共产党宣言(英)

1 共产党宣言 英文版 The Communist Manifesto 卡尔.马克思 Karl Marx PREFACE A spectre is haunting Europe -- the spectre of Communism.All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance toexorcise this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot,French Radicals and German police-spies. Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried asCommunistic by its opponents in power? Where the Oppositionthat has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism,against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as againstits reactionary adversaries? Two things result from this fact. I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powersto be itself a Power. II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in theface of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, theirtendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre ofCommunism with a Manifesto of the party itself. To this end, Communists of various nationalities haveassembled in London, and sketched the following Manifesto, to bepublished in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish andDanish languages. The history of all hitherto existing societies is the historyof 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 anuninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each timeended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society atlarge, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere acomplicated arrangement of society into various orders, amanifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we havepatricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages,feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices,serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinategradations. The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruinsof feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. Ithas but established new classes, new conditions of oppression,new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, theepoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctivefeature: it has simplified the class antagonisms: Society as awhole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps,into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeoisieand Proletariat. From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghersof the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elementsof the bourgeoisie were developed. The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened upfresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian andChinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with thecolonies, the increase in the means of exchange and incommodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, toindustry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to therevolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapiddevelopment. The feudal system of industry, under which industrial productionwas monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for thegrowing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system tookits place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by themanufacturing middle 2 class; division of labour between thedifferent corporate guilds vanished in the face of division oflabour in each single workshop. Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising.Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam andmachinery revolutionised industrial production. The place ofmanufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place ofthe industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, theleaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois. Modern industry has established the world-market, for which thediscovery of America paved the way. This market has given animmense development to commerce, to navigation, to communicationby land. This development has, in its time, reacted on theextension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce,navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion thebourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into thebackground every class handed down from the Middle Ages. We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself theproduct of a long course of development, of a series ofrevolutions in the modes of production and of exchange. Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompaniedby a corresponding political advance of that class. Anoppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armedand self-governing association in the mediaeval commune; hereindependent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany), theretaxable "third estate" of the monarchy (as in France),afterwards, in the period of manufacture proper, serving eitherthe semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoiseagainst the nobility, and, in fact, corner-stone of the greatmonarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since theestablishment of Modern Industry and of the world-market,conquered for itself, in the modern representative State,exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern State isbut a committee for managing the common affairs of the wholebourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionarypart. The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put anend to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It haspitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man tohis "natural superiors, " and has left remaining no other nexusbetween man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cashpayment. " It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies ofreligious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistinesentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. Ithas resolved personal worth into exchange value. And in place ofthe numberless and feasible chartered freedoms, has set up thatsingle, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, forexploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, naked,shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupationhitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It hasconverted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, theman of science, into its paid wage labourers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimentalveil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere moneyrelation. The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that thebrutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which Reactionistsso much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothfulindolence. It has been the first to show what man's activity canbring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptianpyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it hasconducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exodusesof nations and crusades. 3 The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionisingthe instruments of production, and thereby the relations ofproduction, and with them the whole relations of society.Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form,was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for allearlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising ofproduction, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions,everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeoisepoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations,with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices andopinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquatedbefore they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, allthat is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to facewith sober senses, his real conditions of life, and hisrelations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its productschases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. Itmust nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexionseverywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-marketgiven a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption inevery country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it hasdrawn from under the feet of industry the national ground onwhich it stood. All old-established national industries havebeen destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodgedby new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and deathquestion for all civilised nations, by industries that no longerwork up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from theremotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not onlyat home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the oldwants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find newwants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distantlands and climes. In place of the old local and nationalseclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in everydirection, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as inmaterial, so also in intellectual production. The intellectualcreations of individual nations become common property. Nationalone-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and moreimpossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures,there arises a world literature. The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments ofproduction, by the immensely facilitated means of communication,draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation.The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery withwhich it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces thebarbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners tocapitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, toadopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them tointroduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i. e. , tobecome bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a worldafter its own image. The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of thetowns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased theurban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescueda considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rurallife. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, soit has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent onthe civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois,the East on the West. The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with thescattered state of the population, of the means of production,and of property. It has agglomerated production, and hasconcentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequenceof this was political centralisation. Independent, or butloosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws,governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together intoone nation, with one government, one code of laws, one nationalclass-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff. Thebourgeoisie, during its 4 rule of scarce one hundred years, hascreated more massive and more colossal productive forces thanhave all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature'sforces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industryand agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs,clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation ofrivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground -- whatearlier century had even a presentiment that such productiveforces slumbered in the lap of social labour? We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whosefoundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated infeudal society. At a certain stage in the development of thesemeans of production and of exchange, the conditions under whichfeudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation ofagriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudalrelations of property became no longer compatible with thealready developed productive forces; they became so many fetters.They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by asocial and political constitution adapted to it, and by theeconomical and political sway of the bourgeois class. mere moneyrelation. bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is avictory for the bourgeoisie.political illusions, naked,shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.its. A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modernbourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchangeand of property, a society that has conjured up such giganticmeans of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who isno longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom hehas called up by his spells. For many a decade past the historyof industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt ofmodern productive forces against modern conditions of production,against the property relations that are the conditions for theexistence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough tomention the commercial crises that by their periodical return puton its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of theentire bourgeois society. In these crises a great part not onlyof the existing products, but also of the previously createdproductive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crisesthere breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, wouldhave seemed an absurdity -- the epidemic of over-production.Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentarybarbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war ofdevastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence;industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Becausethere is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence,too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces atthe disposal of society no longer tend to further the developmentof the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, theyhave become too powerful for these conditions, by which they arefettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bringdisorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger theexistence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeoissociety are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them.And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the onehand inforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on theother, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thoroughexploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the wayfor more extensive and more destructive crises, and bydiminishing the means whereby crises are prevented. The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to theground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. 5 But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bringdeath to itself; it has also called into existence the men whoare to wield those weapons -- the modern working class -- theproletarians. In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i. e. , capital, is developed,in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern workingclass, developed -- a class of labourers, who live only so longas they find work, and who find work only so long as their labourincreases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselvespiece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article ofcommerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes ofcompetition, to all the fluctuations of the market. history of all hitherto existing societies is the historyof class struggles. in the icy water of egotistical calculation. Ithas resolved? Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division oflabour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individualcharacter, and consequently, all charm for the workman. Hebecomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the mostsimple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that isrequired of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman isrestricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that herequires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of hisrace. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also oflabour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportiontherefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wagedecreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery anddivision of labour increases, in the same proportion the burdenof toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the workinghours, by increase of the work exacted in a given time or byincreased speed of the machinery, etc. Modern industry has converted the little workshop of thepatriarchal master into the great factory of the industrialcapitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, areorganised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army theyare placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officersand sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class,and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved bythe machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, by theindividual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly thisdespotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty,the more hateful and the more embittering it is. The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manuallabour, in other words, the more modern industry becomesdeveloped, the more is the labour of men superseded by that ofwomen. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctivesocial validity for the working class. All are instruments oflabour, more or less expensive to use, according to their ageand sex. No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by themanufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his wages incash, than he is set upon by the other portions of thebourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc. The lower strata of the middle class -- the small tradespeople,shopkeepers, retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen andpeasants -- all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partlybecause their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scaleon which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in thecompetition with the large capitalists, partly because theirspecialized skill is rendered worthless by the new methods ofproduction. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classesof the population. The proletariat goes through various stages of development.With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. Atfirst the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then bythe workpeople of 6 a factory, then by the operatives of one trade,in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directlyexploits them. They direct their attacks not against thebourgeois conditions of production, but against the instrumentsof production themselves; they destroy imported wares thatcompete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, theyset factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanishedstatus of the workman of the Middle Ages. At this stage the labourers still form an incoherent massscattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutualcompetition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies,this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but ofthe union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain itsown political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat inmotion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At thisstage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies,but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolutemonarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the pettyb