Manifesto of the Communist Party

Preface to The 1893 Italian Edition  

Publication of the Manifesto of the Communist Party coincided, one may say, with March 18, 

1848, the day of the revolution in Milan and Berlin, which were armed uprisings of the two 

nations situated in the centre, the one, of the continent of Europe, the other, of the Mediterranean; 

two nations until then enfeebled by division and internal strife, and thus fallen under foreign 

domination. While Italy was subject to the Emperor of Austria, Germany underwent the yoke, not 

less effective though more indirect, of the Tsar of all the Russias. The consequences of March 18, 

1848, freed both Italy and Germany from this disgrace; if from 1848 to 1871 these two great 

nations were reconstituted and somehow again put on their own, it was as Karl Marx used to say, 

because the men who suppressed the Revolution of 1848 were, nevertheless, its testamentary 

executors in spite of themselves.  

Everywhere that revolution was the work of the working class; it was the latter that built the 

barricades and paid with its lifeblood. Only the Paris workers, in overthrowing the government, 

had the very definite intention of overthrowing the bourgeois regime. But conscious though they 

were of the fatal antagonism existing between their own class and the bourgeoisie, still, neither 

the economic progress of the country nor the intellectual development of the mass of French 

workers had as yet reached the stage which would have made a social reconstruction possible. In 

the final analysis, therefore, the fruits of the revolution were reaped by the capitalist class. In the 

other countries, in Italy, in Germany, in Austria, the workers, from the very outset, did nothing 

but raise the bourgeoisie to power. But in any country the rule of the bourgeoisie is impossible 

without national independence Therefore, the Revolution of 1848 had to bring in its train the 

unity and autonomy of the nations that had lacked them up to then: Italy, Germany, Hungary. 

Poland will follow in turn.  

Thus, if the Revolution of 1848 was not a socialist revolution, it paved the way, prepared the 

ground for the latter. Through the impetus given to large-scaled industry in all countries, the 

bourgeois regime during the last forty-five years has everywhere created a numerous, 

concentrated and powerful proletariat. It has thus raised, to use the language of the Manifesto, its 

own grave-diggers. Without restoring autonomy and unity to each nation, it will be impossible to 

achieve the international union of the proletariat, or the peaceful and intelligent co-operation of 

these nations toward common aims. Just imagine joint international action by the Italian, 

Hungarian, German, Polish and Russian workers under the political conditions preceding 1848!  

The battles fought in 1848 were thus not fought in vain. Nor have the forty-five years separating 

us from that revolutionary epoch passed to no purpose. The fruits are ripening, and all I wish is 

that the publication of this Italian translation may augur as well for the victory of the Italian 

proletariat as the publication of the original did for the international revolution. 

The Manifesto does full justice to the revolutionary part played by capitalism in the past. The first 

capitalist nation was Italy. The close of the feudal Middle Ages, and the opening of the modern 

capitalist era are marked by a colossal figured: an Italian, Dante, both the last poet of the Middle 

Ages and the first poet of modern times. Today, as in 1300, a new historical era is approaching. 

Will Italy give us the new Dante, who will mark the hour of birth of this new, proletarian era?  

Frederick Engels 

London, February 1, 1893  

 

---

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 is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, 

against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?  

Two things result from this fact:  

I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a 

power.  

II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, 

publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the 

Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.  

To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the 

following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish 

languages.  

I. Bourgeois and Proletarians

*

 

The history of all hitherto existing society

†

 is the history of class struggles.  

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master

‡

 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 revolutionary 

reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.  

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society 

into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, 

knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, 

apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.  

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done 

away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, 

new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.  

                                                      

*

 By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of 

wage labour. By proletariat, the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are 

reduced to selling their labour power in order to live. [Engels, 1888 English edition]

 

 

†

 That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organisation existing previous to recorded 

history, all but unknown. Since then, August von Haxthausen (1792-1866) discovered common ownership of land in 

Russia, Georg Ludwig von Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, 

and, by and by, village communities were found to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from 

India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this primitive communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by 

Lewis Henry Morgan's (1818-1861) crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With 

the dissolution of the primeval communities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic 

classes. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, second 

edition, Stuttgart, 1886. [Engels, 1888 English Edition and 1890 German Edition (with the last sentence omitted)] 

‡

 Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a master within, not a head of a guild. [Engels, 1888 English Edition]  

---