Karl Marx Posted:

National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.

The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.

In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between clbumes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.

The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical, and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.

Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views and conceptions, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material 14 existence, in his social relations and in his social life?

What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling clbum.

When people speak of ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express the fact, that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.

When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas sucgreat timesbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, 15 feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.

“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical and juridical ideas 16 have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.

“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.”

What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of clbum antagonisms, antagonisms that bumumed different forms at different epochs.

But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, 17 which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of clbum antagonisms.

The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.

But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism. We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working clbum is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling clbum, to win the battle of democracy.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling clbum; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, 18 and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

These measures will of course be different in different countries. 19

Nevertheless in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable:

1. Abolition 20 of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 21

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport 22 in the hands of the State.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country. 23

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c., &c.

When, in the course of development, clbum distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast bumociation of the whole nation, 24 the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one clbum for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of cirgreat timesstances, to organise itself as a clbum, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling clbum, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of clbum antagonisms and of clbumes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a clbum.

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its clbumes and clbum antagonisms, we shall have an bumociation, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

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Footnotes for Section II

Notes by the editor of the 1976 edition

1. The German editions have “separate” instead of “sectarian.”

2. The words “the most advanced and” were added in the English edition of 1888.

3. In the German editions this phrase reads “All property relations have been subject to constant historical replacement, constant historical change .”

4. The German editions have: “the exploitarion of the one by the others.”

5. The German editions have: “the property of the petty bourgois” .

6. The words “for the few” were added in the English edition of 1888.

7. The words “into capital” were added in the English edition of 1888.

8. The words “and made impossihle” were added in the English edition of I888.

9. The German editions have here and below “education” [“Bildung”] instead of “culture.”

10. The words “our intended” were inserted in the English edition of l888.

11. In the German editions the end of this sentence reads as follows: “a will, whose content is determined by the material conditions of existence of your clbum.”

12. In the German editions this sentence reads as follows: “This selfish conception…you share with all the ruling clbumes which have perished.”

13. The German editions of 1848 have “the national clbum” instead of “the leading clbum of the nation.”

14. The word “material” was added in the English edition of l888.

15. The German editions have “the ideas of enlightenment” instead of “rationalist ideas.”

16. In the German editions the beginning of the sentence reads: ” ‘Undoubtedly,’ it will he said, ‘religious, moral, philosophical, political, juridical ideas, etc.’ ”

17. The German editions have “in forms of consciousness” instead of “or general ideas.”

18. The words “necessitate further inroads upon the old social order” were added in the English edition of I888.

19. In the Preface to the 1872 German edition of the Communist Manifesto the authors particularly pointed out that “no special stress is laid” on the transitional revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II, and that the concrete character and practical application of such measures would always depend on the historical conditions of the time.

20. The German editions have here “expropriation.”

21. The German editions have: “A heavy progressive tax.”

22. The German editions have “all transport” instead of “the means of communication and transport.”

23. In the editions of 1848, point 9 reads: “Combination of agriculture with industry, promotion of the gradual elimination of the contradictions between town and countryside.” In subsequent German editions the word “contradictions” was replaced by “distinctions.”

24. The German editions have “bumociated individuals” instead of “a vast bumociation of the whole nation.”