Manifesto of the Communist Party

33 

Chapter III: Socialist and Communist Literature 

But these Socialist and Communist publications contain also a critical element. They attack every 

principle of existing society. Hence, they are full of the most valuable materials for the 

enlightenment of the working class. The practical measures proposed in them – such as the 

abolition of the distinction between town and country, of the family, of the carrying on of 

industries for the account of private individuals, and of the wage system, the proclamation of 

social harmony, the conversion of the function of the state into a more superintendence of 

production – all these proposals point solely to the disappearance of class antagonisms which 

were, at that time, only just cropping up, and which, in these publications, are recognised in their 

earliest indistinct and undefined forms only. These proposals, therefore, are of a purely Utopian 

character.  

The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an inverse relation to 

historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes definite 

shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical 

value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of these systems were, 

in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary 

sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive 

historical development of the proletariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and that consistently, to 

deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dream of experimental 

realisation of their social Utopias, of founding isolated “phalansteres”, of establishing “Home 

Colonies”, or setting up a “Little Icaria”

*

 – duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem – and to 

realise all these castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the 

bourgeois. By degrees, they sink into the category of the reactionary [or] conservative Socialists 

depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic pedantry, and by their fanatical and 

superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social science.  

They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part of the working class; such action, 

according to them, can only result from blind unbelief in the new Gospel.  

The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respectively, oppose the Chartists and the 

Réformistes.  

 

                                                      

*

 Phalanstéres were Socialist colonies on the plan of Charles Fourier; Icaria was the name given by Cabet to his Utopia 

and, later on, to his American Communist colony. [Note by Engels to the English edition of 1888.]  

“Home Colonies” were what Owen called his Communist model societies. Phalanstéres was the name of the public 

palaces planned by Fourier. Icaria was the name given to the Utopian land of fancy, whose Communist institutions 

Cabet portrayed. [Note by Engels to the German edition of 1890.] 

---

IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the 

Various Existing Opposition Parties 

Section II has made clear 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 present, they also represent 

and take care of the future of that movement. In France, the Communists ally with the Social-

Democrats

*

 against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take 

up a critical position in regard to phases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great 

Revolution.  

In Switzerland, they support the Radicals, without losing sight of the fact that this party consists 

of antagonistic elements, partly of Democratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly of radical 

bourgeois.  

In Poland, they support the party that insists on an agrarian revolution as the prime condition for 

national emancipation, that party which fomented the insurrection of Cracow in 1846.  

In Germany, they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way, against the 

absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie.  

But they never cease, for a single instant, to instil into the working class the clearest possible 

recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the 

German workers may straightway use, as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social 

and political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy, 

and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight against the 

bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin.  

The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a 

bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European 

civilisation and with a much more developed proletariat than that of England was in the 

seventeenth, and France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in 

Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.  

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing 

social and political order of things.  

In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property 

question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.  

Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all 

countries.  

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!

5

 

 

                                                      

*

 The party then represented in Parliament by Ledru-Rollin, in literature by Louis Blanc, in the daily 

press by the Réforme. The name of Social-Democracy signifies, with these its inventors, a section of 

the Democratic or Republican Party more or less tinged with socialism. [Engels, English Edition 

1888]  

---