subsistence which he requires for his maintenance and the reproduction of his race. The price of a
commodity, and therefore of labour, is equal to its costs of production. As the repulsiveness of a task increases, so the wage declines proportionately. Moreover as
machinery and the division of labour become more widespread, the amount of work rises proportionately, whether through lengthening workinghours, or increasing
the work demanded in a given time, or accelerating the speed of machines, etc.
Modern industry has transformed the small workshop of the patriarchal master craftsman into the huge factory of the industrial capitalist. Workers, pressed together en
masse in a factory, are organised like an army. They become the common footsoliders of industry under the command of a full hierarchy of officers and commanders.
They are not only the chattel servants of the bourgeois class and the bourgeois state, they are hourly and daily enslaved by the machine, by the overseer, and above all
by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its ultimate aim, the more petty, hateful and embittering it is.
As manual work requires fewer skills and less exertion, that is, the more modern industry has developed, so the labour of men is more and more displaced by that of
women. Differences of age and sex have no social validity any more for the working class. They are merely instruments of labour which cost more or less according to
age and sex.
Once the exploitation of the worker by the factory owner comes to an end, he receives his wages in cash, and other sections of the bourgeoisie beset him in turn, the
landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.
The lower middle classes, small workshop proprietors, merchants and rentiers, tradesmen and yeoman farmers of the present, all these classes will descend into the
proletariat, in part because their small capital is not sufficient for the scale of large industry and so succumbs to the competition of larger capitals, in part

Page 20
because their skills are devalued by the new modes of production. There are recruits to the proletariat from all classes in the population.
The proletariat goes through various stages of development. Its struggle with the bourgeoisie begins with its very existence.
At the outset there are struggles mounted by individual workers, then the workers in a factory, then workers in one trade at a particular site, against the individual
bourgeois who exploits them directly. They direct their assaults not only against the bourgeois relations of production but against the instruments of production
themselves; they destroy imported commodities that compete with theirs, they smash up machines, they put factories to the torch, they seek to regain the lost status of
the medieval workman.
At this stage the workers form a mass dispersed over the whole country and disunited through competition. The purpose behind their own unification is not yet a
massive organisation of workers, rather this is a consequence of the unity of the bourgeoisie, which must set the whole proletariat in motion in order to achieve its own
political puposes, and for the moment it can do so. At this stage the proletariat does not struggle against its enemies, but rather against the enemies of its enemies—the
remnants of absolute monarchy, the great landowners, the nonindustrial bourgeoisie, the small traders. The whole movement of history is concentrated in the hands of
the bourgeoisie; every victory so gained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.
But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases; it is forced together in greater masses, its power grows and it feels it more. The interests, the
circumstances of life within the proletariat become ever more similar, while machinery increasingly obliterates different types of labour and forces wages down to an
almost equally low level. The increasing competition of the bourgeois amongst themselves and the crises emerging therefrom make the worker's wage ever more
fluctuating; the incessant improvement in machinery, which develops ever more quickly, makes their whole livelihood ever more uncertain; the confrontations between
individual workers and individual bourgeois increasingly take on the character of confrontations between two classes. As a result the workers begin to form coalitions
against the bourgeois; they unite in order to protect their wages. They establish continuing associations themselves in order to make provision in advance for these
occasional rebellions. Here and there the struggle breaks out into riots.
From time to time the workers are victorious, but only temporarily. The real result of their battles is not some immediate success but a unity amongst workers that
gains ever more ground. This is furthered by improved communications, which are generated by largescale industry, and which put workers from different localities in
touch with one another. But this unity is all that is needed to centralise the many local struggles of a generally similar character into a national struggle, a class struggle.
Every class struggle, however, is a

Page 21
political struggle. And the unity, which took the burghers of the middle ages centuries with their country lanes, is being accomplished by modern proletarians in a few
years with railways.
This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and hence into a political party, is disrupted time and again by competition amongst the workers themselves. But it
always rises up again, stronger, more resolute, more powerful. It compels the recognition of workers' individual interests in legal form by taking advantage of divisions
within the bourgeoisie itself. Thus the Ten Hours Bill in England was passed.
On the whole, clashes within the old society advance the development of the proletariat in many ways. The bourgeoisie becomes involved in a constant battle; at first
against the aristocracy; later against a part of the bourgeoisie itself, those whose interests contradict the advance of industry; and always against the bourgeoisie in
foreign countries. In all these struggles it finds it necessary to appeal to the proletariat, to enlist its aid, and thus to draw it into political action. Hence it supplies the
proletariat with its own materials for development, i.e. weapons for use against the bourgeoisie itself.
Moreover, as we have seen, there are whole sections of the ruling class dumped into the proletariat as a result of the advance of industry, or at least threatened in their
essential circumstances. These also transmit to the proletariat a mass of materials for selfdevelopment.
Finally at the time when the class struggle comes to a head, the process of dissolution within the ruling class, within the whole of the old society, takes on such a violent
and striking character that a part of the ruling class renounces its role and commits itself to the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. As in the
past when a part of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a part of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, in particular, a part of the bourgeois
ideologists who have worked out a theoretical understanding of the whole historical development.
Of all the classes which today oppose the bourgeoisie, the only truly revolutionary class is the proletariat. The other classes come to the fore and then decline to
extinction with largescale industry, whereas the proletariat is its particular product.
The middle classes, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, they all struggle against the bourgeoisie in order to secure their existence as
middle classes against economic ruin. Hence they are not revolutionary, but conservative. Moreover they are reactionary for they seek to turn back the tide of history.
If they are revolutionary, it is because they recognise that they face a descent into the proletariat, so they defend their future interests, not just their present ones, and
they abandon their own standpoint in order to adopt that of the proletariat.
The lumpenproletariat, that passive dungheap of the lowest levels of the old

Page 22
society, is flung into action here and there by the proletarian revolution, though by its whole situation in life it will be readier to sell itself to reactionary intrigues.
The circumstances necessary for the old society to exist are already abolished in the circumstances of the proletariat. The proletarian is without property; his
relationship to his wife and children no longer has anything in common with bourgeois family relations; modern industrial labour, modern servitude to capital, which is
the same in England as in France or America as in Germany, has stripped him of all national characteristics. The law, morality, religion, are for him so many bourgeois
prejudices that hide just as many bourgeois interests.
Up to now all the classes that seized power for themselves have sought to assure their hardwon position by subjecting the whole of society to their own economic
terms. The proletarians can only seize the productive powers of society by abolishing their own former mode of appropriation and hence all former modes of
appropriation. The proletarians have nothing of their own to secure; they will have to destroy all former private security and private assurances.
All previous movements were movements of minorities or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the independent movement of the vast majority in
the interests of that vast majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of presentday society, cannot lift itself up, cannot raise itself up, without flinging into the air the
whole superstructure of social strata which form the establishment.
The struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie is at the outset a national one in form, although not in content. Naturally the proletariat of each country must first
finish off its own bourgeoisie.
In outlining phases in the development of the proletariat in the most general terms, we traced the more or less hidden civil war within existing society up to the point
where it breaks out into open revolution, and the proletariat establishes its rule through the forcible overthrow of the bourgeoisie.
As we have seen, all society up to now has been based on conflict between oppressing and oppressed classes. But for a class to be oppressed, there must be assured
conditions within which it can at least scrape a slavelike existence. The serf rose to be a member of the medieval commune during the period of serfdom just as the
petty trader rose to bourgeois status under the yoke of feudal absolutism. The modern worker, by contrast, instead of advancing with industrial progress, sinks ever
deeper beneath the circumstances of his own class. The worker becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more quickly than population and wealth. It should now
be obvious that the bourgeoisie is incapable of continuing as the ruling class of society and of enforcing its own conditions of life on society as sovereign law. It is
incapable of ruling because it is incapable of assuring its slave any kind of existence within his

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slavery, because it is forced to let him sink into a condition where it must feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can not live under it any longer, i.e. its life is no
longer compatible with society itself.
The essential condition for the existence and for the rule of the bourgeois class is the accumulation of wealth in the hands of private individuals, the formation and
expansion of capital, and the essential condition for capital is wagelabour. Wagelabour rests exclusively on the competition of workers amongst themselves.
Industrial progress, involuntarily and irresistibly promoted by the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the workers through competition with their revolutionary unity
through close association. The development of largescale industry pulls from under the feet of the bourgeoisie the very foundations on which they produce goods and
appropriate them. Above all it produces its own gravediggers. Its downfall and the victory of the proletariat are equally unavoidable.
II Proletarians and Communists
What is the general relation between communists and proletarians?
Communists are not a separate party as opposed to other workers' parties.
They have no interests apart from those of the whole proletariat.
They do not declare any special principles for shaping the proletarian movement.
Communists are distinguished from the rest of the proletarian parties only in that, on the one hand, in the various national struggles of the proletarians they raise and
highlight the common interests of the whole proletariat, independent of nationality, and on the other hand, in the various stages of development through which the
struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie proceeds, they always represent the interests of the movement as a whole.
Communists are therefore in practice the most resolute and thrusting section of the workingclass parties of every country; they have an advantage over the general
mass of the proletariat in terms of a theoretical insight into the conditions, progress and general result of the movement.
The immediate aim of the communists is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of bourgeois rule,
conquest of political power by the proletariat.
The theoretical propositions of the communists are in no way founded on ideas or principles invented or discovered by this or that reformist crank.
They merely express in general terms the factual relations of an existing class struggle, a historical movement that is proceeding under our own eyes. The abolition of
existing property relations is not distinctively communist.
All property relations have been subject to continuous historical change, to continuous historical variation.

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The French revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.
What is distinctively communist is not the abolition of property in general but the abolition of bourgeois property.
But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the production and appropriation of products which rests on class conflict, on the
exploitation of individuals by others.
In that sense communists can sum up their theory in a single phrase: the transformation of private property.
We communists have been reproached with wanting to abolish property that is personally acquired or produced oneself, property that forms the basis of personal
freedom, activity and independence.
Property that is hard won, dearly acquired, well deserved! Are they talking here of petty traders, small farmers and their property, which preceded the bourgeois
form? We do not need to abolish it, as the development of industry has abolished it and does so daily.
Or are they talking of modern bourgeois private property?
But does wagelabour, the labour of the proletarian, create property for him? Not at all. It creates capital, i.e. property which exploits wagelabour, which can
increase only on condition that it produces new wagelabour to be exploited afresh. Property in its present form develops within the essential conflict between capital
and labour. Let us consider both sides of this conflict. To be a capitalist is not just to have a purely personal position in the process of production but a social one.
Capital is a social product and can only be set in motion by an activity common to many members of society, in the last instance only by the activity common to all
members of it.
Capital is therefore not a personal power but a social one.
If capital is converted into social property belonging to all members of society, personal property is not therefore converted into social. Only the social character of
property is converted. It loses its class character.
Now we come to wagelabour.
The average price of wagelabour is the minimum wage, i.e. the sum total of the means of life necessary for subsistence as a living worker. What the wagelabourer
appropriates through his own activity merely suffices to reproduce a bare existence. We want in no way to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of
labour used for the reproduction of life itself, an appropriation that leaves no pure surplus that could give power over another's labour. We want instead to transform
the miserable character of this appropriation through which the worker merely lives in order to increase capital, and only in so far as it suits the interests of the ruling
class.
In bourgeois society living labour is merely a means to increase accumulated

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labour. In communist society accumulated labour is but a means to broaden, to enrich, to promote the whole life of the worker.
Therefore in bourgeois society the past rules over the present, and in communist society the present over the past. In capitalist society it is capital that is independent
and personalised, while the living individual is dependent and depersonalised.
And the bourgeoisie calls the transformation of these relationships the transformation of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. Of course this concerns a
transformation of bourgeois individuality, independence and freedom.
Under the current bourgeois relations of production freedom means free trade, freedom to buy and sell.
But if bargaining disappears so does free bargaining. The expression free bargaining, like all the other boasts of freedom by our bourgeoisie, means anything only in
contrast to restricted bargaining, in contrast to the suborned burgher of the middle ages, but not in contrast to the communist transformation of bargaining, the
bourgeois relations of production and the bourgeoisie itself.
It horrifies you that we wish to transform private property. But in your existing society private property has been transformed for ninetenths of its members; it exists
precisely in that it does not exist for ninetenths. You reproach us for wanting to transform a type of property which presupposes the propertylessness of the vast
majority of society as a necessary condition.
In a word you reproach us for intending to transform your property. That is exactly what we want.
From the moment that labour can no longer be turned into capital, money, rent, in short, into a monopolisable power in society, i.e. from the moment that personal
property can no longer be turned into bourgeois property, from that moment, clearly, the individual person is transformed.
Thus you confess that by a person you understand nothing except the bourgeois, the bourgeois propertyholder. And this person is to be transformed as well.
Communism deprives no one of the power to appropriate products in society; it merely removes the power to subjugate the labour of others through this
appropriation.
It has been objected that with the transformation of private property, all activity will cease and a general idleness will spread.
According to this view bourgeois society ought to have collapsed into idleness long ago, for those who work do not gain and those who gain, do not work. The whole
idea amounts to the tautology that as soon as there is no more capital, there will be no more wagelabour.
All the objections which are directed at the communist mode of appropriation and production of material products have been extended to the appropriation

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and production of intellectual products. To the bourgeois the disappearance of class property denotes the disappearance of production itself, and in just the same way
the disappearance of classbias in education denotes the disappearance of education altogether.
The bourgeois regrets the loss of this education, but for the vast majority it is only training to act as a machine.
But do not argue with us while you judge the abolition of bourgeois property by your bourgeois conceptions of freedom, education, justice, etc. Your ideas themselves
are products of the relations of bourgeois production and property, just as your justice is merely the will of your class raised to the status of law, a will whose content
is established in the material circumstances of your class.
The biased conception by which you transform your relations of production and property from historical relations that emerge in the course of production into eternal
laws of nature and reason is a conception you share with all the ruling classes that have previously come and gone. What you grasp in the case of ancient property,
what you grasp in the case of feudal property, you will never grasp in the case of bourgeois property.
Transformation of the family! Even the most radical of the radicals flares up at this infamous proposal of the communists.
What is the basis of the contemporary bourgeois family? Capital and private gain. It is completely developed only for the bourgeoisie; but it finds its complement in the
enforced dissolution of the family among the proletarians and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family naturally declines with the decline of its complement, and the two disappear with the disappearance of capital.
Do you object that we want to transform the exploitation of children by their elders? We admit this offence. But, you say, we transform the dearest relations of all
when we move childrearing from the domestic sphere into the social.
And is your education not determined by society as well? Through the social relations with which you are brought up, through the more or less direct or indirect
interference of society by means of schools, etc.? Communists did not discover the effect of society on childrearing; they merely alter its character, rescuing it from
the influence of the ruling class.
Bourgeois phrases about the family and childrearing, about the deeply felt relationship of parent to child, become even more revolting when all proletarian family ties
are severed as a consequence of largescale industry, and children are simply transformed into articles of trade and instruments of labour.
But you communists want to introduce common access to women, protests the whole bourgeoisie in chorus.
The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be utilised in common and naturally cannot think
otherwise than that common use is equally applicable to women.

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He does not suspect that the point here is to transform the status of women as mere instruments of production.
Anyway nothing is more laughable than the moralising dismay of our bourgeois concerning the community of women allegedly sanctioned by communists. Communists
do not need to introduce the community of women; it has almost always existed.
Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of the proletariat at their disposal, not to mention legally sanctioned prostitutes, take the greatest
pleasure in reciprocal seduction of married women.
Bourgeois marriage is really the community of married women. At the very most the communists might be reproached for wanting to replace a hidden community of
women with a sanctioned, openly avowed community of women. In any case it is selfevident that with the transformation of the current relations of production, the
community of women emerging from those relations, i.e. sanctioned and unsanctioned prostitution, will disappear.
Communists have been further criticised for wanting to abolish the nation and nationalities.
Workers have no nation of their own. We cannot take from them what they do not have. Since the proletariat must first of all take political control, raise itself up to be
the class of the nation, must constitute the nation itself, it is still nationalistic, even if not at all in the bourgeois sense of the term.
National divisions and conflicts between peoples increasingly disappear with the development of the bourgeoisie, with free trade and the world market, with the
uniform character of industrial production and the corresponding circumstances of modern life.
The rule of the proletariat will make them disappear even faster. United action, at least in the civilised countries, is one of the first conditions for freeing the proletariat.
To the degree that the exploitation of one individual by another is transformed, so will the exploitation of one nation by another.
As internal class conflict within a nation declines, so does the hostility of one nation to another.
The denunciations of communism from the religious, philosophical and ideological points of view do not merit detailed discussion.
Does it require a profound insight to grasp that men's presumptions, views and conceptions alter according to their economic circumstances, their social relations, their
social existence?
What else does the history of ideas demonstrate than that the products of the intellect are refashioned along with material ones? The ruling ideas of an age were always
but the ideas of the ruling class.
In speaking of ideas which revolutionise the whole of society, we merely express the fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have

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formed, that the dissolution of the old ideas stays in step with the dissolution of the old conditions of life.
When the ancient world was in decline, the ancient religions were conquered by Christianity. When Christian concepts were defeated in the eighteenth century by the
ideas of the Enlightenment, feudal society fought a life and death struggle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious freedom and freedom of inquiry
merely expressed the rule of free competition in the moral realm.
However, it may be said, religious, moral, philosophical, political and legal ideas, etc. have been modified in the course of historical development. Religion, morality,
philosophy, politics, the law are always maintained through these changes.
Besides, there are eternal truths, such as freedom, justice, etc., which are common to all social circumstances. But communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes
religion and morality, instead of maintaining them, and it therefore contradicts all historical development up to now.
What does this objection amount to? The history of all society up to now was made through class conflicts which took different forms in different epochs.
But whatever form it has taken, the exploitation of one part of society by another is a fact common to all past centuries. Hence it is no wonder that the social
consciousness of all the centuries past, in spite of all its multiplicity and varying aspects, takes on certain common forms. These are forms, forms of consciousness,
which finally vanish only with the total disappearance of class conflict.
The communist revolution is the most radical break with traditional property relations, so it is no wonder that in its process of development there occurs the most
radical break with traditional ideas.
But let us put by the bourgeois objections to communism.
We have seen above that the first step in the workers' revolution is the advancement of the proletariat to ruling class, victory for democracy.
The proletariat will use its political power to strip all capital from the bourgeoisie piece by piece, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e.
the proletariat organised as ruling class, and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Naturally this can only be effected at first by means of despotic incursions into the rights of private property and into bourgeois relations of production, hence through
measures which appear economically inadequate and unsustainable, but which drive the course of development past that stage and are essential means for overturning
the mode of production as a whole.
These measures will naturally vary according to the country.
For the most advanced countries the following could be very generally applicable:

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(1) Expropriation of property in land and investment of rents in state enterprises.
(2) A sharply progressive system of taxation.
(3) Abolition of inheritance.
(4) Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
(5) Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state through a national bank with public capital and a guaranteed monopoly.
(6) Centralisation of all means of transport in the hands of the state.
(7) Expansion of nationalised factories, instruments of production, newly cultivated lands and improvement of agriculture according to a common plan.
(8) Equal obligation to labour for all, establishment of industrial armies, particularly for agriculture.
(9) Managerial unification for agriculture and industry, progressively eliminating the conflicting interests of town and country.
(10) Free public education for all children. Elimination of factory work for children in its present form. Associating education with material production, etc. etc.
When in the course of development class distinctions have disappeared, and all production is concentrated in the hands of associated individuals, then the public
power loses its political character. Political power in its true sense is the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat necessarily unites as a
class in its struggle against the bourgeoisie, makes itself into a ruling class through revolution, and as a ruling class forcibly transforms the old relations of production,
then it will transform, along with these relations of production, the underlying conditions for class conflict and for classes in general, hence its own supremacy as a
class.
In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class conflicts there will be an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free
development of all.
III Socialist and Communist Literature
(1) Reactionary socialism
(a) Feudal socialism
Because of their historical position the French and English aristocracies had the job of writing pamphlets against modern bourgeois society. In the French revolution of
July 1830 and in the English reform movement these aristocracies were once more beset by the hateful upstarts. There could no longer be any question of a serious
political struggle. A literary battle was the only thing left. But even in the literary domain the old phrases of the restored monarchy had become impossible. To arouse
sympathy the aristocrats had to appear to forego their interests, and to formulate their indictment of the bourgeoisie only in terms

Page 30
of the interests of the exploited working class. Thus they prepared their revenge—daring to sing slanderous songs against their new master and to whisper more or less
malign prophecies in his ear.
In this way feudal socialism arose, half lamentation, half lampoon, half echo of the past, half menace of the future, striking the bourgeoisie at its very core through bitter,
witty, biting judgements that were always comic because of a total incapacity to grasp the course of modern history.
They waved the proletarian begging bowl in order to unite the people under their flag. But as often as the aristocracy succeeded, the people espied the old feudal arms
on their hind quarters and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.
A section of the French legitimists and the Young England movement gave the best exhibition of this spectacle.
When the feudalists point out that their mode of exploitation takes a form different from that of bourgeois exploitation, they still forget that they did their exploiting
under wholly different and now superseded circumstances and conditions. When they demonstate that under their rule the modern proletariat did not exist, they forget
that the modern bourgeoisie was a necessary offspring of their social order.
In any case they conceal the reactionary character of their criticisms so little that their main complaint about the bourgeoisie emerges in these terms, that under their
regime a class has developed, one that will explode the whole social order.
They berate the bourgeoisie more for creating a revolutionary proletariat than for merely producing a proletariat as such.
In political practice they support all the repressive legislation against the working class, and in ordinary life, in spite of all their inflated talk, they comfort themselves by
picking golden apples and by swapping truth, love and honour for speculation in wool, beetroot and spirits.
The parson was always hand in glove with the feudal lord, and clerical socialism was always so with the feudalists.
Nothing is easier than to give to Christian asceticism a socialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the state? Has it
not preached their replacement by charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monasticism and the organised church? Saintly socialism is but the holy
water with which the priest blesses the fulminations of the aristocrat.
(b) Pettybourgeois socialism
The feudal aristocracy is not the only class that was ruined by the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of life withered and died in modern bourgeois
society. The suburban burghers of the middle ages and the small

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holding peasantry were the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In the less industrial and commercially developed countries this class still just rubs along next to the
rising bourgeoisie.
In countries where modern civilisation has developed, a new pettybourgeoisie has formed, fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and always renewing itself
as a complement to bourgeois society, but whose members are continually being dumped into the proletariat as a result of competition, who themselves—as modern
industry develops—see the time approaching when they will disappear as an independent part of modern society and will be replaced in trade, in smallscale
manufacture, in agriculture by managerial classes and domestic workers.
In countries such as France where the peasant classes make up far more than half the population it was natural for writers who supported the proletariat against the
bourgeoisie to use the standards of the pettybourgeoisie and small peasantry in their criticism of the bourgeois regime and to espouse the workers' party from the
standpoint of the pettybourgeoisie. Pettybourgeois socialism was formed in this way. Sismondi is the high point of this literature not only in France but also in
England.
This type of socialism dissected with great perspicuity the conflicts inherent in modern relations of production. It exposed the hypocritical apologetics of economists. It
demonstrated incontrovertibly the destructive consequences of the use of machinery and the division of labour, the concentration of capital and of land ownership, the
production of surplus goods, crises, the necessary ruin of the small trader and peasant, the poverty of the proletariat, anarchy in production, flagrant disparities in the
distribution of wealth, the industrial fight to the death between one nation and another, the dissolution of traditional family relationships, of traditional national identities.
In its positive programme this type of socialism either wants to restore the traditional means of production and trade, and along with them traditional property relations
and traditional society, or it wants to force modern means of production and trade back into the confines of traditional property relations that are now being—and
must be—dismantled. In either case it is reactionary and utopian in equal measure.
Guild socialism for artisans and patriarchal relations in agriculture are the last word here.
In its later development this tendency petered out in a pusillanimous hangover.
(c) German or true socialism
The socialist and communist literature of France, which orginated within the constraints imposed by the bourgeoisie in power, and which is the literary expression of
the struggle against their rule, was imported into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie had just begun its struggle against feudal absolutism.

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German philosophers, semiphilosophers and wordsmiths eagerly occupied themselves with this literature and simply forgot that with the importation of these writings
from France, the circumstances of French economic life were not imported into Germany at the same time. Set against German conditions, the French literature lost all
immediate practical significance and took on a purely literary cast. That literature could only appear as idle speculation concerning the true society or the realisation of
the human essence. Thus for the German philosophers of the eighteenth century the demands of the first French revolution only made sense as demands of 'practical
reason' in general, and the public expression of the will of the French revolutionary bourgeoisie signified in their eyes the law of pure will, of will as it had to be, of the
truly human will.
The definitive task of the German literati consisted in bringing the new French ideas into line with their traditional philosophical outlook, or rather in appropriating the
French ideas for themselves from their own philosophical point of view.
This appropriation took place in the same way that foreign languages are learned, through translation.
It is well known how monks transcribed absurd lives of the Catholic saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient pagans were inscribed. The
German literati reversed this with secular French literature. They write their philosophical nonsense under the original French. For example, under the French critique
of monetary relations they wrote 'externalisation of the human essence', under the French critique of the bourgeois state they wrote 'transformation of the reign of
abstract generality', etc.
This insertion of their philosophical phrases beneath the French discussions they dubbed 'philosophy of the deed', 'true socialism', 'German science of socialism',
'philosophical foundation of socialism', etc.
The literature of French socialismcommunism was thus punctiliously emasculated. And since it ceased in German hands to express the struggle of one class against
another, so the German 'true socialist' was conscious of superseding French onesidedness, of having substituted for true requirements the requirement of truth, for the
interests of the proletariat the interests of the human essence—of man in general, of man belonging to no class or to any actuality at all, but to the misty realm of
philosophical fantasy.
This German socialism, which pursued its lumbering scholastic exercises so earnestly and solemnly and trumpeted itself so blatantly, gradually lost its pedantic
innocence.
The struggle of the German, particularly the Prussian bourgeoisie against feudalism and absolute monarchy, in a word, the liberal movement, grew more earnest.
Thus the 'true socialists' were offered a much sought after opportunity to put

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forward socialist demands in opposition to current politics, to hurl traditional anathemas against the liberals, against the representative state, against bourgeois
competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois justice, bourgeois freedom and equality, and to preach to the masses how they had nothing to gain from this
bourgeois movement and everything to lose. German socialism forgot at just the right time that French criticism, whose mindless echo it was, itself presupposed
modern bourgeois society, along with the material conditions corresponding to it and the complementary political constitution, the very things for which the struggle in
Germany was so earnest.
This served the absolutist regimes in Germany, with their following of clergy, schoolmasters, country squires and bureaucrats, as a welcome scarecrow to frighten off
the rising bourgeoisie.
This marked a sweet revenge for the bitter whipping and buckshot with which the same regimes belaboured the uprisings of the workers.
Though 'true socialism' formed a weapon in the hands of the governments against the German bourgeoisie, it also represented a reactionary interest directly, the
interest of German philistines. In Germany the pettybourgeoisie forms the real social basis of existing circumstances, but it is a relic of the sixteenth century, albeit one
that is ever changing into different forms.
To preserve this class is to preserve existing circumstances in Germany. The industrial and political rule of the bourgeoisie threatens it with certain ruin, on the one hand
as a consequence of the concentration of capital, on the other, from the rise of the revolutionary proletariat. 'True socialism' appeared to kill two birds with one stone.
It spread like an epidemic.
The gown, worked from speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowery speeches, saturated with damp, sticky sentiment, this extravagant gown, with which German
socialists cover their few scraggy eternal truths, merely increased the sale of their wares to the public.
For its part German socialism recognised its vocation ever more clearly, as the highfalutin representative of pettybourgeois philistinism.
It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation and the German petty philistine to be the model man. To his every dirty trick it gave a hidden, socialist
interpretation which meant the opposite. It drew the ultimate conclusion when it directly opposed the crudely destructive programme of communism, and announced
that it was impartial and above all class struggles. With very few exceptions everything that is ostensibly socialist and communist now circulating in Germany comes
from this malodorous and boring domain.
(2) Conservative or bourgeois socialism
A part of the bourgeoisie wants to redress social grievances in order to assure the maintenance of bourgeois society.
Included in it are economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, dogooders for

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the working classes, charity organisers, animal welfare enthusiasts, temperance union workers, twoapenny reformers of multifarious kinds. This form of bourgeois
socialism has been worked up into whole systems.
For example, take Proudhon's Philosophy of Poverty.
The socialist bourgeois want the living conditions of modern society without the struggles and dangers necessarily arising from it. They want existing society with the
exception of the revolutionary elements bent on destroying it. They want the bourgeoisie without the proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally views the world in which it
rules as the best. Bourgeois socialism works this comforting conception up into a more or less complete system. By requiring the proletariat to realise this system in
order to reach a new Jerusalem, bourgeois socialism requires the proletariat to remain in presentday society but to cast off its spiteful conceptions of it.
A second less systematic and more practical form of this socialism sought to discredit every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class by proving how
only a change in the material relations of life, in economic relations, might be of use to them, not this or that political change. By change in the material relations of life
this form of socialism by no means understands the abolition of bourgeois relations of production, which is only possible by revolutionary means, but rather
administrative reforms presupposing the present relations of production; hence changing nothing in the relationship of capital and wagelabour, but at best reducing the
costs to the bourgeoisie of their political rule and simplifying their state administration.
Bourgeois socialism only reaches a suitable expression when it turns into a mere figure of speech.
Free trade! in the interests of the working class; protective tariffs! in the interests of the working class; prison reform! in the interests of the working class, which is the
final, the only sincere word of bourgeois socialism.
Ultimately its socialism consists in maintaining that the bourgeois are bourgeois—in the interests of the working class.
(3) Criticalutopian socialism and communism
We are not referring here to the literature which has expressed the demands of the proletariat in all the great modern revolutions (like the writings of Babeuf, etc.).
The first attempts by the proletariat to assert its own class interests directly were made in times of general upheaval, in the period of the overthrow of feudal society;
these attempts necessarily foundered on the undeveloped condition of the proletariat itself, as well as on the lack of material conditions for its emancipation, conditions
which are only the product of the bourgeois epoch. The revolutionary literature which accompanied these first stirrings of the proletariat is necessarily reactionary in
content. It teaches a general asceticism and a crude egalitarianism.

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Proper socialist and communist systems, the systems of SaintSimon, Fourier, Owen, etc., emerged in the first undeveloped period of struggle between proletariat and
bourgeoisie which we have outlined above. (See 'Bourgeoisie and proletariat' [sic].)
The founders of these systems, to be sure, see the conflict between classes as well as the active elements of dissolution in prevailing society itself. But they discern on
the side of the proletariat no historical autonomy, no political movement of its own.
Since the development of class conflict proceeds in step with the development of industry, they discover few material conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat,
and they search for a social science based on social laws in order to create these conditions.
In place of activity in society they have to introduce their personally invented forms of action, in place of historical conditions for emancipation they have to introduce
fantastic ones, in place of the gradually developed organisation of the proletariat into a class they have to introduce a specially contrived organisation of society. The
approaching events of world history resolve themselves into propaganda and practical execution of their plans for society.
They are indeed conscious in their plans of generally supporting the interests of the working classes as the class that suffers most. Only from the point of view of the
most suffering class does the proletariat exist for them.
The undeveloped form of the class struggle, as well as their own circumstances in life, leads however to the belief that they are far above the conflicting classes. They
want to improve the circumstances of all members of society, even the best placed. Hence they continually appeal to the whole of society without distinction, even by
preference to the ruling class. Anyone needs but to understand their system in order to recognise it as the best possible plan for the best possible society.
Hence they reject all political action, particularly all revolutionary action; they want to reach their goal by peaceful means and seek through the power of example to
pave the way for the new social Gospel through smallscale experiments, which naturally fail.
In a time when the proletariat is still highly undeveloped and hence comprehending its own position in a fantastic way, these fantastic images of future society
correspond to its first deeply felt urge for a general reorganisation of society.
But the socialist and communist writings also consist of critical elements. They attack all the fundamental principles of existing society. Hence they have offered material
that is very valuable for the enlightenment of the workers. Their positive proposals concerning future society, e.g. transformation of the conflict of interest between
town and country, transformation of the family, of private appropriation, of wagelabour, the proclamation of social harmony, the con

Page 36
version of the state into a mere agency for administering production—all these proposals merely point towards the end of class conflict which had in fact only just
begun to develop, which they only knew in its first formless and undefined stage. Hence these proposals themselves still have only a purely utopian import.
The significance of critical utopian socialism and communism stands in an inverse relationship to historical development. To the extent that the class struggle develops
and takes shape, this fantastic transcendence of the class struggle, this fantastic attack on the class struggle, loses all practical worth, all theoretical justification. Though
the orginators of these systems were revolutionary in many senses, their disciples have in every case formed reactionary sects. They adhere to the original views of
their mentors in firm opposition to the historically progressive development of the proletariat. Consequently they seek to dull the class struggle further and to ameliorate
conflict. They still dream of an experimental realisation of their social utopias, the establishment of individual phalansteries, the foundation of home colonies, the building
of a little Icaria—pocket editions of the new Jerusalem—and to erect all these castles in the air, they must appeal to the philanthropy of the bourgeois heart and purse.
Gradually they fall into the category of the reactionary or conservative socialism depicted above, and distinguish themselves only by their more systematic pedantry, by
a fantastic faith in the miraculous effects of their social science.
Hence they are bitterly opposed to all political activity by the workers which could only happen through blind disbelief in the new Gospel.
The Owenites in England oppose the Chartists, the Fourierists in France oppose the réformistes.
IV Relation of Communists to the Various Opposition Parties
After Section 2 the relation of the communists to the already constituted workingclass parties is selfevident, hence their relation to the Chartists in England and the
agrarian reformers in North America.
They struggle for the attainment of the immedate aims and interests of the working class, but within the current movement they also represent the future. In France the
communists ally themselves to the socialdemocratic party against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, without giving up the right to criticise the phrases and
illusions flowing from the revolutionary tradition.
In Switzerland they support the radicals without losing sight of the fact that this party consists of contradictory elements, in part of democratic socialists in the French
sense, in part of radical bourgeois.
In Poland the communists assist the party which works for an agrarian revolution as a precondition for national emancipation. This is the party which brought the
Cracow insurrection of 1846 to life.

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In Germany the communist party struggles in common with the bourgeoisie against absolute monarchy, feudal landholding classes and the pettybourgeoisie as soon as
the bourgeois revolution breaks out.
But they never cease for a moment to instil in the workers as clear a consciousness as possible concerning the mortal conflict between bourgeoisie and proletariat, so
that German workers may straightaway turn the social and political conditions, which the bourgeoisie must introduce along with its rule, into so many weapons against
the bourgeoisie itself, so that after the overthrow of the reactionary classes in Germany, the struggle against the bourgeoisie begins straight away.
Communists direct their attention chiefly to Germany, because Germany is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution, and because it carries out this upheaval under more
advanced conditions of European civilisation in general and with a much more developed proletariat than England in the seventeeth century and France in the
eighteenth; thus the bourgeois revolution in Germany can be merely the immediate prelude to a proletarian revolution.
In a word communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against existing social and political conditions.
In all these movements they emphasise the property question, which may have taken a more or less developed form, as the basic question for the movement.
Finally communists work everywhere for the unification and mutual understanding of democratic parties of all countries.
Communists disdain to make their views and aims a secret. They openly explain that their ends can only be attained through the forcible overthrow of all social order
up to now. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. Proletarians have nothing to lose in it but their chains. They have a world to win.
Proletarians of all countries unite!

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PART 1
TEXT AND CONTEXT

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Chapter 1
'The Hungry Forties': The Socioeconomic Context of the Communist Manifesto
Michael Levin
The Inevitability of Revolution
Communism has come and gone. From its invocations of class war to its practice of bureaucratic dictatorship it has left a deeply unappealing image. Of course,
twentiethcentury communism and nineteenthcentury Marxism are not the same thing. Their relationship has been a matter of intense and continuing debate. Whatever
view one takes, there is no doubt that the communism of this century has thrown a dark shadow over the Marxism of the previous one.
To understand the Communist Manifesto (and indeed all the other writings of Marx and Engels) we must try to remove the accretions of a later age and get back to
the period from which it emerged, for it is the product of a time with assumptions that now seem strange and often implausible. Perhaps what most needs explaining is
that which is hardest to condone. The call to class war and revolution is probably now as implausible and unappealing as anything in the Marxist canon. In the
Manifesto Marx and Engels traced the long historical process that was to culminate in the communist revolution:
In outlining phases in the development of the proletariat in the most general terms, we traced the more or less hidden civil war within existing society, up to the point where it
breaks out into open revolution, and the proletariat establishes its rule through the forcible overthrow of the bourgeoisie. 1
At the end of a century in which too much blood has been spilt for political causes, such an insistence on violence and class war is, in many respects, deeply
unattractive. We can, if we so wish, attribute it to the youthful romanticism of the authors. What I here wish to suggest is, first, that the case for revolution has an
intellectual argument behind it; and, second, that this key aspect of the Manifesto forms a characteristic part of the intellectual milieu of its time and was made plausible
by the existing social conditions.
For Marx and Engels revolution was necessary because:

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1. The workers were subjugated and exploited, as, in one way or another, they always had been.
2. What was relatively new was that industrialisation had aggregated workers into factories, and so into cities, thereby, unwittingly and unintentionally, making it easier for them
to organise.
3. Workers were being homogenised by deskilling and the withering away of intermediate strata.
4. Workers formed the majority.
5. Workers couldn't vote, so the political institutions remained mere instruments of the ruling class.
6. Trade unions were either illegal or strictly limited.
7. Workers occupied a key location in the production process.
8. The ruling class would always defend its material interests by whatever means necessary.
9. So workers have the need, the means and no other way forward.
On this all else is based. How, we might ask, could Marx and Engels have arrived at this analysis? How could the last become first? One background factor is that
revolution was part of the actual experience of continental Europe. The revolution of 1789 in France had been an uprising in just one country but had spread out and
irreversibly transformed the whole continent. Restoration had been attempted after Napoleon's defeat but had been challenged by a series of revolutions in 1830.
Clearly revolution was the form in which social change broke through the crust of conventional politics.
Revolutions, however, didn't drop out of a clear blue sky. They had to have their socioeconomic causes. The socalled 'hungry forties' was the formative decade for
political Marxism and the Communist Manifesto of 1848 is very much a product of that period and so can only be fully understood in terms of the context from
which it emerged. The rest of this chapter will attempt to demonstrate this point by describing the social conditions in Germany, France and Great Britain. These were
the three countries which Marx and Engels knew best and from which they expected most.
Germany
Germany was the country in which Marx and Engels grew up and came to political consciousness. Its backwardness compared to France and England annoyed them
immensely. It had not even achieved political unity or removed all traces of feudalism. However, on the positive side stood its advanced philosophy and the fact that
industrialism was already making an impact.
In Germany the 1840s was a decade of economic hardship following a long period of steady growth. Signs of discontent were there for all to see and the early
German socialists were almost unanimously of the view that German conditions

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were outmoded and due for radical reconstruction. In 1843 Moses Hess (who converted Engels to communism) foresaw the closing of the divide between thought
and action as inaugurating the reign of freedom 'and we are standing at its portals and knocking upon them now'. 2 A year later the poet Heinrich Heine wrote that 'the
masses will no longer tolerate their earthly poverty with Christian patience and yearn for happiness on earth. Communism is a natural consequence of this changed
Weltanschauung [world view] and is spreading over the whole of Germany.'3 According to the historian O. J. Hammen 'the air was rife with communist yearnings'.4
For Marx the German situation was so bad that it filled him with hope. The draft programme of the DeutschFranzösische Jahrbücher (GermanFrench
Yearbooks) (1843) contained a plan to review 'the literature and publications of the old regime in Germany which is decaying and destroying itself, and finally a review
of the books of the two nations which mark the commencement and continuance of the new era that we are entering'.5 Engels, too, writing to the editor of the
Northern Star in April 1844, viewed Germany as being on the threshold of great historical changes:
The political state of Germany is becoming more important every day. We shall have a revolution there very shortly, which cannot but end in establishment of a Federal Republic .
. . But there is so much combustible matter heaped up in all Germany and the shades of opinion are so various, that it is impossible to predict where the movement, if once fairly
commenced, may stop.6
This was written in the year that the Silesian weavers had looted the houses of rich factory owners. Their position had become hopeless in the face of competition from
industrial England and their wages had fallen below the poverty level. Their revolt had been put down by the Prussian military but had at least served to bring the issue
of poverty on to the political agenda.
By the mid 1840s potato disease and poor corn harvests had put up the price of food, the average cost of which increased by about 50 per cent in the three years up
to 1847. For the urban poor the situation became increasingly desperate. Bread riots broke out in some cities; potato riots in others. 'At such times', notes Eda
Sagarra, 'people were driven to eating dogs slaughtered with rabies in the Prussian Voigtland, cats and dead horses in Silesia, and bark, thistles and nettles in central
Germany'.7 In some parts of the countryside the death rate 'rose as much as 200 per cent, and masses of paupers marched in organized processions through the
hungry villages hunting for scraps of food or a few coins'.8
Tens of thousands were driven to emigration annually, over a million by the end of the decade. Those who stayed at home and attempted to redress their grievances
were curtailed by the Prussian industrial regulations of 1845 which forbade trade unions.
In the few decades following the Napoleonic Wars incomes had risen steadily

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and employment opportunities were generally good. Thus the reverses of the 1840s came as a severe shock. In 1847 wages dropped to rock bottom at only 57 per
cent of their 1800 level. At the same time food prices reached their peak. The Manifesto, then, was written in the year that was, in socioeconomic terms, the most
desperate one yet for its authors' home country. In early 1847 there were frequent clashes between the police and unemployed workers. In April there was a serious
riot in Berlin. 'That such lawlessness was possible in the heart of the classic land of obedience to established authority was irrefutable proof of the demoralizing effect
of the depression.' 9 Germany, then, seemed a country in which revolution was not merely possible but even more likely than elsewhere, so much so that the last
section of the Manifesto states that 'Communists direct their attention chiefly to Germany.'10
France
Paris was one destination for radical German workers. They already formed a sizeable minority in the city when Marx first visited it in 1843. France had long been
regarded as the classic country of revolution, although to be more precise it was its capital, Paris, on which such hopes and fears focused. According to one historian
'Paris in 1848 was the world's greatest manufacturing city, with more than 400,000 industrial workers of all kinds.'11 Paris was then, as usual, untypical of the country
to which it belonged: an urban, industrial island in a rural, agricultural sea, for the nonagricultural workers formed only 18 per cent of the employed population.
In the mid 1840s France as a whole was suffering from the same wider recession as was Germany. Bad harvests in 1845 and 1846 had led to rising costs of
foodstuffs. The potato harvests were poor until after 1848, livestock breeding declined and so the consumption of meat fell. Jardin and Tudesq note that by 1847
various kinds of disturbances were taking place, including looting, intimidation and rioting. In Buzancais 'a wealthy landowner was murdered by peasants'. There was
'a constantly growing fear of disorder. Bands of beggars roamed the countryside, especially in areas known for their wealth; at night they would gather at the local
farms . . . A Great Fear swept the countryside even before the February revolution.'12
Nor was the crisis solely agricultural. The rising cost of food lowered the demand for other produce. Textile mills had been reducing their labour forces for some years
and unemployment among building workers was also increasing. In the mid 1840s France, like England, suffered from a crash in railway investment. This hit metallurgy
and railway construction and contributed to a general rise of unemployment, which peaked in 1847. Mortality rates rose and birth rates fell. 'Strikes broke out with
increasing frequency in 1847, especially in the building and textile industries.'13 Furthermore, a number of political scandals

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contributed to the general crisis of the whole socioeconomic and political system.
In Paris, furthermore, there were people all too eager to feed upon the situation. Isaiah Berlin once remarked that 'In the 1840s Paris is full of revolutionaries—
Bakunin, Marx, Herzen, Louis Blanc, Proudhon, Dézamy, Blanqui, Leroux, George Sand's other socialist friends—SaintSimonians, Fourierists, Socialists,
Communists, anarchists.' 14 If there was to be revolution Paris would have to play its part, and it did, but the abovementioned leaders needed some followers. Where
were they to be found? Not, it seems, among the wageearning proletariat but more among the skilled craftsmen who had a higher level of education and political
awareness.15
Alexis de Tocqueville was among those who saw the trouble ahead. On the very eve of the revolution he advised the Chamber of Deputies to 'see what is happening
among the working classes . . . opinions and ideas are gradually spreading among them that tend . . . to the overthrow of society, breaking down the bases on which it
now rests . . . we are lulling ourselves to sleep over an active volcano.'16 The eruption that followed had some socialist support and successes but, a few years later,
collapsed into the authoritarian dictatorship of Louis Napoleon.
United Kingdom
In a scenario that Marx and Engels derived from Moses Hess, Germany was the land of philosophy, France of politics and England of economics. This initially placed
these three countries upon the same pedestal, but the logic of Marx and Engels's materialist outlook served to give primacy to the latter. The country that was most
advanced economically showed others their own eventual future.
In Britain industry was creating a new world of enormous cities in which the poor were aggregated and isolated from the higher social classes. In being torn from their
rural background, the poor lost the social context which had granted them some support. They no longer lived cheek by jowl with their superiors, able to learn, some
hoped, from the manners and values of their 'betters' and under their general watch and supervision.
A theme of Coleridge, Carlyle and others was that a paternal, caring aristocracy had rendered poverty tolerable. Now it seemed that the community of village life had
given way to the anonymity of the urban mass. Integration had been replaced by atomisation. The city was feared partially because it was unknown but also because
of its presumed potential for disorder, for what from one perspective was a mass was, from another, a class; and a lower class less open to the wisdoms of religion,
education and superior guidance than any before it. According to one modern historian, 'The slums of the cities terrified respectable midVictorians.'17

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To many observers both at home and abroad Britain seemed to have embarked upon a dangerous, even reckless, experiment. Who knew where the logic of industrial
capitalism would lead? One group who claimed to were the political economists. In their writings Marx and Engels found, a damning confession, confirmation of their
view that capitalist society was inherently unstable. From Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo and Nassau Senior they found such views as the inevitability of population
outstripping production, of the wages of labour necessarily falling to subsistence level, of the chronic passage of the trade cycle from glut to unemployment, of the long
term tendency for profits and wages to fall and of the arrival of the stationary state. And yet such an economic system was declared natural and selfregulating with any
ameliorative interference likely to produce something worse!
The effects of the trade cycle were fundamental to the politics and social stability of the period. Labourers veered between bouts of enforced idleness during periods
of recession to overmuch work when they found it, for working hours were beyond what seems conceivable today. It took a long campaign for a sixtyhour week to
be won for the textile industry in 1850. In most occupations there were no official maxima, not that they could have been easily enforced anyway. Factory work in
particular was physically dangerous in terms of the worker's tiredness combining with the employer's insufficient regard for physical safety. And, of course, all manual
labour for men, and even more so for women and children, was poorly paid in terms of providing for such basic necessities as food, housing and clothing. The historian
John Belchem has noted that 'poverty was a regular feature of the life of almost all working families at some stages in their development, especially in old age or before
young children started earning'. 18
Apart from those in employment there were in England and Wales about one and a half million paupers, just under 9 per cent of the total population. Nearly a quarter
of a million of them were confined to workhouses on the harsh terms established by the Poor Law Reform of 1834.
An industrial depression lasted from 1837 until about 1843 but then good harvests and increased railway investment brought greater prosperity in the next few years.
However a new commercial crisis lasted from the autumn of 1847 until the following spring, a time when once again there seemed a threat of disorder from the lower
classes. Poverty and riot, of course, were nothing new. What was new in the nineteenth century was the problem of control exacerbated by the new spatial distribution
of classes. Industry had aggregated the labouring population around the factories but the railways facilitated the flight of the middle classes as stations outside the city
centres began to attract building investment and so facilitated the emergence of suburbia. Consequently social segregation became more pronounced as it became
easier for those with the financial means to work in the city but live on its outskirts or beyond. In this

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situation the different classes increasingly lived in different worlds and the increased segmentation of dwellings on the basis of social class resulted in the emergence of
immense, squalid workingclass suburbs of which the upper classes knew little but feared much.
In 1838 Engels, at the instigation of his father, who owned a factory in Manchester, came to England for the first time. Manchester has been described as 'the shock
city of the 1840s'. 19 According to one assessment, if 'in the sixty years after 1789, England was to have a revolution on the French model, most Englishmen believed
that it would begin in Manchester'.20 Engels's The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), a pioneer document of social history and still highly
readable, is largely a product of his Manchester experience. That Engels expected industrial conditions to lead to revolution may be no surprise, but what needs
emphasising is that Engels's prognosis was far from unusual. The socalled 'Condition of England Question' had been inaugurated, indeed defined, by a conservative
Scot, Thomas Carlyle, who had shot to fame with his history of The French Revolution (1837). Now Carlyle was no antiquarian for its own sake. The purpose of
history was to learn fundamental lessons and the lesson taught by the French Revolution was that an aristocracy which neglects the impoverished masses is heading for
the abyss. Carlyle applied this lesson explicitly to England in 'Chartism' (1839) and Past and Present (1845). Engels was highly impressed and, in an early review,
described the latter work as the only one in England 'which is worth reading . . . the only one which strikes a human chord, presents human relations and shows traces
of a human point of view'.21
John Saville has described the 1840s as 'the last decade of mass agitation' and notes that 'the various arms of the state used their repressive mechanisms' in 183940,
1842 and in 1848.22 One effect of the urban riots and of Chartism was to strengthen the supposition that crime was inextricably linked to social and political
movements. The depiction of such fears and of the desired solutions is more than evident in the major novels of the period. Raymond Williams once wrote of 'a
dramatisation of the fear of violence which was widespread among the upper and middle classes at the time'.23 This is in respect of Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton
(1848), in which Mary's father kills the only son of a factory owner, but the same point applies equally to Disraeli's Sybil (1845), the last section of which has the
Chartist storming of Mowbray castle, and Charles Kingsley's Alton Locke (1850), which includes an agricultural riot and the sacking of a Hall following a mass
meeting. In terms of solutions both Mary Barton and Alton Locke find Christianity as the preferred option to the Chartist movement and all three novels involve the
eponymous hero or heroine falling in love across the class divide; Sybil with Charles Egremont MP, Alton Locke with Lillian, the niece of a dean, and Mary Barton
with a factory owner's son. Charles Dickens finished Barnaby Rudge in 1841 and though set in an earlier period, the Gordon Riots of 1780, it dramatically illustrates
the mood and suspicions of the decade in

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which it was written, the fear that even nominally peaceful intentions could be breached in a fevered atmosphere.
Such novels are one form of the middleclass investigation and presentation of social problems. Government reports, such as that by Chadwick in 1842 or the 1840
Report of the Select Committee on the Health of Towns, are another. The decade was also marked by numerous improvement projects, such as the Metropolitan
Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes (1841), the Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes (1844), and the Health
of Towns Association (1844). As to what was to be done, the answers ranged from 'nothing' to 'everything'. Thomas Carlyle was among the few whose call for
control and supervision was unsullied by fears concerning the growth of central government. Such an approach was unusual. More commonly we find a confused
juxtaposition of the sense that something must be done with the distrust of the centralised agencies this would probably involve. This fear was continual from the
conservative critics of the 1834 Poor Law Reform through to the proposals of the Chadwick Report (1842) and the attempts to control labour conditions in the mines
and factories. However, it seemed to most serious critics that social and economic conditions in the United Kingdom simply could not remain as they were. The
political radicalism of the period, as expressed in both Owenism and Chartism, shared a concern with the same problem that governments and middleclass reformers
were already considering—what to do about the working classes.
Almost certainly the size and activities of workingclass organisations did not, of themselves, justify alarm. It was not what these organisations were or what they
actually did that caused alarm, so much as speculation on what they might become and might do.
Chartism, it seems, produced considerable fear and suspicion. It appeared as a movement of working people actively pursuing their own interests rather than being
guided by their social superiors. The Chartist demand for the franchise seemed potentially revolutionary. Their mass meetings in the expanding industrial cities seemed
likely to lead to disorder and there was apprehension that Chartism might connect English workingclass discontent with Irish grievances. Famine in Ireland had
swelled the impoverished Irish minorities in British cities. Also the whole of Ireland was, of course, still represented in the Westminster parliament, and law and order
problems had been greater in Ireland than anywhere else in the United Kingdom.
What is clear in retrospect is that, as Stedman Jones has summarised it, people were disturbed by the 'novel and threatening social character' of Chartism and so
'could not refrain from projecting onto it deeper, unavowed motives and sentiments'. 24

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Conclusion
This account has been an attempt to make two basic points about the background to the Manifesto; first, that it was written during a period of quite unusual economic
and social stress and is in many ways a product and expression of that particular situation. Secondly, Marx and Engels's expectation of violent revolution is one end of
a wider spectrum of those anticipating fundamental transformation. Their prognosis, which might seem so strange and unbalanced to us, would probably have seemed
less so to their contemporaries. We might note that their prediction of revolution was actually correct, for revolution broke out in the very month that the Manifesto
was published. It was, however, not always where and certainly not quite how Marx and Engels expected . . . but that is another story.
Finally, our presentation does not render Marx and Engels either more right or more wrong but, hopefully, more normal and more understandable.
Notes
1. Manifesto, p. 22. Emphasis added.
2. Quoted in A. Fried and R. Sanders (eds) Socialist Thought: A Documentary History (New York, Doubleday, 1964), p. 271.
3. From 'Aus den Briefen über Deutschland' (1844) in H. Heine, Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland (FrankfurtamMain, Insel Verlag,
1965), p. 211.
4. O. J. Hammen, 'The Spectre of Communism in the 1840s', Journal of the History of Ideas, 14, 1953, p. 404.
5. C.W., Vol. 3, p. 131.
6. Ibid., pp. 514, 516.
7. Eda Sagarra, A Social History of Germany 16481914 (London, Methuen, 1977), p. 397.
8. Theodore S. Hamerow, Restoration, Revolution, Reaction. Economics and Politics in Germany, 18151871 (Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press,
1972), p. 80.
9. Ibid., p. 86.
10. Manifesto, p. 37. I have dealt with this analysis more fully in 'Deutschmarx: Marx, Engels and the German Question', Political Studies, Vol. xxix, No. 4,
December 1981, pp. 53754.
11. P. H. Beik, Louis Philippe and the July Monarchy (Princeton, NJ., 1965), p. 57.
12. A. Jardin and A.J. Tudesq, Restoration and Reaction 18151848 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 193.
13. Ibid., p. 196.
14. R. Jahanbegloo, Conversations with Isaiah Berlin (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 126.
15. See Jacques Droz, Europe between Revolutions 18151848 (London, Collins, 1973), p. 92.
16. Alexis de Tocqueville, Recollections (New York, Doubleday, 1971), pp. 1617.

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17. G. Best, MidVictorian Britain 185170 (Glasgow, Fontana, 1982), p. 79.
18. J. Belchem, Industrialisation and the Working Class. The English Experience, 17501900 (Aldershot, 1990), p. 33.
19. A. Briggs, Victorian Cities (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1968), p. 56 and see esp. ch. 3.
20. D. Read, 'Chartism in Manchester' in A. Briggs (ed.) Chartist Studies (London, Macmillan, 1959), p. 29.
21. C.W., Vol. 3, p. 444.
22. J. Saville, 1848. The British State and the Chartist Movement (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 220.
23. R. Williams, Culture and Society 17801950 (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1968), p. 102.
24. Ibid., p. 90.

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Chapter 2
Retranslating the Manifesto: New Histories, New Ideas *
Terrell Carver
It is widely appreciated that translation is interpretation. What is not so widely understood is that all interpretation is translation. Even in situations where the reader is a
native speaker of the language in which the text is written, the activity of reading—deriving meaning from words—necessarily involves a process of translation. That is,
reading is an active process through which various forms of difference are negotiated, so meaning—not just language—is 'translated'. The outcome of these
negotiations, perhaps surprisingly, is not sameness or similarity, but rather difference yet again, often rather selfdeceptively and onesidedly disguised as 'agreement'.
'When we understand at all, we understand differently.' 1 This is a principle that comes to us from the linguistic philosophers Paul Ricoeur and HansGeorg Gadamer,
and in this chapter I mean to develop its application in connection with my translation of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, now more commonly known as the
Communist Manifesto, reproduced in this volume (pp. 1437). This is the first genuinely new, linebyline retranslation since the English version of 1888. A number
of new editions done from the 1960s onwards contain differences in translation but are not what I consider to be serious attempts to look at the German texts (which
have themselves undergone changes) and to recast the thoughts for a contemporary audience.2
This brings me back to the practical implications of the Gadamer/Ricoeur principle, and the development in the 1980s of 'readerresponse' criticism which elaborates
some of the consequences.3 Interpretation is translation, precisely because in any act of reading the reader must form some judgement as to what the text is saying,
most usually a translation into one's own words of 'what the author meant', or 'what the text means to me'. A mere recitation of text, whether from memory or from
reading aloud, is generally rejected as an
* This chapter incorporates material previously published in MEGAStudien, 1996/1, pp. 1347. I am grateful to the Internationale MarxEngels Stiftung, Amsterdam, for permission
to reproduce this work. I am also grateful to Alternatives: Social Transformation and Humane Governance for kind permission to reprint material appearing in 'Translating Marx',
Vol. 22, AprilJune 1997, pp. 191204.

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indication of understanding, and therefore of having read a text. This is a clue to the plausibility of my claim that interpretation is translation. Readers are not mirrors or
receptacles for meanings that are supposedly fixed in the words 'on the page'. A mere download of data is not a 'reading', even in apparently paradigmatic and
allegedly trivial usage: STOP signs are read and interpreted, indeed translated to the reader's own context, from which the appropriateness of various courses of action
is judged: screeching to a halt, gliding through, target practice, and so on. More complicated texts merely complicate the process, most usually by raising questions of
authorship, intent, genre, history, culture and politics.
Authorship, intent, genre, history, culture and politics can all be interestingly debated with respect to the classic texts by Marx. This is because, among other reasons,
some of them (though actually only three major ones) were jointly written with Engels, in various senses of the word 'jointly'. Authorial intent, so it has been argued, is
ultimately inaccessible, as even living authors view their texts in different ways at different times, saying rather different things about them. 4 Indeed an author who
always said the same thing about a given text would seem to deny that as the world moves, so readers (including the author) tend to view texts differently and derive
new meanings therefrom. In any case poststructuralist philosophy provocatively declared the author dead and located any meaning that a text might contain within the
heads of readers, thus pluralising understanding and taking authority away from authors.
Liberation for the reader is not perhaps quite the gift that it sounds, as universalising difference and celebrating plurality have sent some (though not me) rushing
headlong for their chains, longing for a world of certainty in which authors know what they want to say, their texts represent just that one meaning, and readers either
get it or they don't. On this view someone needs to tell readers whether they have got it or they haven't, and there are plenty of commentators ready to strike the
authoritative or even authorial pose, standing in for the author, and pronouncing on the correctness or otherwise of such understandings as readers have expressed.
The poststructuralist approach, by contrast, did not so much kill the author as declare everyone a reader, and democratise interpretation among authors,
commentators and readers. My understanding is thus that all these readers are at liberty to negotiate their different understandings through dialogue with each other,
and that what results is a further airing of difference, rather than an understanding that is supposedly authoritative and definitive, even if numerous readers happen to
agree with each other at any one point. Following on from that, what I want to do in this chapter is to blur the supposed distinction between interpretation and
translation further by detailing what any reader of Marx must do, even if the reader's German is perfect. (Marx did write occasionally in French and English; the
Manifesto, of course, is in German.)
Any reader confronting Marx must form some view about the author, the

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author's intention in writing or publishing the text (with or without signing it), the presumed audience and political context, and any amount of further contextualisation
ranging from 'background' (concerning political parties and relevant personalities) to 'foreground' (concerning what particular words are thought to have meant at the
time, given events and usage to that point, and conversely what they could not have meant, given intervening events and changes in use).
The opposite strategy is also possible, but no less a reading, that is, to assume that the text is an artefact in the reader's own time, and that such meanings as can be
derived relate to the reader's context, dialogical community, and politics. Whilst only a few readers feel sufficiently empowered to exclude the author and (presumed)
authorial context quite so rigidly, and indeed to push aside the weight of historical commentary and scholarship that inveighs against anachronism and 'ignorance of
history', this approach at least has the merit of acknowledging that reading is an activity in the present, done presumably for present purposes, and that reading on
behalf of people long gone, as if one could reenter their world, is a distinctly odd idea, usually captured as 'antiquarian'. Most readers, I suspect, are actually taking
both approaches and producing very mixed results.
My readings of Marx are no exception. I bring 'background' contextualism to my readings, and these understandings are derived selectively from commentators and
amplified with imagination. However, if I did not think that these texts have something to communicate to presentday readers about the present, I would not be
reading them. That something is a personal construction about politics which is deliberately associated with Marx, though this has disadvantages. Having satisfied
canons of scholarly and commonsensical honesty, I often wonder if Marx is a useful sign under which to write politically? On balance I think he is, but persuading
others of this requires a newly contextualised Marx as well as freshly reread texts, and considerable thought about translation.
All of this is going on in the process of translation, or at least it was in mine in ways that I am pleased and interested to acknowledge, whereas with other translators I
am not sure that this is really the case: either they were unaware of the active and multifaceted process that constitutes a 'reading', or that if they were, they did not
care to acknowledge it publicly. Being really honest, I would say that in as much as translation highlights the way that any reader exercises power in constructing an
interpretation, readers who actually write the texts—to which they bring their politics, and from which they construct it—are in a very powerful position indeed. Rather
than reading a text that is given, and grappling with words that are out of one's control, in order to derive and communicate an understanding (whether of the presumed
past or the experienced present), readers, who—as translators—actually control the text, find themselves in the happy position of ventriloquist, making a dummy
person say what they want 'the

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author' to say. This is what occurs in the usual sense of translation, i.e. reproducing a text in another language.
As with power in any form, this power held by translators is potentially constructive, and not solely destructive. I think I have avoided, more than the 'standard' English
translation (and variant editions), language that is neither English nor German, awkward and verbose expressions, stilted phrases and inapposite metaphors, loss of
alliteration and muddled syntax, and, most important of all, a reading of later philosophical doctrine into earlier political texts. On the other hand, I have allowed Marx
to sound like a foreigner, chiefly by keeping his sentence length (which is sometimes extreme, even by German standards), and by following his ideas through certain
grammatical constructions that are (or were) more common in the German he chose to write than in the English written today. In the same way I have helped Marx to
sound like 'a man of his time' by choosing terms and expressions that would not be out of place in nineteenthcentury English usage, but I have also very occasionally
played on the inevitable drift in meaning that late twentiethcentury readers would be likely to experience.
Thus there has to be a determination as to what sort of English Marx is supposed to be speaking, given that he was a nineteenthcentury German, living in England,
writing to an international Germanspeaking audience, and expecting to be translated, as indeed is promised in the Manifesto itself. While not wanting to rewrite
Marx as a rap artist, I also did not want him to sound alien and incomprehensibly 'other'. After all, in my view the text still speaks to concerns that readers of Marx's
time, and since Marx's time, have in common, even if the full realm of association differs for the two groups. Indeed who is to say that all late twentiethcentury readers
are going to pick up the same associations anyway (whatever my intentions), and the same applies retrospectively to Marx's readers, now long out of dialogue with us.
Next in this chapter I shall recount a number of examples illustrating these points, and then offer some comments on Marx and the politics of translation. After that I
shall consider how some of the latest historical and textual scholarly work done on the German versions of the Manifesto will be affecting readers of the text in
English, both in terms of 'the words on the page' and in terms of the somewhat rearranged contextual and authorial politics that will be attributed to Marx, if and when
this research becomes widely known and generally accepted.
The Manifesto in English
Perhaps the most famous paragraphs attributed to Marx are the opening ones of the Manifesto, as translated for English readers (by Sam Moore, with Engels's
assistance, in 1888):

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A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich and
Guizot, French Radicals and German policespies.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power? Where the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of
Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against reactionary adversaries? 5
First of all I had to address the strongly held view that this English text, being blessed by the translator of Capital, vol. 1, and friend of Marx, and by Marx's political
partner of some forty years, is simply sacrosanct, and that if there were any defects of translation that could be remedied, the time had long since passed, as the text
was so well known and so influential in the socialist tradition. In other words, the English Manifesto simply is the Manifesto for English readers, and so reference back
to German texts at all is really misguided. Rather than merely tracing Engels's welltrodden path yet again, I resolved to produce an alternative Manifesto in English,
one based on the very earliest pamphlet editions, and published without Engels's later framing of the text with introductions and his doctrinal 'corrections' in footnotes.6
However, I am not arguing that the development of the German and English texts after the 1860s was in some sense wrong; rather I am proposing to offer readers an
English rendition of the pamphletstyle Manifesto which emphasises its role as a political intervention at the time it was written. While not denying the importance of
studying the development of Marxism and Marxist politics, I am denying that that is the only way to approach the text, and I am also arguing that there may very well
be gains in seeing a more immediately political, less magisterially doctrinal Manifesto in English. Whether this is really productive in any intellectual or political sense is
up to readers to judge; obviously it is an approach that I thought worth trying, and at the moment I certainly prefer it. In any case such a text in English is not otherwise
available.
With those considerations in mind, then, what did I do with the two famous paragraphs when I sought to translate them, i.e. derive meaning from a text?
A spectre stalks the land of Europe—the spectre of communism. The powers that be Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police—are in holy
alliance for a witchhunt.
Where is the opposition that has not been smeared as communistic by its enemies in government? Where is the opposition that has not retaliated by slandering more progressive
groups and reactionary opponents alike with the stigma of communism?
In the traditional translation, 'spectre', 'haunting', 'holy alliance' and 'exorcise' all seem to go together, following a metaphor of spooks and ghosts. In the second
paragraph 'has not been decried' is an apparently obvious translation of the German, though the phrase 'hurled back the branding reproach' surely falls into

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my category of language that is neither German nor English. My approach to these passages was to take them as an integrated argument, as the succeeding line states
(and here I agree with tradition): 'Two things follow from this fact.' In terms of an integrated argument, it seemed to me that this small army of metaphors should be
mobilised together, and march in formation towards the reader. If the verb is 'haunting', then perhaps the subject should be 'ghost', as after all, ein Gespenst could be
either. Unfortunately it is difficult to see geht um, a pretty colourless verb of motion, as anything like 'haunting'. Clearly ghosts haunt and spectres stalk, preserving
something of the alliteration of ein Gespenst geht um, even though 'stalk' is rather more unusual and sinister in English than 'goes about' or 'moves around'; another
option—'is at large'—would be needlessly vague and verbose.
'Holy alliance' seemed to me quite a reasonable historical allusion, given that Marx mentions the Russian Tsar and the Austrian reactionary Prince Metternich, even if
the German text, taken literally, does not quite make this connection. Rather 'holy' is attached to Hetzjagd, where the sense is that of hunting, coursing, running to
hounds, mad rush, and so on. A Zeitungshetze is a press campaign. Rather than follow the text literally ('bound together in a holy hunt for the spectre') I opted for 'are
in Holy Alliance for a witchhunt', reckoning that 'witchhunt' would convey to modern English readers the sense of a staged and purposeful political panic, and taking
Marx's present perfect ('have entered into') as more to do with the present than the past.
Just as Marx's language played on historical associations that he presumed were available to his readers, so it seemed to me to be defensible to introduce historical
associations (albeit anachronistic in terms of the 1840s) that are arguably parallel to Marx's construction of events (viz. the McCarthy period of late 1940s/early
1950s), when a rather similarly spectral communism stalked the USA. Following that line of reasoning, and wanting to produce a snappy text in English (even though
the analogous 'punchy' effect is produced in nineteenthcentury German through rolling periods and sheer verbal weight), I opted for 'smeared' rather than
'decried' (verschrieen is rather more 'shrieky' than 'decry'), and for 'retaliated by slandering . . . with the stigma' (as opposed to the quite unintelligible 'hurled back the
branding reproach'). 'Exorcise' in the traditional version seemed to me to confuse the metaphor of the occult, as to exorcise implies cleansing whatever has been
spiritually possessed. Thus exorcising a spectre misconstrues the sense; the German merely says that reactionaries are in league 'against' it.
My efforts at retranslating these paragraphs are neither more nor less literal than the previous version. Rather my goal was to produce coherent thoughts in modern
English. However, the thoughts are not what Marx's contemporaries thought when they read it, and there were as many readings at the time as readers. Readings
today are going to be different yet again. However, I do not

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think that these readings are going to be of much use unless there is some semantic coherence in the text, or at least more than there has been in English. This
coherence is largely, though not wholly, a matter of subjects, verbs and objects, tense and word order. Metaphor, allusion, alliteration, puns and innumerable other
forms of word play flicker throughout the texts that translators construct, not all of it under their conscious control, no doubt. But translators who do not organise this
around some meaning which they find in the 'original' are not going to produce a text from which readers derive very much at all, other than a judgement (very common
in the case of Marx, and in his case a judgement of considerable political import) that the author was confused. Marx's translators have rather a lot to answer for.
The Manifesto in German
While the Manifesto is by Marx and Engels, it is the joint work with the fewest authorial problems, in that we have two earlier versions by Engels (a communist
'confession of faith' written in a catachistic style, and a draft on the principles of communism for a party congress), and surviving documentation indicates that Marx
worked on a final draft up to (late) submission for publication in early 1848. 7 A textual comparison between Engels's draft 'principles' and the final text suggests
where Marx's influence lay, but no one, not least the two themselves in subsequent comments on the document, disputes that both had a hand in the final version.
Engels did write in 1869 that the work was essentially Marx's, as was his wont when presenting himself as 'second fiddle' yet Marx's authorised 'voice'. Somewhat
contrarily I have argued that the historical passages, for instance, have far more to do with Engels's voluminous earlier writings than with Marx's considerably thinner
and more theoretical output. It also seems unlikely that the two authors agreed the final draft while actually working together, Marx being presumed from circumstantial
evidence to have worked on the text as the 'last hand' on his own. Nonetheless everything about this work suggests an unambiguously joint effort—though what is
lacking are joint signatures. The Manifesto appeared anonymously for obvious political reasons—and a jointly written manuscript—the publisher's copy has not
survived.8
The real difficulty here is not the joint authorial voice in the Manifesto, but the multifarious character of the audience—the document was written to satisfy a committee
incorporating known individual views and then to weld together diverse less wellknown communists who met only occasionally, and then only to advise and educate
each other, rather than to embark on any concerted campaigns or covert actions. There may very well be silences in this text—areas too controversial to cover—and
ambiguous formulations to please different people differently. By the late 1860s and early 1870s both authors were willing to 'own' the Manifesto and to have it
republished with full authorial attribution and

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a jointly signed introduction. But by then they could also frame it as a historical document and plead other preoccupations to forestall any suggestion that they should
have updated it or written another Manifesto instead.
The textual transmission of the Manifesto is far from simple. Rough drafts, final manuscript and printer's proofs have all vanished. What remains of the earliest editions
is far more varied and far more difficult to interpret than the vast majority of readers—even of Marx scholars—have hitherto appreciated. Thomas Kuczynski has
produced a textual study that bows both to the highest standards of textual criticism and to the need to venture plausible hypotheses about what the research might
mean. In his book he produces the Manifesto in German in two definitive versions. He also goes a long way towards providing us with the materials from which any
'biography' of this document must now be constructed. The two versions of the Manifesto he provides are a 'first edition' based on an 1848 printing, and a 'reading
edition' to replace the 'London edition' of 1890 (and its successors up to 1895, when Engels died). The texts are presented in German in a modern typeface and
backed with a formidable apparatus of textual scholarship. 9
Whilst it is true that a few slips of the pen, misreadings, printer's errors and editorial oddities, scattered here and there throughout the text are unlikely to make much
difference to anyone's understanding of the ideas so vividly portrayed in the Manifesto, it is also true that anyone interested in these ideas ought to be working from
wellfounded texts containing as few slips, mistakes and questionable passages as possible. It is only by discovering slips, errors and variants, however trivial, that we
can be sure that they are trivial. That is why this book is important, even if there are not that many surprises in it.
The Manifesto is a difficult text to work with, as Kuczynski makes evident. On the one hand there is no autograph manuscript from which the printed version (or
versions—see below) was produced in 1848; on the other hand, when Marx and Engels republished the text themselves in 1872 and 1883 (and similarly in Engels's
editions of the 1890s), they did not check their proofs against previous editions with particular care, hence in certain respects the later editions have a wayward quality
independent of the changes, corrections and improvements the authors presumably intended to make. Kuczynski has meticulously listed all the slips, errors and
variants of the intervening editions, as opposed to the practice outlined for the prospective MEGA edition, which rather unfortunately declared the task insoluble.
Moreover Kuczynski regards editions of the Manifesto that are only doubtfully authorised, or not authorised at all, as noteworthy stages in its textual history, and he
also takes a number of early translations on board for comparison, as well as the various works by Marx and Engels in which they cite the Manifesto and so produce
yet more versions of the wording. The full list of textual variants come to 896 items.
However, Kuczynski provides much more than a list of what are—almost

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wholly—trivialseeming variations. First, he is quite clear what he is looking for: mistakes and variants in semantics and style, textual structure, grammar, spelling,
punctuation, phonetics and typography. Second, he pulls items out of his list for analysis. In this he is admirably bold: he corrects a false tense of suchen in the 1848
edition, which no other Germanlanguage edition had ever corrected. As he says, the whole tenor of the passage is in the present; why therefore suchte instead of
sucht? Of the translators he surveys, only an early one (Helen MacFarlane in 1850) seems to have corrected this; in my own version I did not, and I wish I had had
the benefit of Kucyznski's work when I considered the problem. His discussion of the obvious typographical error of 1848 'Der heitige Socialismus' is masterly and
enjoyable: should it be heilige ('holy') or heutige ('contemporary')? I got there by intuition, fortunately, and agreed with Kuczynski in rejecting 'contemporary' (though
I thought 'saintly socialism' rather more in tune with Marx and Engels's satire and presentday usage than the more usual rendering of heilige as 'holy' or 'sacred').
Engels changed this to 'Christian' for the 1872 edition, a move that Kucyznski rejects as 'partypolitical' and inimical to the polemical irony on which the passage
depends. 10
Moreover, this type of analysis enables Kuczynski to argue persuasively that previous assumptions and claims concerning the provenance of the two wellknown
editions bearing the date 1848 are wrong. Virtually all works of reference explain that the 23page version was printed first, and that the 30page version was a reprint
of 1848, and an improvement. Bert Andréas put forward a contrary hypothesis, though this was only in a posthumously published comment, which he himself evidently
rejected: the hypothesis was the reverse of the usual one, and was that the 30page version was first, and the 23page version was a hasty, compact reprint.11
Kuczynski, basing his argument on the work of Wolfgang Meiser, argues that the 23page version was the first one printed, indeed in London in 1848 (and he lists and
discusses a number of variant copies), but he then assigns the 30page version the status of second edition, printed around 1850/1 for distribution in Germany at the
time of the Cologne communist trials. Moreover, he argues that the text of the 30page edition is inferior,12 this, ironically, is the text sold in facsimile by the Marx
Haus bookshop. Conclusions, such as these, could only be drawn on the basis of the textual scholarship and analysis that this volume painstakingly unfolds.
Another question that Kuczynski bravely tackles is the matter of Marx's own view of republishing the Manifesto, given in his introduction (with Engels) to the Leipzig
edition of 1872, saying that the work had become a historical document which they no longer had a right to alter. This echoes Marx's attitude (as conveyed by his wife
Jenny) to an earlier republication of 1866, which he said should reproduce the Manifesto as it was in the beginning, merely correcting the typographical errors, as
these were so obvious that anyone could do it. From Kuczynski's point of view it is rather unfortunate that the 1866 version was based

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on the inferior 30page text (which he dates to 1850/1), and that the apparent authorisation given to this version of the text by Marx and Engels was merely 'juridical'
when the 1872 edition followed along in the same vein. Marx and Engels had priorities other than textual scholarship (at least with respect to the Manifesto, at that
particular time), and any conclusions drawn by textual scholars must recognise this, which Kuczynski rightly does. 13
Even more to his credit, Kuczynski brings up the real issue as to what was meant by 'historical' in the context of an ongoing class struggle. Does such a text merely
document an episode in the past (which is the attitude Kuczynski assigns to Marx and Engels at this stage), or does it function usefully in terms of current political
agitation (which is what Wilhelm Liebknecht seems to have wanted in the 1870s)? In 1872 Marx and Engels argued that while the political principles in the Manifesto
were as correct as ever, the political situation had entirely changed since 1848, and that some of the detail and indeed tactics recommended in the text had become
antiquated—hence they seem to value the Manifesto as documentation of an episode and not to claim that it had functioned, and should continue to function, in
politics. However, in the prefaces of 1888 (to an English edition) and of 1890, after Marx's death, Engels historicises the text once again—though rather differently—
in terms of its continuing, worldwide role as an almost selfrenewing, highly international and always useful weapon in the class struggle, indeed a common programme
for many millions of workers. Kuczynski obviously has more sympathy with the former (and indubitably Marxian) position, than with the latter, given Engels's proclivity
to a little updating here and there and so confusing the argument somewhat.14
Thus Kuczynski's own 'reader's edition' is firmly based on the 23page text of 1848, with twothirds of the errors silently corrected and in modernised orthography.
After that, Kuczynski's notes record both the instances in which he has stuck with the first edition (as opposed to any or all later states of the text), and those instances
in which he has adopted some variant instead of the wording of 1848. These notes refer back easily to both his own rendition of the Manifesto as it was in 1848, and
to his analysis of significant variants that occurred in other editions along the way to the published versions and translations of Engels's lifetime, his being 'the last hand'.
Karl Kautsky gets a rap over the knuckles for referring to his edition of 1906 as 'authorised'. 15
Kuczynski distinguishes his 'reading edition' from a historicalcritical edition, such as could be done under the aegis of the MEGA project, in that he has eschewed
footnotes and other apparatus that would interfere with fluent reading. Instead he uses his list of variants to refer readers to the commentary that he has constructed on
the way to his own version of 'the last hand'. The strategy is to give the reader a version of the Manifesto in which the text improved over the years, rather than got
worse, and one to which, for good or ill, Engels added a few footnotes of 'explanation'. The Manifesto that actually circulated over the

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years, of course, was neither of these, and historicallyminded readers who are interested in exactly who was reading what will have to look elsewhere. Thus as a text
the Manifesto has had many lives of its own, and Kuczynski offers us two more. Both are judicious reconstructions based on careful historical and intellectual
reflection.
Conclusion
It should be apparent from the above discussion that my view of the Manifesto differs markedly from that conveyed by the mainstream tradition, originating with
Engels's editorial work after Marx's death. Engels took the view that the text of the Manifesto was an important element in a system—of theory and practice—and
that as the system evolved, both when Marx was advancing his own work and when Engels was supplementing and popularising it, republication literally meant
reinterpretation. Hence he inserted footnotes incorporating 'corrections' and 'additions', updating and aligning the work according to his view of what current doctrine
was supposed to be.
After Engels's death the process of updating the Manifesto in this literally textual way virtually ceased, as did the retranslation process in English (as opposed to mild
tinkering by Fernbach and by Draper, for instance). Just as important as this ossification of the text was the consistent way in which it was presented: suitably framed
by a succession of prefaces and introductions, establishing an intellectual and political context, of course, but even more importantly, successively building up its
reputation as a text of past and present worldshaking significance in just that particular form, and in just that particular English translation (1888), and not in
any other. While I am tempted to describe the whole effect as rather religious—laying on of hands, veneration of the master and disciple, preservation of a suitably
encased relique, and so on—it will perhaps suffice to comment that while the tradition of the Manifesto has a life of its own, and a historical importance that is not to
be denied, it should also be noted that this traditional Manifesto seems rather a long way from the scrappy pamphlets now dated to 1848/51.
These pamphlets were political interventions, unframed by later presumptions of doctrinal consistency and 'correctness', and issued as part of a practical strategy of
influencing politics through argument and debate. The indeterminacy of the moment cannot ever be recaptured—after all, we know very broadly what happened (and
didn't happen) in later events—but this 'shotinthedark' quality, the way in which the importance (or otherwise) of the Manifesto could not have been known for
certain, can surely be noted explicitly and imaginatively recalled. Thus as a counter to tradition I have argued, and indeed translated, the way that I have in order to
stress to contemporary readers the character of the Manifesto as a political intervention into a context of uncertainty. This, of course,

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is precisely where we all are now, and it is through that kind of link between reader and text that authorship is continually revivified and the potential for political action
renewed.
Notes
1. See Paul Ricoeur, 'Metaphor and the main Problem of Hermeneutics', in A Ricoeur Reader, Reflection and Imagination, ed. Mario J. Valdés (London,
Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), pp. 30319.
2. See, for example, ed. David Fernbach, in Karl Marx, The Revolutions of 1848 (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books/New Left Books, 1973), pp. 6798; also ed.
Hal Draper, in The Adventures of the Communist Manifesto (Berkeley CA, Center for Socialist History, 1994); also ed. Frederick L. Bender (New York, W. W.
Norton, 1988). The first English translation was by Helen MacFarlane, published in The Red Republican in late November 1850, and repr. (London, Merlin Press,
1966). This version is chiefly notable for the awful opening sentence, 'A frightful hobgoblin stalks throughout Europe'.
3. See Jane P. Tompkins (ed.), ReaderResponse Criticism: From Formalism to Poststructuralism (Baltimore MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980); see
also Terrell Carver and Matti Hyvärinen (eds), Interpreting the Political: New Methodologies (London, Routledge, 1997), intro.
4. See James Tully (ed.), Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1988).
5. C.W., Vol. 6, p. 481.
6. C. W. has produced a text of the Manifesto at 1848 in its chronological scheme (Vol. 6, pp. 481519), and incorporated later prefaces further along in the series
chronologically, yet the copytext is the 'authorised' one of 1888, including Engels's footnotes of 1890.
7. Frederick Engels, 'Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith', in C.W., Vol. 6, pp. 96103; Frederick Engels, Principles of Communism, in C.W., Vol. 6, pp.
34157; what amounts to an extract from the Manifesto was produced as a leaflet, signed by Marx and Engels inter alia, and published and circulated widely during
the revolutionary events of 1848 ('Demands of the Communist Party in Germany', in C. W., Vol. 7, pp. 37; there are also a very few fragments from Marx and
Engels's preparatory materials for the Manifesto extant, in C.W., Vol. 6, pp. 5768.
8. Terrell Carver, The Marx Engels Intellectual Relationship (Brighton, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1983); see also Terrell Carver, 'Marx Engels or ''Engels v. Marx''',
in MEGAStudien, 1996/2, pp. 7985.
9. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Das Kommunistische Manifest, ed. Thomas Kuczynski (Trier, KarlMarxHaus, 1995), pp. 29225.
10. Ibid., pp. 129, 1304, 196.
11. Ibid., pp. 301.
12. Ibid., pp. 304, 1615.
13. Ibid., pp. 183, 195.
14. Ibid., pp. 1989, 21415.
15. Ibid., pp. 21622.

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Chapter 3
Past Receptions of the Communist Manifesto
Ian D. Thatcher
The Communist Manifesto is the most widely read of all of Marx and Engels's texts. This is for several reasons. It is the most accessible introduction to their ideas on
history and politics. It was written in 1848, a year of revolution, a coincidence which makes the Manifesto interesting as a historical document. Its size is ideal for
translation and publication as a separate brochure, a boon both to revolutionary parties, seeking to spread the word of Marxism in handy form, and to publishers, with
an eye to making a profit. Any selection of Marx and Engels's oeuvre would be brave to exclude it. To consider every comment upon the Manifesto—culled from its
various versions with their introductions and commentaries, and from the vast corpus of secondary material on Marx and Marxism—would be impossible within this
brief chapter and be beyond the linguistic ability of the present author. 1 However, some of the receptions of the last 150 years can be sketched to illustrate how in
various reissues and at some of its anniversaries commentators have found the Manifesto to have stood the test of time, have gauged its influence and importance, and
how these commentaries and republications have guaranteed the Manifesto continuing attention.
Among the first to welcome the Manifesto were Marx and Engels themselves in prefaces to new imprints of its original and to translations.2 A full twentyfour years
elapsed from 1848 before they had the opportunity to pen a preface for a new German edition.3 Here Marx and Engels indicated areas in which the Manifesto had
become outdated. They warned that the programme for a revolutionary government outlined in Section II was subject to change. After all, different circumstances
would demand flexibility from communists searching to attain their goals. For example, the growth of modern industry, the increased political organisation of the
workers and, in particular, the lessons learnt from the Paris Commune had shown that the working class could not take over the existing state, as Marx and Engels had
assumed in 1848, but would have to smash it and start afresh. Finally, they acknowledge that the critique of socialist parties given in Section IV was no longer so
relevant, since several movements had disappeared and new ones arisen in their place. However, it is clear that for Marx and Engels the issue of most importance was
not in which ways matters had

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moved on since 1848, but that the Manifesto's 'general principles are . . . as correct today as ever.' 4 They state that 'the Manifesto has become an historical
document which we have no longer any right to alter'.5 After Marx's death Engels was even less inclined to attempt an update of the text,6 but was keen to stress the
continuing applicability of its basic philosophy which, he claimed, was Marx's discovery not his.7 The central tenets of this philosophy were that intellectual and political
developments are built upon an economic base; that each historical epoch is characterised by class struggle; and that the capitalist era would be the last in which one
class exploited another, for the proletariat could only liberate itself by liberating the whole of society.
Several of Engels's prefaces proudly recount the publication history of the Manifesto, declaring that in this way one can chart the growth both of the workingclass
movement and of largescale industry.8 Alongside this Engels notes the increasing acceptance of the Manifesto's basic principles by the workers and their leaders.
When the International Working Men's Association was founded in 1864 the Manifesto could not be adopted as its founding document since it was too revolutionary
for conservative elements in the workers' movement. Yet, in prefaces written from 1888 onwards, Engels claims that both on the continent and in England the
Manifesto had become the 'common programme of many millions of workers of all countries, from Siberia to California'.9
The changing status of America and Russia on the world stage and as homes of revolutionary movements was highlighted by Marx and Engels in their 1882 preface to
the second Russian edition of the Manifesto.10 Here Marx and Engels claim that, in 1848, America and Russia, as suppliers of raw materials and consumers of
finished products, had acted as supports to the reactionary order in Europe. In the meantime, America had developed an industry of its own as a competitor to
Europe, to the extent that the industrial market hegemony of Europe as a whole and of England in particular would soon be over. In Russia, the Tsar, who had sent
troops to crush the Hungarian revolution in the 1840s, was under pressure from a revolutionary movement at home. In this context, Marx and Engels gave an
interesting answer to a problem besetting revolutionary thinkers in Russia, namely would Russia have to progress to capitalism, or could the Russian peasant commune,
with its communal relations, act as the starting point for a direct transition to communism? Marx and Engels state that the latter was possible as long as a Russian
transition along these lines sparked socialist revolutions in the advanced West.11 It is possible that this response inspired Leon Trotsky in formulating his famous theory
of permanent revolution. After all, permanent revolution presupposed that a Russian revolution could not survive without aid from revolutions in the advanced countries
of Western Europe.
However, in the final three prefaces he was to pen for versions of the Manifesto Engels does not single out any country as most likely to begin the revolution. In

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general terms, he is optimistic about the prospects of the revolutionary movement, 12 and, for the national audiences for which the new translations were intended,
stresses the contributions that the proletariat could make. For example, Engels makes the point that national independence is a prerequisite for harmonious relations
between countries in Europe and between the various sections of the international workers' movement. In a preface to a Polish edition, he tells the Polish workers that
they are the only group capable of bringing about an independent Poland.13 For an Italian version he commented that in 1848 the proletariat had manned the
barricades while the bourgeoisie had reaped the benefits in an independent Italy. After flattering Italy's leading role in the development of capitalism Engels expresses
the hope that the Italian proletariat will open up the new proletarian era.14
From their prefaces, then, one can conclude that Marx and Engels thought an acceptance of the Manifesto's guiding principles to be the crucial issue rather than
whether a particular detail was holding true for all time, and that after Marx's death Engels was content to report the onward march of the communist movement. This
consensus was soon to be blown apart after Engels's death in 1895.
In the socialist movement, a group of thinkers and politicians, including, among others, Werner Sombart, Eduard Bernstein and Emile Vandervelde, produced what
came to be known as the 'revisionist' view. Although remaining committed to the socialist cause, each questioned elements of Marx's analysis of capitalist
development. They concluded that socialism would be attained not through revolution, as envisioned in the Manifesto, but by gradual reform enacted in parliaments.
Although differences can be found between them, Vandervelde's brochure The Golden Wedding of International Socialism,15 written to celebrate the Manifesto's
fiftieth anniversary, illustrates the revisionist case in general terms. Vandervelde begins by praising Marx and Engels for discovering class struggle—a concept central to
democratic socialism—and for first expounding upon it in the Manifesto. It was only after this achievement that 'the workers gained a programme, a formula of action,
and a warcry'. However, citing Bernstein's comment that the best way to mark its fiftieth anniversary would be to research how capitalism's course had deviated from
the Manifesto's predictions, the bulk of Vandervelde's work argues that Marx and Engels had been proven wrong in three instances: with reference to the iron law of
wages, the law of the concentration of capital, and the law of the correlation between economic supremacy and political power.
According to Vandervelde the Manifesto was written when wages had reached their lowest point relative to a rise in the price of daily necessities. It was therefore
understandable that Marx and Engels should have claimed that workers' wages would decline with the development of capitalism (the iron law of wages). However,
since 1848 in advanced Britain workers' wages had

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increased in real terms, they had kept their value in less developed Germany, and had fallen only in the country which had just begun to be penetrated by capitalism,
Japan. From this comparison Vandervelde draws a conclusion opposite to that of the Manifesto: workers receive more wealth from capitalism as it develops, not
less. On the second law, Vandervelde admits a tendency for capitalists to drive one another out of business and for a narrowing of ownership in fewer hands as a
consequence (the law of the concentration of capital). However, this is not, he claims, true of all branches of industry, and in agriculture, one observes a contrary
process of an increase in smallscale individual holdings. Furthermore, Vandervelde examines the organisation of small milk producers into agricultural organisations to
throw another aspect of the law of concentration of capital into doubt. A positive aspect of this law, for Marx and Engels, was that the ground for a centralised
socialist economy was laid within capitalism. But the experience of agricultural organisations in Belgium shows, Vandervelde argues, how concentration occurs without
an industry passing through a capitalist stage. His final critique of the Manifesto questioned one of its most famous sentences, 'the power of the modern state is merely
a device for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeois class' (the law of correlation between economic supremacy and political power). Looking at the
Europe of 1898, Vandervelde found not the largescale industrialists in power, but rather landlords. This was so, he argued, for two reasons. First, mighty industrialists
do not need to be in government to make money; politics is superfluous to business. Second, the bourgeoisie is content to allow the feudal classes to dominate in
political life as long as they do not abuse their power, and as long as they do not favour the working class. In the event of either, the bourgeoisie would move to the left
and oust the landlords from power. Even though this explanation does not seem to allow the proletariat much influence in parliament, Vandervelde also rejects the
Manifesto's call for the proletariat to seize power through revolution. Because workers become wealthier under capitalism, since workers' organisations become
stronger, the bourgeoisie concedes more and more to workers, and in this way society evolves into socialism.
The revisionist interpretation of the Manifesto was not unchallenged. A host of socialists defended its revolutionary strategy. For example, in a lengthy preface to the
second printing of his translation of the Manifesto, the 'father of Russian Marxism', G. Plekhanov sought to refute the work of Bernstein et al. 16 This he attempted in
several ways. First, he disputed the revisionists' knowledge of their subject. To claim, as Vandervelde had, that no one prior to Marx and Engels had known of class
struggle was to reveal ignorance of the writings of, among others, L. SaintSimon (16751755), F. Guizot (17871874), A. Thierry (17951856) and F. Mignet
(17961884). In pointing this out, Plekhanov was not saying that Marx and Engels had made no contribution; on the contrary it was precisely they who constructed a
historical theory to explain the origins and development of

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class interests. But this theory did not emerge out of a vacuum, and from 'a man writing, so to say, a jubilee brochure on the Manifesto, one can demand a more
scholarly approach to its subject'. 17 According to Plekhanov, Bernstein had also revealed his poor understanding of Marx and Engels's thought, this time with
reference to their theory of society. Bernstein had cited letters of the 1890s in which, he claimed, Engels had significantly reduced the role of the productive forces as a
factor conditioning society. Without abandoning the notion that the mode of production of material life conditions political, social and intellectual activity, Plekhanov
notes that from their very earliest writings, Marx and Engels had acknowledged that, in turn, the superstructure impacts upon the economic base. If this was not the
case, Marx and Engels would not have engaged in political struggles, have insisted that the proletariat must win political power to attain its economic liberation, or,
indeed, have penned the Manifesto!
The second way in which Plekhanov polemicised against the revisionists was to attack the conclusions they drew from even their imperfect mastery of Marx and
Engels. In support of his view that the surest path to socialism lay in parliamentary politics, Bernstein had cited Engels's statement of 1895 that an open struggle with
the army could only result in defeat for the socialist movement, and that the best way to achieve socialism was through election to parliament and peaceful, steady
progress.18 For Plekhanov, Bernstein had committed several errors. To begin with, he had mistakenly counterposed parliamentary activity to the dictatorship of the
proletariat. In actual fact, the former was an important means—in election leaflets, agitation and the like through which socialists could educate workers, and was
therefore a key preparatory phase for the latter. Furthermore, Bernstein clearly misunderstood the concept of class rule, the total domination of one class over its
opponents. Even in democracies like the French and the American the bourgeoisie would not cede its position to the proletariat without a struggle. Thus, however far
the proletariat felt itself advancing in constitutional regimes by peaceful means, all the same it would have to prepare for open class war. Finally, the context of Engels's
remarks of 1895 had escaped Bernstein. Engels was warning socialists not to take to the streets if the army was not on the side of the revolution; he was not rejecting
the need for revolution outright. Indeed, revolution was still the means by which socialism would be attained, not only because of the logic of class struggle, but also
because the infiltration of socialist ideas into the army was 'inevitable'. Ultimately, for Plekhanov, Bernstein had abandoned the Manifesto's basic ideas not for good
reason, but because 'his main worry is not in any way to frighten the democratic bourgeoisie'.19
Plekhanov was not the only socialist to insist upon the continuing relevance of the Manifesto's call for a proletarian revolution in the face of the revisionists' critique. In
a preface to a seventh German edition of the Manifesto, Karl Kautsky accepted some of the revisionists case, while resisting their emphasis on a

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peaceful, parliamentary transition to socialism. 20 Kautsky, for example, admitted that the workers' living standards and cultural level had improved since 1848; 'now
one cannot agree with the Communist Manifesto that "the workers become paupers, more and more sinking below the poverty line of their own class"'. However,
there were several reasons why this change in fortune was unlikely to make the workers more tolerant of capitalism. Any gains had been won and had to be
maintained in a struggle against the capitalists. Second, the workers had experienced a relative impoverishment: labour productivity and social wealth had leapt to
staggering heights while the share given to the workers had gone down. that is, exploitation of the workers had increased. Third, the bourgeoisie had changed in
character since 1848. Marx and Engels had urged communists to join forces with the bourgeoisie against the feudal order. But by 1906, Kautsky argued that, partly as
a consequence of the growth of an antidemocratic high finance, one could no longer talk of a revolutionary bourgeoisie in any of the advanced capitalist countries.
Thus opposed to the bourgeoisie by the very conditions of its existence, the proletariat would only become increasingly hostile as the contradictions just outlined
became sharper. Eventually this would result in revolution. Several years after Kautsky, L. G. Aitken and F. C. Budgen, in a preface to their new translation of the
Manifesto, warned workers against attempts to use sections of the Manifesto to justify reformist politics.21 They point out that Marx and Engels viewed trade unions
as a prerequisite to the foundation of a revolutionary political party, not as the endpoint of workingclass struggle under capitalism. The task of the workers' political
party would be to guide the fight for socialism, not in 'parliamentary' terms but through 'Social Revolution'.
The Bolshevik leader, V. I. Lenin, also participated in the struggle against the revisionists over how the Manifesto's politics should be applied in new conditions.22 On
the eve of his own revolution, in The State and Revolution, Lenin claimed that the Manifesto's main message was that the proletariat should smash the bourgeois
state and organise itself as a ruling class in its own state.23 The accomplishment of this task in Russia and the consolidation of the communist state there guaranteed
that Marx's writings, including the Manifesto, would be printed, distributed, celebrated at key anniversaries, and studied by those in and out of the USSR. There are
many Soviet commentaries on the Manifesto, of which the following are some examples.
At the first congress of the Third Communist International, held in Moscow in 1919, Trotsky declared that communism had 'followed the path indicated by the
Manifesto of the Communist Party'.24 In the early 1920s D. Ryazanov, the head of the recently formed Institute of K. Marx and F. Engels, published the
Manifesto supplemented by his explanatory notes, over four times the size of the Manifesto itself.25 Ryazanov set three aims for his notes: (1) to chart the
Manifesto's emergence out of the socialist movement of its time; (2) to expound upon the Manifesto's intellectual origins, explaining its place in intellectual history; and
(3)

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to point out the ways in which the Manifesto had become outdated. This task was necessary, according to Ryazanov, not only because eighty years on new audiences
would not know the context in which the Manifesto was written, but also because of the deficiencies of existing commentaries. Earlier efforts are dismissed: that of the
Italian Marxist Antonio Labriola 26 because its 'conciseness and abstract style makes it in parts harder to understand than the Manifesto itself', while the French
socialist Charles Andler27 had managed only a 'superficial and at times trivial' understanding.
The journal Istorik marksist marked the Manifesto's ninetieth anniversary with the publication of two articles. The first, by E. Rubinshtein,28 gives a brief account of
the Manifesto's main ideas, states that through the 1917 revolution these ideas had been realised in Russia, and that the then international proletariat, 'under the banner
of MarxEngelsLeninStalin', was 'in the leading rank of the united front's struggle against fascism, fighting across the whole world for the ideas laid down ninety years
ago in the Manifesto of the Communist Party'. The second ninetieth anniversary piece in Istorik marksist is of more interest and is useful to a historian: a collection
of documents from the Tsarist censor, containing accounts of how various editions of the Manifesto were seized by the censor and why.29 To mark 100 years since
the Manifesto's publication, Pravda carried an article which gave a brief exposition of the Manifesto, concluding with praise for Lenin and Stalin for fighting off
revisionist misrepresentations of the importance of key concepts like the dictatorship of the proletariat.30 Finally, papers from a conference held in Moscow in March
1973 to mark 125 years since the Manifesto were published.31 The preface to this collection declares that, in essentials, the Manifesto's tactics for the overthrow of
capitalism were still valid. The chapters themselves contain no surprises, evident from their titles: 'V. I. Lenin and the Communist Manifesto', 'The International
Platform of the Communist Manifesto and the struggle for unity of the world communist movement', and so on.
As with the revisionists at the turn of the century, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's attempts to represent the Manifesto's heritage met with opposition, on
this occasion from all shades of communist and socialist opinion. NonSoviet communists battled on two fronts, against Soviet writings on the one hand, and against
revisionist interpretations on the other. In a (1937) introduction to a first translation of the Manifesto into Afrikaans,32 for instance, a now exiled Trotsky highlighted
areas in which the USSR had abandoned aspects of the Manifesto, in this way revealing its degenerated nature. These areas included support of the People's Front,
which denies the law of class struggle; advancement of socialism in one country against the Manifesto's case for international revolution; strengthening the state
contrary to the Manifesto's view that a proletarian state should wither away, and so on. At the same time, Trotsky polemicises against Bernstein's and the later
Kautsky's view that bourgeois

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democracy is not antiproletarian per se. Although Trotsky admits that in several instances Marx and Engels had miscalculated—overestimating the revolutionary
potential of the mid nineteenthcentury workers, overemphasising the tendency of intermediate strata to disappear, not noting the growth of a new 'technocratic' middle
class in capitalism, 33 and not making reference to the liberation struggles of the colonial and semicolonial peoples, for example—their general case for revolution and
their theoretical understanding of its inevitability still held good. For Trotsky, the force to implement this revolution and thus the hope for the future was the Fourth
International.
For the revisionists the Bolshevik revolution, the arguments of the Russian Communist Party and its offshoots added an additional urgency to a case that in essentials
remained the same. In a preface written for a 1919 edition of the Manifesto published in Vienna, for instance, Max Adler warned that Bolshevism's efforts to
appropriate the Manifesto, if successful, would only turn the masses away from socialism.34 For Adler, the Manifesto was important as a teaching aid to reform the
proletariat's consciousness. This, and not the violence of the Russian Revolution, was the best way to transform capitalism into socialism. Perhaps the strongest claim
from the revisionists to be following the letter of the Manifesto came from the British Labour Party. In 1948 it celebrated the Manifesto's 100th anniversary by issuing
it as a book, together with a foreword by the Labour Party35 and a preface by H. J. Laski.36 The former, though brief, spells out how the then Labour government
was implementing the Manifesto's revolutionary programme: centralising credit in the hands of the state (the Bank of England Act); an extensive nationalisation
programme, including the obligation of all to work; free education in state schools and so on. Laski begins by regretting that because of the then paper shortages he
had not been able to add illustrative material, notes and a bibliography, as originally intended. In the space available, he points out the Manifesto's considerable
achievements,37 notes some of its weaker sections,38 rejects a link between the Manifesto and Soviet socialism by illustrating how the former's vision of socialism
was radically different from the reality of the latter,39 and, finally, supports the then Labour Party's view that it was the genuine inheritor of the Manifesto.40 One
could not imagine Tony Blair's Labour government seeking to make similar claims for the Manifesto's 150th anniversary!
The postwar world was notable not only for the extension of Soviet power and the continuing splits in the socialist and communist movements with their now largely
settled interpretations of the Manifesto. The growth of higher educational institutions and of critical disciplines within them added Marx studies to the curriculum. For
many students the Manifesto served as their first acquaintance with Marx and Engels's writings. Academic publishers met this demand, their versions often containing
interesting introductions. Penguin publishers have been a particularly prominent distributor of the Manifesto,

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producing a separate 'popular' edition with a introduction by A. J. P. Taylor, 41 including it in a volume of the more 'scholarly' Penguin MarxEngels library with an
introduction by David Fernbach,42 and, most recently, issuing it as part of Penguin's sixtieth anniversary celebrations. Taylor accepts the Manifesto's importance,
because of it 'everyone thinks differently about politics and society, when he thinks at all', and he praises Marx's style. However, for the most part, Taylor is critical,
and, here and there, scandalous. On the former side, he finds several flaws in Marx's method. According to Taylor, Marx generalises from single, onesided cases
(taking the cotton industry as 'synonymous with capitalism', for instance), and mistakes 'ought' for 'is' statements (history 'is' class struggle when it is not; the
bourgeoisie 'holds' exclusive political sway when it does not, for example). Furthermore, for Taylor, Marx committed several errors of fact. The percentage of
workers in society has decreased, not increased; capitalist crises have lessened in intensity, not worsened, and so on. Taylor reaches the realm of the scandalous in his
description of professional revolutionaries. On three separate occasions he declares them to be tailors, 'an occupation which gives a man much time for solitary
revolutionary reflection, and also perhaps an intimate distaste for the upper classes'. Taylor locates Marx's emphasis on the need for communist success in Germany
not in that country's economic or strategic position in Europe, but in the fact that Marx 'was a German and was writing for German tailors'. In his final, and perhaps
most shocking remarks on this point, Taylor declares that 'though Hitler never had Marxist leanings, he would have been at home a century earlier with the exiled
tailors of the German Educational Workers' League'. Fernbach is also critical of the Manifesto, but more for its sins of omission, for not detailing how the proletariat
would organise itself to seize power, for example. However, Fernbach's overall estimation the Manifesto is positive: its case for the inevitable transition from an
inefficient capitalism to a stateless communism is 'as valid today as when it was first written'.
Over the past 150 years the Manifesto has been a source of inspiration for many, and the topic of constant debate and dispute within and without the socialist
movement. Charting the comments made on the Manifesto since its appearance reveals as much about the history of the socialist movement as about the Manifesto.
Despite the collapse of Soviet socialism and the retreat of socialist forces in general, the Manifesto's appeal continues to this day. Even before the publication of this
anniversary volume, a new printing, with an introduction by Mick Hume,43 was issued in anticipation of the Manifesto's 150th birthday. Judging from the amount of
websites that carry references to the Manifesto, including the text itself, the advent of new technology has broadened the forum for the expression of differing
interpretations, adding new sources for any future historian studying past receptions of the Communist Manifesto.

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Notes
1. Thus, for example, Bert Andréas, Le Manifest communiste de Marx et Engels. Histoire et Bibliographie 18481918 (Milan, Feltrinelli, 1963), has 544 citations
in which the Manifesto is produced in part (229 items) or in whole (305 items), covering forty languages, issued between 1848 and 1918.
2. The introduction to the first English translation was brief stating that Marx and Engels had written the Manifesto in January 1848, that it had been printed in German
and adopted by all sections of German communism, and that a French translation had been refused publication because of censorship. See 'Manifesto of the German
Communist Party', in The Red Republican, Vol. I, no. 21, November 1850, p. 1.
3. K. Marx and F. Engels, 'Preface to the 1872 German Edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party', in C.W., Vol. 23, pp. 1745.
4. Ibid., p. 174.
5. Ibid., p. 175.
6. F. Engels, 'Preface to the 1883 German Edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party', in C.W., Vol. 26, p. 118.
7. Ibid.; F. Engels, 'Preface to the 1888 English Edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party', in C.W., Vol. 26, p. 517.
8. Engels, 'Preface to the 1888 English Edition', pp. 51516; F. Engels, 'Preface to the Fourth German Edition (1890) of the Manifesto of the Communist Party', in
C. W., Vol. 27, pp. 579; F. Engels, 'Preface to the Polish Edition (1892) of the Manifesto of the Communist Party', Ibid., p. 273.
9. Engels, 'Preface to the Fourth German Edition', p. 59.
10. K. Marx and F. Engels, 'Preface to the Second Russian Edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party', in C.W., Vol. 24, pp. 4256.
11. This answer caused a certain embarrassment for future Soviet commentators. After all, Bolshevism had developed on the basis that the commune was
disintegrating. One Soviet historian dealt with this problem by stating that Marx and Engels, distant from Russia and receiving information from the very populists
whose political strategy was based on the future of the commune, did not know of the real difficulties already besetting the commune. Also Marx and Engels did not
state that the commune should be the starting point for a Russian transition to communism, only that it could under certain conditions. But these conditions were never
met. (See L. A. Levin, Manifest kommunisticheskii partii v Rossii (Moscow, Kul'tumoprosvetitelnoi literatury, 1956), p. 17.
12. Engels, 'Preface to the Fourth German Edition', p. 60.
13. Engels, 'Preface to the Polish Edition', p. 274.
14. F. Engels, 'To the Italian Reader [Preface to the Italian Edition (1893) of the Manifesto of the Communist Party]', in C.W., Vol. 27, p. 366.
15. Emil Vandervel'd, Zolotaya svad'ba mezhdunarodnago sotsializma (London, Russian Free Press Fund, 1899). For the views of other 'revisionists' see, for
example, Eduard Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism (New York, Schocken Books, 1961), especially, pp. xxivxxviii; Werner Sombart, Socialism and the Social
Movement (London, J. M. Dent and Co., 1909), especially, pp. 7187.
16. G. V. Plekhanov, 'Predislovie ko vtoromu russkomu izdaniyu ''Manifesta Kommunisticheskoi Partii''', in Sochineniya, Vol. 11, (Moscow/Petrograd, Gosudarst

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vennoe izdatel'stvo, 1923), pp. 275326. His preface to the first printing of his translation was much briefer. Here Plekhanov states that a reading of the
Manifesto would warn Russian socialists not to ignore political activity, and not to sacrifice final aims for what was possible in the present. He also explained the
need for his translation because an earlier effort by Bakunin was difficult to find and contained many errors. (G. Plekhanov, 'Predislovie k russkomu izdaniyu
"Manifest Kommunistichesk. Partii"', in Sochineniya, Vol. 1, Moscow/Petrograd, Gosudarstvennoe izdatelstvo, 1923), pp. 1502). Plekhanov's translation was
criticised in turn for its inaccuracies in a new translation of 1903 by V. A. Posse (See V. Posse, 'Predislovie perevodchika', in Manifest Kommunisticheskoi
Partii (Geneva, G. A. Kuklina, 1903), pp. 1113).
17. Plekhanov, 'Predislovie ko vtoromu . . . ', p. 292.
18. See, for example, Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism, pp. xxvixxvii.
19. Plekhanov, 'Predislovie ko vtoromu . . . ', p. 317.
20. K. Kautsky, 'Predislovie k VIImu nemetskomu izdaniyu', in K. Marks i F. Engel's, Manifest kommunisticheskoi partii (St Petersburg, tovarishchestva 'Znanie',
1906), pp. 316.
21. L. G. Aitken and F. C. Budgen, 'Translators' Preface', in K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (Glasgow, Socialist Labour Party, 1909),
pp. iiii. For a similar interpretation see, for example, Arnold Peterson's foreword and introduction in One Hundredth Anniversary of the Communist Manifesto
(New York, New York Labor News Co., 1948).
22. See, for example, V. I. Lenin, 'Proekt zayavleniya redaktsii "Iskri" i "Zari"', in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, Vol. 4 (Moscow, Politicheskoi literatury, 1979), pp.
32930.
23. V. I. Lenin, 'The State and Revolution', in Selected Works, Vol. 2 (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1977), pp. 2536.
24. 'Manifesto of the Communist International to the Proletariat of the Entire World', in J. Riddell (ed.), Founding the Communist International. Proceedings and
Documents of the First Congress, March 1919 (New York, Pathfinder, 1987), p. 222.
25. K. Marx and F. Engel's, Kommunisticheskii manifest (Moscow/Petrograd, Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, n.d.). For an English translation see The Communist
Manifesto (New York, International Publishers, 1930).
26. Antonio Labriola, 'In Memory of the Communist Manifesto', in Essays on the Materialist Conception of History (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1966),
pp. 991. This was first published in Italian in 1896.
27. Sharl Andler, Istoricheskoe vvedenie i kommentarii k kommunisticheskomu manifestu K. Marksa i F. Engel'sa (Moscow, Tovarishchestva 'Br. A. i I.
Granit i Ko', 1906).
28. E. Rubinshtein, "Manifest Kommunisticheskoi Partii' (K devyanostoletiyu so vremeni ego opublikovaniya)', in Istorik marksist, No. 1(65), 1938, pp. 315.
29. "Kommunisticheskii manifest' i tsarskaya tsenzura', in Istorik marksist, No. 2(66), 1938, pp. 10619.
30. 'Programmnyi dokument kommunizma', in Pravda, no. 28 (10769), 28 January 1948, p. 2.
31. A. I. Soboloev (ed.), Kommunisticheskii manifest i sovremennost (Moscow, Politicheskoi literatury, 1974).
32. Leon Trotsky, The Communist Manifesto Today (Ceylon, Star Press, 1955), 9 pp. For

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a similar rejection of both Soviet communism and reformist socialism see, for example, The Communist Manifesto and the Last Hundred Years (London,
Socialist Party of Great Britain, 1948), pp. 549.
33. For an interesting account of what had changed since 1848 which places the growth of a technocracy at the centre of its analysis, see Lucien Laurat, 'If One Were
to rewrite the Communist Manifesto Today', in F. L. Bender (ed.), Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto (New York, Norton, 1988), pp. 1469. Laurat
states that the most important task is to introduce a collectivist, communal spirit into the technocracy which runs modern economies.
34. Max Adler, 'Socialism and Communism' (Foreword to Das Kommunistische Manifest, Vienna, Ignaz Brand, 1919), in F. L. Bender (ed.), Karl Marx and the
Communist Manifesto, pp. 1368.
35. Communist Manifesto. Socialist Landmark (London, George Allen and Unwin, 1948), pp. 68.
36. Ibid., pp. 9104.
37. For example, pointing out the inevitability of the transition from capitalism and socialism and why; linking change to a social dynamic; showing that capitalism
would be the last antagonistic social order; and for establishing that socialist economics would substantially increase social wealth.
38. For example, overestimating the strength of socialist ideas in Germany of the 1840s and underestimating the importance of the English socialist movement of that
time.
39. For example, Marx and Engels did not see the need for a separate communist party; Marx and Engels, unlike Lenin and Stalin, were not dogmatic and did not
view themselves as possessing ultimate truth; Marx and Engels sought an increase in workers' democracy and did not favour the establishment of a dictatorship.
40. For example, Laski writes: 'Mr Attlee has never been himself a Marxist; but there is not a word in the sentences of his that I have quoted which could not have
been eagerly accepted by the authors of the Communist Manifesto.'
41. A. J. P. Taylor, 'Introduction', in K. Marx and F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1967), pp. 747.
42. David Fembach, 'Introduction', in K. Marx, The Revolutions of 1848 (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1973), pp. 961.
43. Mick Hume, Introduction, in K. Marx and F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto (London, Pluto Press, 1996), pp. ixxxiv. Here Hume stresses the continuing
relevance of the Manifesto's socialist message, of Marx's method and his belief in the ability of humans to change the world.

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PART 2
THE MANIFESTO AND REVOLUTION

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Chapter 4
The Communist Manifesto and the Idea of Permanent Revolution*
John Hoffman
Introduction
The Manifesto does not actually use the slogan of the permanent revolution (although elsewhere Marx does). But it does enunciate the idea which lies behind the
slogan and in a way which captures the ambiguities which have dogged the idea ever since. I shall argue that in essence the theory of permanent revolution implies that
capitalism and communism, democracy and socialism, liberalism and emancipation are indissolubly linked. Hence the theory is crucial to Marxism as a whole and is
expounded in the Manifesto. However the term is often taken to mean that the link between a 'bourgeois revolution' which establishes capitalism, and a 'proletarian
revolution' which seeks to introduce a communist society, involves a process of revolutionary struggle within a relatively short time scale. One revolution is followed
immediately by another.
I shall call this version of the permanent revolution the 'immediacy thesis' and I will argue that although the immediacy thesis does receive textual support within the
Manifesto (and elsewhere in Marx's writings), it is in conflict both with the general argument of this document and with Marx's overall political theory.
Permanent Revolution and the Immediacy Thesis
As far as the Manifesto in general is concerned, a communist revolution is only possible because 'the weapons used by the bourgeoisie to strike down feudalism are
now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. 1 It is the bourgeoisie which supplies the proletariat 'with its own materials for development, i.e. weapons for use against the
bourgeoisie itself.2 This 'weapons' argument contains, I would suggest, the essence of the permanent revolution idea—the notion that capitalism
* An extended version of this was given to the Annual Conference of the Political Studies Association in 1997. I am very grateful to those who attended the panel for their
comments and in particular to Mark Cowling for his invaluable feedback on my paper.

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and communism are indissolubly linked. That Marx and Engels regarded this idea as distinctive to their particular theory of communism can be seen from Part III of the
Manifesto where the other variants of communism and socialism around in 1848 are criticised either because they reject the revolutionary character of the
bourgeoisie, or because they are uncritical towards capitalism. Marx and Engels believe that it is necessary and possible to be both critical of capitalism and to accept
the revolutionary part played historically by the bourgeoisie.
I shall call this linkage between capitalism and communism the general idea of permanent revolution. There is however a rather different version of the theory also
presented in the Manifesto, and it is this version which I tag the immediacy thesis. In Part IV we see both versions of the theory existing side by side.
The general idea is reiterated in relation to Germany. In the case of Germany—still under absolute semifeudal rule in 1848—communists, the Manifesto tells us, fight
with the bourgeoisie 'as soon as the bourgeois revolution breaks out'. However in doing so, they continue to instil in workers 'the mortal conflict between bourgeoisie
and proletariat', using as 'weapons' against the bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions which the bourgeois revolution introduces. 3
It is also argued in Part IV that the German workers may straightaway use bourgeois weapons against the bourgeoisie 'so that, after the overthrow of the reactionary
classes in Germany, the struggle against the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin'.4 But this comment in itself is not sufficient to assert the immediacy thesis, for this
requires (as we see in the passage which follows) that a revolution against capitalism will immediately follow the bourgeois revolution itself. It is not merely that the
struggle against the bourgeoisie begins immediately after a bourgeois revolution, but rather that (in the celebrated formulation of Part IV) 'the bourgeois revolution in
Germany can be merely the immediate prelude to a proletarian revolution'.5
The difference between what I have called the immediacy thesis and the general idea of the permanent revolution should now be clear. It is not simply a question of
there being a link between capitalism and communism or even that after the bourgeois revolution, a struggle against the bourgeoisie may begin straightaway. It is a
question of a struggle culminating in a seizure of proletarian power (that is, a proletarian revolution) immediately following the bourgeois revolution.
This immediacy thesis is, I want to argue, in tension with the wider notion of permanent revolution presented in the Manifesto (and in Marx and Engels's writings more
generally). It is however a thesis of great historic importance, since it is the immediacy thesis which is often seen as providing the Russian Revolution of 1917 with its
Marxist credentials.

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The Idea and the SingleStage Revolution
There is general agreement that the slogan of the permanent revolution was first used by Jacobins during the French Revolution of 1789. Marx and Engels explicitly
acknowledge this 6 and there can be no doubt that this historical origin explains the term's prestige among the radical revolutionaries with whom Marx and Engels were
allied in the 1848 period. As an expression of popular sovereignty, the slogan implied the demolition of absolutist rule. But it also pointed to a movement beyond
political and legal equality and towards social and economic equality. Hence the idea of a revolution which is 'permanent'. It is here that ambiguities begin. For the
notion implies, on the one hand, that revolution is a process. On the other hand, the question has to be asked: is a process intelligible unless it is divided into distinct
'phases' and 'stages'?
In tackling this problem, Marx added something of his own to the Jacobin formulation, for he and Engels were not uncritical of Jacobin political thought. While they
saw the Jacobins as heroic and audacious revolutionaries who had attempted to take the logic of liberalism to its radical extremes, these revolutionaries were
imprisoned within an idealist philosophical framework which ascribed political development to abstract will power rather than to maturing social conditions. This
idealist political outlook, in Marx and Engels's view, made it impossible to articulate the distinct phases which a revolutionary process requires.7
For this reason I would argue that neither of the two versions of the permanent revolution found in the Manifesto—the general argument and the immediacy thesis—
can be described as Jacobin in character since both distinguish between a bourgeois revolution and a proletarian revolution. This point also explains why it was that
although the Jacobin tradition was continued in the nineteenth century by Auguste Blanqui. Blanquists did not espouse the idea of permanent revolution precisely
because they rejected the notion of a bourgeois revolution as a politically desirable objective distinct from a socialist or communist one.
When Buonarotti (one of Blanqui's predecessors) referred to a 'regenerative revolution' that required 'strong and wise revolutionary hands' to ensure its consummation,
he saw the revolution as fundamentally communist in character. It is true that Blanqui could refer to introducing communism 'step by step', but this is a 'process' view
within a communist revolution.8 It does not imply that one kind of revolution is to be followed by another.
Even the compressed time scale implied by the immediacy thesis distinguishes between two distinct phases of the revolutionary process. In both versions of the
permanent revolution presented in the Manifesto, the notion of distinctness, separation and differentiation is linked to the idea of unity, process and fusion. The
concept of a distinctive bourgeois revolution separate from and preceding a

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proletarian one derives from Marx's view of revolution as a process tied to maturing material conditions, so that even before Marx had formulated the idea of
permanent revolution in the Manifesto, his argument cannot be described as Blanquist or Jacobin in character.
Marx identifies Jacobinism with an abstract politics which seeks to suppress the real contradictions developing in civil society. Even when Marx speaks only of a
communist revolution (as in 1844), his argument emphasises revolution as the product of developing material conditions within society itself. It is not something which
can be imposed by a dedicated elite. The Jacobin strategy of declaring the revolution to be permanent is seen as a political drama which necessarily ends with the re
establishment of religion, private property and civil society. 9
When Marx does come to accept the need for political organisation, the logic which informs his argument is quite different from that of Blanqui. He explicitly rejects
Weitling's (Blanquist) argument that humanity is 'always ripe for communism' and insists that communism can only be established if revolutionaries move through
differentiated and distinct stages of development. Against Weitling, Marx argues in 1846 that it is 'the bourgeoisie which must attain power to begin with'.10
The point is that the idea of permanent revolution as expounded in the Manifesto (in both its versions) rejects the notion of communism as a singlestage revolution. It
is revealing therefore that when Willich's group within the Communist League breaks with Marx in September 1850, his faction abandons the theory of permanent
revolution and reverts to a onestep revolutionary strategy involving the immediate seizure of power. If 'genuine' or 'true' revolution only has a communist character,
then it seems clearer not to call it 'permanent, since the idea of permanent revolution implies some differentiation between different phases of the revolution, and that a
distinct (and positive) recognition should be given to the revolution of the bourgeoisie.11
This is why Cunliffe's analysis of the 'tensions' within the Manifesto is problematic. Although Cunliffe focuses his argument upon the passage in the Manifesto which
deals with a proletarian revolution immediately following a bourgeois one, he concerns himself exclusively with the prospects for proletarian revolution in Germany.
While it is true that proletarian revolution is necessary for the idea of permanent revolution, it is not sufficient, since essential to the idea is the differentiation between
two types of revolution, however closely linked they might be. Cunliffe refers to the Manifesto's 'laconic reference' to an impending bourgeois revolution in Germany12
but fails to see that it is precisely the role of the bourgeois revolution which lies at the heart of the controversy generated by Marx's idea of permanent revolution. What
makes the revolution permanent is the fact that it does not embrace the proletarian revolution alone.

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The Unfortunate Verschmelzung
Hunt has argued that the immediacy thesis arises as a tactically contrived amalgamation or Verschmelzung between Marxian and Blanquist ideas. 13 The logic of
Marxism (as Hunt rightly stresses) requires a bourgeois revolution in order to create the basis for communism. This involves (as Marx points out in 1847) the
destruction of absolute monarchy and explicit patriarchalism; the development of political centralisation, and the proletarianisation of the propertyless classes—in short
'the material basis that the proletariat requires for its liberation'.14 The problem is that the implementation of this bourgeois revolution implies a time scale that cannot
be reconciled with the immediacy thesis.
The Manifesto itself suggests that the proletariat would only acquire the political skills and theoretical confidence to challenge the bourgeoisie over a lengthy process of
time. Although we are told that 'at its birth' it begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie, the proletariat goes through 'various stages of development'. These can (at least in
part) be enumerated as follows: an infantile experience of Luddism—smashing machinery rather than challenging relationships—fighting the absolute monarchy
(alongside the bourgeoisie), forging trade unions, forming a workingclass political party able to intervene in political debate and exploit divisions within the
bourgeoisie, and enlisting the support of ideologically sophisticated bourgeois renegades. All this is necessary if the proletariat is to emerge as the independent
movement of the immense majority.15 If we assume (as the Manifesto seems to) that these developments are necessary for a proletarian revolution, then it is difficult
to see how such a revolution could immediately follow a bourgeois one. The maturation process for proletarian supremacy is clearly a protracted one.
Hunt argues that the members of the Communist League had accepted the need for a 'democratic' (that is, accountable rather than conspiratorial) political organisation,
but were not really convinced that two distinct revolutions were necessary. Hence, as he points out, even where they accepted the notion of a 'democratic revolution',
they interpreted this in Blanquist fashion. The democratic revolution is not (as it is in Marx) the bourgeois revolution, which creates the material basis for a 'higher'
communist struggle. Rather it is synonymous with the communist revolution itself. Within a single upheaval, a 'community of goods' is to be immediately introduced.16
The immediacy thesis which separates the two revolutions but states that one immediately follows the other, is neither 'fish nor fowl'. It seeks, Hunt argues, to reconcile
the irreconcilable—the desire for an immediate communist revolution with the argument that a prior bourgeois revolution is necessary. It is designed to placate radical
sympathies by sugaring the classical Marxist pill so that a distinct bourgeois revolution is to be tolerated on the grounds that a proletarian

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revolution 'immediately follows'. 17 The distinction between the two revolutions is preserved alongside a highly problematic sense of immediacy.
Not only is this particular version of permanent revolution in tension with the argument of the Manifesto as a whole, but it is inconsistent with positions taken in other
texts in this period. For example, Engels in 1847 declared that the workers in Germany would not be mature enough to form a ruling class 'for a long time', and in his
preliminary draft of the Manifesto, he argued that a communist revolution would be 'slowest and most difficult to carry out in Germany'.18 These views certainly
accord with the argument of the Manifesto and what I have called the general idea of permanent revolution, but they are clearly in conflict with the immediacy thesis.
During the 1848 revolution Marx and Engels offered critical support for the bourgeois revolution, and when they became convinced that the bourgeoisie was too weak
to provide political leadership, they argued that the tasks of the bourgeois revolution should be carried through by a radical popular alliance. Johnstone notes that Marx
and Engels saw their campaigning paper, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, as an 'organ of democracy' and not emphatically as an organ of communism.19
After the collapse of the revolution in Germany, Marx and Engels continued to believe (until September 1850) that fresh revolution was imminent. Hence they judged
that a political alliance with radicals was still necessary. This accounts for the positive references made to Blanqui and his 'revolutionary socialism' in The Class
Struggles in France, and for the fact that in Marx's address to the Communist League in March 1850, there is, to quote Hunt, 'an exact rerun of the Manifesto's
Verschmelzung'. The need for a tactically contrived formula designed to mask two incompatible versions of revolution is repeated (and for the same reasons) in a
statement which explicitly refers to permanent revolution by name. On the one hand a bourgeois revolution (identified here with 'petty bourgeois democracy') is insisted
upon, but on the other we are told that this preponderating influence will only last 'for a moment'. Moreover the March Address also argues that German workers will
not be able to attain power without going through 'a lengthy revolutionary development': a reference which embraces the general idea of permanent revolution (and
thus the wider logic of Marxist theory) rather than the immediacy thesis.20
What further complicates the picture is the fact that although Blanquists proper did not (as we have already noted) support the idea of permanent revolution, Blanquist
minded radicals within the Communist League certainly did, at least until the middle of 1850. Incensed by Marx's argument in 1849 that an industrial revolution
(bourgeois in character) was necessary for communism, Gottschalk, a fellow member of the Communist League, contrasted bourgeois rule with the theory of
permanent revolution, accusing Marx of not believing in the latter!21

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In 1848 therefore permanent revolution could mean one of three things: the demand for communism now; the 'immediacy thesis'; and a notion that bourgeois and
proletarian revolutions were linked over a prolonged period of time. The first of these does not square with either version of the permanent revolution in the
Manifesto, and by denying the role of phases, it is hard to see why a onestep theory of communist revolution should be conceived of as 'permanent' at all. However
the phrase about 'an immediately following proletarian revolution' does occur in the Manifesto (although only in the Manifesto), but the immediacy thesis is atypical.
Hunt argues that after 1850 this thesis (which he identifies with the slogan of permanent revolution itself) is never repeated again in Marx's writing. 22 As for the general
idea of permanent revolution—the notion that the bourgeois and communist revolutions are linked—it has to be said that this did not commend itself to all socialists.
If we look at the divisions between socialists at the time of the Russian Revolution, we can say that the Mensheviks sought to separate the bourgeois from proletarian
phases in a way which is difficult to square with any idea of permanent revolution. Lenin and Bolsheviks on the other hand argued (certainly after April 1917) that a
bourgeois revolution (the removal of the Tsar in February) could be 'immediately followed' by a proletarian revolution (the events of October). The Russian Revolution
thereby received its Marxist imprimatur from a particular reading of the Manifesto's immediacy thesis. Trotsky, it is worth noting, directly invoked Marx's support for
his own version of permanent revolution, referring directly to the argument in the Manifesto.23
A Critical Evaluation
The idea of permanent revolution seeks to portray revolution as a process with distinct phases. How distinct the phases and how compressed the time scale between
them is open to controversy, but the idea seems to assume that we can reconcile the notion of revolution as a process and the notion of revolution as a discrete event.
Here it seems to me that Marx and Engels never really shed what Hunt calls their reverence for the French Revolution 'as a model'.24 Revolution as a discrete event
implies a seizure of power—the implementation of a new social order which radically and sharply breaks from the old—and this is clearly what Engels had in mind
when he described a revolution as 'the most authoritarian thing there is'. Ironically Marx also seems to have the same conception when he commented that if British
workers used their legal power and liberties, they could avoid a revolution.25
Marxists generally hold to the notion of revolution as a discrete event—a seizure of power—and this, as Macpherson has pointed out, creates grave

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difficulties for the kind of consensus necessary to sustain a participatory democracy. Revolutions provoke counterrevolutions; they concentrate power, and Lovell has
argued, they are 'intrinsically illiberal' events. 26 It is difficult to see how, in terms of the Manifesto's argument, we could move from 'more or less veiled civil war'
involving the overthrow of one class by another to an emancipated world in which the concentrated force of the state has become redundant and the freedom of each
is a condition for the freedom of all.27
The notion of a classless and stateless society is an attractive one particularly if one links it to an explicit acknowledgement of, and toleration for, all identities whether
of an ethnic, gendered, religious or regional kind. But, as I have argued elsewhere, the notion of reaching such a society through war, revolution, state and proletarian
dictatorship is not credible. If the immediacy thesis makes the attainment of a selfgoverning society especially problematic, the wider argument within the Manifesto
still emphasises the primacy of class struggle, the need for revolution and a logic of polarisation which works against the realisation of emancipation.28
On the other hand, if we interpret the notion of revolution as a process and not as a discrete event, we can avoid the authoritarian and illiberal implications which the
concept of revolution seems to imply. With this reading, revolution simply becomes synonymous with 'change' and 'critique'—a scepticism towards established orders.
It does necessarily not involve a divisive seizure of power. If this is what is meant by 'permanent revolution', then the idea is supportable and appealing. Obviously this
interpretation would involve a sharp break from any conception that fails to emphasise the ideological heritage of liberalism—the kind of materialism which had such
authoritarian consequences in the wake of the Russian Revolution.
While revisionist socialism (as articulated for example in Bernstein's classic Evolutionary Socialism) rejects the notion of revolution as a discrete event, it is also in
danger of ignoring the importance of critique as well. Bernstein expresses rather complacent views about liberalism, colonialism, the state and class division29 and his
stance demonstrates the problem of simply rejecting the permanent revolution thesis.
It would be better in my view to try to construct a version of the idea of permanent revolution which would bring it closer to Marx's admirable 'ideal' of an association
in which the free development of each is the free development of all.
Notes
2. Manifesto, p. 21. See also J. Hoffman, 'Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: The Communist Manifesto' in M. Forsyth et al. (eds), The Political Classics (Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 17680.

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4. Ibid. Italics added; translation slightly modified.
5. Ibid.
6. Marx and Engels, C.W., Vol. 3, p. 156 and C.W., Vol. 4, p. 122. In 1884 Engels noted that the French revolutionary, Marat, like Marx and Engels, 'did not want
the revolution declared finished but continuing in permanence'. Cited by Richard Hunt, The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, Vol. 1 (Basingstoke, Macmillan,
1975), p. 185.
7. For references and commentary, see M. Johnstone, 'Marx, Blanqui and Majority Rule', Socialist Register 1983 (London, Merlin, 1983), pp. 296318, p. 302.
8. Ibid., p. 299, p. 301.
9. Marx and Engels, C.W. , Vol. 3, p. 156; C.W., Vol. 4, p. 183. Fembach argues that the reference to the German proletariat somersalting into communism presages
the tactic of permanent revolution. See D. Fembach, 'Introduction', The Revolutions of 1848 (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1973), pp. 9 61, p. 36. However Hunt is
right to discount this view since the idea of permanent revolution in Marx implies the linkage between two revolutions rather than a focus simply on one. Hunt,
Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, 1, p. 178; also Johnstone, 'Marx, Blanqui and Majority Rule', p. 302; p. 313.
10. Hunt, Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, 1, p. 155, p. 179.
11. Ibid., p. 246.
12. J. Cunliffe, 'Marx's Politics—the Tensions in the Communist Manifesto', Political Studies, Vol. 30, No. 4, December 1982, pp. 56974, p. 573.
13. Hunt, Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, 1, p. 189.
14. Ibid., p. 180.
17. Ibid., p. 190, p. 246.
18. Ibid., p. 179; also Johnstone, 'Marx, Blanqui and Majority Rule', p. 303.
19. Johnstone, 'Marx, Blanqui and Majority Rule', p. 303.
20. Hunt, Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, 1, p. 234, 244; for the text of the March Address, see Marx and Engels, C.W., Vol. 10, pp. 27787.
21. Hunt, Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, 1, pp. 2202.
22. Ibid., p. 246.
23. Leon Trotsky, Permanent Revolution and Results and Prospects (New York, Pathfinder Press, 1969), p. 131. For a fuller treatment of this subject, see my
paper in Jeffrey Stanyer and Gerry Stoker (eds), Contemporary Political Studies, Vol. 1 (Nottingham, PSA, 1997), pp. 7485.
25. Marx and Engels, C.W., Vol. 46, p. 49. Engels's comment is discussed in John Hoffman, The Gramscian Challenge (Oxford, Blackwell, 1984), p. 168.
26. David Lovell, From Marx to Lenin (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 67; C. B. Macpherson, The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy
(Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 99101.
27. Marx and Engels, C.W., Vol. 6, p. 495, p. 506.
28. John Hoffman, Beyond the State (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995), pp. 1404.
29. Eduard Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism (New York, Schocken Books, 1961).

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Chapter 5
The Communist Manifesto, Marx's Theory of History and the Russian Revolution*
Steve Paxton
'Thus the bourgeois revolution in Germany can be merely the immediate prelude to a proletarian revolution.' 1
It has been argued that this statement represents a contradiction in Marxist theory so fundamental as to raise 'crucial questions concerning not just the coherence of the
Manifesto itself but also of Marxist theory as a whole'.2 The suggestion that a proletarian revolution could immediately follow a bourgeois revolution is seen to be
inconsistent with Marx's general conception of full capitalist development as a necessary precondition for the establishment of communism.3 As actual 'communist'
revolutions have all taken place in relatively underdeveloped countries this is an important issue for those concerned with the relevance of Marxist theory to actual
historical events and processes.
Although the suggested inconsistency in the Manifesto relates to the situation in Germany in 1848 it is also relevant to the 1917 revolutions in Russia and the
subsequent rise and fall of the Soviet Union. The political victory of the bourgeois interest in Russia in February 1917 was followed, just eight months later, by the
Bolshevik seizure of power, in the name of the proletariat.
By drawing on the debates surrounding the 'German question' in the Manifesto and relating these to Marx and Engels's other works this chapter will develop a
coherent historical materialist approach to the question of 'premature' proletarian revolutions, and suggest the means by which the 'tensions' in the Manifesto may be
resolved. The Bolshevik reading of the Manifesto, and its approach to this issue will then be examined, and the relationship between Marx's theory of history and the
Bolshevik revolution will be assessed.
Before assessing the damage to the coherence of Marxist theory which is inflicted by the 'strategy for Germany' in the Manifesto, it is useful to consider briefly two
preliminary questions. First, which of the various interpretations of Marx's theory of history is supposed to be rendered incoherent by this
* Acknowledgements are due to Gary Browning, G. A. Cohen and John Stewart for their helpful and encouraging comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

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passage? And, second, what are the particular features of that interpretation which are held to conflict with the Manifesto's treatment of the 'German question'?
The interpretation of Marx's theory of history which most clearly relies upon the concept of communism as a product of mature capitalism is that which S. H. Rigby
identifies as a form of 'productive force determinism'. 4 He suggests that this is the 'traditional' interpretation and argues that Plekhanov, Kautsky, Lenin, Trotsky,
Bukharin and Stalin all subscribed to this reading of the work of Marx and Engels.5 Rigby acknowledges (and demonstrates) that the traditional interpretation is
legitimate as a reading of Marx, but contends that alternative readings of the material are also valid. As it is the traditional approach which is most vulnerable to the
claimed inconsistency, it is this interpretation that will provide the focus of the present discussion.6
This traditional interpretation emphasises Marx and Engels's general conception of communism as a product of mature capitalism. In order to understand exactly
how this position relates to the statements on Germany in Part IV of the Manifesto, it is necessary, first of all, to understand the reasons why communism should be
seen to be unattainable without a prior period of capitalist development. The central points of a productive force oriented approach to Marx's theory of history are
therefore briefly set out below.
This approach usually maintains that Marx and Engels held that superstructural forms may be explained by the economic structure, the character of which is
explained, in turn, by the level of development of the productive forces. Here, various economic structures (sets of production relations) are seen to 'correspond' to
definite stages in the 'development of their material forces of production'.7 The growth of productive power, which cannot be subverted indefinitely, requires that
economic structures must 'rise and fall according as they enable or impede that growth'.8 In the Manifesto Marx and Engels clearly view the collapse of feudalism and
the rise of capitalism in this way: 'feudal property relations . . . no longer corresponded to the forces of production already developed. They impeded production
instead of advancing it. They became just so many fetters. They had to be sprung open, they were sprung open.'9 Here the capitalist economic structure is seen to
arise and persist because of its ability to develop the productive forces at the then existing level.
Indeed capitalism is held to bring a new dimension to this development. It is only under capitalism that a 'boundless thirst' for surplus labour arises from the nature of
production itself.10 Whereas 'all earlier forms were essentially conservative',11 'In scarcely more than one hundred years of class rule the bourgeoisie has created more
massive and more colossal forces of production than have all preceding generations put together'.12 It is this development of the productive forces to such
unprecedented magnitude that is the 'historical task and justification of capital'.13 For Marx 'Capital . . . is an essential relation for the development of the social

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productive forces' 14 which 'cannot be avoided anymore than it is possible for man to avoid the stage in which his spiritual energies are given a religious definition as
powers independent of himself.15 Not only is capitalism unavoidable, though, it also provides the conditions for a higher stage of development; only capitalist
production can develop the 'relentless productive forces of social labour . . . which alone can form the material base of a free human society'.16 In The German
Ideology (184547) Marx and Engels predicted failure for attempts to establish socialism before this material requirement had been met: 'this development of
productive forces [ . . . ] is an absolutely necessary practical premise, because without it privation, want is merely made general, and with want the struggle for
necessities would begin again, and all the old filthy business would necessarily be restored'.17 In the Manifesto Marx and Engels refer to the 'first attempts by the
proletariat to assert its own class interests directly were made in times of general upheaval, in the period of the overthrow of feudal society'.18 They argue that these
attempts 'necessarily foundered on the undeveloped state of the proletariat itself, as well as on the lack of material conditions for its emancipation, conditions that are
only the product of the bourgeois epoch'.19 According to this approach, then, a free human society—communism—has a material precondition, a required level of
development below which freedom (in the relevant sense) cannot be realised.20 Furthermore, this level of development can only be attained under capitalist relations
of production and attempts to 'socialise' prematurely—on the basis of scarcity—are destined to fail.
Although this scheme emphasises the role of capitalism in developing the productive forces to a sufficiently high level for socialism, it does not exclude other beneficial
effects of the bourgeois era. In Capital Marx notes that the 'transformation [to communism] stems from the development of the productive forces under capitalist
production, and from the ways and means by which this development takes place'.21 In The Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels are more specific:
The bourgeoisie becomes involved in a constant battle; at first against the aristocracy; later against a part of the bourgeoisie itself, those whose interests contradict the advance
of industry; and always with the bourgeoisie in foreign countries. In all these struggles it finds it necessary to appeal to the proletariat, to enlist its aid, and thus, to draw it into
political action. Hence it supplies the proletariat with its own materials for development, i.e. weapons for fighting use against the bourgeoisie itself.22
Given all of this it is hardly surprising that Levin has identified a serious difficulty in reconciling this general approach to historical development with the 'strategy for
Germany' in the Manifesto. In a similar vein, John Hoffman argues that the 'permanent revolution thesis' in Part IV of the Manifesto appears to shortcircuit the time
scale for revolutionary change implicit in Parts I and II of that document

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and in Marx and Engels's other work. 23 How could Germany's predicted 'leap over capitalism' be accommodated by a theory which views the establishment of
socialism as dependent upon the satisfaction of a material precondition which clearly, by historical materialist criteria, had not been met by that country? Yet there are
good reasons for thinking that the Manifesto passage does not inflict the damage to Marxist theory which Levin claims. John Cunliffe has drawn attention to 'Marx's
consistent emphasis on the international dimension of capitalism'24 and quotes from The German Ideology to illustrate this:
To lead to collisions in a country, this contradiction [between productive forces and forms of intercourse] need not necessarily come to a head in this particular country. The
competition with industrially more advanced countries, brought about by the expansion of international intercourse, is sufficient to produce a similar contradiction in countries
with a backward industry, e.g., the latent proletariat in Germany brought into view by the competition of English industry.25
Although it demonstrates the importance to Marx and Engels of the 'complex interaction between countries at different stages of economic and political
development',26 it is important to recognise that, with respect to revolutionary potential, this statement merely asserts that backward nations may experience
'collisions'. There is nothing here which suggests that such events would necessarily lead to the successful establishment of communism. In the Manifesto Marx and
Engels note that sometimes such collisions may result in 'the common ruin of the contending classes'.27 In order to reconcile the general theory with Part IV of the
Manifesto it is necessary to identify the particular circumstances which might allow such a collision to lead to a 'revolutionary transformation of society as a whole';28
and, further, to avoid counterrevolution and the restoration of 'all the old filthy business'.
When the assumption that the 'unit of analysis' must be restricted by national boundaries is dropped and the issue is considered from a 'worldhistorical' perspective,
the comments on Germany in the Manifesto provide some indication of the nature of such circumstances: The impending bourgeois revolution in Germany is bound to
be carried out 'under more advanced conditions of European civilisation in general, and with a much more developed proletariat than England in the seventeenth
century and France in the eighteenth'.29 Levin concludes from this that 'it is the relative strength of the [German] proletariat that is to be the decisive factor' in
Germany's leap over capitalism and into socialism.30 But the decisive factor, surely, is that the bourgeois revolution in Germany would take place in an environment of
international intercourse, at a time when the productive forces in England and France had already been developed to (what then appeared to be) a sufficiently high
level to permit the successful establishment of communism.31

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The particular conditions of midnineteenthcentury Germany—a weak and immature bourgeoisie and a relatively strong proletariat—could bring about the
occurrence of a bourgeois revolution immediately followed by a proletarian revolution. But only the worldhistorical situation, only the fact of (apparently) fully
advanced capitalism elsewhere in Europe could provide the basis for the success of this 'premature' proletarian revolution. The German Ideology passage quoted
above asserts that attempts to socialise on the basis of scarcity would be doomed to failure. Only by precipitating proletarian revolutions in the most advanced nations,
and thereby gaining access to the material fruits of mature capitalism, could the German proletarian revolution meet with success. The communists turned their attention
to Germany because the imminently expected bourgeois revolution could, in an atmosphere of international intercourse, provide the spark which would ignite a
European revolution. This interpretation is supported by Marx's assertion, in November 1847, that 'Of all countries, England is the one where the contradiction
between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is most highly developed. The victory of the English proletariat over the English bourgeoisie is, therefore, decisive for the
victory of all the oppressed over their oppressors.' 32
Levin notes that this speech was made in London, whereas the Manifesto, with its emphasis on the potential of the revolutionary situation in Germany, was written
'primarily for the German Labour Movement'.33 He rejects the conclusion, though, that Marx and Engels were guilty of putting an optimistic gloss on the situation of
any country for whom they were writing.34 Hoffman argues that the permanent revolution argument was inserted into the Manifesto for opportunist or tactical reasons
because Marx and Engels were anxious to placate the Blanquist minded radicals who sponsored the document.35 Hoffinan may well be correct in this but the real
issue here is that, whatever the reasons for its insertion, the treatment of the 'German question' in Part IV of the Manifesto does not necessarily contradict Marx and
Engels's general theory, when that is viewed in the worldhistorical context which they emphasised.
The failure of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, the defeat of Russia in the Crimean War, the economic crisis of 1857, the emancipation of the serfs in Russia in the
1860s, the Polish revolt of 1863 and the increasing numbers of Russian refugees and exiles in Western Europe all contributed to the changing international political
scene that prompted Marx and Engels to look towards Russia for the circumstances which could spark the European revolution. Already in 1859 Marx had written to
Engels that 'the impulse for the European revolution can scarcely come from anywhere but Russia'.36 While no mention is made here of a proletarian revolution
immediately following a bourgeois revolution in Russia, this assertion reaffirms the Manifesto's position that the turmoil generated by a revolution in a backward
nation could precipitate a European proletarian revolution. Increasingly interested in developments in Russia, Marx

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and Engels continued to entertain the idea that the revolution would 'begin in the East, hitherto the unbroken bulwark and reserve army of the counterrevolution'. 37
John Lewis suggests that, for Marx and Engels, 'The undermining and destruction of Tsardom, the liberation of all the revolutionary forces of Russia, was the path to
revolution in Europe.'38
Russian revolutionaries were also increasingly interested in the work of Marx and Engels, particularly after the publication of a Russian translation of Capital in 1872.
In 1881 Marx received a request, from Vera Zasulich,39 to clarify his views 'on the possible fate of our rural commune, and on the theory that it is historically
necessary for every country in the world to pass through all the phases of capitalist production'.40 Marx abandoned his first four attempts to draft a reply to this letter,
and the letter he actually sent to Zasulich was short and he explicitly rejected her request that he give permission for it to be published. In his reply Marx states that
'The analysis in Capital . . . provides no reasons either for or against the vitality of the Russian commune.'41 He suggests that 'the commune is the fulcrum for social
regeneration in Russia' but imposes a condition which must be met if it is to function as such. That condition is that 'the harmful influences assailing it on all sides must
first be eliminated, and it must then be assured the normal conditions for spontaneous development'.42 The harmful influences to which Marx refers were the Tsarist
regime and the emerging bourgeois interest which were engaged in an attempt to transform the communal property of the peasants into private property. Only if this
process could be stopped, only if the commune could be rescued from capitalist development, could it act as a basis for a future communist social organisation. But
how could this process be stopped? And if communism is a product of mature capitalism, if only capitalism can provide the material foundation of a free society, how
could the Russian peasantry's communal property survive the capitalist era and act as the fulcrum for social regeneration? According to our earlier analysis, the answer
to this question must lie with the international dimension of the revolution, which would rescue the Russian commune from the destructive influence of capitalist
development and furnish the Russian peasantry with the positive achievements of Western European capitalism. This is precisely the analysis that Marx and Engels
advanced in the preface to the 1882 second Russian edition of The Communist Manifesto.
In this preface, Marx and Engels referred to the 'proclamation' in the Manifesto of the 'inevitably impending dissolution of modern bourgeois property'.43
Acknowledging that in Russia the 'rapidly developing capitalist swindle' coexisted with peasant communal ownership of more than half the land, they posed the
question at the centre of the Russian debates over their work: could the Russian peasant commune 'pass directly into the higher form of communist common
ownership? Or on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution as constitutes the historical evolution of the West?'44 Their

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answer to this question clearly illustrates the need to view their attitude to 'premature revolution' from a worldhistorical perspective: 'The only answer to that possible
today is this: If the Russian revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common
ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.' 45
Two factors are given here in connection with the possibility of a successful communist revolution in a backward nation: a proletarian revolution in the West and a
communist development rooted in peasant communal land ownership. Again the decisive role is considered to lie with the Western European proletariat, and the
establishment of communism is seen as dependent upon the availability of the fruits of full capitalist development to the postrevolutionary regime. As for the potential
of the peasant commune as a basis for communist social organisation, Teodor Shanin finds in this a contradiction of Marx's earlier works. For Shanin, the implications
of the 1882 preface include the following:
1. 'a reevaluation of the place of peasantry and its social organisation in the revolutionary processes to come', and
2. 'a new significance given the decentralisation of sociopolitical power within the postrevolutionary society in which the rejuvenation of ''archaic'' communes may play an
important role'.46
But neither the 1882 preface nor the 'reply to Zasulich' represent a fundamental change in Marx and Engels's approach to social development. Here they merely
confirmed that their general approach to historical change was not so inflexible as to exclude the possibility that events in backward Russia may precipitate a
proletarian revolution in the West or that following such a revolution the peasant commune might provide a model for future communist organisation. The revolutionary
potential of the Russian peasant commune remains intimately tied to the fortunes of the proletarian revolution, both in Russia itself and in the advanced industrial
nations. As Zhongqiao Duan has noted, 'it is not from the Russian peasant commune itself, but from the relations between the Russian peasant commune and Western
capitalism that Marx projected the future of the development of the former'.47
It is clear, then, that Marx and Engels's conception of mature capitalism as a necessary precondition for the establishment of communism does not entail that each
nation must individually tread the developmental path, irrespective of events in other countries. In terms of the development of the productive forces, the requirements
for a successful proletarian revolution in any country are that (1) 'capitalist production has already developed the productive forces of labour in general to a sufficiently
high level',48 in that or another country, and (2) that the

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benefits of that development are available to the postrevolutionary regime. Thus the possibility of a bourgeois revolution in Germany being immediately followed by
a proletarian revolution is easily accommodated within this theory in which the revolutions of each nation are 'dependent upon the revolutions of the others'. 49
What, then, of the situation in Russia in 1917? The fall of the Tsarist regime and the political victory of the bourgeois interest in February of that year must be seen as
important events in Russia's bourgeois revolution. Could these events be immediately followed by a successful proletarian revolution? And could the advocates of
such a revolution justify their position without rejecting important historical materialist claims? E. H. Carr suggests that while Lenin preserved 'a complete theoretical
separation' between bourgeois and proletarian revolutions, his 'indissoluble link' between the two tasks of Russian Social Democracy 'brought him near to Marx's
conception for Germany of a continuous process of revolution'.50 John Hoffman argues that the Bolshevik reading of the Manifesto oversimplified the position of that
work by stressing the case for a permanent revolution.51 Yet the international aspect of Marx and Engels's approach to social revolution was a crucial element in the
theoretical positions of Lenin and Trotsky. The Bolsheviks regarded a successful European proletarian revolution as absolutely necessary to the survival of a socialist
regime in Russia. Lenin argued that following a proletarian revolution 'the only complete guarantee against restoration in Russia is a socialist revolution in the West.
There is and can be no other guarantee.'52 Trotsky was similarly committed to this position: 'Without the direct state support of the European proletariat the working
class of Russia cannot remain in power and convert its temporary dominance into a lasting socialist dictatorship.'53
By acknowledging that the survival of a postrevolutionary regime in Russia would be dependent upon the 'direct state support of the European proletariat', the
Bolsheviks were able to advocate socialist revolution in Russia without rejecting Marx and Engels's theoretical approach to revolutionary change and historical
development. Is it the case, then, that the Bolshevik revolution was 'legitimate' in historical materialist terms, and thus that the failure of Soviet communism strikes at the
credibility of that historical perspective? No, the Bolshevik revolution was premature (in the relevant sense), but not because it occurred in a relatively underdeveloped
nation, but because the final crisis of international capitalism was, contrary to Bolshevik analysis, far from imminent.
My aim in this chapter has not been to show that Marx and Engels or Lenin and Trotsky were always correct, nor even that they were always consistent. Neither of
these claims would be true of any of those four figures. Rather, I have attempted to show how the Manifesto relates to Marx and Engels's other work, particularly on
the question of revolutions in 'backward nations', and to relate these theoretical issues to the situation in Russia in 1917. I have argued that a

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consistent approach to the matter of 'premature' proletarian revolutions can be drawn from the work of Marx and Engels, and that the Bolshevik advocacy of a
socialist revolution in backward Russia was legitimately derived from this approach. From this perspective the Bolsheviks' mistake lay in their analysis of the
revolutionary potential of the situation in Europe, not in their attempts to justify (in Marxist terms) a proletarian revolution in Russia. Indeed, Lenin's insistence that 'the
Russian Proletariat must not forget that its movement and its revolution are only part of a world revolutionary proletarian movement' 54 derives from Marx and Engels's
worldhistorical perspective, from which the supposed contradictions in the Manifesto are resolved.
Notes
2. M. Levin, 'Deutschmarx: Marx, Engels and the German Question', in Political Studies, Vol. 29, No. 4, 1981, pp. 53754, 537.
3. Note that the Manifesto quote not only suggests that these events could take place, but also makes the stronger claim that they would do so. This latter position, a
specific prediction rather than a theoretical statement, will not be defended here, nor will Marx and Engels's occasional practice of ascribing (unconditional) inevitability
to certain future events.
4. S. H. Rigby, Marxism and History—A Critical Introduction (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1987), p. 13. The use of the term 'productive force
determinism' is controversial but its validity is not pertinent to this discussion.
5. That is not to say, of course, that significant differences did not exist among the respective positions of these theorists.
6. For an original and not uncontroversial defence of this approach see G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History—A Defence (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1978).
7. K. Marx, Preface and Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Peking, Foreign Languages Press, 1976), p. 3. (C.W., Vol. 29,
p. 263).
8. G. A. Cohen, 'Functional Explanation: Reply to Elster', in Political Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1, 1980, pp. 12935, 129.
10. K. Marx, Capital 1 (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1954), p. 226. (C. W., Vol. 35, p. 243.)
11. Ibid. p. 457. (C.W., Vol. 35, p. 489.)
13. K. Marx, Capital III (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1959), p. 259. (C.W., Vol. 37, forthcoming.)
14. K. Marx, Grundrisse (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1973), p. 325. (C.W., Vol. 28, p. 217.)
15. C.W., Vol. 34, p. 399.
16. Ibid., p. 399.
17. C.W., Vol. 5, p. 49.

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20. This does not entail, of course, that there are no other preconditions for the establishment of communism.
21. Marx, Capital III, p. 264 (italics added). (C. W., Vol. 37, forthcoming.)
23. J. Hoffman, see this volume, Chapter 4.
24. J. Cunliffe, 'Marx's Politics—The Tensions in the Manifesto', in M. Cowling and L. Wilde (eds), Approaches to Marx (Milton Keynes, Open University Press,
1989), p. 103.
25. C.W. Vol. 5, p. 745.
26. Cunliffe, Marx's Politics, p. 103.
28. Ibid.
29. Manifesto, p. 37; italics added.
30. Levin, 'Deutschmarx', p. 543.
31. Engels, in his introduction to Marx's The Class Struggles in France, acknowledged that he and Marx had in the 1840s 'mistaken the birth pangs of capitalism for
its death agony'. (C. W., Vol. 27, p. 507.) In his preface to the first German edition of Capital Marx stated that 'we [in Germany], like all the rest of Continental
Western Europe, suffer not only from the development of capitalist production, but also from the incompleteness of that development'. See Capital I, p. 20. (C.W.,
Vol. 35, p. 9.)
32. Speech in London. C.W., Vol. 6, p. 389.
33. Levin, 'Deutschmarx', p. 544.
34. Ibid., p. 551.
35. J. Hoffman, see Chapter 4.
36. Marx to Engels, 13 December 1859. See J. Lewis, The Life and Teaching of Karl Marx (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1965), p. 249. (C.W., Vol. 40, p.
551).
37. Marx to Sorge 27 September 1877. C.W., Vol. 45, p. 278.
38. Lewis, The Life and Teaching of Karl Marx, p. 251.
39. Zasulich (18491919), a socialist revolutionary in exile in Geneva, later cofounder of Iskra and a member of the Menshevik faction of the RSDLP.
40. Zasulich to Marx 16 February 1881. See T. Shanin (ed.), Late Marx and the Russian Road (London, Routledge, 1984) p. 99.
41. Marx to Zasulich, 8 March 1881. C.W., Vol. 24, p. 3701.
42. Ibid., p. 3701.
43. C.W., Vol. 24, p. 426.
44. C.W., Vol. 24, p. 426.
45. C.W., Vol. 24, p. 426.
46. Shanin (ed.), Late Marx, p. 29.
47. Z. Duan, "Caudine Forks': Can Capitalism be Leapt Over?', in Politics, Vol. 15, No. 3. September 1995, pp. 1615, p. 164.
48. K. Marx, Theories of Surplus Labour II (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1968), p. 580. (C.W., Vol. 32, p. 204.)
49. C.W., Vol. 5, p. 48.
50. E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution 19171923 (London, Pelican, 1966), p. 26.
51. J. Hoffman, see this volume, previous chapter. For a discussion on the relationship between Trotsky's 'permanent revolution' thesis and Marx's use of the term

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'revolution in permanence' see R. KneiPaz, The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 15862.
52. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1962), Vol. 10, pp. 3334. (From 'Report on the Unity Congress of the RSDLP—A Letter to
the St Petersburg Workers'. May/June 1906.)
53. Quoted in KneiPaz, The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky, p. 140. (From 'Results and Prospects'.)
54. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 24, p. 227. (Speech at the opening of the 7th (April) All Russian Congress of the RSDLP(B), 24 April 1917.)

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Chapter 6
The Cunning of Production and the Proletarian Revolution in the Communist Manifesto
Alexander Chryssis
The concept of cunning, either in the form of 'cunning of nature' (Kant) or in the form of 'cunning of reason' (Hegel), was the cornerstone upon which the most
eminent representatives of the classical German philosophy grounded their own philosophical interpretations of history. 1 According to the argument, which we are
going to present and discuss in this chapter, however, Marx and Engels's philosophy of history—as included in the Communist Manifesto—is also inconceivable
without a concept of cunning. In this case we may talk about a 'cunning of production', the historical relation of which with the proletarian revolution proved to be
much more complicated than Marx and Engels's theoretical analysis of this issue.
From the 'Cunning of Reason' to the 'Cunning of Production'
According to Hegel, states, nations and individuals, whilst animated by their particular interests, 'they are all the time the unconscious tools and organs of the world
mind at work within them'.2 In other words, it is the 'cunning of reason' that sets the particular passions and ends in the service of the universal.3 From this point of
view, 'all these expressions of individual and national life, in seeking and fulfilling their own ends, are at the same time the means and instruments of a higher purpose
and wider enterprise, of which they are themselves ignorant and which they nevertheless unconsciously carry out'.4
Some decades later, Friedrich Engels, in his critique of Hegel's philosophy of history, presented and defended his own version of cunning. According to Engels, the
fact that in the realm of history nothing takes place without intention cannot contradict the conclusion that the course of history is governed by innate general laws.
From Engels's point of view,
what is desired happens but rarely [ . . . ] Thus the conflicts of innumerable individual wills and individual action in the domain of history lead to a state of affairs quite similar to
that

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prevailing in the realm of unconscious nature. The ends of the actions are desired, but the results which actually follow from these actions are not desired; or when they do seem
to correspond to the desired end, they ultimately have consequences quite other than those desired. Historical events thus appear on the whole to be likewise governed by
chance. But wherever on the surface chance holds sway, it is always governed by inner, hidden laws and these laws only have to be discovered. 5
Given this framework of analysis, it becomes quite obvious that the Engelsian 'cunning of history' constitutes rather a reformulation of, than a departure from, the
Hegelian 'cunning of reason', since Engels does not try to negate but to substantiate the function of cunning within the theoretical context of historical materialism.
Nevertheless, as Istvan Mészáros points out, 'the fundamental difference between a speculative and a materialist conception of history is not established by renaming
the "cunning of reason" as the "cunning of history", but by identifying the dynamic constituents of actual historical development in their radical openness.'6 Whether
Marx's own position, however, is really different from Engels's version of the 'cunning of history', as Mészáros suggests while writing against 'the vulgarfatalist view
attributed to Marx by some followers and adversaries alike',7 is a question which deserves detailed consideration.
Hence, the argument we would like to discuss and support within the context of the Communist Manifesto reads now as follows: Marx and Engels's theory of
revolution, as included and expounded in the Manifesto, presupposes a certain 'cunning of production' in the sense of a socioeconomic process, within which the
bourgeoisie, while promoting its particular interests, prepares—almost unconsciously and unwittingly—the final overthrow of capitalism and the transition to
communism. Furthermore, as we are going to argue in this article, this 'cunning of production' plays a determinant role in the Marxian theory of revolution and critically
affects the subject/object dialectic of the revolutionary process itself.
The 'Cunning of Production' in the Manifesto
According to Marx (and Engels) the revolutionary change which takes place in the context of production is not a matter of free choice as far as the bourgeoisie is
concerned; it is on the contrary a matter of necessity, a matter of life and death, since the capitalist class cannot survive without further and further revolutionising the
mode of its economic and social existence.8 In this sense, nothing remains stable in the capitalist society; at the same time, however, it is this process of continuous
change in terms of productive activity which opens the way to the fall of the capitalist system. By constantly revolutionising the instruments and the

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relations of production, the bourgeoisie, being unable to dominate over its own forces, may succeed in postponing, but not in avoiding its death.
The bourgeois relations of production and trade, bourgeois property relations, modern bourgeois society, which has conjured up such powerful means of production and trade,
resembles the sorcerer, who could no longer control the unearthly powers he had summoned forth. 9
In other words, due to the 'cunning of production', the bourgeoisie is condemned to produce the conditions of its final overthrow. Like a modern Oedipus, the
capitalist class, almost unconsiously and unwittingly, follows its tragic fate up to the end; by succumbing to its passion, that is, to the pursuit of its particular interest, the
bourgeoisie has no other solution, than to execute its historical mission and withdraw from the scene of the world history.10
But what about the proletariat?
Industrial progress, involuntarily and irresistibly promoted by the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the workers through competition with their revolutionary unity through
close association. The development of largescale industry pulls from under the feet of the bourgeoisie the very foundations on which they produce goods and appropriate them.
Above all it produces its own gravediggers. Its downfall and the victory of the proletariat are equally unavoidable.11
By arguing, however, that the fall of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat are inevitable, Marx and Engels are compelled to admit that the 'cunning of
production', as described above, affects the formation of the proletariat not only as a class in itself, but also as a class for itself. That is why, for example, while
analysing the phases of the development of the proletariat as the inevitable outcome of the modern industry, they do not hesitate to refer to the 'organisation of the
proletarians into class, and hence into a political party'12 as a further stage of this same development. It is in this context as well that Marx and Engels reach the
conclusion that the bourgeoisie not only produces its gravediggers (the proletarians), but also furnishes them with all the necessary theoretical and political weapons for
fighting capitalism.13
Consequently, according to Marx's (and Engels's) analysis as expounded especially in the first part of the Manifesto, it is only through the function of a certain 'cunning
of production' that the workmen, who are a mere 'appendage to the machine',14 become finally the vanguard of the forthcoming social revolution. It is only on the
ground of the 'cunning of [bourgeois] production' that can be plausibly argued that 'Workers, pressed together en masse in a factory . . . become common footsoldiers
of industry under the command of a full hierarchy of officers and commanders',15 become at the end the pioneers of a selfconscious, criticalthinking and independent
movement.16 In short, the

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'cunning of production' proves to be the mediating term, by which Marx (and Engels) attempted to overcome the contradiction among the slavelike condition of the
proletariat and its selfconscious historical activity as conceived and presented in the Manifesto.
The 'Cunning of Production' and the Dialectic of the Proletarian Revolution
It has been argued that in the pages of the Manifesto 'we hear the authentic tones of Condorcet'. 17 If this estimation is accurate, it must be admitted that the whole
text expresses an evolutionist, unilinear and optimistic conception of history, according to which the proletariat itself, that is, the social vanguard of the forthcoming
revolution, is compelled to function as a mere instrument in the service of the innate laws of history. In order to check the validity of this argument, however, it is worth
returning to the key position of the Manifesto, that is, 'the bourgeoisie produces its own gravediggers'.
What is the real meaning of this 'illuminating, but problematic analogy', as Balibar has called it?18 As I have already suggested, the 'cunning of production' affects not
only the objective basis, but also the subjective formation of the proletarian class; otherwise the victory of the proletariat could not be considered inevitable, as Marx
(and Engels) argued in the last lines of the first part of the Manifesto. In other words, if 'it is always the bad side that in the end triumphs over the good side [in
history]'19 there must be, indeed, an 'irreducible minimum', as far as the proletarian selfestrangement is concerned, 'from which the revolutionary practice of the
collective worker in its turn starts out'.20
Actually, due to the function of the 'cunning of production', as presupposed in the Manifesto, this 'irreducible minimum' is necessarily transformed into a revolutionary
consciousness and practice. It is, in fact, the innate logic of the capitalist production that guarantees the transcendence of the workers' estrangement and makes
alienation, as Mészáros suggests, an 'inherently dynamic concept: a concept that necessarily implies change'.21
The crucial question that I would like to raise at this point, however, is whether and in what sense the 'cunning of production' is really compatible with a philosophical
approach to history based on the concept of possibility: needless to say, the overall importance of this question as regards the Marxian theory of revolution transcends
the textual limits of the Manifesto. Following Ellen Meiksins Wood, for example,
If what we are dealing with is not teleology but history, then the relevant category in characterizing the socialist project is not inevitability, not inescapability, not 'entelechy', not
promise, but precisely possibility.22

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Nevertheless, it is exactly the category of possibility, as the opposite of inevitability, which is deleted from the pages of the Manifesto. On the other hand, the fact that,
as Wood points out, Marx focuses his analysis on 'the specificity of capitalism' 23 does not necessarily mean that his approach to the proletarian revolution is not
deterministic. The specificity of capitalism, at least in the context of the Manifesto, lies exactly in the fact that the bourgeoisie prepares unconsciously and unwittingly,
that is, through the 'cunning of production', its own inevitable fall and the inevitable victory of the proletariat.
From this point of view, as I am going to argue, the Marxian dialectic of the proletarian revolution deals with the freedom/necessity relation in quasi Hegelian terms.
The proletariat, the collective representative of the bad side of history, has no other choice than to fight capitalism and bring 'the prehistory of mankind' to its end. This
is indeed a deterministic conception of history, since freedom in the positive sense of the term, that is freedom in the sense of autonomy, is supposed to be the
unavoidable outcome of a longrun historical and, in the last analysis, economic necessity; but it is also an optimistic view, since history, although advances by its bad
side, advances inevitably towards communism.
If the proletariat [write Marx and Engels], necessarily unites as a class in its struggle against the bourgeoisie, makes itself into a ruling class through revolution, and as a ruling
class forcibly transforms the old relations of production, then it will transform, along with these relations of production, the underlying conditions for class conflict and for classes
in general, hence its own supremacy as a class.24
Hence, as far as the Manifesto is concerned, the question magnificently raised by Balibar, whether there is a third path for a Marxist dialectic between Hegel's
optimism and Benjamin's melancholy,25 must be answered as follows: without any sense of melancholy, Marx (and Engels) endorsed an optimistic view of history,
grounded on the 'cunning of production', which necessarily provides not only the objective, but also the subjective elements for the communist society.
From Cunning to Possibility and from Hegel's Logic to the Communist Manifesto
According to Hegel's Logic 'actuality is first of all Possibility'.26 Nevertheless, Hegel's category of possibility is not the opposite of necessity; on the contrary,
'necessity has been defined, and rightly so, as the union of possibility and actuality'.27 Consequently, it is worth pointing out a distinction between a Hegelian type of
possibility, as defined above, and a liberal freechoice type of possibility, in the sense of the selection of one among other (possible)

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alternatives. It is on the ground of this distinction that it becomes more evident how the German philosopher deals with the necessity/freedom dialectic not only in the
field of logic, but in that of history as well.
Necessity [says Hegel] is often called hard, and rightly so, if we keep only to necessity as such, i.e. to its immediate shape [. . .] But, as we have seen already the process of
necessity is so directed that it overcomes the rigid externality which it first had and reveals its inward nature . . . In this way necessity is transfigured into freedom—not the
freedom that consists in abstract negation, but freedom concrete and positive. From which we may learn what a mistake it is to regard freedom and necessity as mutually exclusive.
Necessity indeed, qua necessity, is far from being freedom: yet freedom presupposes necessity, and contains it as an unsubstantial element in itself. 28
From this Hegelian point of view, therefore, and as far as history is concerned, possibility means the maturation of the conditions for the transition of the Idea to the
next stage of its necessary development, the final end of which is freedom itself. It is exactly this Hegelian concept of possibility—and not possibility as the opposite of
inevitability—which is organically linked to that of cunning and materialistically transferred to the pages of the Manifesto.29 In this context, it is indeed plausible to
argue that the 'free development of each is the condition for the free development of all'30 is the inevitable/necessary outcome of the world history dialectic. In this
sense, 'the truth of necessity is, therefore, Freedom'.31
At this point, let me return once again to the haunting question, an answer to which lies in the pages of the Manifesto: is there an alternative to inevitability and chance,
to determinism and contingency, as far as a Marxian theory of revolution is concerned?
We are not obliged [insists Wood] to accept a Manichean choice between determinism and contingency. The real alternative to both is history . . . I do actually think that 'history
is on our side'—but not in the sense that socialism has been inscribed in the inexorable laws of progress since the dawn of history, or that its coming is inevitable. For me, it is
more a matter of the historically specific and unique possibilities and tensions created by capitalism which have put socialism on the agenda and produced the conditions for
bringing it about.32
Unfortunately, however, for the defender of this argument, the choice between determinism and contingency was rather Hegelian and Marxian than Manichean. Hegel
himself confronted the dilemma and solved it in the direction of determinism. From their part, Marx and Engels followed the same path, while writing the Manifesto. In
the context of the Manifesto, history is not the real alternative to determinism; on the contrary, determinism—and more specifically economic determinism —is the
way history marches towards its inevitable outcome, that is towards communism. Does this mean that men are the passive

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elements of history? Not exactly. Men actually do make their history, 'but they do not make it just as they please', 33 wrote Marx a few years after the Manifesto.
Men will finally reach the realm of freedom, but only through their struggle within the realm of necessity.
The rational [argues Hegel], as the substance of things, is necessary, and we are free in so far as we recognise it as law and follow it as the substance of our own being; the
objective and the subjective will are then reconciled, forming a single, undivided whole.34
In the language of the Manifesto, this means that the proletarians reach freedom in so far as they recognise communism as a historical necessity and confront it as the
'real possibility' of their own actuality. In other words, the proletarians reach freedom as long as they transcend their class existence or when their subjective will, being
expressed as a selfconscious revolutionary movement, meets with the objective/innate laws of history. Therefore, I do insist that Marx and Engels's communism as
conceived in the Manifesto is not a matter of a quasi liberal freechoice possibility; it is rather the materialist transfiguration of the Hegelian freedom/necessity dialectic.
Hence, to face socialism as a possible alternative to barbarism, an alternative, the materialisation of which depends upon the proletariat's free choice or decision, is not
compatible with Marx's way of dealing with the proletarian revolution, at least in the context of the Manifesto. Luxemburg's reference to the dilemma of world
history—socialism or barbarism—the solution of which is supposed to depend upon the proletariat's decision,35 is in contradiction with the quasi Hegelian logic of the
Manifesto. Cunning and possibility, these fundamental categories of Hegel's logic and philosophy of history, play such a crucial role in the whole construction of the
text, that we may plausibly guess that Marx could have used Hegel's words in order to defend his own determinism against his followers and adversaries as well.
Necessity is blind only so long as it is not understood. There is nothing therefore more mistaken than the charge of blind fatalism made against the Philosophy of History, when it
takes for its problem to understand the necessity of every event.36
It was not the aim of this chapter to discuss whether or not Marx and Engels's deterministic version of history as expounded in the Manifesto has been annuled
nowadays; as regards, however, the philosophical origin and content of this determinism, the concept of cunning in its materialist transfiguration as a 'cunning of
production' definitely shows that the link between Hegel's necessity/freedom dialectic and the Marxian theory of the proletarian revolution proves to be rather resistant,
at least within the textual limits of the Manifesto.

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Notes
1. The locus classicus of Kant's 'cunning of nature', although Kant did not use the term, is the fourth thesis of his 'Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan
Point of View'; as regards Hegel's 'cunning of reason', see Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Introduction: Reason in History.
2. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 217.
3. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Introduction (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 89.
4. Ibid., p. 74.
5. F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, in K. Marx and F. Engels, C.W., Vol. 26, p. 387.
6. I. Mészáros, Beyond Capital (London, The Merlin Press, 1995), p. 446.
7. Ibid.
8. Manifesto, p. 16.: 'The continual transformation of production, the uninterrupted convulsion of all social conditions, a perpetual uncertainty and motion distinguish
the epoch of the bourgeoisie from all earlier ones . . . Everything feudal and fixed goes up in smoke, everything sacred is profaned, and men are finally forced to take a
downtoearth view of their circumstances, their multifarious relationships.'
10. For Hegel's concept of passion, in relation to what Marx says about the bourgeoisie and the pursuit of its particular interest, see G. H. R. Parkinson, 'Hegel, Marx
and the Cunning of Reason', Philosophy, Vol. 64, No. 249, July 1989, p. 301.
12. Ibid., p. 21.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., p. 19.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., pp. 23ff.
17. E. Voegelin, 'The Formation of the Marxian Revolutionary Idea', in The Review of Politics, Vol. 12, No. 3, July 1950, p. 297.
18. E. Balibar, The Philosophy of Marx (London, Verso, 1995), p. 95.
19. K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, in C.W., vol. 6, p. 174; italics added.
20. Balibar, The Philosophy of Marx, p. 101.
21. I. Mészáros, Marx's Theory of Alienation (London, The Merlin Press, 1972), p. 181.
22. E. Meiksins Wood, Democracy against Capitalism (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 144.
23. Ibid., pp. 1247, 13540.
25. Balibar, The Philosophy of Marx, p. 99.
26. Hegel, Logic (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 202.
27. Ibid., p. 208.
28. Ibid., p. 220.
29. In defence of the argument that Hegel's and Marx's approaches to cunning converge, see: Parkinson, 'Hegel, Marx and the Cunning of Reason', pp. 287302.

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31. Hegel's Logic, p. 220.
32. Wood, Democracy against Capitalism, p. 145.
33. K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in C. W., Vol. 11, p. 103. (The text here retains the sexist language of the original.)
34. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, p. 97.
35. R. Luxemburg, 'The Junius Pamphlet', in M.A. Waters (ed.), Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (New York, Pathfinder Press, 1970), p. 269: 'This is the dilemma of
world history, [socialism or barbarism], its inevitable choice, whose scales are trembling in the balance awaiting the decision of the proletariat. Upon it depends the
future of culture and humanity' (italics added).
36. Hegel, Logic, p. 209.

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Chapter 7
Revolution? Reaction? Revolutionary Reaction?
Mark Neocleous
On 14 July 1789 the Duke de La RochefoucauldLiancourt gave Louis XVI the news of the fall of the Bastille. 'C'est une révolte', cried the King. 'Non, Sire,'
RochefoucauldLiancourt corrected him, 'c'est une révolution.' Debates in the two centuries since have focused on the nature of the event to which the King and the
Duke were referring, the place of the storming of the Bastille in the French Revolution and, following that, the place of the French Revolution in modern history. This
focus has obscured the fact that in describing the event in this way the Duke was using the word 'revolution' in a very modern sense. The King thought that the fall of
the Bastille was part of a revolt, requiring only a reassertion of his authority as king to quash it. The Duke was informing the King that what had happened was
irreversible and thus beyond the power of the King. 1 In describing the event as a revolution RochefoucauldLiancourt was implying that reversal of the event was
impossible: it had a forward movement rather than a cyclical one.
The point is crucial for understanding the way Marx and Engels use the concept of revolution and, concomitantly, the concept of reaction in the Manifesto. Relatedly,
the point is also important in getting to grips with the way the word 'revolution' has been used to describe events which we might also wish to describe as reactionary,
namely fascism.
Fascism presents itself as a revolutionary doctrine and its seizure of power as a revolution. Mussolini and Gentile insisted that fascism is revolutionary, and leading
Nazis referred to their movement as revolutionary and the regime itself as constituting a national or national socialist revolution.2 Many commentators have taken these
claims at face value, although there is little agreement about the actual nature of the revolution: in some cases it refers to fascist ideology, in others to the seizure of
power, while in yet others it is taken to refer to a social revolution said to have occurred in Italy and Germany once power had been seized. Nazism, for example, has
been variously described a 'revolution of nihilism', a social revolution and a revolution of destruction.3 The barely suppressed political premise behind such claims is
clear: they function as a criticism of Marxist arguments that fascism is a reactionary movement and thus

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by definition counterrevolutionary; this then allows liberal and conservative writers to place fascism and Marxism under the same political banner of 'revolutionary
politics'.
One of the difficulties faced by anyone dealing with the question of the 'revolutionary' nature of fascism is that they enter what has been called a 'semantic minefield', in
which associated concepts such as 'reactionary' and 'counterrevolution' only add to the dangers. 4 The minefield is made more hazardous by fascist ideology itself:
fascists happily describe themselves as conservative, reactionary and revolutionary. Mussolini, for example, describes fascism in any language he finds useful. Fascists
can be 'aristocrats and democrats, revolutionaries and reactionaries, proletarians and antiproletarians, pacifists and antipacifists'.5 How can we get to grips with the
problem this minefield poses? Rather than give up the use of concepts such as revolution and counterrevolution, as some suggest,6 in this chapter I shall argue that in
the Manifesto Marx and Engels supply us with some of the conceptual tools for understanding the revolutionary and the reactionary nature of political phenomena, in
two ways. First, in their appreciation of the difference between the social and the political dynamics of revolution and, second, in their account of reactionary socialism.
In the case of the latter I shall indicate limitations in the Manifesto but suggest that despite these limitations Marx and Engels's overall theoretical framework retains its
critical edge. In other words, I am pointing to the power of the Manifesto as the basis for a contemporary interpretation of fascism.
The Bourgeoisie Has Played a Highly Revolutionary Role in History
The Manifesto is a text about revolution; it is also a text for revolution. But the kind of revolution it is for is not necessarily the same kind of revolution as it is about. In
the historic struggles that end 'with a revolutionary transformation of society as a whole, or with the common ruin of the contending classes',7 only one class can be the
revolutionary class. In the context of presentday capitalism this class is the proletariat. Yet in 1848 the class that had been the most revolutionary was the bourgeoisie:
'The bourgeoisie has played a highly revolutionary role in history',8 a few words which Marx and Engels grant the status of a paragraph of their own. What is this
revolutionary role? And what does it tell us about the bourgeois class?
To answer these questions we need to adopt Marx and Engels's distinction between political and social revolutions, in which the former represents a transformation of
political power relations and the latter a transformation in the socioeconomic relations of production. In the Manifesto Marx and Engels write that 'the modern
bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long process of development, a series of revolutions in the modes of production and exchange',

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every step of which 'was accompanied by a corresponding political advance', 9 and elsewhere they utilise the same sort of distinction. In his critique of Bakunin, for
example, Marx objects to Bakunin's understanding of the political but not the social phrases of the revolution.10 This distinction plays on the related distinction
between political emancipation and social or human emancipation: a political revolution with some emancipatory content need not necessarily result in social
emancipation.
One way to further refine this distinction is to think of revolution as both process and moment. While for Marx and Engels the English revolution of the seventeenth
century and the French Revolution of 1789 are regarded as revolutionary moments, their overall concern is with the long process by which capitalist relations of
production come to dominate. It is for this reason that their work is replete with references to an 'era of social revolution'. The advantage of this distinction is that
rather than identifying bourgeois revolution as a specific seizure of political power by one class, it instead treats the bourgeois revolution as a long, slow and often
'silent' process through which the property relations of the capitalist mode of production gradually place their stamp on human relations. Within this process one can
then identify moments of political rupture or crisis in which relations of political power and authority undergo substantial transformation. This means distinguishing
between the revolution as a specific crisis of the state resulting in a reconstitution of political structures, institutions and relationships, and revolution as a deeper
process of social and economic transformation.11 On this reading the French Revolution of 1789 was a key political moment in the socioeconomic process of
bourgeois revolution in France.
It is not insignificant that in the Manifesto Marx and Engels treat of the process of bourgeois revolution rather than key political moments. After describing the
bourgeoisie as playing a most revolutionary part they move on to describe not moments of crisis and seizures of political power but the revolutionary transformation in
social relations wrought by the bourgeoisie once it has the upper hand: it has torn asunder motley feudal ties, stripped every occupation of its halo, torn the sentimental
veil from the family, all in the name of the cash nexus.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, hence the relations of production, and therefore social relations as a whole [ . . . ]
The continual transformation of production, uninterrupted convulsion of all social conditions, a perpetual uncertainty and motion distinguish the epoch of the bourgeoisie from all
earlier ones.12
This process of constant revolutionising in turn creates the possibility of a further, communist revolution. The productive forces at the disposal of society have become
too powerful for bourgeois conditions, which serve to fetter these

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forces. 'Bourgeois relations have become too narrow to encompass the wealth they produce.' 13 The bourgeois class has thus produced the weapons to be used
against it and called into being another class to wield these weapons—the proletariat. Thus, according to Marx and Engels, communism exists as a potential within
bourgeois society. As well as overthrowing feudalism, then, the bourgeois class plays a most revolutionary part by creating the conditions which contain the possibility
of abundance and for bringing into being the new revolutionary class.14
What can the bourgeoisie do, faced with this fact? In many ways Marx and Engels address this question only in passing: all the bourgeoisie can do is pave the way for
more extensive and destructive crises15 or, as the hour of revolution approaches, part of it may go over to the proletariat.16 Both these possibilities suggest that the
bourgeoisie can only continue to play a revolutionary part either by carrying on the process of capitalist production or by shifting their class allegiance. This would
appear to imply two things. First, that once the bourgeois class has achieved political power in support of its social domination it is no longer politically revolutionary.
That is, since it has no need of a political revolution in defence of capitalism it will no longer defend political revolution of any type. Thus when Engels writes elsewhere
that 'the bourgeois is revolutionary until he himself rules',17 he is referring to the absence in the bourgeois class of any desire either for political revolution or for a
communist transformation of property relations. Once it has conquered social and political power the bourgeois class ceases to be politically revolutionary and
becomes instead the class of political order. Second, the text seems to imply that confronted by the possibility of a communist revolution the bourgeois class does little
more than carry on regardless, doing nothing to stop it.
The twentieth century has of course produced myriad examples of how the bourgeois class has introduced reforms into its system which have assisted in maintaining
capitalism. But what if capitalism could, in the face of the communist threat, be sustained through a politically but not socially revolutionary transformation? This, I
suggest, is one way to understand fascism.
Fascism's seizure of power in Germany and Italy was a reaction to the crises of the state and threat of communist revolution. In both Italy and Germany the failure of
the existing political elites and institutions to overcome economic crisis and what was taken to be national degeneration created an opening for an authoritarian
intervention. Whether this constituted a political revolution in Germany is open to debate—the old political elites continued to exist alongside the new Nazi elites and
key institutions such as the civil service and the army retained a large degree of autonomy—but let us concede that the Nazi destruction of the Weimar constitution and
the liberal democratic institutions it embodied did constitute a political revolution. That it did not also constitute a social revolution is clear: the class structure remained
more or less intact. In the

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case of Italy one may wish to describe the seizure of power as a revolutionary political moment, but thereafter the regime had no longterm revolutionary effect on the
social structure. Obviously some degree of social transformation was achieved in the attempt at instituting totalitarianism—the fascists managed to usurp mafia power
bases for example—but at no point did the regime undermine the real class structure then in existence. The fascist regimes should therefore be understood as new
authoritarian political defences of the capitalist social order. It is for this reason that the Nazis saw the seizure of political power as the completion of the revolution
(Hitler) or the last stage of a revolutionary act (Goebbels), and that as early as 1924 Mussolini was describing the fascist 'revolution' at an end.
The reason for this is clear: fascism sets itself against the possibility of a communist revolution. The fascist political revolution is the alternative to social revolution. The
stress in fascism studies on the 'primacy of politics' has obscured our understanding of the continued existence of structures of social domination in fascist regimes. By
focusing on fascism as politically revolutionary, fascism studies have obscured the extent to which it is also socially counterrevolutionary. The double meaning of
Hitler's description of himself as a revolutionary against the revolution—on the one hand it was a revolution against the revolution of 1918 (and thus also the October
revolution of the previous year), on the other hand it was a political revolution to block any future communist revolution—reveals that the fascist revolution has an
essentially conservative and reactionary nature. To the extent that it facilitates capital accumulation and crushes workers' organisations fascism reveals itself,
regardless of its revolutionary rhetoric, as a form of conservative revolution, an essentially reactionary political phenomenon in defence of capitalism. 18 But then what
does it mean to describe a political phenomena as both revolutionary and reactionary? What is a conservative revolution? I shall answer these questions through a
critique of the way such concepts are used in the Manifesto.
The Bourgeoisie Has also Played a Highly Reactionary Role in History
In the Manifesto Marx and Engels use the concept of reaction as a label to designate the politics of particular classes, writers or movements. Of the classes identified
by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto the lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant are all distinguished from the bourgeoisie
on the grounds that they fight against the bourgeoisie to save themselves from extinction. Yet they are also distinguished from the proletariat. 'Hence they are not
revolutionary, but conservative. Moreover they are reactionary for they seek to turn back the tide of history.'19 The category which Marx and Engels oppose to
'revolutionary' is 'conservative'. As a non

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revolutionary politics conservatism seeks to maintain the status quo, albeit with piecemeal reforms. 'Reactionary', which appears in Marx and Engels's formulation as a
third term distinguishable from both 'revolutionary' and 'conservative', is taken to be a backwardlooking phenomena. These distinctions between revolutionary,
conservative and reactionary determine their understanding of other forms of socialism, which are divided in the Manifesto into 'Reactionary Socialism' and
'Conservative Socialism'. (I shall leave aside the nature of utopian socialism.)
The defining characteristic of reactionary socialism is its desire to restore past social forms. One type of reactionary socialism is 'feudal socialism', which, as 'half echo
of the past, half menace of the future' 20 holds up past forms of exploitation as somehow better than present. As such the feudal socialists often join forces with classes
for which feudalism was most suited, namely the landed aristocracy. The second type, 'pettybourgeois socialism' wishes to reinvigorate corporate guilds as the basis
for manufacture and therefore aims at 'restoring the traditional means of production and trade, and along with them traditional property relations and the traditional
society',21 The third type, 'German, or ''True'', Socialism' results in the tendency to obliterate theoretically the question of class in its concern for 'Human Nature' or
'Man'. In doing so it too is reactionary because it serves the class of philistines, the petty bourgeoisie. As Engels puts it in his work on the constitutional question in
Germany, written just a few months before publication of the Communist Manifesto: 'true socialism is reactionary through and through'.22
In contrast to reactionary socialism, conservative socialism aims more at the maintenance of existing property relations but without the revolutionary potential within
them. It therefore seeks a reform of the mechanisms by which bourgeois property is administered. Rather than propose a radical rejection of modern conditions on the
basis of a reactionary return to feudal or semifeudal social structures, conservative socialism prefers to contemplate the possibility of 'existing society with the
exception of the revolutionary elements bent on destroying it'. That is, they wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat.23 In this context it is worth noting that Marx
and Engels's heading for this section is 'Conservative, or Bourgeois, Socialism'.
Set against reactionary and conservative socialisms is communism, which, as the only doctrine with a vision of a future transformation of the social conditions of
bourgeois society into communist forms of property ownership, is the only revolutionary doctrine. This means that conservative and reactionary socialism, by seeking
either to maintain the status quo or to return to a mythical past, are counterrevolutionary phenomena.
On this basis it would appear that 'conservative' and 'revolution' are diametrically opposed concepts. Yet during the rise of fascism a group of writers emerged as
'conservative revolutionaries'. Popularised by Hugo von

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Hofmannsthal in his literary contribution to what he thought was an increasingly powerful political movement to create a spiritual unity out of a fragmented social order,
conservative revolution was considered a countermovement to both the general 'spiritual upheaval' of the nineteenth century and, more particularly, as a means of
articulating radical nationalist demands. 24 Edgar Jung describes conservative revolution as
the return to respect for all those elementary laws and values without which the individual is alienated from nature and God . . . In the place of equality comes the inner value of the
individual; in the place of socialist convictions, the just integration of people into their place in a society of rank; in place of mechanical selection, the organic growth of
leadership; in place of bureaucratic compulsion, the inner responsibility of genuine selfgovernance; in place of mass happiness, the rights of the personality formed by the
nation.25
Conservative revolutionaries, then, set themselves against liberal democracy and, more importantly, the communist revolutionary potential within liberal democracy.
The language used—the organic, rank, the nation—is essentially conservative, but a society based on such values is to be achieved via a revolutionary movement. The
values driving such a revolution are thus formed in opposition to communist revolution. Arthur Moeller van den Bruck once described the German revolution of 1918
as 'a revolution with no enthusiasm' and he begins The Third Reich (1922) by insisting on the need for a successful revolution, one with the collective national spirit of
1914 and which would be brought about by those who would not stab the army in the back, give in to Germany's enemies and turn its back on German values and
culture.26 Rather than a transformation of the material conditions of exploitation and the structures of social domination, the revolution would be in German culture, an
essentially spiritual revolution for the nation—a 'revolution from the right' as Hans Freyer called it.27
In arguing for the reassertion of the nation and national pride via a strengthening of state power against the competing groups and social forces within civil society, the
conservative revolutionaries—including Moeller, Hofmannsthal, Jung, Freyer, Ernst Jünger and Carl Schmitt—formed the intellectual vanguard of the right in Germany
during the crisis of democracy there and provided intellectual justification for the undermining of the Weimar Republic.28 Fascism appropriated the central themes
articulated by the conservative revolutionaries, radicalised them and put them into practice. And this applies to fascism beyond its German frontiers: even before the
march on Rome Mussolini was claiming that one could be both revolutionary and conservative.29
Yet fascism is also reactionary through and through. One of its defining characteristics, which it shares with the conservative revolutionaries, is a

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nostalgic lamentation for and desire to return to past values (despite its positive appreciation of modernity and technology). This is captured in fascism's glorification of
the (mythic) past. Its espousal of 'traditional' values constitutes an attempt to rethink the fundamental problems of politics through medieval or ancient concepts—hence
its appropriation of a symbolic bricabrac from the past, such as medieval costumes and pageants and the Roman goosestep—and its political revolution is an
attempt to restructure modern society on the basis of past forms of order. For fascism, then, the revolution is to be a form of return or rebirth. Roger Griffen has
identified this as the palingenetic moment in fascist ideology. Etymologically 'palingenetic' derives from palin (again, anew) and genesis (creation, birth). This captures
both the backwardlooking nostalgia and desire to restore the glories of the past in the future, via some form of political transformation. 30 The fascist revolution is
therefore a form of future restoration of a past order.
The concept of revolution now implies a forward and progressive motion; this is how it is understood in the Manifesto. But the 'pathos of novelty' (as Arendt dubs it)
associated with revolution did not become central to the meaning of the word until the late eighteenth century. Originally 'revolution' was an astronomical term used to
describe the regular revolution of the stars. It gained increasing importance in the natural sciences through Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. In
other words, 'revolution' originally referred to a cyclical movement. Even when the word was first used as a political term it referred to a revolving back to a pre
established point. Revolutions of the seventeenth century were thus intended to be restorations—in the context of the English revolution the word was first used in
1660 with the restoration of the monarchy—and both the American and the French revolutions were fought for in their initial stages partly by men who were firmly
convinced that they would do no more than restore an old order of things. John Locke's understanding of revolution is of a restoration of natural liberty against a
tyrannical authority. By the late eighteenth century the term undergoes a shift in meaning. Although some writers in this period equivocate between different ways of
understanding the term—despite his praise of revolutionary progress in the Rights of Man (17912), for example, Tom Paine still occasionally describes the French
and American revolutions as counterrevolutions, since they restored rights and liberties which tyranny has taken away—the assumption of forward progression and
irreversibility found in RochefoucauldLiancourt's comment with which this chapter opened had become the norm.31
On this reading we can say that the fascist use of the concept of revolution is essentially premodern: it sees revolution as part of a cyclical movement of eternal
recurrence rather than forward progression. Yet the desire to restore past forms of order is identified by Marx and Engels as the constitutive moment of reactionary
politics; given their understanding of revolution it is clear for them that

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reactionary politics can never be revolutionary. 32 Fascism's understanding of revolution is thus diametrically opposed to the concept of revolution in the Manifesto.
Its politically revolutionary moment is an attempt at restoring the supposed wonders of a premodern order, albeit in the radically altered conditions of modern
capitalism.
In this sense fascism is, in the language of the Manifesto, both reactionary and politically revolutionary. Like conservative revolution, fascism is a form of
revolutionary reaction. It mobilises the mass—rather than the class—but the revolution the mass is mobilised for is not a historically progressive movement against
private property, but a historically reactionary movement against liberal democracy and communism and in defence of private property. Marx and Engels had no way
of theorising this in the Manifesto, nor did they have any need to, since they had no historical example of such a movement. Yet their reading of reactionary socialism
indicates an understanding that some political forces could seek to mobilise the working class in a counterrevolutionary move. Even though they did recognise
reactionary socialism to be 'halfmenace of the future' as much as 'half echo of the past', they could barely begin to grasp the horrors that would come when reactionary
forces gathered a politically revolutionary momentum.
Notes
1. See Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York, Viking Press, 1965), p. 41.
2. See Giovanni Gentile, 'The Philosophic Basis of Fascism', Foreign Affairs, 6, 1928, pp. 290304, p. 299; Alfred Rosenberg, 'Totaler Staat?' (1934), in Alfred
Rosenberg: Selected Writings (London, Jonathan Cape, 1970), p. 191; Adolf Hitler, 'The National Socialist Revolution' (30 January 1937), in Bruce Mazlish,
Arthur Kaledin and David Ralston (eds), Revolution: A Reader (New York, Macmillan, 1971), pp. 47085.
3. Hermann Rauschning, The Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West, trans. E. W. Dickes (New York, Alliance Book Corporation, 1939); David
Schoenbaum, Hitler's Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany 19331939 (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967); Ralf Dahrendorf, Society
and Democracy in Germany (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), pp. 40218. Also see Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary
Germans and the Holocaust (London, Little, Brown and Co., 1996), pp. 173, 45563. On fascism and revolution in more general terms see Noel O'Sullivan,
Fascism (London, Dent, 1983), p. 39; Roger Griffen, The Nature of Fascism (London, Routledge, 1993), p. 48; George Mosse, 'Introduction: Towards a General
Theory of Fascism', in George Mosse (ed.), International Fascism: New Thoughts and New Approaches (London, Sage, 1979), pp. 5, 36.
4. Jeremy Noakes, 'Nazism and Revolution', in Noel O'Sullivan (ed.), Revolutionary Theory and Political Reality (Brighton, Wheatsheaf, 1983), p. 73; Ian
Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation (London, Edward Arnold, 1989), p. 132.

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5. Cited in Franz Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism (London, Victor Gollanz, 1942), p. 378, from Mussolini's 'Relativismo
e Fascismo'.
6. Eugen Weber, 'Revolution? CounterRevolution? What Revolution?', in Walter Laqueur (ed.), Fascism: A Reader's Guide (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1979), pp.
488531. The title of my chapter is a play on Weber's title, just as the argument in the chapter is partly a response to Weber's argument.
10. Karl Marx, 'Conspectus of Bakunin's Statism and Anarchy', in The First International and After (Harmondsworth, Penguin in association with New Left
Review, 1974), p. 334.
11. For useful examples of similar approaches see David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in
NineteenthCentury Germany (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1984), and Paul Ginsborg, 'Gramsci and the Era of Bourgeois Revolution in Italy', J. A. Davis
(ed.), Gramsci and Italy's Passive Revolution (London, Croom Helm, 1979). I have developed this argument at greater length in Administering Civil Society:
Towards a Theory of State Power (London, Macmillan, 1996), ch. 4.
17. Frederick Engels, 'The Constitutional Question in Germany' (1847), C.W., Vol. 6, pp. 7591, p. 80.
18. A longer version of this argument can be found in Mark Neocleous, Fascism (Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1997).
22. Engels, 'The Constitutional Question in Germany', p. 77. See also Engels's essay on 'The True Socialists', written as part of The German Ideology, in which
Engels is at pains to identify the reactionary political tendency at the heart of true socialism. C.W., Vol. 5, p. 556.
24. Hugo von Hofmannsthal, 'Literature as the Spiritual Space of the Nation' (1927), in Anton Kaes, Martin Jay and Edward Dimendberg (eds), The Weimar
Republic Sourcebook (California, University of California Press, 1994), p. 341.
25. Edgar J. Jung, 'Germany and the Conservative Revolution' (1932), in Kaes et al. (eds), Weimar Republic Sourcebook, p. 352.
26. See Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (New York, Doubleday and Co., 1965), pp. 275, 313.
27. Hans Freyer, 'Revolution from the Right' (1931), in Kaes et al. (eds), Weimar Republic Sourcebook, pp. 3478.
28. Walter Struve, Elites Against Democracy: Leadership Ideals in Bourgeois Political Thought, 18901933 (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1973),
p. 227. For an

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account of how the work of one conservative revolutionary—Carl Schmitt—is developed partly from an understanding of Italian fascism and then used to
legitimise Nazism, see Mark Neocleous, 'Friend or Enemy? Reading Schmitt Politically', Radical Philosophy, 79, 1996, pp. 1323.
29. Cited in Weber, 'Revolution? CounterRevolution? What Revolution?', p. 523.
30. Griffin, Nature of Fascism, pp. 326, 735.
31. Arendt, On Revolution, pp. 27, 3540. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (London, Dent, 1924), Book II, Chapter XIX. Tom Paine, Rights of Man
(Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1971), p. 183.
32. However, the question of the possibility of reactionary politics becoming revolutionary was one of the many questions which Marx and Engels continually came
back to, but never at great enough length. See, for example Marx's letter to Ferdinand Lassalle, about 2 June 1860, where he describes David Urquhart as
'subjectively reactionary' but adds that this 'in no way precludes the movement . . . of which he is the head from being objectively revolutionary'. C.W., Vol 41, p.
153.

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PART 3
THE ROLE OF THE WORKING CLASS

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Chapter 8
The Communist Manifesto and Workingclass Parties in Western Europe
Stuart WilksHeeg
Introduction
This chapter examines the relationship between the Communist Manifesto and the subsequent development of workingclass parties in Western Europe. The first half
of the chapter shows how both the formation of social democratic and labour parties and the development of their early programmes were significantly influenced by
the Manifesto. Even the young British Labour Party, which is widely felt to have developed without notable Marxist influence, owed considerable debt to the
Manifesto. However, as will also be shown, these workingclass parties increasingly pursued a reformist road rather than playing the revolutionary role apparently
assigned to them in the Communist Manifesto. In the second half of the chapter the reasons for the 'failure' of workingclass parties to act as the key organisational
agent in the overthrow of capitalism are examined. It is argued that paradoxically the Manifesto itself was central in setting workers on a reformist road, particularly as
it was interpreted fortyfive years later by Karl Kautsky in his (1892) book The Class Struggle. Moreover, through a brief consideration of Eduard Bernstein's
critique of Kautsky's orthodox Marxism, it is proposed that some of the reasons why workingclass parties did not maintain their revolutionary character can also be
found within the text of the Manifesto.
The Communist Manifesto, Proletarian Organisation and Workers' Parties
The central theme of the Manifesto is that the development and growth of industrial capitalism creates the conditions for a class struggle, in which an expanding and
exploited working class unites to overthrow the capitalist system of production. According to Marx and Engels, the growth of capitalism and its downfall are part of an
unalterable historical process of class struggle, in which the bourgeoisie must seek the advance of industrial capitalism and the proletariat must seek and, moreover,
must obtain its destruction.

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Industrial progress, involuntarily and irresistibly promoted by the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the workers through competition with their revolutionary unity through
close association. The development of largescale industry pulls from under the feet of the bourgeoisie the very foundations on which they produce goods and appropriate them.
Above all it produces its own gravediggers. Its downfall and the victory of the proletariat are equally unavoidable.' 1
However, the overthrow of the capitalist system is not, of course, expected to occur spontaneously; workers must first organise themselves as a class, driven by their
common interest in ending their own exploitation. While the selfcontradictory structures of the capitalist economic system would ultimately bring about its own
destruction, it was nonetheless necessary that the agent of its destruction, the working class, mobilise to push capitalism into its final demise. In the Manifesto, Marx
and Engels therefore point to the vital importance of the emergence of organisations formed by the proletariat to challenge the capitalist class. In the first place, Marx
and Engels observed, these organisations took the form of trade unions, whose main task was to maintain and increase workers' wage levels. Ultimately, however,
they saw that the process through which workers would become organised as a class would lead them to form political parties. The formation of workingclass parties
was essential since the proletariat was compelled to organise around a programme of action broader than protecting its wage levels, in short: 'every class struggle is a
political struggle'.2
Hence, while the Manifesto clearly stated that the victory of the proletariat would prove to be an inevitable outcome of the structural development of capitalism, it was
also the source of the most dominant subsequent assumption within the labour movement: that the workingclass would have to be organised and political parties
would be essential agents in the workers' struggle to gain power and transform capitalist societies. This tension between structure and agency implicit in the Manifesto,
and omnipresent in Marxist literature thereafter, was to dominate debates within workingclass parties well into the twentieth century, and with good reason. Since
their formation, working class parties have not been able to simply wait for the collapse of capitalism before carrying out their inevitable historical role; in reality they
have had to make choices about how to carry out their role as actors in a fluid and changing political context.
To begin with, there was the issue of what exactly that role should be, a question which, initially at least, found only a partial answer in the Manifesto. Marx and
Engels made limited direct reference to the role of political parties and what the book does have to say on this issue is far from unambiguous. As a result, the
Manifesto's immediate influence on the formation of political parties was arguably secondary. Hence, the first recognisable workers' party, the Allgemeine

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Deutsche Arbeiterverein, established by Ferdinand Lassalle in 1863, did not draw its inspiration directly from Marx and Engels but rather from Lassalle himself. And
while Lassalle's thinking developed parallel to and partially in common with Marx's, the two also parted on a number of key issues, particularly regarding the role of
the state in the transition to socialism.
It was arguably not until after Marx's death in 1883 that the role of the Manifesto in shaping the direction of workingclass parties was to become evident. Prior to the
1880s it was probably the activities of the Manifesto's authors, particularly their own active engagement in the promotion of workers' parties, rather than the text itself,
which first established their ideas as central to the class struggle. Marx was a major inspiration behind the formation of the International Working Men's Association
(the First International) in 1864 while Engels was actively involved with the German social democrats (SPD) until his death in 1895. Hence, despite the influence of
Marx and Engels at the time of the formation of the SPD in 1875, the role which the first social democratic party assigned to itself remained somewhat antagonistic to
the analysis contained in the Manifesto. Accordingly, the infant party did not find immediate favour with Marx, who wrote a lengthy critique of the Gotha Programme,
which the party had adopted upon its foundation and which proposed that the state could be used to achieve the workers' objectives. 3 It was following Marx's death
that, largely through the active engagement of Engels, the SPD was to adopt in the Erfurt Programme of 1891, a programme which provided one of the purest
intellectual lineages from the Manifesto to the principles of a West European socialist party.
Thereafter, the early programmes of social democratic parties were centrally influenced by proposals advocated in the Manifesto. The historical caveats
notwithstanding, the central influence of the Manifesto on the subsequent formation and development of workingclass parties cannot be underestimated. The Erfurt
Programme founded the basis not only of the SPD's ideological and policy positions until as late as 1959, but was also a key influence on the early programmes of
several European social democratic parties. As the most dominant workers' party, the SPD's espousal of a programme which drew substantially on Marx and Engels's
text carried considerable significance. The SPD was not only the mother of European social democratic parties, it was also 'the cradle of Marxian social democracy'
and its influence on workingclass parties throughout Europe was substantial.4 When the first Dutch workers' party was formed in 1882, its programme was modelled
on the Gotha Programme and later, in 1894, when a new party, the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP), was formed, its programme was principally derived
from the Erfurt Programme.5 The inspirational role of the SPD was further reflected in the foundation of Marxist parties across Europe, for example, in the Socialist
Workers' Party of Spain (PSOE), established in 1879, and in the Socialist Party of Austria (SPÖ), which adopted a strongly Marxist orientation, heavily influenced

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by the SPD and expressed most clearly in the Linz Programme of 1926. Moreover, the SPD's influence heightened following the formation of the Second International
in 1889 after which the German socialists played a leading role in directing the course of European socialism, for instance prompting the formation of the Section
Française de L'Internationale Ouvrière in 1905, a party more loyal to Marxism than its predecessors in France. 6 By the late nineteenth century parties committed to
the establishment of a socialist order through revolutionary means could thus be found in almost every West European country.
The principal exception was Great Britain: when the Labour Representation Committee was founded in 1900 its main objective was precisely as its name suggested,
to gain political representation. Moreover, it has generally been assumed that the influence of the Manifesto on the British Labour Party, indeed of Marx in general,
was minimal. Accounts of the theoretical foundations of British socialism have for instance argued that it owed more to Methodism than to Marxism, or that for each
worker Marx and Engels brought to socialism, a further 50,000 were converted by the English socialist propagandist, Robert Blatchford.7 Historians have often
pointed to the fact that the Labour Party was formed primarily by the trade unions together with the Fabians, the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and the Social
Democratic Foundation (SDF). Of these groupings, only the SDF was overtly Marxist (and this as part of an eclectic mix which included support for British
imperialism) and its influence was anyway insignificant compared to powerful alliance of Labourism and Fabianism which came to dominate the party.8 Moreover, with
the exception of the ILP all of these constituent parts had been established before the Manifesto was common currency in the British labour movement (although an
English translation of the book did appear in 1850, it was not widely available until 1888). Hence, according to Padgett and Paterson, while the influence of Marxism
on the SPD was such that it 'dominated its ideological perspectives and permeated its early programmes' all that could be said of the British Labour Party was that
'Marxism made virtually no impression at all'.9
However, the view that the British Labour Party was theoretically uninformed by the Manifesto is simplistic for a number of reasons. As Ingle has noted, the influence
of Marx on the British Labour Party is rather more ambiguous than is commonly supposed. Elements of his writings appealed to a large number of British socialists,
including not only H. M. Hyndman, leader of the SDF, but also to William Morris and even to Fabians such as George Bernard Shaw.10 It is indeed possible to trace
this diffusion of Marxist ideas well into the twentieth century, ranging from the intellectual influence of Harold Laski, a leading member of the party's National Executive
Committee from 1937 to 1949, to the popular acclaim accorded to Robert Tressel's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.11 Nor did the British trade union
movement develop in total isolation from

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Marxist ideas. When Marx spoke at the launch of the International Working Men's Association in 1864 he was flanked by British trade union leaders, and a number
of prominent trade unionists after the 1880s such as John Burns and Tom Mann were strongly influenced by Marx. 12
While Labour's debt to the Manifesto was not widely declared, its subtle influence is detectable throughout the party's history. Consider, for instance, that among the
ten measures proposed by Marx and Engels for the period immediately following the acquisition of power by the working class are the following:
1. Expropriation of property in land and investment of rents in state enterprises.
2. A sharply progressive system of taxation.
3. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state.
4. Centralisation of all means of transport in the hands of the state.
5. Expansion of nationalised factories, instruments of production.
6. Free public education for all children.13
These measures are remarkably similar to the principles enshrined in Labour's 1918 constitution and in its policy document of the same year, Labour and the New
Social Order (though both were drafted by Sidney Webb, a renown antiMarxist). Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the principles accepted in 1918 were a
compromise between Marxian socialism, particularly as expressed in the Manifesto, and the piecemeal reformism of the Fabians.14 This compromise was to form the
basis for the policies which Labour advocated between the wars and which were implemented by the Labour government of 194551. Nor did Labour at this time
particularly seek to deny the influence of the Manifesto; in 1948 the Labour Party issued a centenary edition of the book with a preface by Laski indicating the
significance of the text to the British labour movement 100 years on. 15
Yet, while the initial development of socialist parties in Western Europe appeared to relate closely to the analysis contained in the Manifesto, later developments did
not lead in the direction which Marx and Engels supposed. Notwithstanding the rapid growth of workingclass parties from the latter part of the nineteenth century and
the clear lines of descent from Marx and Engels to the SPD and other European social democratic parties, these parties have not been the vehicle for the overthrow of
capitalism and the final victory of the proletariat. Instead, during the course of the twentieth century, the Marxist orientation of social democracy has progressively been
eroded, the most symbolic indicator of this erosion being the decision of the SPD at Bad Godesberg in 1959 to renounce its Marxist heritage and accept the structures
of the Federal Republic's social market economy. Similarly, in 1958 the SPÖ revised the Linz Programme and the Dutch SDAP became the Party of Labour

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(PvdA), signifying at the same time a departure from its earlier Marxist orientation.
The acceptance of reformism was not merely a postwar phenomenon. The official changes of the 1940s and 1950s were rather an acceptance of what had been the
actual practice of social democratic parties since the 1930s and even before. The Swedish Social Democratic Labour Party (SAP), the forerunner of social
democratic reformism, had completed this transition to reformist politics while in government from 1932 onwards. During this period, the SAP developed a reformist
programme underpinned by the conclusion of a class compromise and the use of protoKeynesian policies aimed at reducing unemployment. Under this compromise,
the labour movement accepted the maintenance of a capitalist economy in exchange for the commitment of employers to real wage growth and to redistributive social
policies. In due course, similar compromises and the adoption of Keynesian economics became the basis of social democratic politics first in the Scandinavian states
and then throughout Northern Europe. 16
From Revolutionary to Reformist Politics: The Paradoxical Role of the Communist Manifesto
One of the central challenges facing Marxists has therefore been to explain why the large, revolutionary workingclass parties which emerged in Europe at the end of
the nineteenth century did not lead the working class to overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism, as they had initially promised. Instead, social democratic
parties have largely chosen to follow a reformist road, tending, in one form or another, to follow the route of the Scandinavian class compromises of the 1930s.17
I wish to argue that rather than understanding the adoption of reformism as a development which stands in clear opposition to the revolutionary role outlined in the
Manifesto, there is in fact a direct linkage between the text of the Manifesto, and particularly the way in which the text was interpreted in the face of changing
circumstances, and the pursuit of reformist socialist policies. This linkage begins with the fact that, its influence notwithstanding, the Manifesto was a problematic basis
for socialist party foundations. In this regard, three main problems were evident. First, the Manifesto raised the question of to what extent the working class should be
organised at all. Opposing interpretations of the text created a tension between the notion of the organised proletariat as a transformatory agent and that of working
class organisations as a leading force in that transformation. Thus, it was not clear whether it was the role of the party to secure 'the formation of the proletariat into a
class', or if the proletariat should be left to 'organise itself as a class', as the Manifesto declared both. In other words, should the proletariat as a class be left to react

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spontaneously in response to its immiserisation or should it be directed by its representatives? Second, Marx and Engels's primary concern in 1848 had been the
organisation of the proletariat into a class and the Manifesto offered relatively little guidance as to what would happen beyond that point, that is, about what form that
organisation should take. Marx appeared to be supportive of a broad range of classmobilising movements, including trade unions, the cooperative movement and
political parties. 18 Third, while it was usually assumed that the Manifesto stressed that workingclass parties would play the leading role, it still was not clear what
that role would be. In the Manifesto it was simply advocated that the communists would not constitute a sectarian party and that they would always and everywhere
represent the interests of the proletariat as a whole.
The Manifesto therefore not only accorded limited attention to the precise role of a workingclass party but what it did have to say was generally ambiguous. Thus,
while it was possible to derive key elements of a party programme from the text, it was far less simple to derive a strategy. For instance, it was not clear whether
workingclass parties should, in their daytoday activities, fight for immediate gains for workers within the constraints of capitalist democracy, or remain solidly
revolutionary and prepare the workers for the final countdown of the class struggle. In particular, shortly after their foundation revolutionary socialist parties faced the
question of whether they should participate in elections. These choices about whether to engage in nonrevolutionary activities came to dominate debates within social
democratic parties during the 1880s and 1890s.
Something of a theoretical void therefore existed in the available writing of Marx and Engels on this subject of workingclass parties, a problem accentuated by the fact
that a great deal of Marx's writings were not generally available until the 1920s and some not before the 1950s.19 Into this void stepped Karl Kautsky, the SPD's
leading theoretician and coauthor of the Erfurt Programme. Kautsky's book, The Class Struggle, was published in the thick of these debates, providing a widely
read interpretation of Marx and, critically, deriving a coherent Marxist analysis of the role of workingclass parties.20 Together with the Manifesto and parts of
Engels's AntiDühring, The Class Struggle became one of the main works guiding active socialists in the 1890s.21
Although essentially a work of orthodox Marxism, The Class Struggle unintentionally provided a vital link between the Manifesto and the development of social
democratic reformism. This paradox stemmed from the conclusions which were to be drawn from three key strands of thought taken from the Manifesto which were
developed by Kautsky. First, through The Class Struggle the economic determinism of the Manifesto was carried over into the intellectual capital of social
democratic parties: 'as far back as the forties, Marx and Engels showed that . . . the history of mankind is determined not by ideas, but by an economic
development'.22 Thus, to Kautsky, the breakdown of the social system

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was unavoidable, 'because we know that the economic evolution inevitably brings on the conditions that will compel the exploited classes to rise against this system of
private ownership'. 23 Second, Kautsky cast the party into a particular role within the workingclass movement. By the 1890s, it seems that Kautsky regarded the
process of the formation of the proletariat into a class as largely complete.24 The function of the party was thus simple: to support the struggle. The third direct thread
from the Manifesto to Kautsky was the belief that the middle class would be proletarianised and that this 'disappearing middle classes' of farmers and small
entrepreneurs would be compelled to join the side of the workers. Hence Kautsky reiterated a central axiom of scientific socialism, that the immiserisation of the
working classes would become more and more the condition of the vast majority.
Under such assumptions the role of the party seemed clear: it would continue to organise for the inevitable victory of socialism, representing a mass movement, swelled
by the evergrowing proletariat. Appearing some fortyfive years after the Manifesto, in every sense its direct descendant and in essence an authorised update,
Kautsky's book thus became a handbook for European social democrats operating in the conditions of the 1890s. A considerable amount had changed in the interim,
not least the onward march of industrialisation, the formation of trade unions and workingclass political parties, and, perhaps most significant of all, the extension of
the franchise to include workers.25 When social democratic parties opted to participate in elections the decision was not taken lightly; the debates over electoral
participation had split the SPD, and subsequently other socialist parties, into revolutionaries and reformists since 1870. Yet to Kautsky there was no dilemma as pitting
reformist against revolutionary politics was anyway a false dualism. Seeking immediate improvements in the conditions of the working class through electoral
participation was unproblematic since the revolutionary victory of the proletariat was anyway inevitable: 'it would be a profound error to imagine that such reforms
could delay the social revolution'.26
Elections thus became a tool in this struggle, 'paper stones' which would herald the forthcoming proletarian uprising.27 As Przeworski and Sprague note, the evidence
quickly justified the theory as votes for socialist parties grew from election to election. For instance, the 125,000 votes the SPD received in 1871 had grown to almost
1.5 million by 1890, establishing it as Germany's largest political party.28 So compelling was the argument was that by 1895 it famously counted Engels among its
converts when he strongly praised the SPD's electoral strategy, advocating it as an essential means to securing the victory of the proletariat.29 Engels's expression of
support was not the sudden whim of a dying man; he had long expressed support, albeit not always uncritical, for the reformist efforts of the SPD.30
Indeed, both Marx and Engels indicated on numerous occasions that the objectives of the proletariat could be achieved through democratic means. To

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begin with the Manifesto itself suggested that seeking immediate reforms through electoral politics was perfectly legitimate: 'the first step in the workers' revolution is
the advancement of the proletariat to ruling class, victory for democracy'. 31 Moreover, since the Manifesto also stated that 'The proletarian movement is the
independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of that vast majority,'32 electoral victory seemed assured: like capitalism, bourgeois democracy
contained the seeds of its own doom, particularly given that the middle class was destined to rush to the support of the workers.
The Manifesto could therefore be seen to give legitimacy to a reformist road, and this legitimacy was further backed by the subsequent writings of Marx and Engels.
Indeed, as Miliband notes 'Marx himself vigorously supported the pursuit of such reforms,' arguing in his inaugural address of the First International that the Ten Hours
Act was 'a great practical success'.33 In 1850 Marx advocated in his address to the Communist League that German workers should stand in elections and argued
two years later in an article in the New York Daily Tribune that 'universal suffrage is the equivalent for political power for the working class in England'.34 As universal
male suffrage spread, Marx increasingly recognised the possibility of reforms achieved through the democratic process, suggesting in a speech in Amsterdam in 1872
that: 'we do not deny that there are countries like America, England (and if I knew your institutions better, I would add Holland), where the workers can achieve their
aims by peaceful means.35
Contrary to the claims of some Marxists, it is therefore difficult to regard reformism as a simple betrayal of the workers by their own leaders since this 'betrayal' was,
at least initially, sanctioned by Marx and Engels themselves. What requires explanation therefore is not that the reformist road was ever embarked upon but why it was
thereafter to prove to be the only one. Contrary to Kautsky, participation in electoral politics did indeed have major implications for the apparently inevitable final
triumph of the workers. As Miliband notes, electoralism made the reformist road a oneway street since the constant attempt to broaden the electoral support base
inevitably meant that social democrats progressively moderated their demands. Moreover, electoral politics necessitated the building of a large organisational machine
whose purpose was increasingly directed at securing immediate gains, an investment which made the leaders of the movement more riskadverse and hence, less
prone towards revolutionary activity.36
However, while the initial decision to participate in elections triggered a series of choices which pushed social democratic parties more and more towards reformism, it
was a series of changes beyond the control of their leaders which were most critical in reinforcing this direction. Between 1875 and 1925 fundamental changes took
place in the nature of capitalism and in its dependent class structure. While these changes were to mean that postwar European

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capitalism was to be a far cry from the conditions charted by Marx and Engels in 1848, there was little reason why these developments should not have been clearly
observable to Kautsky in the 1890s.
Following the publication of The Class Struggle, Kautsky was accused of perpetuating fatal errors by his previous intellectual ally, Eduard Bernstein, who instead
advocated a revisionist programme to the SPD. 37 Bernstein argued that the assumption that the proletarian revolution would be the inevitable outcome of the class
struggle was critically flawed and that the development of capitalism was serving to illustrate its strength and flexibility rather than its inbuilt capacity for self
destruction. On the other hand, the success of the workers' political organisations was demonstrating that rather than being subject to a constantly deteriorating
standard of living, workers could improve their economic and social position within the capitalist system. As a result, Bernstein proposed that class divisions would
tend to become characterised more by fragmentation rather than by the binary opposition of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. In particular, he predicted that far
from disappearing, the middle class would grow and diversify.
The historical evidence falls squarely on Bernstein's side of the argument. Class fragmentation has meant that labour leaders have been unable to assume that workers
are a homogenous block united by a common desire to overthrow capitalism. As a result, socialist electoral politics became increasingly directed at mobilising a
majority through an appeal to the middle strata, a process which inevitably involved considerable compromises.38 Moreover, as Bernstein hinted, class fragmentation
was driven by important changes in the nature of capitalist accumulation. Through the expansion into new markets, increased mechanisation and the introduction of
new labour processes, the inverse relationship between wages and profits which Marx had posited no longer held true. It became possible for workers to achieve
higher wages and for capitalists to achieve higher profits simultaneously. This transition to a Fordist mode of accumulation enabled labour leaders to offer immediate
and continuous gains within the structures of capitalist democracy, at least during the long boom of 194673.39
Conclusion
European social democrats, driven onward by Kautsky's orthodox interpretation of Marx and Engels, were thus to lead the working classes towards an inevitable
victory that was never to be, securing on the way tangible benefits for the workers and a posthumous intellectual victory for Bernstein's revisionism. Yet, even on these
issues the Manifesto is not silent. While Marx and Engels could not have foreseen the scale of the changes which would occur, it also appears that the early grains of
these developments were documented in the Manifesto; such is the

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richness of its analysis that it even predicts the sources of its own analytical mistakes. For example, the difficulties of portraying the proletariat as a unified political
actor are clearly alluded to in the text: 'This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and hence into a political party, is disrupted time and again by competition
amongst the workers themselves.' 40
Moreover, the capacity of capitalism to adjust in the face of crisis is a central theme of the Manifesto. Marx and Engels note the tendency for the bourgeoisie to
respond to crisis 'on the one hand, by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, through the capture of new markets and by a more
thoroughgoing exploitation of old ones'.41 Although it is assumed that such actions merely pave the way for deeper crises and, hence the demise of capitalism,
elsewhere in the text the complex adaptation of capitalism is noted in a passage which foresees the rise of globalisation, much analysed by social scientists 150 years
later: 'raw materials from the ends of the earth, industries whose products are consumed not only in the country of origin, but in every part of the world. In place of the
old needs, satisfied by home production, we have new ones which demand the products of the most distant lands and climes for their satisfaction.'42
That the implications of the authors' own caveats were not analysed was perhaps unlikely in a text which, for good reasons, was as much a work of political
propaganda as one of political philosophy. Perhaps in the end the pivotal role of the Manifesto was therefore not that it charted the inevitable rise of a socialist order
but that it set up a ricochet of powerful and contradictory paradoxes which were to fundamentally change capitalism. It was as a body of threatening ideas subject to
constant rebuttal and review that the Manifesto brought its influence to bear. In this regard, its historical contribution may be truer to its Hegelian origins than to its
attempt to construct a materialist conception of history.
Notes
3. This belief, which stemmed directly from Lassalle, stood in clear contradiction to the ideas contained in the Manifesto, which argued that the state was an organ of
the bourgeoisie and would have no place in a classless society.
4. S. Padgett and W. Paterson, A History of Social Democracy in Postwar Europe (London, Longman, 1991).
5. R. B. Andeweg and G. A. Irwin, Dutch Government and Politics (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1993), p. 54.
6. T. Wright, Socialisms Old and New (London, Routledge, 1996), p.7.
7. Cf. Rodney Barker, Political Ideas in Modern Britain (London, Methuen, 1978).
8. Labourism constituted a belief in the continual improvement of the conditions

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under which the working class live, to be achieved particularly through parliamentary representation. Fabianism expressed the belief in the 'inevitable gradualness'
of socialism, to be achieved through reforms introduced by the state.
9. S. Padgett and W. Paterson, A History of Social Democracy in Postwar Europe (London, Longman, 1991), pp. 45.
10. S. Ingle, The British Party System (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1987).
11. R. Tressel, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (London, Grant Richards, 1914). Tressel's political novel expresses strongly Marxian concepts such as the
labour theory of value and the problem of false consciousness.
12. B. Simpson, Labour, The Unions and the Party (London, George Allen, 1973).
13. Shortened from Manifesto, p. 29.
14. H. Pelling, A Short History of the Labour Party (New York, St Martins Press, 1993), p. 45.
15. Tony Blair has not been approached to supply a commendatory preface for this collection! (Ed.)
16. See A. Przeworski, Capitalism and Social Democracy. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995); S. Wilks, 'Rationality, Marxism and Class Struggle', in
Contemporary Politics, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1995, pp. 1536.
17. Arguably, the British Labour Party through its longrunning commitment to public ownership was perhaps the last to (formally) accept the terms of this
compromise.
18. R. Miliband, Marxism and Politics (Oxford, Oxford University Press), p. 132. On several occasions Marx stressed the importance of other organisations over
and above political parties, particularly trade unions. For example, Marx said in a speech to German trade unionists in 1872 that 'trade unions ought never to be
attached to a political association or place themselves under its tutelage; to do so would be to deal themselves a mortal blow', D. McLellan, Karl Marx, Selected
Writings (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 538.
19. Przeworski, Capitalism and Social Democracy, p. 48.
20. Originally published as a commentary on the SPD's Erfurt Programme, The Class Struggle had been published in fifteen languages by 1914.
21. Przeworski, Capitalism and Social Democracy, p. 48. See also W. Holzheuer, Karl Kautskys Werk als Weltanschauung, Beitrag zur Ideologie der
Sozialdemokratie vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Munich, C. H. Beck, 1972). Holzheuer notes that both friends and enemies of Kautsky have generally accepted that
he brought the work of Marx and Engels to bear on the world rather than the authors themselves.
22. K. Kautsky, The Commonwealth of the Future, in I. Howe (ed.), Essential Works of Socialism (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1976), p. 171.
23. Przeworski, Capitalism and Social Democracy, p. 50.
24. Ibid., p. 53.
25. By the mid1890s, universal male suffrage had already been achieved in Denmark (1849), Germany (1871), France (1876) and Belgium (1894) and the right to
vote had also been extended to significant parts of the working population in the UK (1867), Norway (1884) and the Netherlands (1887).
26. Quoted in A. Przeworski and J. Sprague, Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1986), p. 23.
27. Przeworski and Sprague, Paper Stones.
28. Ibid., p. 27.

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29. F. Engels, Introduction to The Class Struggles in France, in K. Marx and F. Engels, Werke (Berlin, Dietz Verlag, 1972), Vol. 22, pp. 509ff.
30. Miliband, Marxism and Politics, p. 40.
33. Miliband, Marxism and Politics, p. 40.
34. Marx, 'British Political Parties', New York Daily Tribune, in McLellan, Karl Marx, Selected Writing, p. 332.
35. Marx, Speech in Amsterdam, 1872, in McLellan, Karl Marx, Selected Writings, p. 594.
36. Miliband, Marxism and Politics, pp. 1634. See also Wilks, 'Rationality, Marxism and Class Struggle'.
37. E. Bernstein, Crisis and Adjustment in Modern Economy, in Howe, Essential Works of Socialism.
38. Przeworski and Sprague, Paper Stones.
39. See Stuart WilksHeeg, The Political Economy of Social Democracy (London, South Bank University, 1996).

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Chapter 9
The Communist Manifesto's Transgendered Proletarians
Mike Gane
But the bourgeoisie has not only forged the weapons which bring it death; it has also produced the men who will wield these weapons—modern workers, proletarians. 1
The more modern industry has developed, so the labour of men is more and more displaced by that of women.2
Some 150 years after the Manifesto was published it is clear that one of the great curiosities of the text and the subsequent characterisation of the proletariat in
Marxism concerns the mystery of its gendered character. The evident contradiction between the two following sentences leads to the heart of the problem.
As manual work requires fewer skills and less exertion, that is, the more modern industry has developed, so the labour of men is more and more displaced by that of women.
Differences of age and sex have no social validity any more for the working class.3
In effect capitalist industrialisation produces gender neutralisation for the working class and yet this involves a displacement of male by female labour (I am ignoring the
equally problematic question of age here). Essentially I want to ask: how much of the way gender arises as an issue in the Manifesto is related to a genuine knowledge
of the gender system and how much to political character and demands of the vision held and developed by Marx and Engels? In this chapter I want to examine the
possibility that Marx and Engels knew a great deal about the gendered aspects of the social forces they analysed, yet this knowledge was not very convenient for the
theory and perspective they wanted to present. Rarely did the huge contradiction between the various theses developed in historical materialism with respect to the
gendered character of the proletariat come clearly into the open.
The story of the way the Manifesto was commissioned by the Communist League has been told in various ways many times. The current introduction to the Penguin
Classic edition by A. J. P. Taylor dates from 1967 and itself has become a classic, but really adds very little to the story that is not in some way presented by Marx
and Engels, especially the latter's 'On the history of the

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Communist League' of 1885. Taylor emphasises the fact that the League was not composed of proletarians:
None of them was a proletarian in the new Marxist sense; none that is, was a factory worker [. . .] Most of them were tailors—an occupation which gives a man much time for
reflection [ . . . ] Then came a typesetter, a cobbler, a watchmaker, a painter of miniatures, a few students, a Prussian Officer [. . .] and Marx's aristocratic brotherinlaw. 4
Engels describes some of the characters in these communist circles individually, noting that for example Karl Shapper was 'of gigantic stature, resolute and energetic . .
. He was fully a man.' There was also Joseph Moll, 'a medium sized Hercules'. For the group that formed the Communist League Marx finally put together not the
craftworker's but the proletarian Manifesto, as Engels said 'a different communism' based on the aim of 'the rule of the proletariat'.5 Thus it is clear that the
Manifesto was written with an absent and idealised—heroic—agency in mind. This agency was to appear to combine masculine strength and a virtually instinctive
drive towards a new kind of social order (quite different from the sentimental and utopian forms espoused by the craftsmen of the League). As Jeff Hearn has noted,
for Marx 'the proletariat is workingclass men, the worker is the adult male: the proletariat appears as the embodiment of future Man'.6 Hearn proposes the not
unambiguous terminology: 'the childworkers of our society form the third proletariat, after women as a class and the working class'.7
Apart from the discrepancy between the social character of the composition of the League, Engels had already discovered a crucial fact about the Manchester
proletariat which had bothered him considerably in his discussion in The Condition of the Working Class in England,8 but which is completely ignored by A. J. P.
Taylor. This fact was that over half the operatives in textile manufacture were women: Engels says, 56.25 per cent in cotton, 69.5 per cent in wool, 70.5 per cent in
silk and flax.9 Engels writes:
Let us examine somewhat more closely the fact that machinery more and more supersedes the work of men. The human labour, involved in both spinning and weaving, consists
chiefly in piecing broken threads, as the machine does the rest. This work requires no muscular strength, but only flexibility of finger. Men are, therefore, not only not needed for
it, but actually, by reason of the greater muscular development of the hand, less fit for it than women and children, and are, therefore naturally almost superseded by them.10
In this passage there is a very curious formulation (a contradiction repeated in a similar form in the Manifesto), a shift from the idea that the work process is replacing
men by machines to a replacement of men by women and children. Engels clearly presents capitalist industrialisation as mechanisation (the process by which male and
female work are rendered equivalent, abstractly) and feminisation

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(because in fact the more muscular development of men is revealed as linked to a prior stage and is now a disadvantage) of the labour process. The conclusion is
unmistakable: the newly formed proletariat (at least in textiles) is predominantly female, and this sets up a contradiction which has rarely been addressed even,
surprisingly, in the writings of such pathbreaking authors as Jeff Hearn who consider the problem of Marxism and gender in depth.
A. J. P. Taylor in his comments on the Manifesto's notion of proletarians is concerned only to point out that if they were defined as essentially 'workers in the cotton
mills' there were theoretical and analytical problems. The first was terminological: the mill workers had a relatively higher standard of living than most members of the
lower classes even in 1844'. 11 But, second, these factory workers were 'not the stuff of which rioters were made [. . .] Their chosen weapon of conflict was the
strike.' He notes that in 1848 the 'industrial workers took little part in the revolution. Even in Great Britain there were demonstrations in London and Glasgow, but not
in industrial Lancashire.12 Although Taylor later observes that Marx was generally 'right' about capitalism and the proletariat,13 the only comment on gender concerns
the bourgeois family, and here, says Taylor, 'Marx is particularly enjoyable'.14 But Taylor is not untypical, even feminists have not taken up as radically as might be
expected, the 'discovery' of Engels that industrialisation is feminisation of labour, and repeated in the Manifesto in the phrase 'the more modern industry has
developed, so the labour of men is more and more displaced by that of women'.15
In a sense this presentation of gender remains abstracted from the personal involvements of Marx and Engels, who after all were men aged around thirty and had
sexual partners. Marx was married to Jenny von Westphalen, and Engels had formed a relationship with Mary Burns in Manchester.16 At one meeting of the London
group Marx and Jenny, Engels and Mary were all present. An eye witness (Stephan Born) later reported: 'when I greeted Marx he indicated by a significant gesture
and a smile that his wife would in no circumstances meet Engels's companion. In matters of honour and morals the noble lady was quite intransigent.17 There was no
friendship or solidarity between Jenny Marx and Mary Burns. Jenny referred to her as 'Lady MacBeth . . . as regards this critical woman, Engels was perfectly right . .
. in finding such a woman ''as she ought to be'', as the eternal antithesis'.18 So Engels had presented the Irish catholic illiterate mill worker Mary as the new
proletarian woman, indeed in one sense as more than this—as the archetypal new proletarian.
The gender issue then was not simply a matter between Marx and Engels, but effectively between two couples. The logic in Engels's work and life was to identify the
textile worker as the bearer of the new communist civilisation, and he discovered not only the feminisation of the proletariat but also Mary Burns as exemplar.
Evidently Engels was in revolt here, since his family wished him to marry to the advantage of the family business. When Engels railed against

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bourgeois marriage he meant marriage in the style of commercial dynasty, as governed by property calculation. But he compromised, kept his business position and
contacts, while at the same time had a second and secret life in Ardwick as Mr F. Boardman. His family did not know about Mary, or about Lizzie Burns, Mary's
sister, who became Engels's partner after Mary's death (in 1863). Mary was not allowed to visit the Marx household with Engels.
So the relationship between Jenny Marx and Mary Burns was not just an uneasy one; it was intensely antagonistic. Clearly Jenny Marx felt her position deeply
threatened by the logic of Engels's 'discoveries' and the way of life implied in the direction Engels, along with other communists, was taking: rejection of marriage and
family, idealisation of illiterate mill workers as the bearers of a higher culture. Jenny was the only woman signatory to the documents of the League and clearly involved
herself in the same project as Karl Marx. Indeed it can be seen that Jenny had made the decision to sacrifice a life of privilege and comfort when she became secretly
engaged in 1836 (and married in 1843). Marx's father wrote that Jenny had brought Karl 'a great sacrifice when she gave up her brilliant career and social position
and prospects for a faltering and gray future' and never seemed tired of repeating that 'she clings to you with body and soul—and you must never forget this—and at
her age she brings to you a sacrifice, the like of which ordinary girls would be incapable'. 19 She reciprocated a passion evident in her letters, where she could write
that she imagined Karl in a duel and that
Day and night I saw you bleeding . . . and Karl to tell the truth, I was not altogether unhappy in this thought: for I vividly imagined you had lost your right hand, and Karl I was in
a state of rapture, of bliss because of that . . . I thought that then I could write down all your dear, heavenly ideas and be really useful to you.20
Both Karl and Jenny were ideologically and philosophically in favour of monogamous marriage, and elsewhere Jenny wrote that women's 'destiny is to have
children'.21 Their children were born in May 1844, September 1845 December 1847, November 1849, March 1851 and January 1855. The Marx household also
included Helen Demuth, the domestic servant, who gave birth in June 1851. ('Marx wanted Engels to assume the paternity'22 but this is contested by Carver.23)
Thus the relationship of the two couples, KarlJenny, FriedrichMary, was highly contradictory and full of tensions. Karl and Fred engaged in a theoretical and political
project to outline the communist programme as comrades, yet Marx was financially dependent on Engels, who remained active in the family firm in Manchester.
Aristocratic Jenny and entrepreneurial Engels rejected the demands from their respective families to marry appropriately to their status and family interest, yet Jenny
viewed Engels's path as a threat to her own family

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while remaining financially dependent on him. In a letter of March 1846 Jenny wrote of the model presented by Mary Burns, and reacted defensively:
I myself, when confronted with this abstract model, appear truly repulsive in my own eyes . . [but] there is an abundance of lovely, charming, capable women, they are to be found
all over the world waiting for a man to liberate and redeem them. Any man can become a redeemer of a woman. Present day women . . . are receptive to all things and very capable
of selfsacrifice. 24
Of Mary Burns's own view we know nothing, no photo or likeness remains.
How were these contradictions worked out when theoretical issues of gender were addressed? It was Engels who sought out this issue and eventually wrote a text
which integrated the economic with the gender dimensions of Marxist theory (in The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State) published after Marx's
death. But clearly Marx himself could not write about the process of capitalist industrialisation without considering gender dimensions of this process. It is possible to
find in the text of Capital (Vol. 1, 1867) Marx's way of thinking about gender. Considering the topics Marx treats, the division of labour, factory labour and discipline,
wages, and so on, what is remarkable is how little there is in Marx's major work which takes gender divisions seriously. It is as though he has a strategy of converting
all labour into one kind, though this of course was quite impossible in practice. When he comes to consider 'Capitalist Production' itself he begins to discuss
'Machinery and Modern Industry'25 and in particular the revolution in textile production. Section 3 of this chapter begins to discuss the homogenisation of labour:
'insofar as machinery dispenses with muscular power . . . the labour of women and children was, therefore, the first thing sought for by capitalists who used
machinery.'26 Marx very quickly notes that now capital employs families, and that 'previously, the workman sold his own labourpower, which he disposed of
nominally as a free agent. Now he sells wife and child. He has become a slavedealer.'27 Yet Marx skips over women workers and discusses child labour as the key
feature in a new process where children suffer as a result of 'the employment of the mothers away from their homes'.28 Marx adopts the language of the Public Health
Report of 1864 to the effect that an 'unnatural estrangement' between mother and child is established, and this leads him to a brief and sarcastic comment on the
education of children. But Marx concludes this part of the first section quite suddenly, without a consideration of women workers as such, with the observation that
By the excessive addition of women and children to the ranks of the workers, machinery at last breaks down the resistance which the male operatives in the manufacturing period
continued to oppose to the despotism of capital.29

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In other words, resistance comes from the male operatives, and the process of proletarianisation reduces the forces of resistance to capital. More than this, the way
that Marx has argued here clearly points to the argument that proletarianisation actually corrupts the workingclass family. The position of the male is converted from
the principal breadwinner and class fighter to that of 'slavedealer' of his wife and children: 'by sweeping away the economic base of parental authority, made its
exercise degenerate into a mischievous misuse of power'. 30 Capital, therefore, finds a way of establishing the cheapest and most compliant labour force in its making
of the industrial proletariat. And Marx reveals his yardstick: the male operatives in the patriarchal family of the manufacturing period.
Towards the end of section six of this chapter Marx reaches a point at which he summarises the proportions of the various productive elements of labour compared
with 'domestic slaves' according to the census of 1861. He presents his figures thus
1. Agricultural labourers 1,098,261
2. Workers in cotton, wool, etc. 642,607
3. Coal and other mines 565,835
4. Metal manufacture 396,998
5. The servant class 1,208,648
He concludes very bizarrely:
All the persons employed in textile factories and in mines, taken together number 1,208,442; those employed in textile factories and metal industries, taken together, number
1,039,605; in both cases less than the number of modern domestic slaves. What a splendid result of the capitalist exploitation of machinery!31
However this comment is interpreted, there is an underlying suggestion that something has been lost for men. Marx provides footnotes giving the gender proportions of
these categories, but does not comment. Let us do this for him.
Gender in selected trades, 1861 census, from Capital Vol. 1
Trade Total Women
2 Workers in cotton, wool etc. 642,607 465,011
4 Metal manufacture 396,998 30,501
5 Servant class 1,208,648 1,071,201
Hence the overall gendered figures for productive labour and domestic slavery combined (outside of agriculture) are:
men: 557,878
women: 1,566,713

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These figures are from 1861 and reflect legislation which excluded women from mining and other work.
In fact Marx's discussion continues to be highly contradictory. In section nine of this key part of Capital Marx, after considering the complex effects of state
intervention and regulation, returns to the effects on 'parental authority' of the new order introduced by modern industry. He tries here to introduce a dialectical
balance:
However terrible and disgusting the dissolution, under the capitalist system, of the old family ties may appear, nevertheless, modern industry, by assigning as it does an important
part in the process of production, outside the domestic sphere, to women, to young persons, and to children of both sexes, creates a new economic foundation for a higher form of
the family and of the relations between the sexes.
However, the discussion halts without further comment than that this higher form can only be developed under 'suitable conditions'. 32 And then abruptly, after
considering the abuses uncovered by various commissions, the text returns, in a phrase strikingly reminiscent of the Manifesto, to the contradictory outcomes of this
process: industrialisation concentrates production and
thereby generalises the direct opposition to this sway. . . it matures the contradictions and antagonisms of the capitalist form of production, and therefore provides, along with the
elements for the formation of a new society, the forces for exploding the old one.33
The only forces Marx had been discussing were forms of state intervention and legislation, so Marx added a footnote to Robert Owen as if in afterthought.
It is certainly curious that at certain moments in this part of Capital thematic passages from the Manifesto seem to be inserted directly. Compare these two passages:
[Manifesto]
Workers, pressed together en masse in a factory are organised like an army. They become common footsoldiers of industry under the command of a full hierarchy of officers and
commanders. They are not only chattel servants of the bourgeois class and the bourgeois state, they are hourly and daily enslaved by the machine, by the overseer, and above all
by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself.34
And,
[Capital]
The technical subordination of the workman to the uniform motion of the instruments of labour, and the peculiar composition of the body of workpeople, consisting as it does of
individuals of both sexes and of all ages, give rise to a barrack discipline, which is elaborated into a complete system in the factory, and which fully develops . . . the labour

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35
of overlooking, thereby dividing the workpeople into operatives and overlookers, into private soldiers and sergeants of an industrial army.
With this image women proletarian textile workers are transformed into men, for the very image of the military machine disguises the principal fact that the private
soldiers are women and the 'perfect hierarchy' of officers and sergeants are men.36
It seems clear that Marx is caught within a restricted and determinate net of contradictory ideas and principles which might be identified as follows:
1. the industrialisation process passes from manufacture to modern industry, and this witnesses the displacement of male by female and child labour;
2. female and child labour are more 'pliant' more 'docile'37 than that of the previous male operative; the workingclass male family head is turned into a slavedealer; or joins the
ranks of the overlookers of operatives;
3. capitalist industrialisation breaks up the patriarchal family and produces the social forces which will overturn capitalist society itself. Only under the conditions of the new
society can the new gender division of work produce the higher form of family and society that it promises.
What Marx describes is not coherent: he wants to reveal the contradictory process of capitalist development, but he succeeds in showing that only by intervening in the
process of industrialisation to maintain the traditional gendered division of labour in favour of men will the process produce a proletariat that is not docile. Second, if
the old system of family ties is restored however, there cannot be a transition to a higher form of family relations. As it is, it seems that Marx believed the capitalist
system both corrupted the family and feminised the proletariat. Ultimately there is at base here a striking ambivalence in relation to women. Their role as mothers is
compromised by factory labour, they do not resist the rule of capital, yet they are as factory workers the principal bearers of a new and higher form of the family. In
quick succession in the Manifesto we read of the 'enforced dissolution of the family among the proletarians' on the one hand, and the fact that with 'all proletarian
family ties are severed as a consequence of largescale industry, and children are simply transformed into articles of trade and instruments of labour'.38
It was Engels who tried to resolve these contradictions. He did this by attempting to show that the annexation of women to the domestic sphere was the first form of
class exploitation, and that in the final phases of the domestic unit the husband 'is the bourgeois and the wife represents the proletariat' and under these conditions 'the
first premise for the emancipation of women is the reintroduction of the entire female sex into public industry'.39 He carefully shows a historical trend in which 'sex
love' becomes more individualised. We can now see that what Marx and Engels had in mind when they wrote:

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'Transformation of the family! Even the most radical of the radicals flares up at this infamous proposal of the communists', 40 for they in no way supported the Saint
Simonian experiments in sexual communism.41 As Engels says, 'the equality of woman . . . will result far more effectively in the men becoming really monogamous than
in the women becoming polyandrous'.42 Essentially, he says, 'the predominance of the man in marriage is simply a consequence of his economic predominance and
will vanish with it automatically'.43 Engels simply avoids becoming embroiled in the fact that it is with capitalist industrialisation of textile manufacture that women had
already returned to public industry, as he had reported in 1845. Only towards the end of the twentieth century was this reversed in the textile industry when curiously
as employment in towns like Rochdale was increasingly parttime and feminised, the workforce in textiles became 'increasingly male and decreasingly parttime during
a period of massive overall decline'.44
Notes
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. A. J. P. Taylor, introduction to The Communist Manifesto (London, Penguin, 1985), p. 20.
5. F. Engels, in Selected Works of Marx and Engels (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1968) pp. 43846.
6. J. Hearn, The Gender of Oppression: Men, Masculinity and the Critique of Marxism (Brighton, Wheatsheaf, 1987), p. 76.
7. Ibid., p. 64.
8. F. Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, in C.W., Vol. 4, p 436.
9. Ibid., p. 436.
10. Ibid., p. 434.
11. A. J. P. Taylor, introduction, 1985, p.19.
12. Ibid., p. 26.
13. Ibid., p. 41.
14. Ibid., p. 31.
16. See M. Gane, Harmless Lovers? (London, Routledge, 1993), pp. 83104, 14155.
17. Cited in W. Henderson, The Life of Friedrich Engels (London, Cass, 1976), Vol. 2, p. 104.
18. Jenny Marx, in C.W., vol 18, p 530.
19. In S. Padover, The Letters of Karl Marx (New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 1979), pp. 505, 508.
20. In C.W., Vol. 1, p. 697.
21. C.W., Vol 38, p. 527.
22. Padover, Letters, 1979, p. 69.
23. T. Carver, Friedrich Engels (London, Macmillan, 1989), p. 159.

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24. C.W., Vol. 18, pp. 5301.
25. C.W., Vol. 35, pp. 374508.
26. Ibid., p. 398.
27. Ibid., p. 399.
28. Ibid., p. 401.
29. Ibid., p. 405.
30. Ibid., p. 492.
31. Ibid., p. 450.
32. Ibid., pp. 4923.
33. Ibid., p. 505.
35. Capital, C.W., Vol. 35, pp. 4267.
36. I. Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution (London, Cass, 1969), p. 186.
37. C.W., Vol. 35, p. 406.
39. Engels, in Selected Works, 1968, p. 510.
41. Gane, Harmless Lovers? 1993, pp. 11419.
42. Engels, Selected Works, 1968, p. 516.
43. Ibid., p. 517.
44. Roger Penn et al., 'Gender Relations, Technology and Employment Change in the Contemporary Textile Industry', in Sociology, Vol. 25, 1991, pp. 56982.

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Chapter 10
Marx and Engels, Marxism and the Nation
Mark Cowling
Introduction
In this chapter I describe briefly Marx and Engels's account of nations and nationalism, starting with some statements in the Manifesto and moving on to a more
general account. I then introduce some of the ways subsequent Marxists have attempted to tackle the issue, stressing the continuing relevance of past debates in the
context of a developing European Union. I end with a cursory reference to a controversy about Northern Ireland which has been very important in the United
Kingdom since about 1970.
Nations in the Manifesto
For a modern reader one of the most startling passages in the Manifesto is that on the question of nations:
Communists have been further criticised for wanting to abolish the nation and nationalities.
Workers have no nation of their own. We cannot take from them what they do not have. Since the proletariat must first of all take political control, raise itself up to be the class of
the nation, must constitute the nation itself, it is still nationalistic, even if not at all in the bourgeois sense of the term.
National divisions and conflicts between peoples increasingly disappear with the development of the bourgeoisie, with free trade and the world market, with the uniform character
of industrial production and the corresponding circumstances of modern life.
The rule of the proletariat will make them disappear even faster. United action, at least in the civilised countries, is one of the first conditions for freeing the proletariat.
To the degree that the exploitation of one individual by another is transformed, so will the exploitation of one nation by another.

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1
As internal class conflict within a nation declines, so does the hostility of one nation to another.
For us this passage contains a series of surprises, including at least the three following. The claim that 'workers have no nation of their own' is in stark contrast with
what we know happened at the beginning of the First World War, when the workers of the leading capitalist nations largely marched off enthusiastically to fight each
other, to the disgust of Lenin and in apparent contrast to the pledges of their leaders in the Second International.2 The Second World War, too, had a strong
nationalistic dimension. More recently we in Britain have seen upsurges of nationalistic feeling during the Falklands War and the Gulf War of 1991.
Then there is the claim that national divisions diminish with the rise of the bourgeoisie. Apart from seeming to be just plain false, given the list of conflicts in the previous
paragraph, there is also the point that Marxist theory generally has tended to associate the growth of nationalism with the growth of the bourgeoisie, who need a large
internal market and a mobile labour force to prosper.3 More than that, we might recall Lenin's theory of imperialism, which claims that as the bourgeoisie develop and
become monopolists, so they also become imperialistic and engage in interimperial conflicts, notably the First World War.4
Moreover, the claim that successful revolution in one country leads to the diminution of international conflict sounds odd when we remember the history of the Soviet
Union, which suffered interventions from the Western powers during its civil war, the Nazi invasion and, from the Second World War to its demise, the threat of
nuclear annihilation in the Cold War.
Marx and Engels on the Nation
Up to 1848 Marx does not seem to have considered the issue of national selfdetermination. Nationalism was very prominent in the revolution of 1848. European
advocates of liberal democracy had tended to equate democracy for individuals with selfdetermination for the nation. This equation worked for the Germans, Poles
and Italians, but the Danes, Czechs, Ruthenians, Slovaks, Croats, Slovenes and Irish were dubious as democrats, and not helpful in spreading a developing
international liberal culture. Marx and Engels in 1848, and subsequently, tended to hold much the same position as democrats and liberals:
1. Nations must have a certain minimum size. This was not tightly specified, but goes with the next point.
2. Large and powerful units are to be encouraged (and little ones discouraged5—cf. John

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6
Stuart Mill ). 'Miserable remnants of former nations' or inventions of panSlavism, such as Serbs, Bulgarians and Greeks, were destined to dissolve, but would benefit from the
developing democracy of larger units.7
3. National selfdetermination was to be particularly encouraged if it helped revolution; the only progressive peasant nationalism was to be found in Poland,8 where bourgeois
development seemed possible; at this time Marx and Engels did not support the Irish against the British; their view changed subsequently.9
4. Oppose Russia, the champion of European reaction. Concretely this meant strengthening the Habsburg Empire by denying rights to its small minorities.
5. Marx and Engels have an element of pragmatism in this area. For example, they favoured German territorial claims against Poland but Polish claims against Russia. In this they
were going along with the mainstream of German opinion.10
Marx and Engels did not produce an elaborate discussion of nationalism. There is a parallel between their approach and that of liberals such as John Stuart Mill, in that
the major focus of socialists and liberals was not on the nation and nationalism. For both, nations were a nuisance whose influence needed to be neutralised or,
possibly, channelled towards a nonnationalist agenda.
Before moving on to subsequent Marxist accounts of nationalism, let us return briefly to the surprises with which we started.
The claim that workers have no nation is least paradoxical if we read it as a statement about loyalty: given the conditions they suffer, why should the workers be loyal
to their nation? Their loyalty should instead be to other workers worldwide. This statement could be seen as legitimate, if forlorn, throughout all the conflicts which I
listed as casting doubt on the claim that workers have no nation. Another approach, though, is to see it as a statement of fact. As Mike Levin points out, many
workers or peasants in 1848 spoke a different language from the ruling class in their country, had no significant interest in the nation, and were loyal if anything to local
ties.11 If we take this approach then the criticisms made by Bernstein and others later in the nineteenth century are very important: workers, he said, have come to
have a significant stake in their nation, thanks to education, welfare benefits and (the prospect of) a say in its government via the franchise.12 There is thus an argument
that Marx and Engels were right in 1848 but wrong by the turn of the century.
The second surprising claim starts off as one about liberal free trade, i.e. that it leads to less conflict between nations. This claim is also upheld by some liberals, for
example in the modern claim that there has never been a war between two nations enjoying the benefits of McDonald's. It is not altogether implausible: free trade may
have needed wars to break down protectionism in some nations, such as the Chinese, whose government opposed a free trade in opium, but it can be seen as a level
playing field between nations, unlike mercantilism, which preceded the era of free trade, or the conflicting imperialist cartels Lenin discusses.13

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The third claim is that conflict between nations is diminished further when proletarian revolution has occurred. The important background assumption to this, not much
discussed but very generally held among Marxists up to the Russian Revolution, was that a revolution in one important country would lead rapidly to a succession of
revolutions in the other major capitalist nations. This claim was particularly elaborated in Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, which holds that a revolution in a
largely precapitalist country such as Russia will fail unless (1) it moves on from being a revolution against Tsarism to a socialist revolution and (2) it becomes
international, that is, spreads to the main capitalist states. 14 For reasons which have been debated ever since, the Russian Revolution failed to spread in the manner
anticipated, leading Stalin and others to elaborate the theory of 'Socialism in One Country'. The exact nature of the Soviet state is also, of course, much debated, but it
was certainly a potential threat to its capitalist neighbours, hence the failure of Marx and Engels's original claims.
Lenin and Stalin
The major controversy about nations and nationalism within the legacy left by Marx and Engels occurred in the years leading up to the First World War. Its main
protagonists were Lenin and Stalin arguing against the Austrian Marxists Karl Renner and Otto Bauer on the one hand and against Rosa Luxemburg on the other. All
of these figures were concerned with a situation which is very typical around the world, but which had not been the foremost concern of Marx and Engels. This is the
problem of multinational states, particularly those where different nationalities are mixed in close proximity on the same territory. In different ways this was true both
of the AustroHungarian Empire and the Russian Empire. I shall present the Lenin/Stalin position and then the two 'heresies'. Obviously the reader is at liberty to
conclude, along with many contemporary Marxists, that the heretics were right.
The basic position of Lenin and Stalin was that they stood by the resolution of the Second International Congress in London, 1896, which stood for 'the full right of all
nations to selfdetermination' and 'calls upon the workers of all these countries to join the ranks of classconscious workers of the whole world in order jointly to fight
for the defeat of international capitalism and for the achievement of international Social Democracy'.15
Lenin's summary of the problem faced by Russian socialists was as follows:16
1. Great Russia was the centre of the Russian Empire and had a vast, unbroken territory of about 70 million people.
2. The subject peoples were about 57 per cent of the population of the Empire and inhabited the border regions.

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3. The oppression of these peoples was worse than that of similar minorities in other states.
4. Often the oppressed minorities had compatriots across the border, for example the Finns, Swedes, Poles, Ukrainians, Rumanians—and many more.
5. Neighbouring Asian states were experiencing bourgeois revolutions and national movements which are spreading to the Russiandominated conationals. 16
In a nutshell, then, Lenin's problems were: 1.) which of the very many groupings to be found within the Russian Empire were nations and should be supported in
attaining selfdetermination if they so wish? and 2.) how, concretely, should this be dealt with—should these nations be actively encouraged to seek independence, or
to remain with Russia? Should socialists take a different approach to this matter in different circumstances? Who would actually vote in a referendum on self
determination? How should the Bolshevik party be organised, given divisions between nationalities?
Lenin and Stalin divided up the work of answering these questions. Lenin says nothing about how nations are to be defined, but implicitly endorses Stalin's criteria,17
which are as follows:
1. A Nation is a historically constituted and stable community of people: (this is a summary of points 25 below). That is, it is not necessarily a racial or tribal community; but it is
not lots of motley peoples bundled into an empire which breaks up as soon as the imperial power wanes—so the empires of Cyrus and Alexander were not nations.
2. Community of Language: If people live together in a stable community but have different languages they are not a nation; however, you can have different nations speaking
the same language.
3. Community of territory: If peoples have the same language but a different territory (e.g. Englishmen and Americans) they are different nations.
4. Community of economic life, economic cohesion: For example, Georgia: before the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 the Georgians shared territory and language but were not a
nation; their economic life was split up.
5. Community of psychological makeup: National character—this is particularly important in distinguishing the otherwise similar English, Irish and Americans.18
Stalin clarifies these criteria as follows. (1) All these characteristics are required: if one is missing it is not a nation. (2) Nations can rise and fall; that is, one can have
peoples who aren't a nation but get welded into one and nations which develop into two (for example the English in America). (3) There are two stages in the
development of nations: under rising Western capitalism, 17891871; and in Eastern Europe and Asia, where bourgeoisdemocratic revolutions started in 1905.
Stalin generally sees the bourgeoisie as responsible for stirring up nationalism, although nationalist armies tend to be supplied by the peasantry. The first aim of the local
bourgeoisie is to secure its own market. It therefore tends to demand

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free movement, the right to use the native language, a wider franchise, freedom of religion. These issues tend to stir up the other classes. 19
Although the struggle is essentially bourgeois, the proletariat should support it to the extent that it needs the freedoms in prospect; if it has no clear movement of its
own, it will support the nationalist movement anyway. The proletariat should guard against nations being incited against each other.
The proletariat should thus:
1. Support the right of nations to selfdetermination (that is, political separation).
2. Support the right of nations to noninterference in culture and customs (that is, the equality of nations—but the proletariat should combat those customs if they are anti
proletarian).
3. However, whether the proletariat actually advocates separation depends on the development of the proletarian revolution; and if there is no proletarian revolution in prospect it
should support larger units in preference.
4. The proletariat defends democratic rights, that is, the right to use the national language, to move freely, have one's own schools, have liberty of conscience. These democratic
rights are the solution to another problem: that nationalities are mixed up with each other in many areas. Over and above these democratic rights the position on minorities is 'hard
luck', that is, no special encouragement of national peculiarities.20
As with all definitions of a nation, Stalin's is open to criticism on the grounds that it fails to cover various exceptions: it tells us Switzerland is not a nation, it fails to
cover Pakistan before the split into Pakistan and Bangladesh, it runs into difficulties in dealing with African nations, it tells us that the Jews before the founding of Israel
were not a nation. The main line of criticism from some authors, however, would be that what really counts in a nation is the subjective element, the feeling of its
members that they are a nation. However, authors who adopt subjective definitions tend to accept that a list of objective features similar to Stalin's very often
accompany appropriate feelings. Further, Stalin emphasises that a psychological criterion must be fulfilled, as do other authors using objective criteria.21
The Austrian Heresy
As I said above, Stalin's main immediate purpose in writing Marxism and the National Question was to attack the Austrian heresy. The Austrian dual monarchy
contained Hungarians, Czechs and Germans, and there was a danger that Austria would disintegrate because of rivalries between these nationalities, and therefore be
crushed and divided up between her more powerful neighbours. Every issue in the Austrian parliament led to a wrangle between the representatives of different
nationalities. To try to cope with this by parliamentary means the Austrian SDP developed a programme of national autonomy.

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Otto Bauer and the Austrians started by defining a nation as a community of character bound by a community of fate—so a group can have no common territory,
language and economic life, and still remain a nation (the definition is psychological).
Hence the (preState of Israel) Jews on the Austrian definition are a nation because of a common culture, despite sharing similarities of territory, language and
economic life with the people they live among.
Having defined a nation in this way, on the Austrian plan, it is granted autonomy, not as a region, but as nationality members, wherever they may be. National cultural
institutions are to be set up for each nationality and are to decide on cultural questions; 'political' questions are to be decided by the panAustrian parliament (the
Reichsrat). Only these cultural unions, the Austrians thought, could protect the interests of cultural minorities; citizens would have to take out a certificate of nationality
stating which nationality they belonged to. The Austrians proposed the national autonomy solution for all multinational states, and as the prototype of the socialist
future, in a sort of vast multinational state. 22
Stalin's main objections to the Austrian heresy were, first, it makes no provision for national selfdetermination if a nation wants it; and there was a real chance that
some Russian nations would. Second, it is artificial; capitalism keeps mixing people up and altering nations; national partitions are tending to fall; and it unites all
classes, despite the antagonism between classes. Third, the programme favours, implicitly and explicitly, the 'preservation and development of the national peculiarities
of the people'; but these, comments Stalin, may not be desirable, for example the Transcaucasian Tatars selfflagellation at the festival of ShakseiVaksei or the
Georgian vendetta. Fourth, it splits the working class: the Austrian SDP had broken into six rival and in some cases antagonistic parties; the trade unions associated
with the party have likewise broken up.
Recent commentators tend to be kinder to the Austrian Marxists. They start from the standpoint that one's national identity is more fundamental than Lenin allowed,
particularly because much of our identity is cultural, and culture is strongly linked to language, which is an important determinant of national identity. The argument runs
that socialists should advocate a limited nationalism with a strong emphasis on citizenship. This offers the possibility of nationalism being identified with the left rather
than the right. The nationalism envisaged would be compatible with other loyalties and identities, so that for particular purposes a woman might emphasise her identity
as a Gorbals resident, as a Glaswegian, her Jamaican descent, her lesbianism, her disability, her role as a social worker and local government employee, her Labour
Party activism, and her Scottish, British, European Union or international identity. This approach clearly involves an acceptance that nationality is unlikely to disappear
in the manner envisaged by Kautsky,23 and that there is likely to be more to life than

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the proletarian internationalism advocated by Lenin; that is, even if international workingclass solidarity can be made a reality, people will still identify with towns,
regions and nations. 24
The questions raised by the debate over the Austrian heresy are very much live issues for socialists today. A consensus is increasingly emerging that the only practical
vehicle for developing socialism in European countries in an increasingly aggressive global economy is the European Union.25 Obviously this in turn places on the
agenda issues of how much the Union becomes a federal state, the role of its constituent nations and regions, what forms of support, if any, should be given to specific
national cultures, and so on.
The Polish Heresy
The chief proponent of the Polish heresy was Rosa Luxemburg, a Polish Marxist who spent much of her time in Germany. Luxemburg engaged in extensive studies of
the Polish economy and concluded it was developing rapidly as part of the Russian Empire. Polish nationalism, she thought, was mainly advocated by disgruntled
intellectuals and members of the petty bourgeoisie. It was not in the interests of the working class in Poland. Luxemburg tended to expand this argument into one which
said the working class has no interest in supporting nationalist movements.26
Lenin found this argument alarming because many of the nations at the borders of the Russian Empire might really want to separate from Russia. His view was that
Russian socialists should support their right to do so, but that capitalist or socialist development worked best in larger units, so that it would not normally be in their
best interest to separate. If Luxemburg's views were generally accepted by Russian socialists they would be seen as Great Russian chauvinists, and the socialist cause
damaged.
Modern commentators, whilst sympathetic to Luxemburg as an important and heroic revolutionary figure, are not attracted by her substantive views, as she makes
even less concessions to nationalism than Lenin.
The Way the SelfDetermination Doctrine Worked Out in Practice after 1917
The Lenin/Stalin doctrine on selfdetermination played a very important role in the Russian Revolution. On coming to power, the Bolsheviks proclaimed the right of the
Russian nationalities to selfdetermination. The Entente powers urged the border nationalities to proclaim independent republics. Often what decided what happened in
a border area was simply the force of arms between the Red and White armies in the civil war. However, as the Whites generally did not accept the right of nations to
selfdetermination and the Reds did, and as the

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Whites tended to want to restore land expropriated by peasants to its former owners, the Reds were at an advantage.
A special Commissariat, Narkomnats, was set up under Stalin with representatives of each nation dealing with that nation's affairs. Narkomnats encouraged education,
propaganda and literature in the national languages. 27 According to E. H. Carr, if criticism is to be made of the Soviet government in the early years, it is on grounds
of reviving halfdead languages as a basis for a future national autonomy.28
In view of Stalin's generally evil reputation, four further short comments should be made on this issue. First, Stalin and Lenin agreed that Menshevik Georgia had to be
coerced into submission to Bolshevik rule on strategic grounds, but had a row about Stalin's failure to put a democratic gloss on the matter.29 Second, the 'right' of
secession accorded to Union Republics under the Soviet constitution was unreal, because the advocacy of secession was prohibited in the only legal party in the
USSR. Third, Stalin's brutal treatment of nations who might be proGerman did not involve attacking national cultural autonomy generally. Fourth, there does seem to
have been more active promotion of Russian language and culture after Stalin's death. Given that the Russian communist system stifled normal political life it is not
surprising that ethnic leaders provided some of the main alternative influence after its demise.
Marxism and Ireland
I have space here only to draw attention to a second contemporary area in which Marxist theories about nationalism are at issue, that of the modern troubles in
Northern Ireland, which have cost some 3,000 lives since the late 1960s. The orthodox Marxist tradition stems from Marx's own comment that '[a] nation that
oppresses another forges its own chains'; that is, Irish independence would be beneficial to Irish development and to British socialism.30 Lenin and the martyred Irish
Marxist James Connolly support this view. None of the three pay much attention to the specific character of Northern Ireland's Protestant community, beyond a series
of comments from Connolly to the effect that they are misled by Orange clergy and aristocracy, and that their resistance to Home Rule is insubstantial.31 This
approach leads straight on to Marxist support for the Provisional IRA in support of the right of the Irish people to selfdetermination.32
A straightforward approach of this sort is now much less readily accepted in leftwing circles, thanks in considerable measure to the writings of one particular group of
Irish Marxists. Taking Stalin's criteria for the identification of nations they argued that the Northern Protestants were a second nation on the island of Ireland, a part of
the British nation, and therefore also had a right to selfdetermination. In particular, they argued that there were two distinct Irish economies, each related to the British
economy in a different way, and that these

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economic differences broadly coincide with the national division in Ireland. 33 Whilst it would be wrong to suggest that this approach has won over everyone on the
left or been accepted by academic writers, straightforward support for 'Connolly socialism' is now much less usual.34
Conclusion
Although some of the statements on nations in the Manifesto now appear fairly naive, this chapter has shown that the approach to nations generated by Marx and
Engels and developed by others remains an important one, which contributes to our understanding of conflicts in the former Soviet Union countries, to the discussion
of the development of the European Union, and to our understanding of the Northern Ireland problem.
Notes
2. For an excellent recent account of the debacle of August 1914 and its effect on Lenin, see N. Harding, Leninism (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1996).
4. See V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Vol. 22, Collected Works (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1974), pp. 185305.
5. For example F. Engels, 'The Democratic Panslavism', in C. W, Vol. 8, pp. 3628; 'The Magyar Struggle', ibid., pp. 227, 230, 2345.
6. John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government (1861) (New York, Liberal Arts Press, 1958), Ch. 16.
7. Engels, 'Magyar Struggle', in C.W., Vol. 8, p. 233. For a particularly forthright exposition of this, see E. Nimni, Marxism and Nationalism: Theoretical Origins
of a Political Crisis (London, Pluto, 1991), pp. 2643.
8. C.W., Vol. 7, pp. 3501.
9. Engels, C. W., Vol. 6, pp. 4459, where Engels looks to close unity between the Irish and the Chartists.
10. Cf C.W., Vol. 6, pp. 54552.
11. Mike Levin, 'Marx and Engels on the National Question: A Contextual Approach', Studies in Marxism, Vol. 2, 1995, pp. 11333.
12. See Eduard Bernstein (ed. and trans. Henry Tudor), The Preconditions of Socialism (1899) (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 1634.
13. See V. I. Lenin, Imperialism.
14. L. Trotsky, Permanent Revolution and Results and Prospects, (New York, Pathfinder Press, 1969). For further discussion, see the contributions by John
Hoffman and Steve Paxton to this volume.
15. V. I. Lenin, The Right of Nations to SelfDetermination (1914), in V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 20 (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1972), p. 397.
16. Summarised from Lenin, The Right of Nations to SelfDetermination, p. 408.
17. I am thus here contradicting some authors who assert that Lenin was simply not

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concerned with defining nations, for example, A. Morgan in A. Morgan and B. Purdie (eds) Ireland, Divided Nation, Divided Class (London, Ink Links, 1980),
p. 193; P. Bew et al., The State in Northern Ireland, 192172 (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1979), p. 12. In a generally useful pair of books on
Marxism and the national question H. B. Davis contradicts himself on the question of whether there is a LeninStalin theory in this area—see H. B. Davis,
Nationalism and Socialism (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1967), p. 82; H. B. Davis, Towards a Marxist Theory of Nationalism (New York, Monthly
Review Press, 1978), p. 137.
18. Summarised from J. V. Stalin, Works, Vol. 2 (Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953), pp. 3038.
19. Ibid., pp. 31416.
20. Ibid., pp. 31921.
21. For examples of authors using subjective definitions of a nation, see E. Renan, 'What is a Nation?' in A. Zimmern (ed.), Modern Political Doctrines (1939); H.
SetonWatson, Nations and States (London, Methuen, 1977), p. 5. For objective definitions broadly on the same lines as Stalin's, see A. D. Smith, Theories of
Nationalism (London, Duckworth, 1971), p. 188, or L. L. Snyder, The Meaning of Nationalism (New York, Greenwood Press, 1954), p. 54.
22. There are no major translations of the relevant works of Bauer and other Austrian Marxists into English. Good descriptions of their views may be found in Nimni,
Marxism and Nationalism, chs 57; J. Schwartzmantel, Socialism and the Idea of the Nation (Hemel Hempstead, Harvester, 1991), ch. 6.
23. Quoted in Nimni, Marxism and Nationalism, p. 49. Nimni produces quotes from the main Marxist figures at the time of the Second International suggesting that
they had an image of nations withering away and the growth of one international language (see ibid., chs 2 and 3). The model they had in mind seems to be the sort of
development which has actually happened in the United Kingdom: the major pressure towards people dropping Irish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Cornish and so on. has
historically been the cultural dominance of English rather than campaigns of suppression. Russian played a similar role in the Russian Empire and subsequently the
USSR: there were practical advantages to speaking Russian rather than, say, Georgian, whatever official policies were in force. To the extent any one language seems
likely to dominate internationally, American English is a current obvious candidate.
24. For arguments on these lines, both including considerable subtleties for which there is no space here, Schwartzmantel, Socialism and the Idea of the Nation;
Nimni, Marxism and Nationalism.
25. On this see Lawrence Wilde's excellent Modern European Socialism (Dartmouth, Aldershot, 1994).
26. See Rosa Luxemburg, The National Question: Selected Writings, ed. H. B. Davis (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1976). For discussions of Luxemburg,
see Schwartzmantel, Socialism and the Idea of the Nation, pp. 1815; Nimni, Marxism and Nationalism, pp. 507.
27. On the nationalities issue in the early years of the Soviet state see R. Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union—Communism and Nationalism, 191723
(Harvard University Press, 1964 revised edn), esp. chs 1, 5, 6.
28. See E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, Vol. I (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1971),

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Part III, esp. Note B; Vol. III (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1971), ch. 26; E. H. Carr, The Interregnum, 19234 (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1971), ch. 11.
29. On this see M. Lewin, Lenin's Last Struggle (London, Pluto Press, 1975); chs 4 and 8 relate to Georgia, and are generally written from an antiStalin standpoint.
30. K. Marx, 'Confidential Communication' (1870), in K. Marx and F. Engels, On Colonialism (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1974), p. 259.
31. James Connolly, Selected Writings, ed. P. Beresford Ellis (Harmondsworth, Pelican, 1973), pp. 265, 274, 279.
32. See, for example, M. Farrell, Northern Ireland, The Orange State (London, Pluto Press, 1976); G. Bell, The British in Ireland: A Suitable Case for
Withdrawal (London, Pluto Press, 1984). Junius, An AntiImperialist's Guide to the Irish War (London, Junius Publications, 1983).
33. See British and Irish Communist Organisation, The Home Rule Crisis (Athol Books, Belfast, 1970); The Economics of Partition (Athol Books, Belfast, 1973);
Ulster As It Is (Athol Books, Belfast, 1970); The Road to Partition (Athol Books, Belfast, 1974).
34. For academic writing at least somewhat influenced by this approach, see P. Gibbon, The Origins of Ulster Unionism (Manchester, Manchester University
Press, 1975); Bew et al., The State in Northern Ireland, 192172. For the role of some of these ideas in current discussions of Northern Ireland, see A. Aughey,
'Unionism', in A. Aughey and D. Morrow (eds), Northern Ireland Politics (Harlow, Longman, 1996). For a recent academic assessment of theories about nations in
Ireland, see M. Gallagher, 'How Many Nations are there in Ireland?', Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1995, Vol. 18, 4, pp. 71539; for a more general discussion of
theories about Northern Ireland, including the question of nations, see J. McGarry and B. O'Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland (Oxford, Blackwells, 1995).

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PART 4
THE MANIFESTO: STILL RELEVANT TODAY?

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Chapter 11
What is Living and What is Dead in the Communist Manifesto?
Wal Suchting
In a primarily theoretical context (rather than, say, an aesthetic one) there are, broadly speaking, two ways of considering a work like the Communist Manifesto.
They may be called the 'historical' and the 'systematic' approaches. The first asks questions about the conditions of its production (for example, in what concrete
problemsituation, theoretical and/or practical, was it an intervention? what discursive materials went into bringing it about?), and about the effects which it had, once
produced, about its 'consumption', as it were (for example, how has it affected various currents of thought and people's actions?). The second asks questions about its
logical structure, its assumptions and premises, explicit and perhaps also implicit, its conclusions, and about the value, from the point of view of current thinking, for
tackling current problems to which it may be considered relevant. As in the case of the first, the problems may be either primarily theoretical or primarily practical, that
is, roughly speaking, ones having to do mainly either with what is, was, will be the case about certain subjectmatters, or with changes in what is the case. A major part
of these practical questions may well be (in the case of the Manifesto obviously are) political ones, that is, ones about what should, ought to be the case regarding
major aspects of social life and how this might best be achieved. These two general approaches are distinct and, up to a point, separable, though always ultimately
complementary.
What follows takes primarily the second path. So, in a nutshell, it poses the question: what, if anything, in the Manifesto is relevant today to the search for solutions to
the sorts of problems it addresses, and hence, by implication, what in it is, on the contrary, of 'merely historical' significance? Certainly there is no pretence at all to
answering these questions comprehensively, even in a sketchy way; my chapter aims only to set out a few relevant considerations which may contribute to further
debate about the issues.
Among the central claims of the Manifesto are the following.
(1) Theoretical claim (1.1): Capitalism, after a period of development which had as one of its contradictory aspects a hitherto unimaginable progress for humanity, as
regards its productive powers and level of civilisation in general, 1 is, in 1848, in terminal crisis, as a result of a contradiction between the very growth

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of those powers and the social relations within which this has occurred. 2 Capitalism cannot develop any further; indeed the bourgeoisie 'is incapable of assuring its
slave any kind of existence within his slavery . . . because it is forced to let him sink into a condition, where it must feed him, instead of being fed by him'.3 Hence 'the
class struggle comes to a head'.4
(2) Practicalpolitical claims: (2.1) In the past, class struggles have 'finished each time with a revolutionary transformation of society as a whole, or in the common ruin
of the contending classes'.5 In the case of capitalism there has been an overreaching tendency for the 'contending classes' to be reduced to two, capitalists and
proletariat.6 The alternative of a 'a revolutionary transformation of society' can only be realised if the proletariat takes over the existing state, the power of which 'is
merely a device for administering the common affairs of the whole bourgeois class'.7 The central aim in doing so is to be the abolition of private property,8 this making
possible the institution of a communist order of society, 'an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all'.9 (2.2) In
this movement communists must naturally play a vanguard role, for, 'they have an advantage over the general mass of the proletariat in terms of a theoretical insight into
the conditions, progress and general result of the movement'.10
(3) Theoretical claim (2): (2.1) is not only a fundamental practicalpolitical aim, but also what indeed will certainly happen: 'Above all [the bourgeoisie] produces its
own gravediggers. Its downfall and the victory of the proletariat are equally unavoidable.'11 In fact, the imminent 'bourgeois revolution in Germany can be merely the
immediate prelude to a proletarian revolution'.12
Claim (1) and at least the second part of (3) were hardly made before they were shown by events to be completely false. What the Manifesto diagnosed as its death
throes quickly proved to be, on the contrary, the travail attending the birth of a capitalism not only economically dominant, as, broadly speaking, it was before, but
now politically so as well; in particular, the prediction concerning Germany was quite off the mark. (However, it must be added that Marx and Engels almost
immediately saw their errors.) Every subsequent announcement of the imminent death of capitalism has proved to be no less premature.
All this by itself does not rule out the more general claim in (3) about the inevitability of the fall of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat. However, this is so
only because it is essentially vacuous empirically, since it is consistent with any actual historical events at all.
It is, of course, obvious now that, at the time anyway, neither of the authors had theoretical equipment at all adequate to the problems of analysis and prediction
addressed in the Manifesto, in particular, nothing like an adequate political economy of the capitalist mode of production, an attempt to construct which would prove
to be the major task of the rest of Marx's life. However, no

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realistically conceivable theory of political economy, or the like, could possibly underpin many of the sorts of predictions made in the Manifesto. For scientific laws
are conditional in character, and categorical assertions (like those in question) follow from them only in conjunction with particular assertions about initial and boundary
conditions of particular cases. 13 The degree of reliability of such predictions depends on the exactness of the laws and the exhaustiveness of the knowledge of the
particular conditions, the degree of which depends in turn on the degree of 'closure' (natural or artificial) of the system in question from unforeseen perturbing
influences. However, in what may be called 'historical' sciences from, say, geology to social history, to the extent that it is possible to speak at all of 'laws' specific to
them they are certainly far from exact, and there is, at best, only minimal closure.
What can explain (in theoretical terms that is, rather than, say, psychological ones) the seemingly apodictic character of claims (1) and (3) in the Manifesto? One such
explanation is as follows.
It is arguable that the Manifesto makes at least two assumptions: one implicit, the other reasonably explicit.
Assumption 1: the development of capitalism is governed by certain necessary economic laws which flow from its very nature. Such an assumption is not explicit in
the Manifesto, but Marx expressed a view of this sort from time to time at least as late as the first volume of Capital. Thus in the preface to the first edition (1867) he
writes of 'the natural laws of capitalist production . . . working and enforcing themselves with iron necessity', and in the 'Afterword' to the second edition (1873) he
quotes with approval a long passage from a Russian review of the earlier edition, which says, among other things: 'Marx treats the social movement as a process of
natural history, governed by laws which are . . . independent of the will, consciousness and intentions of human beings.' One consequence of these laws are that
capitalism as such is subject, at a certain point, to chronic economic crises.
Now this by itself does not entail that the demise of capitalism is inevitable, fated, that it will happen no matter what people do, in particular, no matter what the
proletariat does. It only becomes something like this when it is conjoined with at least one further assumption.
Assumption 2: to complete the quotation from the Russian reviewer referred to above: not only is it Marx's view that there are laws of the sort described but these
'determine [bestimmen] their ['human beings'] will, consciousness and intentions'. Applied to present concerns this means that the economic laws which lead to crises
and generally adverse effects on the proletariat work to give the latter a consciousness of their situation, of their objective interest in overthrowing capitalism, and,
moreover, a will to do so. This assumption emerges in the Manifesto in passages like the following:

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The theoretical propositions of the communists . . . merely express in general terms the factual relations of an existing class struggle, a historical movement that is proceeding
under our own eyes . . . man's presumptions, views and conceptions alter according to their economic circumstances, their social relations, their social existence?
What else does the history of ideas demonstrate than that the products of the intellect are refashioned along with material ones? . . .
In speaking of ideas that revolutionise the whole of society, we merely express the fact, that within the old society the elements of a new one have formed, that the dissolution of
the old ideas stays in step with the dissolution of the old conditions of life. 14
On these assumptions capitalism is seen as producing, parthenogenetically as it were, the necessary and sufficient conditions for its own dissolution. In the terms used
at the beginning of this part of the discussion, the necessary laws themselves give rise to the initial and boundary conditions, as regards human actions, for the
occurrence of what they predict.
However, there are no empirical reasons for believing either of these assumptions. (A simple argument for this is just a challenge to someone who thinks there are such:
produce them! 'Hic Rhodus, hic salta!' (Here is Rhodes, jump over the Colossus) as Marx liked to say.) They are of extrascientific provenance.
If this is so, then what is this provenance? The overwhelmingly most likely answer is: Hegel.
On this diagnosis, the first assumption is related to Hegel's view that reality is ultimately Absolute Spirit, which is a necessarily articulated system. The atemporal
structure of the latter (its structure sub specie aetemitatis) is revealed by logic (in the Hegelian sense of the word). This presents itself in a series of stages in which
each attempt to grasp reality as anything short of Absolute Spirit ultimately exhibits contradictions—the process is thus 'dialectical'—which lead to more inclusive
attempts until the category of the Absolute is attained. The structure of Absolute Spirit in its temporal projection, as it were, is manifested in the necessary movement
of history and revealed by the philosophy of history. Here the timeless succession of categories exhibited in logic becomes a series of historical epochs, each one
embodying an overriding category, each exhibiting internal contradictions and giving rise to the next, until the advent of one where there is a recognition of the true
character of Absolute Spirit as an allencompassing unity of finite selves.
Along similar lines, the second assumption may be related to Hegel's view that the true character of each phase, which to start with is implicit (an sich), eventually,
after the phase has been completed itself, becomes explicit and open to consciousness (für sich). The Owl of Minerva takes wing only at night: theory only formulates
the character of what has already happened. Philosophers are amanuenses of the Absolute, as it were. It is necessary that there should be ultimately this strict
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reflection in thought, since, after all, finite thinkers are just the aspect of difference within the overarching identity in difference of Absolute Spirit.
Both assumptions 1 and 2 can then be seen to result from the famous operation of standing Hegel on his head. Instead of matter's being a way in which Absolute Spirit
manifests itself, however inadequately, human consciousness is a way in which matter manifests itself, matter including here the processes of history. Furthermore, just
as history as the temporal projection of Absolute Spirit has a necessary structure, so history as a material process has one also, specifically a necessary economic
structure. Finally, just as the real character of each phase of the historical selfrevelation of Spirit eventually becomes known to historical agents, so the character of the
material historical process necessarily reflects itself in the consciousness of human beings, even if only post festum.
This view of the matter could be buttressed by reference to Marx's writings from the very earliest to ones leading up to the Manifesto, though it is not possible to do
this within the limits of this chapter.
So far, the discussion has focused on some central aspects of the theoretical claims set out above and has, in effect, sought to identify what is arguably 'dead' here.
What is 'living' in this area may be located in at least two places.
One is at the point of various observations and explanatory glosses about the development of capitalism, like its tendency towards periodic crises, the concentration
and centralisation of capital the formation of a world market, and the dehumanisation of work, all themes worked out in more sophisticated and detailed ways by Marx
and later by others following at least the general lines of his thought.
The other includes elements which may be described as raw materials for the production of a conceptual framework for sociohistorical explanations, for modest
predictions, and for the formulation and prosecution of certain political programmes. In this regard it may be suggested that such a 'materialist conception of history' or
'historical materialism' should be conceived as a repertory of concepts and heuristic principles for inquiry rather than as the repository of the sort of 'laws of history',
either in general or as regards particular modes of production, which occur in the pages of the Manifesto, in at least some of the later works of Marx (and Engels),
including historically very influential ones like the preface to the Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, and are still pursued by, for instance, many
proponents of 'analytical Marxism'. 15
The expression 'raw materials' is used advisedly, for it cannot be said that they exist in a satisfactory state in the Manifesto. Take, for example, one of the fundamental
principles of that work: 'The history of all society up to now is the history of class struggles.'16 To start with, the concept of 'class' appears in the Manifesto in a very
inadequate form. Thus at the place where it is first introduced, at the beginning of Section I, it seems to serve to identify, very generally, 'oppressor and oppressed', the
heretofore pervasive 'comprehensive division of

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society into different orders, a multifarious gradation of social rank'. 17 The existence of classes seems to be identified with 'the exploitation of one part of society by
the other'. All this is very vague, though it seems to limn a notion of 'class' much broader than what Marx later meant by the term. It also tends to blur the fact that 'the
history of class struggles' has often been, basically and crucially, struggles, antagonisms, within the exploiting classes as a whole rather than between the latter and the
exploited as a whole. (This is well illustrated by the history of the rise to dominance of the bourgeoisie in Europe, the most recent phases of which were incomparably
analysed by Marx himself in The Eighteenth Brumaire, The Class Struggles in France and elsewhere.) Furthermore, the idea of the key role of class struggle in
historical development is not used in the Manifesto in a thoroughgoing way. Thus it can hardly be said to play any significant role in the account there of the
development of specifically capitalist productive forces; here factors like the opening up of markets play a key part. This contrasts with how it is used in many parts of
Capital, where Marx gives important pointers to the role of class conflict between capital and labour in the development of the productive forces, for instance, in the
context of securing the 'real' versus the merely 'formal' 'subsumption of labour under capital'.
Turning now from the theoretical to the practicalpolitical component of the Manifesto, set out above, it is, to start with, obvious enough that (2.2)—the idea of the
vanguard role of communists—is dead. But what of the general goal of communism presented in (2.1)?
It is clear that this is also dead in the sense that there exists no social force with any claim to be taken seriously as a historical agent which has that goal on its political
agenda, and that it is completely unlikely that one will exist within the however remotely foreseeable future. To the extent that, in the opening words of the Manifesto,
'A spectre haunts the land of Europe—the spectre of communism', that spectre is not a premonition, terrifying to capitalists, of what is to come, but a ghost of the
dead, and the following claim that 'Communism is already recognised as a force by all the European powers'18 at best a report about the past.
The reasons for this are complex. On the one hand, they include capitalism's success so far in surviving its colossal internal economic and general social problems. On
the other, they include the failure of all attempts so far to realise anything even distantly like the sort of communist programme which Marx envisaged: every 'actually
existing socialism' has been, or become more or less rapidly, economically dysfunctional and/or inegalitarian, and also politically repressive.
Of course, it is true that many different explanations, in terms of specific historical factors, have been given for such failures. However, even if there is some adequate
explanation for each, this would provide no positive ground whatsoever for thinking that some future and reasonably lasting communist

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mode of organisation of society is achievable, that future ventures will not fail, even if, each time, for explicable reasons.
If history so far furnishes no actual examples of successful socialist/communist projects then it furnishes no rational grounds for believing that they are really possible in
the future.
However, if we discount crudely inductivist arguments from past failures, neither does it afford rational grounds for believing that such projects are really impossible.
Indeed the historical facts are consistent with a rational gamble on a socialist/ communist political programme. To start with, it needs to be established, as far as
anything of the sort can be, that the ultimate goal of such a programme offers the best available theoretical alternative to capitalism, in, as Brecht put it, 'these dark
times', present and future. Then it can be further argued in the following way that it is rational to pursue such a programme without any prior knowledge of the
possibility of its success. If the programme is in fact achievable (though we cannot know this to be so), and if pursuing it is a necessary condition for achieving it, then it
is rational to pursue it. If the programme is not in fact achievable (though again we cannot know this to be so) then pursuing it is, hopefully, merely futile. (In this regard
the argument is not unlike 'Pascal's Wager' about belief in God.)
This sort of consideration may well be pretty thin gruel to offer to an understandably desperate appetite for hope. But there is no point in denying that, at the present
time, we can see humanity's historical prospects, even in the fairly short term, through a glass at best only very darkly. The fact is that, in general, there is an irreducible
element of contingency in history and therefore in politics (Lenin for one never tired of stressing this) 19 which should bate too immoderate a desire for programmatic
certainties of any sort.
It is undeniable that this approach involves a strong element of 'utopianism', roughly in the sense of the programmatic entertaining of possibilities in no serious sense
justifiable by reference to empirical evidence. But Marx's own writings are riddled with ideas about communism which are utopian in this sense. This is true not only of
the earlier writings, like the 1844 Manuscripts. It is also true of the period of 'Scientific Socialism'. Even the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx's last,
greatest, and most sober writing on the subject, is filled with programmatic expectations which might turn out to be realistic, but which from the standpoint of the
present can be rationally regarded as little more than benign hopes. It hardly needs to be added that this is also true of later Marxists, and, among these, ones of the
first rank.20
The spectre of communism has ceased to haunt Europe, but the Manifesto has not ceased to haunt revolutionaries. The preceding remarks have only indicated a few
broad lines for a discussion with 'that affable familiar ghost'. Innumerable others remain. One, chosen partly because it has very seldom been discussed,

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rather than taken by most Marxists as virtually axiomatic, is the view, classically set out in it, 21 of the overall progressive character of capitalism as a historical epoch,
a discussion which would eventually have to consider the issue of what it means to call an epoch 'progressive' at all.22 Perhaps what is truly living in the Manifesto
resides more in the questions it raises than in the answers it gives to them.
Notes
13. This was, of course, pointed out long ago, in this context, by K. R. Popper, in The Poverty of Historicism (rev. edn, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1961). There is a detailed criticism of Popper's ascription of 'historicism' (briefly: unconditional prediction) to Marx in my 'Marx, Popper and ''Historicism''', in
Inquiry, Vol. 15, 1972, pp. 23566. What is said there is correct so far as it goes, but the defence of Marx is also tendentious, as it ignores what are in fact important
elements of 'historicism' in his work. There is a somewhat more balanced presentation in my 'Popper's Critique of Marx's Method', in G. Currie and A. Musgrave
(eds), Popper and the Human Sciences (Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster, Martinus Nijhoff, 1985), pp. 14763.
15. See my 'Reconstructing Marxism', in Science and Society, Vol. 57, No. 2, Summer 1993, pp. 13359.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. For example: 'History as a whole, and the history of revolutions in particular, is always richer in content, more varied, more multiform, more lively and ingenious
than is imagined by even the best parties, the most classconscious vanguards of the most advanced classes.' ('LeftWing' Communism—an Infantile Disorder in
Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1966) Vol. 31, p. 95).
20. For example, Trotsky writes that in the future: 'The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe or a Marx. And above this ridge new
peaks will arise', Literature and Revolution (New York, Russell and Russell, 1957), p. 256).

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22. See I. Wallenstein, Historical Capitalism with Capitalist Civilization (London/New York, Verso, 1995), especially pp. 97ff. J. Vogel raised some related
issues in his 'The Tragedy of History' in New Left Review, No. 220, November/December 1996, pp. 3661, but not, I think, as radically as Wallerstein.

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Chapter 12
A Capitalist State? Marx's Ambiguous Legacy
Paul Wetherly
Introduction
The Communist Manifesto contains probably the bestknown and most often quoted statement on the subject of the state to be found in Marx's writing, in which it is
claimed that political power is in the hands of the capitalist class or bourgeoisie. However, there are other views of the state to be found in Marx and, taken as a
whole, his writing constitutes an ambiguous legacy. 1 This chapter takes the Manifesto as a starting point to explore the variety of views of the state in Marx. Although
important unifying themes are identified it is shown that Marx's legacy is marked by two dimensions of ambiguity. It is argued that Marxism is still wanting a theory of
the state which satisfactorily resolves these ambiguities.
The State as Instrument of the Capitalist Class
In the Manifesto Marx and Engels offer a characterisation of the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the state which, it has been suggested, constitutes 'the
classical Marxist view on the subject of the state'.2 Here it is claimed that
Each of these stages of the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance [. . .] The bourgeoisie—with the establishment of largescale
industry and the world market—has finally gained exclusive political control through the modern representative state. The power of the modern state is merely a device for
administering the common affairs of the whole bourgeois class.3
The Manifesto appears to make a rather simple and bold claim: political or state power has been conquered or taken over by the capitalist class (thus suggesting
deliberate political action by that class) and is used exclusively (that is to the exclusion of other classes) to defend and advance the interests of the class. Hence the
Manifesto advances a class (or 'classtheoretical') analysis of politics and, more specifically, an 'instrumental' view of the state, in which the state is viewed as an
instrument controlled by

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the bourgeoisie for its own purposes. 4 More specifically, 'political power, in its true sense, is the organised power of one class for oppressing another'.5 This

formulation makes clear that the principal function of the state is to maintain class domination, and portrays the state, rather more narrowly than the opening statement,
as an essentially coercive instrument. The underlying characterisation of capitalism is as a society riven by class conflict (the intensity of which rises with capitalist
development) such that the capitalist class requires a coercive apparatus, the state, to maintain its position as economically dominant class. Following the same
reasoning, the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism requires the proletariat to organise itself as the ruling class through the seizure of state power into its own hands.
Hence the working class will have to use the state as an instrument to enforce its own rule against resistance from the capitalist class, until 'in the course of
development, class distinctions have disappeared . . . then . . . the public power loses its political character',6 We see here the idea that the state as a coercive
apparatus arises in the context of class conflict as an instrument for one class to oppress another and that in a classless society this instrument, accordingly, 'withers
away'.7
The view of the state as an instrument of the capitalist class also supports a strong form of economic determination insofar as it suggests a correspondence between the
economic and political dimensions of a capitalist society; between the economic and political constitution of classes. For it is claimed that the economically dominant
class is also, thereby, politically dominant; that a capitalist economy has as its counterpart a capitalist state. This idea is repeated in the claim that the development of
'free competition' (meaning capitalist relations of production) was 'along with a complementary social and political constitution, the economical and political rule of
the bourgeois class'.8 The classical view of the state thus exemplifies the 'cardinal principle'9 of Marxism; that the character of the legal and political superstructure is
explained in terms of the nature of the economic structure.
This simple view of the state appears to present the antithesis of the liberal conception. For Marx
The state is not an independent structure or set of institutions above society, that is a 'public power' acting for the 'public'. On the contrary, it is deeply embedded in
socioeconomic relations and linked to particular interests.10
Thus, again, it is claimed of the bourgeoisie that:
Your justice is merely the will of your class raised to the status of law, a will, whose content is established in the material circumstances of your class.11
It seems, indeed, that the state is so deeply embedded in the socioeconomic structure and so firmly linked to capitalist interests that there is no scope

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whatever for independent action by the state (the executive is 'but', that is 'nothing more than' a committee for managing the affairs of, the law 'but' the will of the
bourgeoisie) or for other interests in society to be represented (the bourgeoisie has 'exclusive political sway'). The state represents the interests of the capitalist class
and that is all.
What this bold formulation of the instrumental view gains in simplicity it seems to lose in plausibility. For example, whatever its limitations, it seems difficult to claim that
liberal democracy is simply an instrument of the capitalist class, or the welfare state is simply a response to the interests of that class. If this is the 'classical view' then,
it seems, so much the worse for the Marxist theory of the state. However before jumping to this conclusion we should note that the instrumental view of the state is
perhaps more subtle than is at first apparent and that other views are to be found in Marx's writing, including in the Manifesto.
Marx's Ambiguous Legacy
A more subtle reading of the classical view results by allowing that the reference to the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie suggests an important distinction
between the common interests of the whole class and the particular (divergent and possibly conflicting) interests of units (that is, individual firms) or 'fractions' of
capital. 12 Recognition of the fractioned and diverse nature of the dominant class complicates the answer to the question who controls the state. Rather than the
bourgeoisie, a single unified class, we might think of a dominant fraction of the class.13 But this is a minor refinement of the instrumental thesis—it leaves us with the
same basic concept of the state as 'instrument' in the hands of(a fraction of) the bourgeoisie and thus 'reducible' to (some combination of common and particular)
capitalist interests. A more significant departure is to conceive a looser relation between the capitalist class and the state, and to grant the state some degree of
autonomy, some capacity for action not reducible to capitalist interests.
Miliband discerns, in addition to the instrumentalist approach expressed in the Manifesto, a 'secondary view . . . of the state as independent from and superior to all
social classes, as . . . the dominant force in society rather than the instrument of a dominant class',14 exemplified by The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.15
Similarly Held suggests that
there are at least two strands in Marx's account of the relation between the classes and the state . . . the first . . . stresses that the state . . . may take a variety of forms and
constitute a source of power which need not be . . . under the unambiguous control of the dominant class in the short term. By this account, the state retains a degree of power
independent of this class . . . [it is] . . . 'relatively autonomous'. The second strand . . . is without doubt the dominant one . . . : the state and its bureaucracy are class instruments.16

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For Elster the 'central question' in Marx's approach to the state is posed in similar terms: whether the state is autonomous from or reducible to the interests of the
economically dominant class. 17 Elster distinguishes three approaches to the state in Marx: instrumentalism, abdication (or abstention), and class balance theories. The
latter two are united by the conception of the state as autonomous from the capitalist class so that Elster's typology closely matches that of Miliband and Held. Elster
makes the distinctive claim, however, that 'Marx made the autonomy of the state into the cornerstone of his theory'.18
It appears that there is a fundamental tension within Marx's thought between seeing the state as an instrument of, or autonomous from, the dominant class. In Elster's
account the autonomy of the state may sometimes arise from the voluntary abstention or abdication from power by the bourgeoisie, motivated by a calculation that
their interests are best served if they remain outside politics.19 In this case the bourgeoisie can, apparently, choose to take power back into their own hands if their
strategic calculation alters and the 'instrumental state' and 'autonomous state' views are thus reconciled (the second view becomes, in effect, a special case of the first).
However Elster says that sometimes 'the struggle between two opposed classes allows the state to assert itself by divide and conquer'.20 In this case, as with
Miliband's reference to the state as 'the dominant force in society' and Held's characterisation of the state as 'independent' of the dominant class, the two views appear
much harder to reconcile. The tension within Marx's thought might be resolved by the claim that the instrumental view refers to the 'normal' relation between the state
and the dominant class and, consequently, that the 'Bonapartist' state is 'exceptional'.21 This view would be predicated on a claim that the bourgeoisie normally retains
the upper hand in its struggle with the working class.
The normal exceptional distinction seems to preserve the instrumental view as the cornerstone of Marx's theory of the state. State autonomy becomes an interesting
but marginal case—the exception to the rule of the capitalist class. However the concept of (relative) autonomy suggests that the state is not simply reducible to the
interests of the dominant class, and this opens up a number of interesting theoretical avenues.
Within the framework of an instrumental view of the state we may conceive the two main classes seeking to control state power in their own interests. A looser
relationship between the state and the interests of the economically dominant class thus permits an understanding of state actions as, in part, a response to 'pressure
from below'. Indeed in the Manifesto it is recognised that political action by the proletariat has the capacity to compel 'the recognition of workers' individual interests
in legal form . . . Thus the Ten Hours Act in England was passed.'22 This argument is taken further in the chapter on 'The Working Day' in Capital. The argument here
is that the workers are unable by economic struggle alone to resist the lengthening of the working day so that

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limitation can only be achieved by state action. The Ten Hours Act is then portrayed as a defeat for the industrial bourgeoisie by an alliance of the factory operatives
and the landowners, the latter motivated by a desire to avenge the repeal of the Corn Laws: 'legal limitation and regulation had been wrung [from the masters] step by
step after a civil war of half a century'. 23 Elsewhere Marx goes so far as to describe limitation of the working day as the victory of the political economy of the
working class over the capitalist class.24 Thus the Ten Hours Act seems to provide an important example of the working class using state power for their own ends.
It seems from this that state power is not in fact held securely in the grasp of the bourgeoisie—its control is much more contested than appeared before. However the
key question is how far can pressure from below, short of the revolutionary seizure of power by the proletariat, be effective in compelling state action in response to
workingclass interests. It is, after all, consistent with the idea of the state as an instrument of the capitalist class that it does not manage the affairs of the bourgeoisie
exclusively. That is, the instrumental (for the bourgeoisie) actions of the state might not be a complete description of what it does, thus allowing the possibility that the
state might also respond to workingclass interests. However the state can still be viewed fundamentally as an instrument of the bourgeoisie if this responsiveness is
conceived as highly circumscribed, such that pressure from below can be successful only to the extent that it does not threaten dominant class interests. Thus the Ten
Hours Act may be construed as consistent with the political economy of the capitalist class, securing the reproduction of labour power. On the other hand it may be
possible to trace, in the Ten Hours Act, the origins of the major social transformation brought about by the development of the welfare state, itself seen largely as an
outcome of 'pressure from below'. In this view what is emphasised is the much more openended nature of political outcomes and the potential for reforms which do
cut against the grain of capitalist interests even to the extent of opening up the possibility of a gradual 'reformist' transformation of capitalism. In the Manifesto, at least,
Marx is clearly committed to the first of these views: the state is essentially an instrument of the capitalist class, the potential for reform is limited, and the need for the
forcible overthrow of capitalist rule is envisaged.25
The recognition of pressure from below still conceives the state as an instrument reducible to class interests, albeit that the interests of the working class now come into
play and there is consequently some degree of autonomy of the state from the capitalist class. Other writings of Marx suggest a break with this approach by bringing
the state itself into play. Thus Miliband's reference to the state as the dominant force in society and Elster's notion of the state asserting itself imply the need to
investigate what Poggi refers to as the supply of state actions based upon 'the push of interests lodged inside the state'.26 This moves us away from a 'black box'
conception of the state which passively transforms inputs in

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the form of class interests into policy outputs towards a conception of the state as a subject with its own interests (a conception found in Marx's early writing). 27 In
other words, it moves us away from a 'societycentred' to a 'statecentred' understanding of the state, or to a synthesis of these approaches. For example, in Elster's
hands the Marxist approach is conceived as a 'strategic game' between capital and the state.28
We can see that, drawing on other writings of Marx, relaxing key assumptions of the 'classical view' produces a more complex model of the state in which it is seen as
the vector of three distinct sets of interests: the dominant and subordinate classes and the state itself. The dichotomy suggested by Elster between counterposed
models of the state (either autonomous from or reducible to capitalist interests) is clearly inadequate to capture the feasible alternatives: there is a variety of theoretical
positions 'inbetween' these two extreme formulations29 generated by different conceptions of the balance between the three sets of interests. The notion of 'relative
autonomy' is designed to capture precisely this inbetween theoretical position: the state is not reducible to capitalist interests but neither is it entirely autonomous. At
the same time, however, the thrust of the 'classical view' could be maintained by arguing that, in the end, capitalist interests generally prevail over those of the working
class or the state.
Within the same basic model additional complexity can be introduced by a more complex view of strategic actors and their interests, and by allowing for the influence
of other class and nonclass social forces. Thus we might think in terms of 'fractions of labour' with competing interests analogous to the fractions of the dominant
class. For example Gough, in a discussion of the origins of the welfare state, places particular emphasis on the role of 'the core of the "labour movement" . . . the
unionised, predominantly manual, working class'.30 Similarly we might conceive the state system in terms of diverse interests. In each case we move away from seeing
the state and classes as unified actors towards the idea of dominant fractions. Further, the simple twoclass model of bourgeoisie and proletariat may be extended by
the recognition of other classes which may be conceived as external to the capitallabour relation (for example landlords, the petty bourgeoisie) or occupying an
intermediate position between capital and labour (for example supervisors). Finally 'nonclass' social forces or movements may be defined in terms of issues which are
not directly connected to relations of production (for example movements for democratic reform such as Chartism).
The approach we have considered so far involves what may be termed a strategic actor conception of political power. the disposition of political power is the outcome
of the balance between organised interests—the bourgeoisie, interests within the state, the working class, other class and nonclass forces. The emphasis is on the role
and effectiveness of agency conceived primarily in terms of

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classes as 'collective actors.' However there is another side to the theory of the state in Marx (not evident in the Manifesto) which involves a structural or 'capital
theoretical' approach.
Marxist political economy is a theory which encompasses a 'structural' view of the economy and a conflict theory of class struggle. 31
In the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy the theory of the state is located as an element of the theory of history. Here Marx
characterises the relationship between the economic and political realms in terms of the famous 'base and superstructure' metaphor.
The totality of. . . relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure . . . At a certain
stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production . . . From forms of development of the productive forces
these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole
immense superstructure.32
There is no mention here of the relation between the state and classes, and no strategic actors. Rather the relationship is conceived as structural: between the economic
structure, which comprises the relations of production, and the legal and political (super)structure, which includes the state. It is this passage, above all, which
expresses the principle of economic determination, the idea that the character of the state is to be explained in terms of the nature of the economic structure. There
appear to be two distinct theoretical claims involved here which are often compounded. The first is the conceptualisation of the economy as a structure, which entails
that the economy exhibits its own dynamic, its own 'laws of motion', in virtue of its structural characteristics, specifically the nature of the relations of production. In this
view the economic structure has a logic of its own which is prior to individuals and notions of agency in the explanatory order: 'here individuals are dealt with only in so
far as they are personifications of economic categories, embodiments of particular classrelations and classinterests'.33 This claim is related to (but does not entail) the
second, that there is a structural relationship between the economic and political dimensions of society, that the nature of the economic structure supplies a principle
of explanation of the character of the state (economic determination).
It may be argued that a major strength of Marxism is the recognition of the role of both agency and structure in social theory, but there seems to be ambiguity in Marx:
sometimes agency is forefronted (as in the Manifesto) and sometimes structure (the preface). It is clearly important to clarify the relationship

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between these two explanatory principles, to set out a coherent and plausible understanding of their combination. There are two approaches to this problem. The first,
exemplified by Gough 34 and Miliband,35 is to see them as commensurable principles in terms of the level of concreteness of social reality at which they operate so
that the theoretical and empirical task is to assess their relative weights in contributing to specific outcomes. The second approach, taken by Cohen,36 sees these two
principles as nonequivalent in the sense that one is more fundamental than the other; in particular structural (functional) explanation may be viewed as more
fundamental and operating at a higher level of abstraction than class struggle explanation.
The principle of economic determination raises again the question of state autonomy—how far there is scope for action by the state independent of economic structural
determinations—and how far the state exerts a causal influence upon the economic base. In other words, to what extent does economic determination involve a simple
onedirectional determinism or reductionism? In general, economic determination need not entail that the state has no scope for independent action or no causal effect
on the economic structure, but involves the assertion of causal asymmetry: the principal direction of causality is from the economic to the political dimension, the base
explains the superstructure more than vice versa.37 Again, the theoretical alternatives are not either economic determination or state autonomy but a conception of
relative autonomy.
Conclusion
Marx's legacy is thoroughly ambiguous. This is not to say that there are no important and distinctive unifying themes running through Marx's writing: the most important
of these is the societycentred approach to the state, which emphasises the relationship between state and society and rejects any notion of the state as an independent
set of institutions. More specifically the key idea of Marx—the cardinal principle—is economic determination; that is, that explanations of politics and the state are to
be found (more than vice versa) in economics. Finally, to use Poggi's terms,38 Marx's image is of a partisan rather than a serviceable state—political power is closely
aligned with, and subordinate to, economic power. However, as we have seen, the ambiguity in Marx can be seen as running along two dimensions. The first is the
structureagency dimension or, in other words, the distinction between class and capitaltheoretical approaches. This ambiguity is encapsulated in Held's apt
characterisation of Marx's approach: the state is both 'deeply embedded in socioeconomic relations and linked to particular interests'39 but no link is made between
the workings of these explanatory principles. They are linked by the theoretical claim which they both purport to sustain—the partisan model of the capitalist state. But
here we

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find Marx running along the second dimension of ambiguity—between a determinist thrust (the state as instrument of the bourgeoisie or as superstructural effect of
economic structural causes) and a recognition that there is scope for independent action by the state.
Thus Marxism stands in need of a fully elaborated theory of the state in which these ambiguities are resolved. A distinctive Marxist theory of the state will, consistent
with the theory of history, exemplify the central claim of economic determination construed as causal asymmetry, wherein 'politics' is explained by 'economics', more
than vice versa. Such a theory must allow, what is apparent, that state power can and does have significant effects within 'civil society' and yet demonstrate that over a
range of areas of state action that impinge decisively on the reproduction of a capitalist economy state power is subordinate to economic power. Finally, in showing
how this subordination is effected the theory must elucidate the way in which economic power is both embedded in the structural properties of the system and
expressed through class agency, and the relationship between these explanatory vectors.
Notes
1. For surveys of Marx's writing on the state see, in particular: R. Miliband, 'Marx and the State', in R. Miliband and J. Saville (eds), The Socialist Register (London,
Merlin Press, 1965); D. McLellan, The Thought of Karl Marx (London, Macmillan, 1980); B. Jessop, The Capitalist State (Oxford, Blackwell, 1984).
2. Miliband, 'Marx and the State', p. 283.
4. It is worth noting that an instrumental view is compatible with differing, and nonMarxist, answers to the questions: who controls the state? and in whose interests?
The state could be conceived as an instrument of (in a liberal view) society as a whole or (in a feminist view) men. What unites all variants of an instrumental view is
that they see the state essentially as a 'tool' manipulated by interests in society and not as itself an agent with its own interests.
6. Ibid.
7. This particular formulation is attributed to Engels, although Marx certainly believed that the abolition of classes would lead to the disappearance or abolition of state
power. A plausible interpretation is that the state would no longer exist as a specialised and differentiated set of institutions, a public sphere, and that the specifically
oppressive or coercive aspects of the state would disappear. See McLellan, The Thought of Karl Marx, pp. 21112.
9. S. Hall, 'The ''Political'' and the "Economic" in Marx's Theory of Classes', in A. Hunt (ed.), Class and Class Structure (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1977), p.
23.
10. D. Held, 'Central Perspectives on the Modern State', in G. McLennan et al. (eds), The Idea of the Modern State (Milton Keynes, Open University Press,
1984), p. 52.

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12. R. Miliband, Marxism and Politics (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 678.
13. For example, it has been argued that one overriding feature of contemporary British capital is 'the dominance of finance capital over industrial capital': D. Coates,
The Context of British Politics (London, Hutchinson, 1984), p. 59.
14. Miliband, 'Marx and the State', p. 283.
15. K. Marx, C.W., Vol. 11, pp. 99197.
16. Held, 'Central Perspectives . . .', pp. 523.
17. J. Elster, Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 402.
18. Ibid., p. 426.
19. Ibid., p. 411.
20. Ibid., p. 422.
21. The Bonapartist state and other 'exceptional' forms of authoritarian state, as compared with 'normal' bourgeois democratic forms, seem to involve a concentration
of state power unfettered by representative institutions and independent of the dominant class. On the other hand exceptional forms of state may be understood, as
compared to democracy, as isolating state power, from 'pressure from below'. Thus Miliband claims that, for Marx and Engels, normal and exceptional forms are all,
in fact, class states (Miliband, Marxism and Politics, pp. 7490).
23. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 280 (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1954).
24. K. Marx, 'Inaugural Address of the Working Men's International Association', in C.W., Vol. 20, p. 11.
25. Contemporary Marxist accounts standardly explain the development of the welfare state as, in part, the outcome of 'pressure from below' and 'reform from
above'. But the welfare state remains part of a capitalist state because, for example, reforms are implemented in a form that does not threaten capitalist interests. The
state does respond to pressure from below but only within limits. See I. Gough, The Political Economy of the Welfare State (London, Macmillan, 1979); N.
Ginsburg, Class, Capital and Social Policy (London, Macmillan, 1979).
26. G. Poggi, The State. Its Nature, Development and Prospects (Oxford, Polity, 1990), p. 120.
27. Jessop, The Capitalist State, pp. 45.
28. Elster, Making Sense of Marx, pp. 4067.
29. N. Geras, 'PostMarxism?', in New Left Review, No. 163, 1987, p. 50.
30. Gough, The Political Economy of the Welfare State, p. 60. See also P. Wetherly, 'Class Struggle and the Welfare State', in Critical Social Policy, No. 22,
1988.
31. Gough, The Political Economy of the Welfare State, p. 56.
32. K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1970), pp. 201.
33. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1954), p. 21.
34. Gough, The Political Economy of the Welfare State.
35. Miliband, Marxism and Politics.
36. G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (Oxford, Clarendon, 1978).

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37. This conception is exemplified by Cohen's functional construal of the theory of history, ibid.
38. Poggi, The State.
39. Held, 'Central Perspectives', p. 52.

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Chapter 13
The Communist Manifesto and the Crises of Marxism
Jules Townshend
The spectre of the Communist Manifesto has haunted two major crises of Marxism in this century. The first crisis was associated with the Revisionist Debate at the
turn of the century, and the second with the fall of communism in 1989, the rise of neoliberalism, new social movements and postmodernism. In both crises the
Manifesto's spinal assumption, namely, its teleological vision of history, proclaiming an inevitable proletarian revolution which would usher in the new dawn of a
communist civilisation—indeed, its 'grand narrative'—came under the critical spotlight. What will be shown is why this vision was so fundamental to Marxist theory and
practice, how it revealed itself in the Manifesto and impacted upon these two crises. And a crucial question will be addressed: has this assumption proved so fatal to
Marxism that it must be abandoned in the quest for human emancipation?
The Spinal Assumption
The idea that history had a distinct, communist goal played a fundamental role in the theorising of Marx prior to the Manifesto. He sought, along with Engels, to create
a new language for socialist politics, a language that did not start from transcendental notions of social justice and utopian nostrums, and which in effect redefined the
role of the socialist intellectual. The 'young' Marx of 1843 wanted to avoid the imperious contempt for the masses that he saw as all too evident among the Young
Hegelians. In a letter to his friend Ruge, he stated that he did not propose to
confront the world with new doctrinaire principles and proclaim: Here is the truth, on your knees before it! It means that we shall develop for the world new principles from the
existing principles of the world. We shall not say: abandon your struggles, they are mere folly; let us provide you with the true campaign slogans. Instead we shall simply show
the world why it is struggling, and consciousness of this is a thing it must acquire whether it wishes it or not. The reform of consciousness consists entirely in making the world
aware of its own consciousness, in arousing it from its dream of itself, in explaining its own actions to it.

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Further, he maintained that his 'credo' was: 'the selfclarification . . . of the struggles and wishes of the age'. 1
Marx developed this teleological vision through a series of confrontations with different kinds of progressive intellectuals in the five years preceding the Manifesto,
whether they were Young Hegelians or 'utopian' socialists. Their strategies for solving social problems in effect were either singly or in combination, elitist,
conservative, ineffectual, defending a material interest, or politically divisive.2 Importantly, he sought to unite these reformers by developing a universal discourse
derived from an agreement about what the world was, where it was going and their place in it. He aimed to bring them down to earth, both literally and metaphorically,
to alter their vision of the world and also of themselves. This entailed three moves. First, the demonstration that thought was worlddependent, rather than the
converse. So:
The phantoms in the real human brain are also, necessary sublimates of their material life process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion,
metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence.3
Thus, such intellectuals could not escape from the materiality of the world. Figuratively, there existed no extraterrestrial Archimedean point from which the world
could be changed.
The second move recognised that thought in some way reflected the activities of human beings in attempting to satisfy their human needs. Not to acknowledge that
ideas were integrally related to human activity, to practice, led to the notion that thought itself was independent from, and superior to, the world. This led to irrationality
and 'mysticism'. Marx therefore argued that:
The dispute over the reality or nonreality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question . . . All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which
lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.4
Further, Marx came to realise that core human activities were structured by the technical and social organisation of production, which had hitherto generated a world
of conflicting class interests. Hence, human thought and activity were conditiondependent. A genuine universality that did not lead to mysticism and an effective
concealment of class interest could only arise, as Marx was to say later, when material conditions had generated this possibility.
Mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since . . . the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the
process of formation.5

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The task of creating communism, that is, a system of production in which all human material needs could be met, was only possible as a result of capitalism and the
creation of a universal class, that is, the proletariat, that would end exploitation and class division in all its forms.
Thus, and here we come to the crux: his third move. These tendencies immanent in material reality meant that he could assume that the 'real' and the 'good' were
coalescing. Indeed, he adopted the Hegelian strategy for dealing with the fact/value, is/ought problem. Hegel argued that
What is universally valid is also universally effective; what ought to be, in fact also is, and what only ought to be without [actually] being, has no truth. The instinct of Reason,
for its part, rightly holds firmly to this standpoint, and refuses to be led astray by figments of thought which only ought to be and as 'oughts', are credited with truth, although
they are nowhere met within experience. 6
But unlike Hegel's solution, it did not assume the form of a constitutional monarchy and a market economy, but communism. As already quoted:
Communism is the act of positing as negation of negation, and is therefore a real phase, the next period of historical development, in the emancipation and recovery of mankind.7
Facts and values, the 'is' and the 'ought' became united in the historical process. This teleological vision enabled him to position himself in a way that was not overtly
prescriptive, elitist, conservative, or defending a 'particular', that is, nonuniversal interest. The working class, who would come to constitute the majority of the world's
working population, was for Marx a genuinely 'universal class', whose interests lay in the creation of a classless, nonexploitative, communist society. And it had the
potential capacity to become a new ruling class, as the bourgeoisie had done so before it. The task of the socialist progressive intellectual was not an offer panacea to
this class.
In the measure that history moves forward, and with it the struggle of the proletariat assumes clearer outlines, [socialists and communists] no longer need to seek science in their
minds; they have only to take note of what is happening before their eyes and to become its mouthpiece.8
Within this process, the 'educator' would get educated. Indeed, the Manifesto was in a sense a product of this 'education' and aimed to disseminate its results to the
proletariat. Specifically, this meant demonstrating how this 'next phase of historical development' would necessarily be communist, consequent upon the activities of
this uniquely revolutionary class.

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The Manifesto's Teleology
The role of teleological thinking and its implications for socialist intellectuals can now be examined. Marx and Engels held that the 'advance of industry' precipitated
'sections of the ruling class' into the proletariat, supplying it with 'a mass of materials for selfdevelopment'. 9 Crucially, this involved 'a part of the bourgeois ideologists
[such as Marx and Engels themselves], who have worked out a theoretical understanding the whole historical development'.10 This 'enlightening' relation between
worker and bourgeois ideologist took the form of a mirroring relation, of the latter indicating to the former the historical significance of their struggles, based on their
understanding of the 'whole historical development'.
Not surprisingly, the first part of the Manifesto is devoted to making what is implicit in the historical process explicit to the proletariat, namely, how capitalism
involuntarily creates its own gravediggers, the proletariat, and how the dialectic of its struggles beginning with individual struggles against individual capitalists undergoes
an everwidening process of solidarity and organisation, moving from the level of the factory, to the nation and ultimately the world, from the economic to the political,
as the working class becomes a class, that will eventually become a ruling class.11 Even reforms that it achieved, such as the Ten Hours Act of 1847, were viewed as
evidence of it becoming so. Marx in bringing out the inner meaning of workers' struggles thus used the teleological perspective to demonstrate that immediate,
contingent struggles could be viewed within a broader historical framework. Not merely was reformist activity viewed in this light. Further, bourgeois revolutions,
where the proletariat was well developed, as in Germany, would be a prelude to proletarian revolutions.12
In the second part of the Manifesto the teleological principle is again employed in order unify the proletarian movement by preventing intellectuals from imposing their
ideas on workers. The reason why communists did not 'declare any special principles for shaping the proletarian movement' was that they understood the 'the
conditions, progress and general result of the movement', which was a proletarian revolution and the abolition of private property. Crucially, communists did not
dictate to this movement because their 'theoretical propositions' were 'in no way founded upon ideas or principles invented or discovered by this or that reformist
crank'.13 Rather these conclusions 'merely express in general terms the factual relations of an existing class struggle, a historical movement that is proceeding under our
own eyes'.14 The historical logic of workers' struggles was the creation of a communist society. It was not a question of imposing a particular communist panacea on
workers. Through the course of their struggles against capital, they would come to this solution, as indicated in Section I of the Manifesto. In other words, the end

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of these struggles did not have to be schematised and philosophically justified. It was a potential given.
The teleological framework helped resolve a good number of political and theoretical problems within the Manifesto; it managed to balance many potential antinomies.
Thus, a balance could be struck between free will and determinism, as well as between structure and human agency. Capitalism's development meant that workers as
potentially rational beings would be able to respond rationally to their growing immiserisation, which coincided with their growing sense of collective strength and
increasing political education. Individual workers would freely combine with other workers to overcome their exploitation and create a classless, communist society.
Moreover, the is/ought, fact/value tension was overcome theoretically and practically: capitalism was creating the conditions in which the 'real' and the 'good' would
necessarily merge, and hence the 'good' itself required no philosophical justification. Further, in a practical sense, a utopian stance could be avoided, with its divisive
and totalitarian implications, because the present contained anticipations of the future. The role of the theorist was merely to invest existing workers' struggles with their
appropriate historical significance derived from the teleological vision. More concretely, this also meant that even struggles which were not directly aimed at achieving
proletarian revolution could be given a revolutionary gloss through a teleological perspective. Successful reformist struggles served to verify the fact that the working
class, in imposing its will on the bourgeoisie, was in the process of becoming a ruling class. Supporting the bourgeoisie in its struggles with the feudal aristocracy, as in
Germany, would hasten the possibility of a proletarian revolution. Thus, the conjunctural could be subsumed within the tendential, thereby resolving any tension
between necessity and contingency.
However, after the Manifesto this delicate fabric of synthesis, constructed around the idea of a telos, became unstitched by 'history' itself. Many, but not all of, Marx
and Engels's projections became vulnerable to criticism as capitalism developed, displaying an unanticipated resilience, and as the working class proved coy in
accepting the mantle of a future ruling class.
The Revisionist Debate
The first 'crisis' of Marxism, generated by Eduard Bernstein's 'revision' of Marxism at the turn of the century, registered the fact that reality and Marxian teleology, as
expressed in the Manifesto, were not coinciding. Central to Bernstein's 'revision' of Marxism was a debunking of its teleological claims. (In)famously he asserted: 'This
[final] goal [of socialism], whatever it may be, is nothing to me, the movement is everything.' 15 Although he explicitly held his own teleological vision, grounded on the
principle of cooperation, he challenged the Marxian telos of proletarian revolution.16 His doubts lay in

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what he perceived as the tendentiousness of the Marxian dialectic, as evidenced by the continued growth and stability of capitalism, the democratisation of the
capitalist state, thereby dissolving its class character and opening up the possibilities for social reform.
Further, he questioned the proletariat's capacity to become a ruling class, because, among other things, it lacked the requisite potential of strong solidarity. In advanced
manufacturing industries a whole hierarchy of differentiated workers is to be found. 17 Equally important, workers could achieve their demands through reform rather
than revolution as a result of the development of parliamentary democracy, which he assumed along with Karl Kautsky and the later Engels as a natural outgrowth of
capitalist development, trade unions and cooperatives.18 Indeed, he rejected the whole notion of historic necessity, with its deterministic implications. Human
civilisation had reached such a stage, even under capitalism, that ethical considerations, which presupposed the existence of choice, could have greater causal
significance.19 Consequently, socialism had to have an ethical appeal that transcended class interest. The object of this moral agenda was to make citizenship
'universal'.20
Rosa Luxemburg's riposte, Social Reform or Revolution, stoutly defended Marxist teleology.21 Her theoretical strategy was, first, to explore the implications of
abandoning such a perspective: it would lead to an atheoretical opportunism.22 The role of Marxist theory lay precisely in demonstrating the 'indissoluble tie between
social reforms and revolution. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution its goal.'23 Whilst the purpose of the struggle for reforms was to develop the
organisation, combativity and class awareness of the proletariat, the role of theory was to demonstrate through a dialectical understanding of capitalism that its inherent
contradictions made socialism 'objectively necessary'.24 Such an understanding revealed the 'dualism of the socialist future and the capitalist present'.25 Her analysis of
capitalism and its stateform sought to show how all the struggles for reforms, without such a transcending vision, would be ultimately selfdefeating. As for the space
that Bernstein attempted to open up for ethical deliberation, Luxemburg, consistent with her notion of 'historic necessity', retorted that this smacked of Kantianism: an
endeavour to base a socialist programme on 'pure reason'.26
Although Luxemburg's defence of Marxian teleology was a masterpiece in cogent argumentation, certainly in comparison with Bernstein's efforts, it suffered from three
defects. First, it too easily dismissed the question of whether a socialist programme should be explicitly ethically grounded. Second, it omitted any discussion of the
proletariat's hegemonic capacities; these were merely assumed. Third, the contingency of reformist struggles was reconciled with the tendential solely in terms of
subjectivity, that is, consciousness raising to revolutionary selfawareness, because the objective development of capitalism would inevitably erase all reformist gains.
Whilst Bernstein's analysis of capitalism

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and reformism collapsed into empiricism, as noted by Lukács, 27 there was at least a recognition of the reformist temper of the European working class, of the
significance of parliamentary democracy, of the resilience of capitalism and of the fact that reforms could have an objective impact on its economic and political modus
operandi. Thus, Luxemburg did not adopt the same argument as Marx and Engels did in the Manifesto, in insisting that reforms constituted growing evidence of the
working class's development as a ruling class, although her teleological vision was still intended to underline the importance of the proletariat as a historically hegemonic
actor. The theorist's role therefore as with Marx and Engels was to act as some kind of mirror. Nevertheless, if Bernstein erred on the side of empiricism, she erred on
the side of reductionism offering no convincing attempt to combine contingency and necessity. What Bernstein and Luxemburg had in common, however, was an
attempt to ground theory on some kind of historical directionality, that is, an understanding of its underlying tendencies, even of the former argued that historical
necessity was becoming a less significant force. And however problematic her defence of the Marxian telos may have been, her insistence upon the need to explain
capitalism in terms of contradictory economic processes and class conflict and domination, effectively undermined Bernstein's aspiration to make ethics a driving force
for social change in order to realise the liberal ideal of 'universal citizenship'.
Teleology and the Current Crisis of Marxism
In response to the current crisis of Marxism, Laclau and Mouffe in their influential and controversial work, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical
Democratic Politics,28 followed Bernstein in their critique of Marxism in making the rejection of the teleological vision of the Manifesto pivotal to their thesis. They,
too, pointed to the growing mismatch between Marxist theory and reality, which in this case referred to the rise of new, nonclassedbased social movements and the
complete inversion of its emancipatory aspiration in the totalitarian societies of communism. Similarly, they openly embraced liberalism, wanting to deepen and expand
'liberaldemocratic ideology'.29 And like Bernstein at the declaratory level they maintained some kind of slippery affinity with Marxism, in claiming that their notion of a
hegemonic struggle for 'a radical, libertarian and plural democracy' was both 'postMarxist' as well as 'postMarxist'.30 Yet, just as their 'revisionist' precursor, they
in effect distanced themselves from Marxism.
Their strategy of distancing took the form of finding Marxism guilty of numerous, untenable 'isms', which stemmed from its underlying teleological principle of 'historical
necessity'. These included 'a priorism', 'essentialism', 'monism', 'reductionism', 'dualism' and 'classism'. These 'isms' were problematic

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because they did not satisfactorily account for contingency in human affairs, which was at variance with the teleological vision. Indeed, Marxists developed the fruitful,
if flawed, concept of 'hegemony' to deal with the problem, which allowed the working class to adopt, albeit temporarily, an alien class identity. Nevertheless, the
Marxist notion of hegemony, even Gramsci's, was mired by an arbitrary privileging of the working class, the rigid fixing of human identity in class terms and the viewing
of society as transparent, rather than as opaque and complex.
This theoretical failure, they claimed, arose from Marxism's ontologically primitive understanding of the formation of human identity. Every identity was 'precarious',
manifesting itself in the 'continuous movement of differences'. 31 Laclau and Mouffe maintained that this precariousness and 'unfixity' were generated by the inherently
relational nature of individual identities, which stemmed from a recognition of differences with other individuals. These differences themselves were unstable,
presumably because perceptions (of self and the world), subjective desires and dispositions could never be taken as constant. Hence, there existed an 'irresoluble
interiority/exteriority tension'. The 'field of identities' never manages to be 'fully fixed'.32 This meant that all social relations were contingent and open to constant
negotiation between what they termed 'floating signifiers'.
And this theoretical failure led to a political failure. Its teleological vision, which privileged the working class as the emancipatory actor, as the universal class,
contained an incipient totalitarian logic. Its fixed 'subject positions' built on a resultant a priorism, and led to forms of representation that were inherently substitutionist,
with the 'party', substituting itself not merely for the working class, but the whole of humanity.
Laclau and Mouffe proposed an alternative form of democratic hegemony, which they maintained was genuinely emancipatory. It consisted of 'articulatory practices',
which modified the identities of those participating. The totality of these practices constituted a 'discursive formation'. This process was openended because the nature
of the differences between the elements within this formation could not be determined in an a priori fashion, given their relational character and the 'irresoluble
interiority/exteriority tension'. Thus, although meaning and identity could be partially fixed in 'privileged discursive points', as 'nodal points', they were open to constant
subversion. Concretely, this subversion was manifested in the growth of the new social movements, through a process of 'emergence', where a subject in a condition of
subordination comes to realise that it is oppressive and 'articulates' this fact, thereby creating a new site of 'antagonism' and appropriate forms of political organisation.
Democratic hegemony was crucial here, because it allowed these identities to emerge, since it recognised that all struggles against oppression were 'equivalent' to each
other, with none privileged. Given the 'radically open character of the

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social', the experience of democracy 'should consist of the recognition of the multiplicity of social logics along with the necessity of their articulation', which should be
'constantly recreated and renegotiated'. 33 Thus, a 'democratic revolution' was needed, consisting of the 'multiplication of spaces and . . . institutional
diversification'.34 And this meant giving up on the 'possibility of a unified discourse', owing to the irreducible nature of 'discursive identity'.35 Indeed, there was 'no
radical and plural democracy without renouncing the discourse of the universal and its implicit assumption of a privileged point of access to ''the truth'', which can be
reached only by a limited number of subjects'.36
Both Marx and Laclau and Mouffe sought to stifle the Jacobin temptation of intellectuals involving the imposition of their utopian ideals upon the benighted masses.
Marx thought this could be done through demonstrating the convergence of the real and ideal in the historical process: the job of the intellectual was merely to speed
up this process by enlightening workers about the true, historical significance of their struggles, fostering class unity and their hegemonic potential, thereby aiding them
in their own selfemancipation. As we have seen, Laclau and Mouffe rejected this teleological solution, because in privileging the proletariat it was inherently
totalitarian. A democratic form of hegemony was required, which was fundamentally tolerant in perceiving all struggles against oppression as 'equivalent'.
Critics of Laclau and Mouffe have correctly indicated that any serious analysis of the 'extradiscursive' realm of social and historical processes is absent.37 What needs
to be underlined is that their radical discarding of all the 'isms' supposedly inscribed in Marxism makes such an analysis difficult for them and disarms them in their
attempt to formulate a truly emancipatory theory. In dismissing various 'isms', they abandon various forms of analysis that are fundamental to our understanding of the
external (and internal) world that is crucial to our emancipation. All the forms of analysis written off as 'a priorism', 'reductionism', 'essentialism', 'classism' (with the
exception of 'monism' and 'dualism') are in some way vital analytical tools.38 The real question is not whether they should be rejected, but whether they are well or
badly used. For example 'a priorism', insofar as it refers to the making of deductive predictions based upon certain assumptions, can be good or bad, depending on
whether the assumption is well or ill founded. Thus, Marx's assumption about workingclass hegemonic capacities inevitably revealing themselves in the historic
process has so far proved questionable, but the sun rising tomorrow is a fairly plausible form of 'a priorism'. Life would be impossible without such assumption
making. Indeed, Laclau and Mouffe irresistibly lapse into a kind of 'a priorism' themselves through their unargued privileging of tolerance in viewing all struggles against
oppression as 'equivalent'. There is an a priori ruling out of the possibility that some

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struggles may for various reasons (for example, strategic, depth and width of oppression, whether they are genuinely emancipatory, and so on) be more important than
others. Further, they assume, even though they reject the possibility of a 'unified discourse' that this 'polyphony' of identities can constitute a 'discursive formation'. Why
not an 'unhegemonic' cacophony ?
Similarly, 'reductionism' is crucial to scientific method, referring to different levels of abstraction. Whilst there are often problems in moving between the different levels
of abstraction, there is no need to confuse this process with reality, especially, in its 'economistic' variant. Again, they, too, could be charged with 'reductionism' in
reducing the world to contingency and refusing to consider the possibility that both contingency and necessity might play a part in explaining identity. To assert that all
identities are 'precarious' and subject to a 'continuous movement of differences' downplays external, structural factors that may explain why certain identities,
connected with various social roles, are far from precarious. Laclau and Mouffe in rejecting 'historical necessity' rightly reject its teleological version, but to abandon all
forms of structural causality is an unnecessary step, hampering our ability to understand the 'extra discursive' world. By the same token, to jettison 'essentialism' is to
discard a useful tool of analysis, in helping us develop for example economic models that enable us to contrast different systems of production. Thus, Marx's focus on
how different societies organised surplus extraction offers a fruitful line of enquiry. This model, however, does not have to be confused with any actual society, which
may contain a mixture of different modes of production. Lastly, 'classism' insofar as it suggests that class is an important desideratum in the understanding of numerous
social processes, including the distribution of wealth and power, social conflict and the nature of ideology. Of course the phenomena of different kinds of autonomous
spheres, which cannot be simply explained by class, are significant. Yet their existence does not disprove the existence of class. Indeed, the latter may be crucial in
helping to understand the context in which the former operates.
Thus, all these different 'isms', if handled intelligently, may in fact be crucial to the development of a hegemonic, emancipatory discourse and strategy that are able to
analyse reality critically in terms of power relations and the effects of different strategies. These different 'isms' offer the possibility that in principle there can be some
agreement about the nature of the context in which multiple oppressions occur and about solutions that may require largescale collective action. Laclau and Mouffe in
suggesting that society is too complex and opaque to be fully understood through these 'isms' are in effect inviting us to give up the quest for a greater understanding of
society and its various mechanisms, which may be crucial to overcoming exploitation and oppression. Perhaps symptomatic of their unwillingness to deploy the critical
tools of the 'isms' is their far less radical critique of liberal democracy than of Marxism. The latter's development

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is effectively 'fixed', except for the development of the concept of hegemony, whilst the former has merely to be 'widened' and 'deepened'. Yet liberal democracy plays
an ideological role in legitimating capitalist production relations, and contains an implicit tension between the individualism of liberalism and the potential collectivism of
democracy. Marxism, apart from containing a valuable critique of liberal democracy, ought to be given the same 'equivalent' developmental space as liberal
democracy, to learn from its own mistakes—political and theoretical—and respond to changes in the worlds of thought and economic, political and social processes
and institutions.
Indeed, and here we return to the original teleological assumption of Manifesto, the history of Marxism has amply demonstrated its elitist and totalitarian dangers. Yet,
it is still possible to endorse the idea of 'historical directionality', 39 if shorn of its 'inevitablist' connotations, in the sense that capitalism is still continuing to develop on a
global basis, generating the need and possibility of a genuinely international socialist movement. Nevertheless, if the 'real' and the 'good' are not automatically
coalescing as required by the original teleological template, then Marx and Engels's rubbishing of philosophising and utopian thought in general was illconceived. Still,
their point that such activities are shaped by, and are dependent upon, their historical context has lost little of its force. Whilst a question mark must hang over the idea
of the working class as a hegemonic subject as defined in orthodox Marxist theory, although it remains strategically central to the socialist project, the imperative to
create a global anticapitalist movement has in many respects become even more evident than it was in Marx's day, as a globalised capitalism makes the lives of the
planet's population increasingly precarious. Such a movement cannot be built on the ultimate solipsism of identity politics, but has to be grounded in a language that
assumes a common humanity, albeit consisting of difference within a unity.
The problem lies less with the Enlightenment project, and its quest for transparency, as taken up by Marxism, than with the context in which such theorising takes
place, where ideas cannot be tested by a democratic practice, where the 'social being' of the educator cannot be educated. In a reconstitution of that project some
kind of reconstituted—'deteleologised'—Marxism may have an important part to play. This discourse of the 'universal' can be developed within a democratic context
on the presumption that 'history' has no fixed endpoint.
Notes
1. K. Marx, Early Writings (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1975), pp. 2089.
2. In the same letter to Ruge he complained about the 'universal anarchy' that had 'broken out among the reformers', ibid., p. 207.
3. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1965), p. 138.

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4. Ibid., p. 661.
5. 'Preface to A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy', in K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing
House, 1962), p. 363.
6. Quoted in V. Geoghegan, Utopianism and Marxism (London, Methuen, 1987), pp. 278.
7. Early Writings, p. 358.
8. K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1955), p. 109.
10. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Quoted in E. Bernstein, The Preconditions of Socialism, ed. H. Tudor (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. xxviii.
16. Ibid., p. 99.
17. Ibid., p. 104.
18. Ibid., pp. 1436.
19. Ibid., pp. 1920.
20. Ibid., p. 146.
21. Indeed, her monumental Accumulation of Capital (1913) can be viewed as an attempt to defend the economic assumptions underlying this thesis through the
idea of inevitable economic breakdown, with the presumption that the proletariat would act to prevent this 'barbarism' from occurring through proletarian revolution.
See N. Geras, The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg (London, New Left Books, 1976), ch. 1, passim.
22. R. Luxemburg, Selected Political Writings (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1971), pp. 1324.
23. Ibid., p. 52.
24. Ibid., pp. 589.
25. Ibid., p. 101.
26. Ibid., pp. 589.
27. G. Lukács, History and Class Consciousness (trans. R. Livingstone), (London, Merlin Press, London, 1971), ch. 1, passim.
28. E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London, Verso, 1985).
29. Ibid., p. 176.
30. Ibid., p. 4.
31. Ibid., p. 122.
32. Ibid., p. 111.
33. Ibid., p. 188.
34. Ibid., p. 189.
35. Ibid., p. 19. Laclau and Mouffe's emphasis.
36. Ibid., p. 1912.
37. See E. M. Wood, The Retreat From Class (London, Verso, 1986), p. 62.
38. See G. McLellan, 'PostMarxism and the "Four Sins" of Modernist Theorizing',

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New Left Review, No. 218, July/August 1996, pp. 5374 for a plausible defence of certain kinds of reductionism, functionalism, essentialism and universalism in
social explanation.
39. See A. Callinicos, Theories and Narratives (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995), pp. 21011.

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Chapter 14
The Communist Manifesto as International Relations Theory
Peter Burnham
Introduction
In the Manifesto of the Communist Party, written between December 1847 and January 1848, Marx and Engels provide definite albeit brief indications of how a
class theory of international relations can be constructed. Taken together with passages from the Economic Manuscripts of 18578 (published in Moscow in 1939
under the editorial heading, Grundrisse der Kritik derpolitischen Ökonomie) and The Civil War in France, it is clear that although Marx did not live to complete
his proposed treatise on the world market and crises, he prepared a rudimentary analysis of international relations which challenges both realist statecentred
orthodoxy and fashionable neoGramscian approaches. 1
In many respects Marx's work also provides an alternative to the rather crude interpretations of Lenin and Bukharin which often dominate discourse on the far Left.
'Bukharinist' theories of the state as 'capitalist trust' can appear anachronistic and all too easily lend themselves to the mechanical functionalism characteristic of
determinist Soviet MarxismLeninism. Alternatively, dependency and world systems theory, which seeks to dispense with the analysis of interstate relations, opting
instead for sociological coreperiphery models, tends to disintegrate either into liberal institutionalism or display the worst traits of functionalism far removed from
Marx's focus on class as developed in the Manifesto.2
Faced with this crisis of theory many 'marxist' analysts simply adopt traditional realist or neorealist approaches to international relations. International outcomes are
explained in terms of the hegemonic dominance or decline of great powers and versions of 'superimperialism' are fashioned from traditions which owe more to
Machiavelli and Morgenthau than to Marx. The argument of this chapter is that such theorists need not relinquish Marx's class analysis when it comes to international
relations. Although many 'marxologists' and international relations writers are keen on presenting the view that Marx's work is essentially a 'domestic' study, which was
taken into the 'international arena' by Lenin,3 the alternative view of this paper is that Marx theorises bourgeois social relations as global class relations. It is simply
unnecessary to approach the study of international

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relations in terms of Waltzean or Poulantzean structural 'levels'. 4 By contrast I will argue that Marx views capitalism as a single system in which state power is
allocated between territorial entities. Class relations do not impinge on the state, they do not exist in 'domestic' society and make their presence felt by influencing the
state which operates in the 'international' realm. Rather the state itself is a form of the class relation which constitutes global capitalist society.5 Bourgeois social
relations appear, for example, as British relations on the world market. Yet as Marx clarifies in The Civil War in France, struggles between states are to be
understood as struggles between capital and labour which assume more and more the character of the national power of capital over labour.6
The world market is not therefore to be seen as an autonomous 'level', for this simply reproduces the domestic/international split which so bedevils realist and liberal
international relations theory. Rather the world market, existing in and through the territory of states, is where the disharmony of bourgeois social relations appear upon
their most magnificent scene, as the nationally separate component parts of bourgeois society struggle in competition.7 A class analysis of international relations does
not thereby proceed by dismissing the state or by seeking to divine how the 'economy' determines and is the 'real' motor behind the state. This would be to accept the
axioms of neoclassical liberalism which see the state as both irrelevant and absent from the 'autonomous realm' of the economy. Instead class analysis seeks to
understand how seemingly independent features of capitalist society are interdependent and contradictory aspects of an organic unity whose foundation is the struggle
between capital and labour. Neither the state nor the market exist simply as class relations but they are nevertheless the historically specific social forms taken by this
contradictory unity.8
The foregoing indicates that the aim of class analysis as presented in the Manifesto is to reveal the relations of struggle which lie behind the seemingly solid nature of
material categories. This does not mean that we should reject analysis of the categories themselves. Rather we need to begin our study by asking 'why this content has
assumed that particular form'.9 In respect of international relations, first, what it is about the development of the social relations of production under capitalism that
results in apparently separate 'economic' and 'political' forms,10 and, second, how are we to understand conflict and collaboration between states (and other actors) in
terms of the struggle between capital and labour?
The Significance of the Communist Manifesto
A full account of Marx's approach to international relations rests upon mastering his critique of classicalpolitical economy presented in Capital and in Theories of
Surplus Value. The clear and insistent arguments present in this critique

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undermine the claim that Marx's project is flawed because of too many 'silences' and 'absences'. 11 Moreover it seems reasonable to infer from Engels's preface to the
English edition of the Communist Manifesto of 1888 (and from the joint preface of 1872), that, with a few minor changes, the authors continued to adhere, well after
1848, to the general principles laid down in the Manifesto. In many ways therefore the Manifesto remains the essential starting point for understanding Marx's
approach to international relations. In the course of his analysis in the Manifesto Marx develops four main arguments indicating how a radical theory of international
relations can be fashioned. These arguments focus on class struggle and the constitutive power of labour; the 'revolutionary' dynamic of industrial capitalism;
dependence and uneven development in the global system; and the centrality of the notion of crisis.
Class Struggle and the Constitutive Power of Labour
The central proposition of the Manifesto, that 'the history of society up to now is the history of class struggles', has been much misunderstood.12 If, as is often the
case, class struggle is taken to mean overt political action or conscious, collective industrial dispute then it is easy to conclude that Marx's statement is false. However,
as de Ste Croix points out, this interpretation makes nonsense not merely of the Manifesto but of the greater part of Marx's work.13 By contrast if we interpret the
Manifesto's opening statement in line with the centrality Marx gives to exploitation in Capital, a much more coherent explanation is produced. In a famous passage in
Capital, Volume 3, Marx argues:
the specific economic form in which unpaid surplus labour is pumped out of the direct producers determines the relationship of domination and servitude, as this grows directly
out of production itself and reacts back on it in turn as a determinant . . . it is in each case the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the immediate
producers in which we find the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social edifice and hence also the political form of the relationship of sovereignty and dependence,
in short, the specific form of state in each case.14
What Marx is concentrating on, and as de Ste Croix points out what is so often overlooked, is not the way in which the bulk of the labour of production is done, but
how the extraction of the surplus from the immediate producer is secured.15 If we see exploitation as the hallmark of class struggle then it is feasible to view history as
involving a permanent struggle between exploiting and exploited classes, and in a sense 'even slaves who are kept in irons and driven with a whip can conduct some
kind of passive resistance, if only by quiet sabotage and breaking a tool or two'.16 In short, by understanding class struggle

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as the fundamental relationship between classes involving exploitation and resistance to it, we have a more coherent view of struggle encompassing overt/covert, active
and passive forms of resistance to the restructuring and intensification of the imposition of work. 17
In this sense it is the organisation of the social relations of production, and in particular the social determination of labour, which forms the starting point for Marx's
analysis, 'it is the general light tingeing all other colours and modifying them in their specific quality; it is a special ether determining the specific gravity of everything
found in it'.18 For Marx the importance of the social relations of production, and the disposition of power which thereby obtains between the working class and the
ruling class throughout history in classdivided societies, cannot be overemphasised. By rooting his study in the analysis of the direct relationship of the owners of the
conditions of production to the immediate producers, Marx offers a unique theorisation of the entire social edifice and, thereby, its changing political form. In
capitalism, as Meiksins Wood points out, the disposition of power between the individual capitalist and worker has as its condition the political configuration of society
as a whole. The balance of class forces and the powers of the state permit the expropriation of the direct producer, the maintenance of private property for the
owners, and their control over production and appropriation.19
In developing the concept of the social relations of production—the relations established by individuals in the reproduction of their life—Marx is able to understand the
state and the market as historically specific reified forms, which are to be grasped neither from themselves nor from the socalled general development of the human
mind, but rather have their roots in the 'material conditions of life, the totality of which Hegel . . . embraces within the term "civil society".20 To grasp the laws of
motion of bourgeois society, and thereby to understand the contradictory unity of state and market, it is necessary to briefly characterise the social relations of feudal
production and trace their dissolution since, 'the whole mystery of commodities, all the magic and necromancy that surrounds the products of labour on the basis of
commodity production, vanishes . . as soon as we come to other forms of production'.21 This is the task Marx achieves in his seminal Contribution to a Critique of
Hegel's Philosophy of Law, and which is later reiterated in the Grundrisse and Capital and again with passion in The Civil War in France.
For our purposes, the Manifesto indicates that the key characteristic of capitalist social relations is that for the first time in history the means whereby the surplus is
pumped out of the direct producer is 'purely' economic in form, given the generalisation of commodity production and exchange. Whilst all other classdivided
societies have operated through direct extraeconomic sanctions, based on kin, custom, religion, law or force, the capitalist class achieves subordination through the
generalised imposition of the commodity

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form. 22 The ability to participate in consumption is thereby regulated by the ability to amass exchange value. For the mass of propertyless individuals this is only
possible through the sale of labour power. The struggles of the bourgeoisie against the feudal nobility thereby sought to replace connections based on primitive blood
ties, nature, and relationships of lordship and bondage, with the 'icy waters of egotistical calculation'23 in the shape of the commodity form and a market society. The
linchpin of bourgeois society is, as the Manifesto makes clear, private property. Although, as Marx points out, production based on exchange value may appear to
posit property as the result only of labour, actually capitalist relations presuppose and produce the separation of labour from its objective conditions.24 The
transformation of money into capital and the final consolidation of market society presupposes the historical process which separates the worker from ownership of the
means of production and subsistence. Once capital has come into being, the effect of its process is to subject all production to itself, and everywhere to develop and
complete the separation between labour and property, between labour and the objective conditions of labour. However, despite the 'separation' between the 'moment
of coercion' and the 'moment of appropriation' in capitalism, absolute private property, the contractual relation which binds producer to appropriator and the process
of generalised commodity exchange itself are all maintained through legal and political forms. Therefore in bourgeois civil society, the 'economic' rests firmly on the
'political' despite their 'differentiation'.25 This, as I indicate below, is of fundamental importance in Marx's approach to international relations.
In the place of unreflective statecentrism, Marx suggests we understand that the apparent solidity of the 'state' masks its existence as a contradictory form of social
relationship. The state is not only an institution but a formprocess, an active process of forming social relations and therefore class struggles channelling them into non
class forms—citizens' rights, international human rights—which promote the disorganisation of labour.26 The key to comprehending capitalist society is that it is a
social system based on the imposition of work through the commodityform. The reproduction of bourgeois social relations at all levels (from the overseer, to the
managing director, the government, international agencies and alliances between states) rests upon the ability of capital (in all its forms and guises) to harness and
contain the power of labour within the bounds of the commodityform. The struggles which ensue over the imposition of work, the regulation of consumption through
the commodification of labour time as money and the confinement of the production of use values within the bounds of profitability produce constant instability and
crisis. It is the everyday struggles in and against the dominance of the commodityform which are manifest as 'national' economic crises or balance of payments
problems or speculative pressure on currency. Thus Marx's approach sees relations between

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national states in terms of the social relationships which constitute states as moments of the global composition of class relations.
The 'Revolutionary' Dynamic of Industrial Capitalism
The foregoing analysis of the constitutive power of labour is summarised by Marx towards the end of Section I of the Manifesto, in the following terms: 'The essential
condition for the existence and for the rule of the bourgeois class is the accumulation of wealth in the hands of private individuals, the formation and expansion of
capital, and the essential condition for capital is wage labour.' 27 The bourgeoisie harnessing the power of labour has, Marx notes, been the first to show what human
activity can really bring about. However although the bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part in the development of society, Marx is adamant
that it is the law of value (to which the bourgeois class is also subject) and the accumulation of capital that forces the pace of change:
The bourgeois relations of production and trade, bourgeois property relations, modern bourgeois society which has conjured up such powerful means of production and of trade,
resembles the sorcerer who could no longer control the unearthly powers he had summoned forth.28
Whilst the discovery of America and development of giant modern industry gave an immense boost to the rising bourgeoisie, these features have now reacted back on
the capitalist class. The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and 'The need for a constantly expanding market for
their products pursues the bourgeoisie over the whole world'.29 This situation has two main consequences for international relations. First, in the place of old local and
national seclusion, 'we have a universal commerce, a universal dependence of nations on one another'.30 Prefiguring by almost 130 years the 'interdependence school'
of international relations,31 Marx suggests that national selfsufficiency becomes more and more impossible. Not only is this likely to destroy 'national' industries (and
lead to the 'internationalisation' of production) it also fuels international trade by creating 'new wants' and produces from national literatures a cosmopolitan 'world
literature'.32
Second, rapid improvements in production and communication force all nations, regardless of their dominant mode of production to adopt capitalist social relations.
The cheap price of commodities 'batter down all Chinese walls' despite 'even the most intense xenophobia'. In short:

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It forces all nations to adopt the bourgeois mode of production or go under; it forces them to introduce socalled civilisation amongst themselves, i.e. to become bourgeois. In a
phrase, it creates a world in its own image. 33
The recent history of international relations 'postCold War' and the experience of attempts to devise 'socialism in one country' would appear to lend renewed
significance to this insight of the Manifesto.
Dependency and Uneven Development
Whilst Marx recognises that the power of the bourgeoisie rests on its ability to impose work through the commodityform, hence extracting maximum surplus from the
working class, he is equally clear that relations between states involve exploitation. Unlike Adam Smith and David Ricardo, who argue that international relations can
be a positive sum game with all nations benefiting from a global division of labour (encapsulated in Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage),34 Marx indicates that
there is no basis for 'catchup' or even development. The 'less developed' nations are likely to remain disadvantaged in the global system, becoming increasingly
dependent on 'advanced' states. In the same way that the bourgeoisie has made the countryside dependent on the towns:
It has made undeveloped and semideveloped nations dependent on civilised ones, peasant societies dependent on bourgeois societies, the East on the West.35
When placed in the context of the dynamic of industrial capitalism Marx and Engels offer a clear statement that whilst all nations will be drawn into the bourgeois mode
of production they will not exist on equal terms. Growing competition among the bourgeoisie indicates that conflict and collaboration is the norm in the global system
and is manifested in national terms as a struggle between states. A dialectic of nationalisation within states and internationalisation between states is set up prefiguring
both the 'dependency' school and more orthodox Leninist treatments of international affairs. However whilst the latter traditions have on occasion been guilty of
reifying the state and producing a static analysis, the Manifesto continues the theme that, 'everything feudal and fixed goes up in smoke',36 by placing the notion of
crisis and class struggle at the heart of its explanation.
Social Crisis and Political Struggle
Insofar as Marx grounds a theory of global relations in an analysis of struggles between labour and capital he offers a unique contribution to international

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relations that transcends the artificial separation between 'economics' and 'politics'. Capital, he emphasises, is not a personal, it is a social power, and only by the
united action of all members of society can it be set in motion. This points to the instability of capitalist relations and the permanence of class struggle. Whilst the
bourgeoisie is involved in an unceasing process of harnessing the power of labour (and the working class in permanent resistance to the imposition of work), it is
moreover engaged in fierce competition and ultimately bound by the law of value. The system of private property, on which the class antagonism rests, periodically
produces an epidemic of crises that in earlier epochs would have seemed absurd—an 'epidemic of overproduction'. 37 Here Marx refers not only to the standard
economics meaning of not enough 'effective demand' (demand backed by the ability to pay). He primarily draws attention to the social crisis at the heart of society
based on private property—'bourgeois social relations have become too narrow to encompass the wealth they produce'.38 Periodically not only the products of
labour but largescale productive forces themselves are destroyed (and society finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism) because 'there is too much
civilisation, too many goods, too much industry, too much commerce'. In an effort to mitigate such crises we see on the one hand, the enforced destruction of a mass
of productive forces; and on the other the conquest of new markets and the more thorough exploitation of old ones. As a consequence the bourgeoisie paves the way
for more extensive and destructive crises and diminishes 'the means for preventing them'.39
Just as the bourgeoisie is involved in a constant battle with the working class (and is of course fragmented in terms of nationality), the proletariat conducts its daily
struggle in localcumnational settings. Whilst recognising that the 'Workers have no nation of their own' Marx and Engels nevertheless maintain that:
Since the proletariat must first of all take political control, raise itself up to be the class of the nation, must constitute the nation itself, it is still nationalistic, even if not at all in the
bourgeois sense of the term.40
Moreover, united action of the 'leading civilised' countries is 'one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat'. In an important passage Marx resolves
what at first sight seems to be a contradiction in his understanding:
The struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie is at the outset a national one in form, though not in content. Naturally the proletariat of each country must first finish off its
own bourgeoisie.41
In consequence, as the exploitation of one individual by another is put to an end, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put to an end: 'As internal

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class conflict within a nation declines, so does the hostility of one nation to another.' 42 In short, Marx develops a careful argument that rejects nationalism as the basis
of workingclass organisation, yet recognises that global relations are expressed in national terms. Hence the national struggles of the workers bring to the fore the
common interests of the entire proletariat, 'independent of all nationality'.
Conclusion
Whilst a quick survey of contemporary international relations points to the durability of national states and the world market, class analysis, as developed in the
Manifesto, probes behind this apparent solidity to reveal the incessant struggles between labour and capital, which, as Marx indicates, are just so many mines to blow
bourgeois society to pieces: 'a multitude of antagonistic forms of the social entity, whose antagonism, however, can never be exploded by a quiet metamorphosis'.43
Capitalist society, built on generalised commodity production, fetishises social relations to the extent that the dead categories 'trade', 'competition', 'profitability', and
the 'economy' itself, limit our vision and threaten to constrain political action by obscuring the historical specificity of the present form of social organisation.
Not only is the notion of the 'economy' a reified abstraction, but even a seemingly innocuous idea such as the 'national balance of payments' is revealed on closer
inspection to have only a virtual existence—an accountant's attempt to chart the spatial (national) containment of the power of labour within the commodity form. As
Marx records in relation to trade, however much the private interests within every nation divide it into as many nations as there are fullgrown individuals in it, and
however much the interests of the exporters and the importers of the same nation here conflict with each other—the rate of exchange creates only the semblance of
the existence of a national trade.44 Similarly, 'competition' tends to be understood by liberal and realist writers alike as the relation between firms which fuels capitalist
growth. However, 'price competition' and 'product differentiation' are simply the forms through which the class struggle between labour and capital is organised.45
New job hierarchies, infinite model variations, marketing strategies and definitions of skill are methods employed globally by capital to gain control over (principally by
dividing) labour.
The Manifesto indicates that the aim of Marxian class analysis is to reveal the relations of struggle that lie behind the seemingly solid nature of material categories.
Marx rejects studies of international relations which begin either from the 'isolated individual' of economic liberalism or the 'likeunits' (sovereign states) of the realist
tradition. The 'isolated individual' is 'nothing but the aesthetic illusion of the small and big Robinsonades'.46 Individuals exist

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only in definite social relations, 'man is a social animal in the most literal sense: he is not only a social animal, but an animal that can isolate itself only within society'. 47
Furthermore, states do not exist independently of society—they are simply the political form of the social relations which constitute society ('Political power in its true
sense is the organised power of one class for oppressing another').48 By guaranteeing private property and thereby upholding the rule of the market through law and
money, states manage the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. In effect, states exist as political nodes in the global flow of capital.
The relevance of the Communist Manifesto is that it implores us to trace international relations back to the contradictory movements of the labourcapital relation. In
this way, Marx and Engels offer a 'political' theory of international relations which forges an allimportant link between global class struggles and the national
formulation of policies, designed to rechannel the power of labour and disorganise its potential for political unification. Based on this reading of the Manifesto,
international relations is redefined as the study of the national processing of global class relations and the forms of resistance to this precarious 'containment', from the
workplace to the Earth Summit.
Notes
1. For a defence of statecentred orthodoxy see S. Krasner, 'International Political Economy: Abiding Discord, in Review of International Political Economy, Vol.
1, No. 1, Spring 1994, pp. 1319. For an early assessment of neoGramscian approaches see P. Burnham, 'NeoGramscian Hegemony and the International Order,
in Capital and Class, Vol. 45, Autumn 1991, pp. 7391.
2. A useful overview of the limits of dependency can be found in R. Kiely, Sociology and Development: the Impasse and Beyond (London, UCL Press, 1996).
The classic critique of functionalism remains J. Rex, Key Problems of Sociological Theory (London, Routledge, 1961).
3. For example see J. S. Goldstein, International Relations (New York, HarperCollins, 1994), p. 477.
4. For a critique of Poulantzas see S. Clarke, 'Marxism, Sociology and Poulantzass Theory of the State', in Capital and Class, 2, 1977. The classic structural realist
text is Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York, Random House, 1979).
5. See W. Bonefeld, 'Social Constitution and the Form of the Capitalist State', in W. Bonefeld, R. Gunn and J. Holloway (eds), Open Marxism, Vol. 1 (London,
Pluto, 1992).
6. C.W., Vol. 22, p. 329.
7. C.W., Vol. 28, p.10.
8. For further elaboration see P. Burnham, 'State and Market in International Political Economy, in Studies in Marxism, 2, 1995.
9. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1976), p. 174.
10. The seminal analysis is J. Holloway and S. Picciotto, 'Capital, Crisis and the State', in Capital and Class, Vol. 2, 1977.
11. For example, in an otherwise useful overview Andrew Linklater criticises Marx for

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failing to reflect systematically on 'the manifold patterns of alienation, exploitation and estrangement based on ethnicity, race and gender' (A. Linklater, 'Marxism',
in S. Burchill and A. Linklater, Theories of International Relations (London, Macmillan, 1996), pp. 1245). On 'silences' and 'absences' in Marx, see S. Clarke,
'Althusserian Marxism', in S. Clarke et al., OneDimensional Marxism (London, Allison and Busby, 1980).
13. G. E. M. de Ste Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (London, Duckworth, 1981), p. 57.
14. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 3 (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1981), p. 927.
15. de Ste Croix, The Class Struggle, p. 52.
16. Ibid., p. 66.
17. Ibid., p. 44. To illustrate the consistency of this view, de Ste Croix notes a comment made by Marx and Engels to Babel and others in 1879 when reflecting on the
Manifesto: 'For almost forty years we have stressed the class struggle as the immediate driving power of history'. Ibid., p. 47.
18. C.W., Vol. 28, p. 43.
19. Ellen Meiksins Wood, 'The Separation of the Economic and the Political in Capitalism', in New Left Review, 127, 1981.
20. C.W., Vol. 29, p. 262.
21. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 169.
22. P. Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, Verso, 1979), p. 403; H. Cleaver, Reading Capital Politically (Sussex, Harvester, 1979) p. 72.
24. C.W., Vol. 28, p. 433.
25. Meiksins Wood, 'The Separation'.
26. J. Holloway, 'In the beginning was the scream', in Common Sense, 11, 1991.
31. The classic interdependence text is R. Keohane and J. Nye, Power and Interdependence (Boston, Little Brown, 1977).
33. Ibid.
34. D. Ricardo, The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (London, Everyman, 1973), pp. 827.
35. C.W., Vol. 6, p. 488.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
43. C.W., Vol. 28, pp. 967.
44. C.W., Vol. 28, p. 96.

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45. See H. Cleaver, 'Competition or Cooperation?', in Common Sense, 9, 1990.
46. C.W., Vol. 28, p. 17.
47. Ibid., p. 18.

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GUIDE TO FURTHER STUDY
Many of the chapters in this volume already constitute guides to further study in particular areas. Their endnotes will provide very useful sources of further reading, and
are included in the book's general index to allow for the pursuit of particular authors or topics. Some more general suggestions follow.
General Introductions to Marx and Engels
These are numerous. In making the following suggestions I am acutely aware of missing out many good introductions. A good basic starting point would be David
McLellan's Karl Marx (Fontana Modern Masters, 1975), followed up with his Marx Before Marxism (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1972) and his The Young
Hegelians and Karl Marx (London, Macmillan, 1969). McLellan's most comprehensive account of Marx is his Karl Marx—His Life and Thought (London,
Macmillan, 1980). Two good thoughtful general introductions are Mike Evans, Karl Marx (London, Unwins, 1975) and Wal Suchting, Marx: An Introduction
(Brighton, Wheatsheaf, 1983). Many current debates focus on analytical Marxism. A good introduction to these (but emphatically not a first book on Marx) is Jon
Elster, Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985).
Further Reading of Marx and Engels
It is always best to get to know an author through his or her own words. Marx and Engels tend to mention numerous concepts and persons, often with nicknames,
which makes this trickier than it might otherwise be. A sensible approach is to read through a lot of their work quickly, not worrying too much about understanding
everything, and then go back and analyse paricular concepts and issues. There are numerous editions of their work, so I have just suggested some titles which should
be quite easy to find:

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Marx: The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (main source for young Marx's ideas on alienation); The German Ideology, Part 1 (with Engels, the
first systematic exposition of the materialist conception of history); The Class Struggles in France, 184850; The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon
Bonaparte (these show Marx's practice of writing history and his class analysis); Wage Labour and Capital, Wages Price and Profit (two popular expositions of
Marx's economic ideas, the latter modifying some of the views in the Manifesto); preface to The Critique of Political Economy (Marx's statement of his views in a
couple of pages needs very careful thought and comparison with his other writings. The Critique itself is more an economic text for later study); The Civil War in
France (Marx's account of the Paris Commune, contains ideas on the state); Critique of the Gotha Programme (Marx's comments on various political issues;
includes some ideas about communism). More intimidating are Capital (3 vols), Theories of Surplus Value (3 vols) and, the first draft for these, the Grundrisse.
However, the economic ideas in these volumes underlie the other writings.
Engels: The Condition of the Working Class in England (Engels's account based heavily on the Manchester of the 1840s; very readable; arguably the first
exposition of Marxism); Socialism, Utopian and Scientific (Engels's popular introduction to Marxism); The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
(Engels on the family, and, implicitly, feminism).

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INDEX
A
Adler, Max, 70, 74
Aitken, L. C., 68, 73
alienation, 4, 12, 100, 200, 203
Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverein, 121
alliance, of classes etc., 4
Andler, Charles, 69, 73
Andréas, Bert, 59, 72
anniversaries of the Manifesto, 6374
Arendt, Hannah, 113, 114, 116
Attlee, Clement, 74
Austrian Heresy, 147
author, death of the, 5, 51
B
Babeuf, Graccus, 12
Bad Godesberg, 123
Bakunin, Mikhail, 45, 73, 108, 115
Balibar, Etienne, 100, 101, 104
Bastille, 106
Bauer, Otto, 145, 148
Belchem, John, 46, 50
Benjamin, Walter, 101
Berlin, 44, 49
Berlin, Isaiah, 45
Bernstein, Eduard, 6, 9, 10, 65, 66, 67, 69, 72, 73, 84, 85, 119, 128, 131, 144, 151, 181, 182, 183, 188
Blair, Tony, 70, 130
Blanqui, Louis 12, 45, 79, 80, 82, 85
Blanquism, 6, 80, 81, 82, 90
Blatchford, Robert, 122
Bolsheviks, 6
bourgeoisie, 3, 4, 8, 11, 12, 41, 65, 66, 67, 68, 71, 77, 80, 87, 88, 90, 98, 99, 100, 101, 104, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 119, 120, 128, 129, 132, 142, 143, 146,
149, 158, 162, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 174, 179, 181, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199, 203
reactionary, 68
revolutionary, 16
Brecht, Bertolt, 163
Britain, 5, 42, 46, 50, 65, 74, 122, 129, 134, 143
economic leadership, 45
British Labour Party, 4, 70, 119, 122, 130
Budgen, F. C., 68, 73
Bukharin, Nikolai, 87, 190
Buonarotti, 79
Burns, John, 123
Burns, Lizzie, 135
Burns, Mary, 134, 135, 136
C
Capital, 9, 11, 55, 87, 88, 91, 94, 95, 104, 136, 137, 138, 141, 159, 162, 169, 175, 191, 192, 193, 197, 199, 200, 203
capital, concentration of, 6, 66
capitalism, 3, 11
global, 11
laws, 159
capitalist class, 3, 98, 99, 120, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 193, 195
Carlyle, Thomas, 5, 45, 47, 48
Carr, E. H., 93, 95, 150, 152, 153
Chadwick, Owen, 48
Chartism, 5, 36, 47, 48, 50, 171
children, 3
class
class rule, 66
class struggle, 2, 1423, 60, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 71, 84, 119, 120, 121, 125, 128, 158, 160, 172, 173, 180, 192, 196, 197, 198, 200
Class Struggles in France, The, 11, 82, 95, 131, 203
class war, 41, 67
classless society, 84
definition of, 2, 11
ruling, 4
Cohen, G. A., 94, 173, 175, 176
Coleridge, S. T., 45
commune, Russian peasant, 72, 912
communism, 1, 3, 4, 12, 23, 41, 43, 49, 55, 57, 62, 72, 152, 162, 164, 177, 179, 183
concept of, 87
Communist Corresponding Committee, 2
Communist League, 2, 12, 80, 127, 132, 133
WillichSchapper faction, 12
'Condition of England' debate, 5
Condition of the Working Class in England, 5, 47, 133, 140, 203

Page 206
Condorcet, M. J., 100
Connolly, James, 150, 153
Copernicus, 113
Crimean War, 90
crises, 3, 7, 18, 71, 109, 129, 157, 159, 161, 190, 194, 197
of Marxism, 177
Cunliffe, John, 80, 85, 89, 95
cunning of production, 8, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 103
D
de La RochefoucauldLiancourt, Duc, 106, 113
de Ste Croix, 192, 200
democracy, 2, 4, 70, 74, 77, 82, 84, 112, 114, 123, 125, 127, 128, 143, 144, 168, 175, 182, 183, 185, 186
Dickens, Charles, 5, 47
Disraeli, Benjamin, 5, 47
Draper, Hal, 6, 13, 61, 62
Duan, Zhongqiao, 92, 95
E
economists, political, 46
Elster, Jon, 169, 170, 171, 175, 202
emancipation, 7, 77, 84, 88, 90, 108, 139, 146, 177, 179, 185, 197
Engels, Friedrich
The Condition of the Working Class in England, 5, 47, 133, 140, 203
partnership with Marx, 6, 54
England see Britain
Erfurt Programme, 121, 130
ethics, 10
European Union, 9, 142, 148, 149, 151
exploitation, 2, 16
F
Fabians, 122, 123, 130
Falklands War, 143
family, 3, 9, 26, 108, 134, 135, 138, 139, 140, 203
fascism, 8, 10, 69, 106, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 114, 116
Fernbach, David, 61, 62, 71, 74, 85
fettering, 3, 18, 87, 108, 197
feudalism, 3, 42, 77, 87, 109, 111
Feuerbach, Ludwig, 1, 2
First World War, 9, 143, 145
Fordism, 128
Fourier, Charles, 3, 4, 35
Fourth International, 70
France, 2, 11, 42, 44, 45, 89, 95, 108, 122, 130, 131, 191, 193, 203
franchise, 2, 48, 126, 144, 147
freedom, 8, 43, 84, 88, 101, 102, 103, 147
Freyer, Hans, 112, 115
G
Gadamer, HansGeorg, 51
Gaskell, Mary, 5, 47
gender, 9
proportions of the workforce, 1861, 137
Gentile, Giovanni, 106, 114
Germany, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 42, 43, 44, 45, 49, 59, 62, 66, 71, 74, 78, 80, 82, 86, 87, 89, 90, 93, 95, 106, 109, 111, 112, 114, 115, 130, 149, 158, 180, 181
backwardness, 42
globalisation, 129, 187
Goebbels, Joseph, 110
Gotha Programme, 12, 121, 163, 203
Gottschalk, R. von, 82
Gough, Ian, 171, 175
Griffen, Roger, 113, 114
Guizot, FrançoisPierreGuillaume, 14, 55, 66
H
Hammen, O. J., 43, 49
Hearn, Jeff, 133, 134, 140
Hegel, G. W. F., 8, 11, 97, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 160, 161, 179, 193, 203
Idea, 102
Logic, 101, 104, 105
possibility, 100, 102
Spirit, 8, 97, 160, 161
World History, 1, 8
Hegelianism, 8, 9, 98, 101, 102, 103, 129, 160, 179
left, 1, 2, 11
hegemony, 184
Heine, Heinrich, 43, 49
Held, David, 168, 169, 173, 174, 175, 176
Hess, Moses, 43, 45
Hitler, Adolf, 71, 110, 114
Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 112, 115
human essence, 4
Hume, Mick, 71
'hungry forties', 42
Hunt, Richard, 81, 83, 85, 174
Hyndman, H. F., 122
I
ideology, 8
immediacy thesis, 77, 78, 79, 81, 84
immiserisation, 12, 19, 22, 68, 125, 126, 181
imperialism, 122, 143, 190
Independent Labour Party (ILP), 122
Ingle, Stephen, 122, 130
international relations theory, 190201
International Working Men's Association (First International), 64, 115, 121, 123, 127
Ireland, 5, 9, 48, 150, 152, 153
famine, 5
is and ought, 179, 181
Italy, 65, 106, 109, 110, 115

Page 207
J
Jacobins, 79, 80, 185
Japan, 66
Johnstone, Monty, 82, 85
Jung, Edgar, 112, 115
Jünger, Ernst, 112
K
Kant, Immanuel, 104
Kautsky, Karl, 9, 60, 67, 68, 73, 87, 119, 125, 126, 127, 128, 130, 148, 182
The Class Struggle, 9, 119, 125, 128, 130
Kingsley, Charles, 5, 47
Kuczynski, Thomas, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62
L
labour, 8
division of, 4
Labourism, 122, 129
Labriola, Antonio, 69, 73
Laclau, Ernesto, 10, 183, 184, 185, 186, 188
Laski, Harold J., 70, 74, 122, 123
Lassalle, Ferdinand, 12, 116, 121, 129
League of the Just, 2
Lenin, Vladimir, 4, 7, 68, 69, 73, 74, 83, 85, 87, 93, 96, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 163, 164, 190
Lewis, John, 91, 95
liberalism, 10, 77, 79, 84, 177, 183, 187, 191, 198
Liebknecht, Wilhelm, 60
Linz Programme, 122, 123
living standards, 12, 68
Locke, John, 113
Louis XVI, 106
Lovell, 84, 85, 200
Luddism, 81
lumpenproletariat, 11, 203
Luxemburg, Rosa, 10, 103, 105, 145, 149, 152, 182, 188
Social Reform or Revolution, 182
M
McCarthy, Joe, 56
McLellan, David, 11, 130, 131, 174, 188, 202, 203
Macpherson, C. B., 83, 85
Malthus, Thomas, 46
Manchester, 47, 50, 94, 133, 134, 135, 152, 153, 203
Manifesto
circumstances of writing, 57
communism, 3
effect on party formation, 11924
prefaces, 64
problems of getting an accurate text, 58
programme implemented by Labour, 70
revolution, 41
teleology, 180
Mann, Tom, 123
Marat, JeanPaul, 85
Marx, Jenny, 134
Marx, Karl
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 94, 161, 172, 175
Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law, 193
Grundrisse, 94, 190, 193, 203
materialism, 178
partnership with Engels, 55
The Civil War in France, 190, 191, 193, 203
The Class Struggles in France, 11, 82, 95, 131, 162, 203
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, 105, 162, 168
The German Ideology, 2, 88, 89, 90, 115, 187, 203
Theories of Surplus Value, 191, 203
Young Marx, 11
Marxism, 1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 41, 42, 55, 63, 77, 81, 94, 107, 119, 122, 125, 130, 131, 132, 134, 140, 147, 150, 151, 152, 161, 164, 166, 167, 172,
174, 175, 177, 181, 183, 185, 186, 187, 188, 190, 199, 200, 202, 203
means of production, 2
Meiser, Wolfgang, 59
Mensheviks, 83, 95, 150
Mészáros, Istvan, 98, 100, 104
Metternich, Klemens, 14, 55, 56
middle class, 5
Mignet, François Auguste, 66
Miliband, Ralph, 127, 130, 131, 168, 169, 170, 173, 174, 175
Mill, John Stuart, 144, 151
Moeller van den Bruck, Arthur, 112
Moore, Samuel, 5, 6, 54
Morris, William, 122
Mouffe, Chantal, 10, 183, 184, 185, 186, 188
Mussolini, Benito, 106, 107, 110, 112, 115
N
Napoleon, 11, 42, 203
Napoleon, Louis III, 45
Narkomnats, 150
nationalisation, 4
nations, 3, 9, 22, 27, 14253
definition, 146
Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 82
Northern Ireland, 9, 142, 150, 151, 153
O
Oedipus, 99
ought and is, 58, 130, 134, 179, 181
Owen, Robert, 4, 35, 138
P
Padgett, S. and W. Paterson, 122
Paine, Tom, 113, 116

Page 208
Paris, 1, 2, 12, 44, 45, 203
Commune, 63
parliament, 48, 66, 67, 147, 148
party
vanguard idea, 68, 99, 100, 112, 158, 162
working class, 8, 9, 1920, 119, 120, 121, 125
People's Front, 69
permanent revolution, 6, 7, 64, 77, 79, 83, 85, 88, 90, 93, 145
petty bourgeoisie, 31
planned economy, 3
Plekhanov, G. V., 6, 66, 67, 72, 73, 87
Poggi, G., 170, 173, 175, 176
Poland, 65, 144, 149
Polish Heresy, 149
Popper, Karl, 164
postmodernism, 10
poststructuralism, 52
Poulantzas, Nicos, 11, 199
private property, 3
production, cunning of see cunning
productive force determinism, 94
productive forces, 4, 17, 67, 87, 88, 89, 92, 108, 129, 162, 172, 197
proletariat, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 41, 45, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 77, 81, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 99, 100, 101, 105, 107, 109, 110, 111, 119, 120, 123, 124,
126, 128, 129, 132, 133, 134, 137, 139, 142, 147, 158, 159, 167, 169, 170, 171, 179, 180, 182, 183, 185, 188, 197, 198
Proudhon, P.J., 34
Przeworski, A. and J. Sprague, 126, 130, 131
R
reactionary socialism, 107, 111, 114
reading, 5
reason, 1
reason, cunning of, 8, 97, 98
reformism, 8, 68, 74, 119, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 170, 180, 181, 182, 183
anticipated in Manifesto, 1248
relations of production, 99, 101, 108, 172, 193
Renner, Karl, 145
revisionism, 6, 7, 10, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 84, 128
Bernstein vs Luxemburg debate, 1813
Laclau and Mouffe debate, 1837
revolution, 6, 7, 8
1848 Revolutions, 4
American, 113
bourgeois, 4, 6, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 86, 89, 90, 93, 108, 158
communist revolution, 289, 41, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 92, 109, 110, 112
concept of, 106
English revolution, 113
fascist revolution, 110, 113
French Revolution of 1789, 42, 47, 79, 83, 106, 108, 113
French Revolution, 1830, 40
French Revolution, February 1848, 44
German revolution of 1918, 112
permanent revolution, 6, 7, 64, 77, 79, 83, 85, 88, 90, 93, 145
proletarian, 4, 6, 67, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 86, 90, 92, 93, 94, 97, 100, 101, 103, 128, 145, 147, 158, 177, 180, 181, 188
Russian, 1917, 7, 78, 83, 84, 86, 145, 149
Russian, Marx and Engels on, 92
versus reformism, 67
Ricardo, David, 46, 196, 200
Ricoeur, Paul, 51, 62
Rigby, S. H., 87, 94
Romanticism, 41
Rubinshtein, E., 69, 73
Ruge, Arnold, 177, 187
Russia, 7, 64, 68, 69, 72, 86, 90, 91, 92, 93, 144, 145, 146, 149
Ryazanov, David, 68, 69
S
Sagarra, Eda, 43, 49
SaintSimon, Henri, 4, 35, 66
Saville, John, 47, 50, 174
Schmitt, Karl, 112, 116
science, natural, 9
SDAP, 121, 123
Second International, 122, 143, 145, 152
Second World War, 143
Section Française de L'Internationale Ouvrière, 122
selfflagellation, 148
Senior, Nassau, 46
Shanin, Teodor, 92, 95
Shapper, Karl, 133
Shaw, George Bernard, 122
Sisimondi, J., 31
Smith, Adam, 46, 196
Social Democratic Foundation (SDF), 122
Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) (Netherlands), 121
socialism, 3
true, 4
utopian, 4, 11, 12
socialism in one country, 7, 69, 145
Socialist Party of Austria (SPO), 121, 123
Socialist Workers' Party of Spain (PSOE), 121
socialists, 10
Sombart, Werner, 65, 72
SPD, 121, 122, 123, 126, 128

Page 209
species being, 4
SPÖ, 121, 123
Stalin, Josef, 7, 69, 74, 87, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153
state, 4, 9, 16676
and economic determination, 10
class balance, 169
instrumental view, 16, 166
relative autonomy view, 10, 168
welfare state, 168, 170, 175
Stedman Jones, Gareth, 48
suffrage, universal, 4
Swedish Social Democratic Labour Party (SAP), 124
T
Taylor, A. J. P., 71, 74, 132, 133, 134, 140
teleological view of history, 177
teleology, 10, 100, 181, 182
Ten Hours Act, 10, 127, 169, 170
Thierry, Augustin, 66
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 45, 49
trade unions, 6, 12, 13, 42, 43, 68, 81, 120, 122, 125, 126, 130, 148, 182
translation, problems of, 5, 517
Tressel, Robert, 122, 130
Trotsky, Leon, 6, 7, 64, 68, 69, 70, 73, 83, 85, 87, 93, 96, 145, 151, 164
U
United Kingdom, 2, 5, 9
USA, 5, 64, 127, 146, 195
USSR, 6, 7, 10, 68, 69, 86, 143, 150, 151, 152
V
Vandervelde, Emile, 6, 65, 66
W
wages, iron law of, 6, 12, 65
Weavers' Revolt, 5
Webb, Sidney, 123
Weimar republic, 109, 112, 115
Weitling, Wilhelm, 80
Williams, Raymond, 47, 50
Willich, August, 12, 80
women, 7, 19, 27, 13240
as large part of proletariat, 9
community of, 3
Wood, Ellen Meiksins, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 188, 193, 200
working class, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 42, 44, 47, 48, 60, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 78, 81, 82, 83, 93, 99, 110, 114, 119, 120, 121, 123, 124, 125, 126,
127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 134, 136, 137, 139, 143, 144, 145, 148, 149, 167, 169, 170, 171, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 187, 193, 196, 197, 198
standard of living, 128, 134
world market, 3, 15
Z
Zasulich, Vera, 91, 95

Mark Cowling - The Communist Manifesto - A Modern Edition - Verso Books (1998)

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the bourgeoisie for its own purposes. 4 More specifically, 'political power, in its true sense, is the organised power of one class for oppressing another'.5 This

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