Manifesto of the Communist Party

49 

Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith 

– 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 mother’s 

care, in national establishments at national cost. Education and production 

together.  

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50 

Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith 

(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 in its wake. 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 country’s 

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 superfluous, and 

production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off 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 co-ordinated 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 phenomenon 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 the 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 

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