``In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped.The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family-relations; modern industrial labor, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character.Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.All the preceding classes that got the upper hand, sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation.The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation.They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities.The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole super- incumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.''
The Communists, says Marx, stand for the proletariat as a whole.They are international.``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.''
The immediate aim of the Communists is the conquests of political power by the proletariat.``The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.''
The materialistic interpretation of history is used to answer such charges as that Communism is anti-Christian.``The charges againstCommunism 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?''
The attitude of the Manifesto to the State is not altogether easy to grasp.``The executive of the modern State,'' we are told, ``is but a Committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.'' Nevertheless, the first step for the proletariat must be to acquire control of the State.``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 class, to win the battle of democracy.The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.''
The Manifesto passes on to an immediate program of reforms, which would in the first instance much increase the power of the existing State, but it is contended that when the Socialist revolution is accomplished, the State, as we know it, will have ceased to exist.As Engels says elsewhere, when the proletariat seizes the power of the State ``it puts an end to all differences of class and antagonisms of class, and consequently also puts an end to the State as a State.'' Thus, although State Socialism might, in fact, be the outcome of the proposals of Marx and Engels, they cannot themselves be accused of any glorification of the State.
The Manifesto ends with an appeal to the wage- earners of the world to rise on behalf of Communism.``The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.They have a world to win.Working men of all countries, unite!''
In all the great countries of the Continent, except Russia, a revolutionfollowed quickly on the publication of the Communist Manifesto, but the revolution was not economic or international, except at first in France.Everywhere else it was inspired by the ideas of nationalism.Accordingly, the rulers of the world, momentarily terrified, were able to recover power by fomenting the enmities inherent in the nationalist idea, and everywhere, after a very brief triumph, the revolution ended in war and reaction.The ideas of the Communist Manifesto appeared before the world was ready for them, but its authors lived to see the beginnings of the growth of that Socialist movement in every country, which has pressed on with increasing force, influencing Governments more and more, dominating the Russian Revolution, and perhaps capable of achieving at no very distant date that international triumph to which the last sentences of the Manifesto summon the wage-earners of the world.
