Communist Manifesto
CommunistManifestoBy Karl Marx and Frederick EngelsAuthorized English TranslationEdited and Annotated by Frederick EngelsPublished Online bySocialist Labor Party of Americawww.slp.orgNovember 2006
Communist ManifestoBy Karl Marx and Frederick EngelsPUBLISHING HISTORY(Record of earlier New York Labor News editions lost)As “Manifesto of the Communist Party”FIRST PRINTING . May 1928SECOND PRINTING . February 1933THIRD PRINTING . November 1933FOURTH PRINTING . December 1934FIFTH PRINTING . March 1939SIXTH PRINTING . August 1945SEVENTH PRINTING . October 1947As “Communist Manifesto”CENTENNIAL EDITION . March 1948SECOND PRINTING . August 1949THIRD PRINTING . October 1954FOURTH PRINTING . October 1959FIFTH PRINTING . March 1961SIXTH PRINTING . May 1964SEVENTH PRINTING . November 1968ONLINE EDITION . November 2006NEW YORK LABOR NEWSP.O. BOX 218MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA 94042-0218http://www.slp.org/nyln.htm
FREDERICK ENGELS’ PREFACE TO 1888 ENGLISH EDITION.The “Manifesto” was published as the platform of the “Communist League,” aworking-men’s association, first exclusively German, later on international, and,under the political conditions of the Continent before 1848, unavoidably a secretsociety. At a Congress of the League, held in November, 1847, Marx and Engelswere commissioned to prepare for publication a complete theoretical and practicalparty-programme. Drawn up in German, in January, 1848, the manuscript was sentto the printer in London a few weeks before the French revolution of February24th.1 A French translation was brought out in Paris, shortly before theinsurrection of June, 1848. The first English translation, by Miss Helen Macfarlane,appeared in George Julian Harney’s “Red Republican,” London, 1850. A Danish anda Polish edition had also been published.The defeat of the Parisian insurrection of June, 1848—the first great battlebetween Proletariat and Bourgeoisie—drove again into the background, for a time,the social and political aspirations of the European working-class. Thenceforth, thestruggle for supremacy was, again, as it had been before the revolution of February,solely between different sections of the propertied class; the working class wasreduced to a fight for political elbow-room, and to the position of extreme wing of theMiddle-class Radicals. Wherever independent proletarian movements continued toshow signs of life, they were ruthlessly hunted down. Thus the Prussian policehunted out the Central Board of the Communist League, then located in Cologne.The members were arrested, and, after eighteen months’ imprisonment, they weretried in October, 1852. This celebrated “Cologne Communist trial” lasted fromOctober 4th till November 12th; seven of the prisoners were sentenced to terms ofimprisonment in a fortress, varying from three to six years. Immediately after thesentence, the League was formally dissolved by the remaining members. As to the“Manifesto,” it seemed henceforth to be doomed to oblivion.When the European working-class had recovered sufficient strength for anotherattack on the ruling classes, the International Working Men’s Association sprang1 [In February, 1848, a revolt of the lower tier of the capitalist class—the industrialbourgeoisie—against the aristocracy of finance, in turn, dethroned the bourgeois monarchy of LouisPhilippe (also known as the “July Monarchy” from the month in which it came to power in 1830.)NOTE: bracketed footnotes are by the publisher; all others are by Frederick Engels.]Soc ialist Labor Party3www .slp.o rg
Karl Marx and Frederick Engelsup. But this association, formed with the express aim of welding into one body thewhole militant proletariat of Europe and America, could not at once proclaim theprinciples laid down in the “Manifesto.” The International was bound to have aprogramme broad enough to be acceptable to the English Trades’ Unions, to thefollowers of Proudhon2 in France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain, and to the Lassalleans(a) in Germany. Marx, who drew up this programme to the satisfaction of allparties, entirely trusted to the intellectual development of the working-class, whichwas sure to result from combined action and mutual discussion. The very eventsand vicissitudes of the struggle against Capital, the defeats even more than thevictories, could not help bringing home to men’s minds the insufficiency of theirvarious favourite nostrums, and preparing the way for a more complete insight intothe true conditions for working-class emancipation. And Marx was right. TheInternational, on its breaking in 1874, left the workers quite different men fromwhat it found them in 1864. Proudhonism in France, Lassalleanism in Germanywere dying out, and even the Conservative English Trades’ Unions, though most ofthem had long since severed their connexion with the International, were graduallyadvancing towards that point at which, last year at Swansea, their President couldsay in their name “Continental Socialism has lost its terror for us.” In fact: theprinciples of the “Manifesto” had made considerable headway among the workingmen of all countries.The Manifesto itself came thus to the front again. The German text had been,since 1850, reprinted several times in Switzerland, England and America. In 1872,it was translated into English in New York, where the translation was published in“Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly.” From this English version, a French one wasmade in “Le Socialiste” of New York. Since then at least two more Englishtranslations, more or less mutilated, have been brought out in America, and one ofthem has been reprinted in England. The first Russian translation, made byBakounine, was published at Herzen’s “Kolokol” office in Geneva, about 1863; asecond one, by the heroic Vera Zasulitch, also in Geneva, 1882. A new Danishedition is to be found in “Socialdemokratisk Bibliothek,” Copenhagen, 1885; a fresh2 [Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1803–65). A theoretician of the petty bourgeoisie and of anarchism,whose ideas had an especially wide influence on the French workers.](a) Lassalle personally, to us, always acknowledged himself to be a disciple of Marx, and, as such,stood on the ground of the “Manifesto.” But in his first public agitation, 1862–64, he did not gobeyond demanding co-operative workshops supported by State credit. [Ferdinand Lassalle(1825–1864). The founder of the reformist German labor movement.]Soc ialist Labor Party4www .slp.o rg
Communist ManifestoFrench translation in “Le Socialiste,” Paris, 1886. From this latter a Spanishversion was prepared and published in Madrid, 1886. The German reprints are notto be counted, there have been twelve altogether at the least. An Armeniantranslation, which was to be published in Constantinople some months ago, did notsee the light, I am told, because the publisher was afraid of bringing out a book withthe name of Marx on it, while the translator declined to call it his own production.Of further translations into other languages I have heard, but had not seen them.Thus the history of the Manifesto reflects, to a great extent, the history of themodern working-class movement; at present it is doubtless the most wide-spread,the most international production of all Socialist Literature, the common platformacknowledged by millions of working men from Siberia to California.Yet, when it was written, we could not have called it a Socialist Manifesto. BySocialists, in 1847, were understood, on the one hand the adherents of the variousUtopian systems: Owenites in England, Fourierists in France, both of them alreadyreduced to the position of mere sects, and gradually dying out; on the other hand,the most multifarious social quacks, who, by all manners of tinkering, professed toredress, without any danger to capital and profit, all sorts of social grievances[;] inboth cases men outside the working class movement, and looking rather to the“educated” classes for support. Whatever portion of the working class had becomeconvinced of the insufficiency of mere political revolutions, and had proclaimed thenecessity of a total social change, that portion, then, called itself Communist. It wasa crude, rough-hewn, purely instinctive sort of Communism; still, it touched thecardinal point and was powerful enough amongst the working class to produce theUtopian Communism of Cabet in France, and in Germany, of Weitling. Thus,Socialism was, in 1847, a middle-class movement, Communism a working-classmovement. Socialism was, on the Continent at least, “respectable”; Communismwas the very opposite. And as our notion, from the very beginning, was that “theemancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself,” therecould be no doubt as to which of the two names we must take. Moreover, we have,ever since, been far from repudiating it.The “Manifesto” being our joint production, I consider myself bound to statethat the fundamental proposition which forms its nucleus, belongs to Marx. Thatproposition is: that in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economicproduction and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it,form the basis upon which it is built up, and from which alone can be explained, theSoc ialist Labor Party5www .slp.o rg
Karl Marx and Frederick Engelspolitical and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole historyof mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in commonownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting andexploited, ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these class strugglesform a series of evolution in which, now-a-days, a stage has been reached where theexploited and oppressed class—the proletariat—cannot attain its emancipation fromthe sway of the exploiting and ruling class—the bourgeoisie—without, at the sametime, and once and for all emancipating society at large from all exploitation,oppression, class-distinctions and class-struggles.This proposition, which, in my opinion, is destined to do for history whatDarwin’s theory has done for biology, we, both of us, had been graduallyapproaching for some years before 1845. How far I had independently progressedtowards it is best shown by my “Condition of the Working Class in England.” (b) Butwhen I again met Marx at Brussels, in spring, 1845, he had it ready worked out,and put it before me, in terms almost as clear as those in which I have stated ithere.From our joint preface to the German edition of 1872, I quote the following:—“However much the state of things may have altered during the last 25years, the general principles laid down in the Manifesto are, on the whole,as correct to-day as ever. Here and there some detail might be improved.The practical application of the principles will depend, as the manifestoitself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions forthe time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on therevolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passagewould, in many respects, be very differently worded to-day. In view of thegigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanyingimproved and extended organisation of the working-class, in view of thepractical experience gained, first in the February revolution, and then, stillmore, in the Paris Commune,3 where the proletariat for the first time heldpolitical power for two whole months, this programme has in some detailsbeen antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz.,that “the working-class cannot simply lay hold of ready-made Statemachinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” (See “The Civil War inFrance; Address of the General Council of the International Working-Men’s(b) The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. By Frederick Engels. Translated byFlorence K. Wischnewetzky, New York, Lovell—London, W. Reeves, 1888.3 [The first working-class government was established in Paris following the spontaneous, andvirtually bloodless, insurrection of March 18, 1871. The Paris Commune was crushed in blood by thebourgeois reaction.]Soc ialist Labor Party6www .slp.o rg
Communist ManifestoAssociation,” London, Truelove, 1871, p. 15, where this point is furtherdeveloped.) Further, it is self-evident, that the criticism of socialistliterature is deficient in relation to the present time, because it comes downonly to 1847; also, that the remarks on the relation of the Communists tothe various opposition-parties (Section IV.), although in principle stillcorrect, yet in practice are antiquated, because the political situation hasbeen entirely changed, and the progress of history has swept from off theearth the greater portion of the political parties there enumerated.“But then, the Manifesto has become a historical document which wehave no longer any right to alter.”The present translation is by Mr. Samuel Moore, the translator of the greaterportion of Marx’s “Capital.” We have revised it in common, and I have added a fewnotes explanatory of historical allusions.London, 30th January, 1888.FREDERICK ENGELS.Soc ialist Labor Party7www .slp.o rg
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