PART 1: Preface to the German Edition of 1872

The Communist League, an international association of workers, which could of course be only a secret one, under the conditions obtaining at the time, commissioned us, the undersigned, at the Congress held in London in November, 1847, to write for publication a detailed theoretical and practical programme of the Party. Such was the origin

PART 2: Preface to the Russian Edition of 1882

The first Russian edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, translated by Bakunin, was published early in the ‘sixties by the printing office of the Kolokol Then the West could see in it (the Russian edition of the Manifesto) only a literary curiosity. Such a view would be impossible today. What a limited

PART 3: Preface to the German Edition of 1883

The preface to the present edition I must, alas, sign alone. Marx, the man to whom the whole working class of Europe and America owes more than to any one else rests at Highgate cemetery and over his grave the first grass is already growing. Since his death, there can be even less thought

PART 4: Preface to the German Edition of 1890

Since the above was written, a new German edition of the Manifesto has again become necessary, and much has also happened to the Manifesto which should be recorded here. A second Russian translation – by Vera Zasulich – appeared at Geneva in 1882; the preface to that edition was written by Marx and myself.

PART 5: Preface to the English Edition of 1888

The Manifesto was published as the platform of the Communist League, a working-men’s association, first exclusively German, later on international, and, under the political conditions of the Continent before 1848, unavoidably a secret society. At a Congress of the League, held in November, 1847, Marx and Engels were commissioned to prepare for publication a

PART 6: Manifesto of the Communist Party

A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies. Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where

PART 6A: Bourgeois and Proletarians

The history of all hitherto existing society2 is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master3 and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a

PART 6B: Proletarians and Communists

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

PART 6C: 1- Reactionary Socialism

1- Reactionary Socialism a. Feudal Socialism Owing to their historical position it became the vocation of the aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against modern bourgeois society. In the French Revolution of July, 1830, and in the English reform agitation, these aristocracies again succumbed to the hateful upstart. Thenceforth a serious political

PART 6C: 2- Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism

A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society. To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of

PART 6C: 3- Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism

We do not here refer to that literature which, in every great modern revolution, has always given voice to the demands of the proletariat, such as the writings of Babeuf and others. The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, made in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was

PART 6C: 4- Position of the Communists in relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties

Section II has made dear the relations of the Communists to the existing working-class parties, such as the Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America. The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the