The Principles of Communism
Frederick Engels 1847
Written:
October-November 1847;
Source:
Selected Works, Volume One, p. 81-97, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969;
First
Published: 1914, Eduard Bernstein in the German Social Democratic Partys
Vorwδrts!;
Translated:
Paul Sweezy;
Transcribed:
Zodiac, MEA 1993; marxists.org 1999;
HTML
Markup: Brian Basgen;
Proofed:
and corrected by Andy Blunden, February 2005.
Adjusted for reading level by James Couture. Some sections cut entirely. All elements in [] by Couture. 0506a
1
What is Communism?
Communism
is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.
2
What is the proletariat?
The proletariat is that class in society which lives
entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of
capital; whose well-being and woe, whose life and death, whose individual
existence depends on the demand for labor.
As a result, workers are at the mercy of the changing state of business,
on the random results of unrestricted economic competition. The proletariat, or
the class of proletarians, is the working class of the 19th century.
3
Proletarians, then, have not
always existed?
No. There have always been poor and working classes;
and the working class have mostly been poor. But there have not always been
workers and poor people living under conditions as they are today. In other words, there have not always been
proletarians, any more than there has always been free unbridled economic
competition.
4
How did the proletariat
originate?
The Proletariat originated in the industrial revolution, which took place in England in the last half of the 18th century, and which has since then been repeated in all the civilized countries of the world.
This industrial revolution was started by the discovery
of the steam engine, various spinning machines, the mechanical loom, and a
whole series of other mechanical devices. These machines, which were very
expensive and as a result could be bought only by big capitalists, changed the
whole mode of production and displaced the former workers, because the machines
turned out cheaper and better commodities than the workers could produce with
their inefficient spinning wheels and handlooms. The machines delivered
industry entirely into the hands of the big capitalists and rendered completely
worthless the meager property of the workers (tools, looms, etc.). The result
was that the capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing
remained to the workers. This marked the introduction of the factory system
into the textile industry.
Once the impulse to the introduction of machinery
and the factory system had been given, this system spread quickly to all other
branches of industry, especially cloth- and book-printing, pottery, and the
metal industries.
Labor was more and more divided among the individual
workers so that the worker who previously had done a complete piece of work now
did only a part of that piece. This division of labor made it possible to
produce things faster and cheaper. It reduced the activity of the individual
worker to simple, endlessly repeated mechanical motions which could be
performed not only as well but much better by a machine. In this way, all these
industries fell, one after another, under the dominance of steam, machinery, and
the factory system, just as spinning and weaving had already done.
But at the same time, they also fell into the hands
of big capitalists, and their workers were deprived of whatever independence
remained to them. Gradually, not only genuine manufacture but also handicrafts
came within the province of the factory system as big capitalists increasingly
replaced the small master craftsmen by setting up huge workshops, which saved
many expenses and permitted an elaborate division of labor.
This is how it has come about that in civilized
countries at the present time nearly all kinds of labor are performed in
factories and, in nearly all branches of work, handicrafts and manufacture
have been superseded. This process has, to an ever-greater degree, ruined the
old middle class, especially the small handicraftsmen. It has entirely transformed the condition of
the workers and two new classes have been created which are gradually
swallowing up all the others.
These two new classes are:
(i) The class of big capitalists, who, in all
civilized countries, are already in almost exclusive possession of all the
means of subsistence and of the instruments (machines, factories) and materials
necessary for the production of the means of subsistence. This is the bourgeois
class, or the bourgeoisie.
(ii) The class of the wholly propertyless, who are
obliged to sell their labor to the bourgeoisie in order to get, in exchange,
the means of subsistence for their support. This is called the class of
proletarians, or the proletariat.
5
Under what conditions does
this sale of the labor of the proletarians
to the bourgeoisie take
place?
Labor is a commodity, like any other, and its price
is therefore determined by exactly the same laws that apply to other commodities.
In a system of big industry or of free competition as we shall see, the two
come to the same thing the price of a commodity is, on the average, always
equal to its cost of production. Hence, the price of labor is also equal to the
cost of production of labor.
But, the costs of production of labor consist of
precisely the quantity of means of subsistence necessary to enable the worker
to continue working, and to prevent the working class from dying out. The
worker will therefore get no more for his labor than is necessary for this
purpose; the price of labor, or the wage, will, in other words, be the lowest,
the minimum, required for the maintenance of life.
However, since business is sometimes better and
sometimes worse, it follows that the worker sometimes gets more and sometimes
gets less for his commodities. But, again, just as the industrialist, on the
average of good times and bad, gets no more and no less for his commodities
than what they cost, similarly on the average the worker gets no more and no
less than his minimum.
This economic law of wages operates the more
strictly the greater the degree to which big industry has taken possession of
all branches of production.
6
What working classes existed
before the industrial revolution?
The working classes have always, according to the different stages of development of society, lived in different circumstances and had different relations to the owning and ruling classes.
In antiquity, the workers were the slaves of the
owners, just as they still are in many backward countries and even in the
southern part of the United States.
In the Middle Ages, they were the serfs of the
land-owning nobility, as they still are in Hungary, Poland, and Russia. In the
Middle Ages, and indeed right up to the industrial revolution, there were also
journeymen in the cities who worked in the service of petty bourgeois masters.
Gradually, as manufacture developed, these journeymen became manufacturing
workers who were even then employed by larger capitalists.
7
In what way do proletarians
differ from slaves?
The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly.
The individual slave, property of one master, is
assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the masters
interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire
bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no
secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.
The slave is outside competition. The proletarian is in it and experiences all
its random occurrences.
The slave counts as a thing, not as a member of
society. Thus, the slave can have a better existence than the proletarian,
while the proletarian belongs to a higher stage of social development and,
himself, stands on a higher social level than the slave.
The slave frees himself when, of all the relations
of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby
becomes a proletarian. The proletarian
can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.
8
In what way do proletarians
differ from serfs?
The serf possesses and uses an instrument of production, a piece of land, in exchange for which he gives up a part of his product or part of the services of his labor.
The proletarian works with the instruments of
production of another, for the account of this other, in exchange for a part of
the product.
The serf gives up, the proletarian receives. The
serf has an assured existence, the proletarian has not. The serf is outside
competition, the proletarian is in it.
The serf liberates himself in one of three ways: either he runs away to the city and there becomes a handicraftsman; or, instead of products and services, he gives money to his lord and thereby becomes a free tenant; or he overthrows his feudal lord and himself becomes a property owner. In short, by one route or another, he gets into the owning class and enters into competition. The proletarian liberates himself by abolishing competition, private property, and all class differences.
10
In what way do proletarians
differ from manufacturing workers?
The manufacturing worker of the 16th to the 18th
centuries still had, with but few exception, an instrument of production in his
own possession his loom, the family spinning wheel, a little plot of land
which he cultivated in his spare time. The proletarian has none of these
things.
The manufacturing worker almost always lives in the
countryside and in a more or less father-son relation to his landlord or
employer; the proletarian lives, for the most part, in the city and his
relation to his employer is purely a cash relation.
The manufacturing worker is torn out of his
father-son relation by big industry, loses whatever property he still has, and
in this way becomes a proletarian.
11
What were the immediate
consequences of the industrial revolution and of the division of society into
bourgeoisie and proletariat?
First, the lower and lower prices of industrial products brought about by machine labor totally destroyed, in all countries of the world, the old system of manufacture or industry based upon hand labor.
In this way, all semi-barbarian countries, which had
hitherto been more or less strangers to historical development, and whose
industry had been based on manufacture, were violently forced out of their
isolation. They bought the cheaper commodities of the English and allowed their
own manufacturing workers to be ruined. Countries which had known no progress
for thousands of years for example, India were thoroughly revolutionized,
and even China is now on the way to a revolution.
We have come to the point where a new machine
invented in England deprives millions of Chinese workers of their livelihood
within a years time.
In this way, big industry has brought all the people
of the Earth into contact with each other, has merged all local markets into
one world market, has spread civilization and progress everywhere and has thus
ensured that whatever happens in civilized countries will have repercussions in
all other countries.
It follows that if the workers in England or France
now liberate themselves, this must set off revolution in all other countries
revolutions which, sooner or later, must accomplish the liberation of their
respective working class.
Second, wherever big industries displaced
manufacture, the bourgeoisie developed in wealth and power to the utmost and
made itself the first class of the country. The result was that wherever this
happened, the bourgeoisie took political power into its own hands and displaced
the hitherto ruling classes, the aristocracy, the guildmasters, and their
representative, the absolute monarchy.
The bourgeoisie annihilated the power of the
aristocracy, the nobility, by abolishing the entailment of estates in other
words, by making landed property subject to purchase and sale, and by doing
away with the special privileges of the nobility. It destroyed the power of the
guildmasters by abolishing guilds and handicraft privileges. In their place, it
put competition that is, a state of society in which everyone has the right
to enter into any branch of industry, the only obstacle being a lack of the
necessary capital.
The introduction of free competition is thus public
declaration that from now on the members of society are unequal only to the
extent that their capitals are unequal, that capital is the decisive power, and
that therefore the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, have become the first class in
society.
Free competition is necessary for the establishment
of big industry, because it is the only condition of society in which big
industry can make its way.
Having destroyed the social power of the nobility
and the guildmasters, the bourgeois also destroyed their political power.
Having raised itself to the actual position of first class in society, it
proclaims itself to be also the dominant political class. This it does through
the introduction of the representative system which rests on bourgeois equality
before the law and the recognition of free competition, and in European
countries takes the form of constitutional monarchy. In these constitutional
monarchies, only those who possess a certain capital are voters that is to
say, only members of the bourgeoisie. These bourgeois voters choose the
deputies, and these bourgeois deputies, by using their right to refuse to vote
taxes, choose a bourgeois government.
Third, everywhere the proletariat develops in step
with the bourgeoisie. In proportion, as the bourgeoisie grows in wealth, the
proletariat grows in numbers. For, since the proletarians can be employed only
by capital, and since capital extends only through employing labor, it follows
that the growth of the proletariat proceeds at precisely the same pace as the
growth of capital.
Simultaneously, this process draws members of the
bourgeoisie and proletarians together into the great cities where industry can
be carried on most profitably, and by thus throwing great masses in one spot it
gives to the proletarians a consciousness of their own strength.
Moreover, the further this process advances, the
more new labor-saving machines are invented, the greater is the pressure
exercised by big industry on wages, which, as we have seen, sink to their
minimum and therewith render the condition of the proletariat increasingly
unbearable. The growing dissatisfaction of the proletariat thus joins with its
rising power to prepare a proletarian social revolution.
12
What were the further
consequences of the industrial revolution?
Big industry created in the steam engine, and other machines, the means of endlessly expanding industrial production, speeding it up, and cutting its costs. With production thus made easy, the free competition, which is necessarily bound up with big industry, assumed the most extreme forms. A huge number of capitalists invaded industry, and, in a short while, more was produced than was needed.
As a consequence, finished commodities could not be
sold, and a so-called commercial crisis broke out. Factories had to be closed,
their owners went bankrupt, and the workers were without bread. Deepest misery
ruled everywhere.
After a time, the overproduced products were sold,
the factories began to operate again, wages rose, and gradually business got
better than ever.
But it was not long before too many commodities were
again produced and a new crisis broke out, only to follow the same course as
its predecessor.
Ever since the beginning of the 19th century, the
condition of industry has constantly fluctuated between periods of prosperity
and periods of crisis. Nearly every
five to seven years, a fresh crisis has intervened, always with the greatest
hardship for workers, and always accompanied by general revolutionary stirrings
and the direct peril to the whole existing order of things.
14
What will the new communist
social order have to be like?
Above all, it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead begin a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole that is, for the common good, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society.
It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace
it with association.
Moreover, since the management of industry by
individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in
reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private
property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be
separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private
property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common
utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all
products according to common agreement in a word, what is called the communal
ownership of goods.
In fact, the abolition of private property is,
doubtless, the shortest and most significant way to characterize the revolution
in the whole social order which has been made necessary by the development of
industry and for this reason it is rightly advanced by communists as their
main demand.
15
Was not the abolition of
private property possible at an earlier time?
No. Every change in the social order, every revolution in property relations, is the necessary consequence of the creation of new forces of production which no longer fit into the old property relations.
Private property has not always existed.
When, towards the end of the Middle Ages, there
arose a new mode of production which could not be carried on under the then
existing feudal and guild forms of property, this manufacture, which had
outgrown the old property relations, created a new property form, private
property. And for manufacture and the earliest stage of development of big
industry, private property was the only possible property form; the social
order based on it was the only possible social order.
So long as it is not possible to produce so much
that there is enough for all, with more left over for expanding the social
capital and extending the forces of production so long as this is not
possible, there must always be a ruling class directing the use of societys
productive forces, and a poor, oppressed class. How these classes are
constituted depends on the stage of development.
The agrarian Middle Ages give us the baron and the
serf; the cities of the later Middle Ages show us the guildmaster and the
journeyman and the day laborer; the 17th century has its manufacturing workers;
the 19th has big factory owners and proletarians.
It is clear that, up to now, the forces of
production have never been developed to the point where enough could be
developed for all, and that private property has become a barrier in relation
to the further development of the forces of production.
Now, however, the development of big industry has
brought about a new period. Capital and the forces of production have been
expanded to an unprecedented extent, and the means are at hand to multiply them
without limit in the near future. Moreover, the forces of production have been
concentrated in the hands of a few bourgeois, while the great mass of the
people are more and more falling into the proletariat, their situation becoming
more wretched and intolerable in proportion to the increase of wealth of the
bourgeoisie. And finally, these mighty and easily extended forces of production
have so far outgrown private property and the bourgeoisie, that they threaten
at any moment to unleash the most violent disturbances of the social order.
Now, under these conditions, the abolition of private property has become not
only possible but absolutely necessary.
16
Will the peaceful abolition
of private property be possible?
It would be desirable if this could happen, and the communists would certainly be the last to oppose it. Communists know only too well that all conspiracies are not only useless, but even harmful. They know all too well that revolutions are not made intentionally and arbitrarily, but that, everywhere and always, they have been the necessary consequence of conditions which were wholly independent of the will and direction of individual parties and entire classes.
But they also see that the development of the
proletariat in nearly all civilized countries has been violently suppressed,
and that in this way the opponents of communism have been working toward a
revolution with all their strength. If the oppressed proletariat is finally
driven to revolution, then we communists will defend the interests of the
proletarians with deeds as we now defend them with words.
17
Will it be possible for
private property to be abolished at one stroke?
No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society.
In all probability, the proletarian revolution will
transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private
property only when the means of production are available in sufficient
quantity.
18
What will be the course of
this revolution?
Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat. Direct in England, where the proletarians are already a majority of the people. Indirect in France and Germany, where the majority of the people consists not only of proletarians, but also of small peasants and petty bourgeois who are in the process of falling into the proletariat, who are more and more dependent in all their political interests on the proletariat, and who must, therefore, soon adapt to the demands of the proletariat. Perhaps this will cost a second struggle, but the outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat.
Democracy would be wholly valueless to the
proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through
measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the
proletariat. The main measures, emerging as the necessary result of existing relations,
are the following:
(i) Limitation of private property through
progressive taxation, heavy inheritance taxes, abolition of inheritance through
collateral lines (brothers, nephews, etc.) forced loans, etc.
(ii) Gradual expropriation of landowners, industrialists,
railroad magnates and shipowners, partly through competition by state industry,
partly directly through compensation in the form of bonds.
(iii) Confiscation of the possessions of all
emigrants and rebels against the majority of the people.
(iv) Organization of labor or employment of
proletarians on publicly owned land, in factories and workshops, with
competition among the workers being abolished and with the factory owners, in
so far as they still exist, being obliged to pay the same high wages as those
paid by the state.
(v) An equal obligation on all members of society to
work until such time as private property has been completely abolished.
Formation of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
(vi) Centralization of money and credit in the hands
of the state through a national bank with state capital, and the suppression of
all private banks and bankers.
(vii) Increase in the number of national factories,
workshops, railroads, ships; bringing new lands into cultivation and improvement
of land already under cultivation all in proportion to the growth of the
capital and labor force at the disposal of the nation.
(viii) Education of all children, from the moment
they can leave their mothers care, in national establishments at national
cost. Education and production together.
(ix) Construction, on public lands, of great palaces
as communal dwellings for associated groups of citizens engaged in both
industry and agriculture and combining in their way of life the advantages of
urban and rural conditions while avoiding the one-sidedness and drawbacks of
each.
(x) Destruction of all unhealthy and jerry-built
dwellings in urban districts.
(xi) Equal inheritance rights for children born in
and out of wedlock.
(xii) Concentration of all means of transportation
in the hands of the nation.
It is impossible, of course, to carry out all these
measures at once. But one will always bring others behind it. Once the first
radical attack on private property has been launched, the proletariat will find
itself forced to go ever further, to concentrate increasingly in the hands of
the state all capital, all agriculture, all transport, all trade. All the
foregoing measures are directed to this end; and they will become practicable
and feasible, capable of producing their centralizing effects to precisely the
degree that the proletariat, through its labor, multiplies the countrys
productive forces.
Finally, when all capital, all production, all
exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private
property will disappear of its own accord, money will become useless, and
production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to
abandon whatever of its old economic habits may remain.
19
Will it be possible for this
revolution to take place in one country alone?
No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others.
Further, it has coordinated the social development
of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie
and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them
the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will
not merely be a national event but must take place simultaneously in all
civilized countries that is to say, at least in England, America, France, and
Germany.
It will develop in each of these countries more or
less rapidly, according as one country or the other has a more developed
industry, greater wealth, a more significant mass of productive forces. Hence,
it will go slowest and will meet most obstacles in Germany, most rapidly and
with the fewest difficulties in England. It will have a powerful impact on the
other countries of the world, and will radically alter the course of
development which they have followed up to now, while greatly stepping up its
pace.
It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly,
have a universal range.
20
What will be the
consequences of the ultimate disappearance of private property?
Society will take all forces of production and means
of commerce, as well as the exchange and distribution of products, out of the
hands of private capitalists and will manage them in accordance with a plan
based on the availability of resources and the needs of the whole society. In
this way, most important of all, the evil consequences which are now associated
with the conduct of big industry will be abolished.
There will be no more crises; the expanded
production, which for the present order of society is overproduction and hence
a prevailing cause of misery, will then be insufficient and in need of being
expanded much further. Instead of generating misery, overproduction will reach
beyond the elementary requirements of society to assure the satisfaction of the
needs of all; it will create new needs and, at the same time, the means of
satisfying them. It will become the condition of, and the stimulus to, new
progress, which will no longer throw the whole social order into confusion, as
progress has always done in the past. Big industry, freed from the pressure of
private property, will undergo such an expansion that what we now see will seem
as petty in comparison as manufacture seems when put beside the big industry of
our own day. This development of industry will make available to society a
sufficient mass of products to satisfy the needs of everyone.
The same will be true of agriculture, which also
suffers from the pressure of private property and is held back by the division
of privately owned land into small parcels. Here, existing improvements and
scientific procedures will be put into practice, with a resulting leap forward
which will assure to society all the products it needs.
In this way, such an abundance of goods will be able
to satisfy the needs of all its members.
The division of society into different, mutually
hostile classes will then become unnecessary. Indeed, it will be not only
unnecessary but intolerable in the new social order. The existence of classes
originated in the division of labor, and the division of labor, as it has been
known up to the present, will completely disappear. For mechanical and chemical
processes are not enough to bring industrial and agricultural production up to
the level we have described; the capacities of the men who make use of these
processes must undergo a corresponding development.
Just as the peasants and manufacturing workers of
the last century changed their whole way of life and became quite different
people when they were drawn into big industry, in the same way, communal
control over production by society as a whole, and the resulting new
development, will both require an entirely different kind of human material.
People will no longer be, as they are today,
subordinated to a single branch of production, bound to it, exploited by it;
they will no longer develop one of their faculties at the expense of all
others; they will no longer know only one branch, or one branch of a single
branch, of production as a whole. Even industry as it is today is finding such
people less and less useful.
Industry controlled by society as a whole, and
operated according to a plan, presupposes well-rounded human beings, their
faculties developed in balanced fashion, able to see the system of production
in its entirety.
The form of the division of labor which makes one a
peasant, another a cobbler, a third a factory worker, a fourth a stock-market operator,
has already been undermined by machinery and will completely disappear.
Education will enable young people quickly to familiarize themselves with the
whole system of production and to pass from one branch of production to another
in response to the needs of society or their own inclinations. It will,
therefore, free them from the one-sided character which the present-day
division of labor impresses upon every individual. Communist society will, in
this way, make it possible for its members to put their comprehensively
developed faculties to full use. But, when this happens, classes will
necessarily disappear. It follows that society organized on a communist basis
is incompatible with the existence of classes on the one hand, and that the
very building of such a society provides the means of abolishing class
differences on the other.
A corollary of this is that the difference between
city and country is destined to disappear. The management of agriculture and
industry by the same people rather than by two different classes of people is,
if only for purely material reasons, a necessary condition of communist
association. The dispersal of the agricultural population on the land,
alongside the crowding of the industrial population into the great cities, is a
condition which corresponds to an undeveloped state of both agriculture and
industry and can already be felt as an obstacle to further development.
The general co-operation of all members of society
for the purpose of planned exploitation of the forces of production, the
expansion of production to the point where it will satisfy the needs of all,
the abolition of a situation in which the needs of some are satisfied at the
expense of the needs of others, the complete liquidation of classes and their
conflicts, the rounded development of the capacities of all members of society
through the elimination of the present division of labor, through industrial
education, through engaging in varying activities, through the participation by
all in the enjoyments produced by all, through the combination of city and
country these are the main consequences of the abolition of private property.