Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Communist Manifesto

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

The manifesto begins with a somewhat optimistic opening declaration that Communism loomed over Europe, terrifying the authorities of the time (who were interested enough to spy on and harass Communists but more preoccupied with the dangers of liberal democracy and nationalism). Among those authorities are the pope (at the time, Pius IX), the czar of Russia (at the time, Nicholas I), the German diplomat Prince von Metternich, and the French statesman François Guizot. The manifesto goes on to analyze the historical roots of mid-nineteenth-century society. This is where Marx differentiates his version of Socialism from other advocates' approaches and begins the argument that inspired hope and fear in so many people.

“Bourgeois and Proletarians”

Marx's chapter heading “Bourgeois and Proletarians” identifies the two social classes that would fight out the coming class struggle: “Bourgeois” refers to the middle class, with implications of narrow material concerns and obsession with respectability, while “proletarians” are members of the industrial working class. The declaration that all history has been “the story of class struggles” summarizes the essence of the Marxist view of history. Marx cites examples of how a rigid class structure existed in the past, such as in ancient Rome, during the feudal Middle Ages with their trade guilds, and even in the Americas. The difference between the struggle between classes in these earlier eras and that taking place in the nineteenth century is that the modern class struggle is simpler, pitting just two social classes—the bourgeoisie and the proletariat—against each another.

Marx explains how this state of affairs evolved. The modern struggle arose because of new economic realities, including the growth of the population and therefore of markets, improvements in navigation and communication, and the emergence of organized industrial production—of “Modern Industry.” The modern bourgeoisie emerged from the historical development of the consolidation of the means of production. As the bourgeoisie gained economic power, it also gained political power. As Marx puts it, “The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” Marx seems to see the modern bourgeoisie as worse than earlier aristocratic feudal overlords, for the bourgeoisie has converted the relationship between worker and employer into one based entirely on wage labor: It has “left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment.'” He goes on to note that modern industry in the hands of the bourgeoisie has effectively eliminated any chivalry or “sentimentalism” in favor of “egotistical calculation.” The bourgeoisie's interest in freedom is restricted to a single “unconscionable” freedom, “Free Trade.” Marx regards this relationship between worker and employer as one based entirely on exploitation, though this exploitation is masked by “religious and political illusions.” Meanwhile, the bourgeoisie has reduced all occupations to mere paid labor, in the process damaging the ties that formerly bound families.

Marx goes on to specify some of the ways in which the modern bourgeoisie has disrupted traditional patterns of life. The bourgeoisie is constantly changing the means of production. It creates new industries to satisfy new wants, in the process destroying old industries. It travels the world in search of new markets. It replaces locally made products with products from around the globe. Nations and regions are no longer self-sufficient. It has subjugated nature. Marx acknowledges that the new means and methods of production have drawn “barbarian” nations into the community of civilized nations. Yet the cost of this development in Marx's eyes is heavy: “It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.”

Marx argues that the very successes of the bourgeoisie contribute to its own instability. Because of “too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce”—in a word, because of overproduction—“the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule.” Put simply, the bourgeoisie has created conditions that potentially lead to its own destruction, and that destruction will come at the hands of the proletariat. The process Marx describes is often referred to as the “dialectic” or “dialectical materialism.” This is a philosophical view that states that any “thesis” creates its own “antithesis” and that the clash between the two gives rise to a new “synthesis.” In Marx's view, the clash was between labor and the new industrial realities. The synthesis would be Communism.

Marx details the condition of the proletariat. In his view, workers are “commodities.” They sell their labor piecemeal. They are victims of changes in markets. They become appendages of the machine. Their work is monotonous. They become like soldiers in an industrial army. They become slaves, men and women alike, and even tradespeople become part of the proletariat because they lack the capital—money—to take part in modern industry. The proletariat, though, is not without power. At first, individual laborers fight the bourgeoisie; then the workers in a plant resist. Ultimately, if competing workers are able to transform themselves from an “incoherent mass scattered over the whole country,” they can organize into trade unions. Collectively, they can protect their interests, keep wages up, and resist their exploitation at the hands of capitalists. This resistance will often take a violent turn, but this violence is a necessary and inevitable part of the class struggle. It is the essence of revolution, and Marx sees the industrial class, in contrast with more conservative shopkeepers, tradesmen, artisans, and peasants, as the only truly revolutionary class.

“Proletarians and Communists”

In this section of the manifesto, Marx details the relationship between proletarians and Communists. He sees the Communist Party not as a “separate party opposed to other working-class parties.” He views it, rather, as an international movement, one that focuses on the “common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.” He sees Communists as the “most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country” and states the aim of Communism succinctly: “The immediate aim of the Communist is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.”

Marx takes up the issue of private property. On the one hand he states that “the distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property.” He goes on to say, though, that because private property is essentially in the hands of the bourgeoisie, and because the bourgeoisie uses that property to exploit workers, in essence the aim of Communism is “abolition of private property.” He addresses the objection that people should be able to keep the fruits of their labor. However, the only people who are not bourgeoisie and who might have been able to do so, such as artisans, have already lost their private property to the bourgeoisie. If, however, “private property” means the property of the bourgeoisie, the problem in Marx's view is that such property is used only to create more capital put to use for the exploitation of labor. Capital is not really private property, for capital “is a collective product,” something that can be used “only by the united action of many members” of a class. Capital is not money or property. Capital is social and political power. Meanwhile, he writes, “Private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population,” so claims that Communists want to eliminate everyone's private property miss the point.

Marx addresses family relationships and the education of children. He argues that modern wage labor turns the family into purely an economic unit, one that takes subsistence wages for its own brute survival. Marx is especially critical of the modern education system, writing that

the bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parent and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.

This exploitation extends to women, who are similarly exploited by bourgeois values; he suggests that the bourgeois system has reduced women to the status of prostitutes.

Marx then addresses the issue of whether Communism wants to abolish nationalities. Marx argues that under current conditions, the working man has no country. He goes on to say that the conditions created by the bourgeoisie have stripped people of any real attachment to a nation or culture, substituting instead a need on the part of working people to engage in a quest for mere survival. In effect, the bourgeoisie has already eliminated nationality.

Marx specifies the steps that are necessary to wrest control over property from the bourgeoisie and turn the proletariat into an organized class that will usher in a new, more productive economic system. Some of these steps include abolition of land rents, a progressive income tax (that is, a tax system that taxes the rich at a higher rate than those of lesser means), elimination of inheritances, centralization of credit and transportation, state-owned factories, and free public education. When these and other steps are taken, class distinctions will disappear.

“Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties”

In this brief section, Marx tries to reassure other democratic movements that Communism is not an opponent. He writes, “Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things” and wants to see “the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.” The section concludes with perhaps the most famous quotation from the Communist Manifesto: “Working Men of all Countries, Unite!”