In
what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a
whole?
The
Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class
parties.
They
have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat
as a whole.
They
do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which
to shape and mould the proletarian movement.
The
Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties
is only:
(1) In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different
countries, they point out and bring to the front the common
interests of entire proletariat, independently of nationality.
(2) In the various stages of development which the struggle
of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through,
they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement
as a whole.
The
Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most
advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of
every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on
the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of
the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line
of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of
the proletarian movement.
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.
The
theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based
on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered,
by this or that would-be universal reformer. They merely express,
in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing
class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our
very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not
at all a distinctive feature of Communism.
All
property relations in the past have continually been subject to
historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.
The
French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour
of bourgeois property.
The
distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property
generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern
bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression
of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is
based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by
the few.
In
this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the
single sentence: Abolition of private property.
We
Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing
the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man's
own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of
all personal freedom, activity and independence.
Hard-won,
self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property
of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property
that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish
that; the development of industry has to a great extent already
destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.
Or
do you mean modern bourgeois private property?
But
does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit.
It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits
wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of
begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation.
Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital
and wage-labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.
To
be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a
social status in production. Capital is a collective product,
and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last
resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can
it be set in motion.
Capital
is, therefore, not a personal, it is a social power.
When,
therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the
property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby
transformed into social property. It is only the social character
of the property that is changed. It loses its class-character.
Let
us now take wage-labour.
The
average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum
of the means of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite in
bare existence as a labourer. What, therefore, the wage-labourer
appropriates by means of his labour, merely suffices to prolong
and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish
this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation
that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life,
and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of
others. All that we want to do away with, is the miserable character
of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to
increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the
interest of the ruling class requires it.
In
bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated
labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means
to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.
In
bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present;
in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois
society capital is independent and has individuality, while the
living person is dependent and has no individuality.
And
the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois,
abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition
of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois
freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.
By
freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production,
free trade, free selling and buying. But if selling and buying
disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk
about free selling and buying, and all the other "brave words"
of our bourgeoisie about freedom in general, have a meaning, if
any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with
the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when
opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of
the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie
itself.
You
are horrified at our intending to do away with private property.
But in your existing society, private property is already done
away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for
the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those
nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do
away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose
existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense
majority of society.
In
one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your
property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.
From
the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital,
money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised,
i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be
transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment,
you say individuality vanishes.
You
must, therefore, confess that by "individual" you mean no other
person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property.
This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.
Communism
deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society;
all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the
labour of others by means of such appropriation.
It
has been objected that upon the abolition of private property
all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.
According
to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the
dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work,
acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work.
The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology:
that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer
any capital.
All
objections urged against the Communistic mode of producing and
appropriating material products, have, in the same way, been urged
against the Communistic modes of producing and appropriating intellectual
products. Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class
property is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance
of class culture is to him identical with the disappearance of
all culture.
That
culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous majority,
a mere training to act as a machine.
But
don't wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition
of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions
of freedom, culture, law, etc. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth
of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property,
just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made
into a law for all, a will, whose essential character and direction
are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your
class.
The
selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal
laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from
your present mode of production and form of property-historical
relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production
-- this misconception you share with every ruling class that has
preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property,
what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course
forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.
Abolition
of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous
proposal of the Communists.
On
what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based?
On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form
this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state
of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the
family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
The
bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement
vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
Do
you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children
by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.
But,
you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when
we replace home education by social.
And
your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the
social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention,
direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The
Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education;
they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention,
and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.
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.
But
you Communists would introduce community of women, screams 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 exploited in
common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than that
the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.
He
has not even a suspicion that the real point is to do away with
the status of women as mere instruments of production.
For
the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation
of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend,
is to be openly and officially established by the Communists.
The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it
has existed almost from time immemorial.
Our
bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of
their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes,
take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives.
Bourgeois
marriage is in reality a system of wives in common and thus, at
the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with,
is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically
concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest,
it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of
production must bring with it the abolition of the community of
women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public
and private.
The
Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries
and nationality.
The
working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they
have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire
political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the
nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself
national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.
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
classes 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 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 class.
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 succumbed
in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, 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 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 class antagonisms,
antagonisms that assumed 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, which cannot completely vanish except with the
total disappearance of class 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 class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of
ruling as to win the battle of democracy.
The
proletariat will use its political supremacy top 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 class; 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, and are unavoidable as a means
of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.
These
measures will of course be different in different countries.
Nevertheless
in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally
applicable.
1.
Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of
land to public purposes.
2.
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
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 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.
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, class distinctions have disappeared,
and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast
association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its
political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely
the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the
proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled,
by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class,
if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class,
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 class antagonisms and of classes
generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as
a class.
In
place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class
antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development
of each is the condition for the free development of all.
........
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