11/12 Jan 2019

Philosophy
and Critical
Thinking
Seminar with Professor
Daniel Loick from
Humboldt-University
in Berlin

GoetheHaus The seminar is organised by

Jakarta
the Goethe-Institut Indonesien
in cooperation with STF Driyarkara
 Table of content

Religion “Contribution to the Critique of

Hegel’s Philosophy of Law”
Marx Engels Collected Works
(MECW) vol. 3, pp. 175 – 187

Capitalism Section “Estranged Labour”

from “Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts of 1844”
MECW 3, pp. 270 – 282

Rights and Section from

“On the Jewish Question”
Freedom MECW 3, pp. 161 – 169

Politics Section “Bourgeois and

Proletarians”
from “Manifesto of the
Communist Party”
MECW 6, pp. 481 – 496
Religion
“Contribution to the Critique of
Hegel’s Philosophy of Law”
Marx Engels Collected Works
(MECW) vol. 3, pp. 175 – 187
 CONTRIBUTION T O T H E CRITIQUE
OF HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF LAW

Introduction

For Germany the criticism of religion is in the main complete,

and criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism.
The profane existence of error is discredited after its heavenly
oratio pro aris et /octs" has been disproved. Man, who looked for a
superhuman being in the fantastic reality of heaven and found
nothing there but the reflection of himself, will no longer be
disposed to find but the semblance of himself, only an inhuman
being, where he seeks and must seek his true reality.

Religion, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law”

The basis of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion
does not make man. Religion is the self-consciousness and self-
esteem of man who has either not yet found himself or has
already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being encamped
outside the world. Man is the world of man, the state, society. This
state, this society, produce religion, an inverted world-consciousness,
because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of
that world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in a popular
form, its spiritualistic point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral
sanction, its solemn complement, its universal source of consola-
tion and justification. It is the fantastic realisation of the human
essence because the human essence has no true reality. T h e struggle
against religion is therefore indirectly a fight against the world of
which religion is the spiritual aroma.
Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress
and also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the
oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the
spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
a
Speech for the altars and hearths.—Ed.
176 Karl Marx
To abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to
demand their real happiness. The demand to give up illusions
about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of
affairs which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in
embryo the criticism of the vale of tears, the halo of which is religion.
Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not
so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he
will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." The criticism
of religion disillusions man to make him think and act and shape
his reality like a man who has been disillusioned and has come to
reason, so that he will revolve round himself and therefore round
his true sun. Religion is only the illusory sun which revolves round
man as long as he does not revolve round himself.
The task of history, therefore, once the world beyond the truth has
disappeared, is to establish the truth of this world. The immediate
task of philosophy, which is at the service of history, once the holy
form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked, is to
unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms. Thus the criticism of
heaven turns into the criticism of the earth, the criticism of religion
into the criticism of law and the criticism of theology into the criticism
of politics.
The following exposition 80 —a contribution to that task—deals
immediately not with the original, but with a copy, the German
philosophy of state and of law, for no other reason than that it deals
with Germany.
If one wanted to proceed from the status quo itself in Germany,
even in the only appropriate way, i.e., negatively, the result would
still be an anachronism. Even the negation of our political present is
a reality already covered with dust in the historical lumber-room
of modern nations. If I negate powdered pigtails, I am still left
with unpowdered pigtails. If I negate the German state of affairs
in 1843, then, according to the French computation of time, I am
hardly in the year 1789, and still less in the focus of the present.
Yes, German history flatters itself with a movement which no
people in the firmament of history went through before it or will
go through after it. For we shared the restorations of the modern
nations although we had not shared their revolutions. We under-
went a restoration, first because other nations dared to carry out a
revolution and second because other nations suffered a counter-
revolution, the first time because our rulers were afraid, and the
3
Cf. Karl Marx, "The Philosophical Manifesto of the Historical School of Law"
(see this edition, Vol. 1, p. 205).—Ed.
Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law. Introduction 177
second because our rulers were not afraid. We—and our
shepherds first and foremost—never found ourselves in the
company of freedom except once—on the day of its burial.
A school which legitimates the baseness of today by the baseness
of yesterday, a school that declares rebellious every cry of the serf
against the knout once that knout is a time-honoured, ancestral,
historical one, a school to which history only shows its posterior as
the God of Israel did to his servant Moses a —the historical school of
ku)91—would hence have invented German history had it not
been an invention of German history. For every pound of flesh
cut from the heart of the people the historical school of
law—Shylock, but Shylock the bondsman—swears on its bond, its
historical bond, its Christian-Germanic bond.
Good-natured enthusiasts, Germanomaniacs by extraction and
free-thinkers by reflection, on the contrary, seek our history of
freedom beyond our history in the primeval Teutonic forests.
But what difference is there between the history of our freedom
and the history of the boar's freedom if it can be found only in
the forests? Besides, it is common knowledge that the forest
echoes back what you shout into it. So let us leave the ancient
Teutonic forests in peace!
War on the German conditions! By all means! They are below the
level of history, beneath any criticism, but they are still an object of
Religion, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law”
criticism like the criminal who is below the level of humanity but
still an object for the executioner. In the struggle against those
conditions criticism is no passion of the head, it is the head of
passion. It is not a lancet, it is a weapon. Its object is its enemy,
which it wants not to refute but to exterminate. For the spirit of
those conditions is refuted. In themselves they are not objects
worthy of thought, but phenomena which are as despicable as they are
despised. Criticism does not need to make things clear to itself as
regards this subject-matter, for it has already dealt with it.
Criticism appears no longer as an end in itself, but only as a means.
Its essential sentiment is indignation, its essential activity is denunci-
ation.
It is a case of describing the dull reciprocal pressure of all social
spheres on one another, a general,inactive ill humour, a limited-
ness which recognises itself as much as it misjudges itself, within
the frame of a government system which, living on the preserva-
tion of all wretchedness, is itself nothing but wretchedness in office.
What a sight! This infinitely proceeding division of society into
a
The Holy Bible, Exodus 33:23.—Ed.
178 Karl Marx
the most manifold races opposed to one another by petty an-
tipathies, uneasy consciences and brutal mediocrity, and which,
precisely because of their reciprocal ambiguous and distrustful
attitude, are all, without exception although with various for-
malities, treated by their rulers as licensed existences. And they must
recognise and acknowledge as a concession of heaven the very fact
that they are mastered, ruled, possessedl On the other side are the
rulers themselves, whose greatness is in inverse proportion to their
number!
Criticism dealing with this content is criticism in hand-to-hand
combat, and in such a fight the point is not whether the opponent
is a noble, equal, interesting opponent, the point is to strike him.
The point is not to allow the Germans a minute for self-deception
and resignation. The actual pressure must be made more pressing
by adding to it consciousness of pressure, the shame must be made
more shameful by publicising it. Every sphere of German society
must be shown as the partie honteuse' of German society; these
petrified relations must be forced to dance by singing their own
tune to them! The people must be taught to be terrified at itself in
order to give it courage. This will be fulfilling an imperative need
of the German nation, and needs of the nations are in themselves
the ultimate reason for their satisfaction.
This struggle against the limited content of the German status
quo cannot be without interest even for the modern nations, for the
German status quo is the open completion of the ancien régime, and the
ancien régime is the concealed deficiency of the modern state. The
struggle against the German political present is the struggle
against the past of the modern nations, and they are still troubled
by reminders of that past. It is instructive for them to see the ancien
régime, which has been through its tragedy with them, playing its
comedy as a German ghost. Tragic indeed was the history of the
ancien régime so long as it was the pre-existing power of the world,
and freedom, on the other hand, was a personal notion, i.e., as long
as this regime believed and had to believe in its own justification.
As long as the ancien régime, as an existing world order, struggled
against a world that was only coming into being, there was on its side
a historical error, not a personal one. That is why its downfall was
tragic.
On the other hand, the present German regime, an anachro-
nism, a flagrant contradiction of generally recognised axioms, the
nothingness of the ancien régime exhibited to the world, only
a
Shameful part.— Ed.
Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law. Introduction 179
imagines that it believes in itself and demands that the world
should imagine the same thing. If it believed in its own essence,
would it try to hide that essence under the semblance of an alien
essence and seek refuge in hypocrisy and sophism? The modern
ancien régime is only the comedian of a world order whose true
heroes are dead. History is thorough and goes through many
phases when carrying an old form to the grave. T h e last phase of
a world-historical form is its comedy. The gods of Greece, already
tragically wounded to death in Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, had to
re-die a comic death in Lucian's Dialogues. Why this course of
history? So that humanity should part with its past cheerfully. This
cheerful historical destiny is what we vindicate for the political
authorities of Germany.
However, once modern politico-social reality itself is subjected to
criticism, once criticism rises to truly human problems, it finds
itself outside the German status quo or else it would reach out for
its object below its object. An example. The relation of industry, of
the world of wealth generally, to the political world is one of the
major problems of modern times. In what form is this problem
beginning to engage the attention of the Germans? In the form of
protective duties, of the prohibitive system, of national economy.
Germanomania has passed out of man into matter, and thus one
morning our cotton barons and iron champions saw themselves
Religion, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law”
turned into patriots. People are therefore beginning in Germany
to acknowledge the sovereignty of monopoly within the country by
lending it sovereignty abroad. People are thus about to begin in
Germany with what people in France and England are about to
end. The old corrupt condition against which these countries are
rebelling in theory and which they only bear as one bears chains is
greeted in Germany as the dawn of a beautiful future which still
hardly dares to pass from cunning1 theory to the most ruthless
practice. Whereas the problem in France and England is: Political
economy or the rule of society over wealth, in Germany it is: National
economy or the mastery of private property over nationality. In France
and England, then, it is a case of abolishing monopoly that has
proceeded to its last consequences; in Germany it is a case of
proceeding to the last consequences of monopoly. There it is a
case of solution, here as yet a case of collision. This is an adequate
example of the German form of modern problems, an example of
how our history, like a clumsy recruit, still has to do extra drill in
matters that are old and hackneyed in history.
a
In the German listig, probably an allusion to Friedrich List, who was an
advocate of protectionism.—Ed.
180 Karl Marx
If therefore the whole German development did not exceed the
German political development, a German could at the most
participate in the problems of the present to the same extent as a
Russian can. But, if the separate individual is not bound by the
limitations of the nation, still less is the nation as a whole liberated
by the liberation of one individual. The fact that Greece had a
Scythian a among its philosophers did not help the Scythians to
make a single step towards Greek culture.
Luckily we Germans are not Scythians.
As the ancient peoples went through their pre-history in imagi-
nation, ,in mythology, so we Germans have gone through our post-
history in thought, in philosophy. We are philosophical contem-
poraries of the present without being its historical contemporaries.
German philosophy is the ideal prolongation of German history. If
therefore, instead of the œuvres incomplètes of our real history, we
criticise the œuvres posthumes of our ideal history, philosophy, our
criticism is among the questions of which the present says: That is
the question^ What in advanced nations is a practical break with
modern political conditions, is in Germany, where even those
conditions do not yet exist, at first a critical break with the
philosophical reflection of those conditions.
German philosophy of law and state is the only German history which
is al pari with the official modern reality. The German nation must
therefore take into account not only its present conditions but also
its dream-history, and subject to criticism not only these existing
conditions but at the same time their abstract continuation. Its
future cannot be limited either to the immediate negation of its
real conditions of state and law or to the immediate implementa-
tion of its ideal state and legal conditions, for it has the immediate
negation of its real conditions in its ideal conditions, and it has
almost outlived the immediate implementation of its ideal condi-
tions in the contemplation of neighbouring nations. Hence it is
with good reason that the practical political party .in Germany 3 2
demands the negation of philosophy. It is wrong, not in its demand,
but in stopping at the demand, which it neither seriously imple-
ments nor can implement. It believes that it implements that
negation by turning its back on philosophy and with averted face
muttering a few trite and angry phrases about it. Owing to the
limitation of its outlook it does not include philosophy in the circle
of German reality or it even fancies it is beneath German practice
and the theories that serve it. You demand that real living germs
a
Anacharsis.—Ed.
This sentence is in English in the original.—Ed.
Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law. Introduction 181
be made the starting point but you forget that the real living germ
of the German nation has grown so far only inside its cranium.
In a word—you cannot supersede philosophy without making it a reality.
The same mistake, but with the factors reversed, was made by the
theoretical political party originating from philosophy. 53
In the present struggle it saw only the critical struggle of philosophy
against the German world; it did not give a thought to the fact that
the hitherto prevailing philosophy itself belongs to this world and is
its complement, although an ideal one. Critical towards its adver-
sary, it was uncritical towards itself when, proceeding from the
premises of philosophy, it either stopped at the results given by
philosophy or passed off demands and results from somewhere
else as immediate demands and results of philosophy, although
these, provided they are justified, can be obtained only by the
negation of hitherto existing philosophy, of philosophy as such.
We reserve ourselves the right to a more detailed description of
this party. Its basic deficiency may be reduced to the following: It
thought it could make philosophy a reality without superseding it.
The criticism of the German philosophy of state and law, which
attained its most consistent, richest and final formulation through
Hegel, is both a critical analysis of the modern state and of the
reality connected with it, and the resolute negation of the whole
German political and legal consciousness as practised hitherto, the most
Religion, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law”
distinguished, most universal expression of which, raised to the
level of a science, is the speculative philosophy of law itself. If the
speculative philosophy of law, that abstract extravagant thinking on
the modern state, the reality of which remains a thing of the
beyond, if only beyond the Rhine, was possible only in Germany,
inversely the German thought-image of the modern state which
disregards real man was possible only because and insofar as the
modern state itself disregards real man or satisfies the whole of man
only in imagination. In politics the Germans thought what other
nations did. Germany was their theoretical consciousness. The abstrac-
tion and conceit of its thought always kept in step with the
one-sidedness and stumpiness of its reality. If therefore the status
quo of German statehood expresses the perfection of the ancien régime,
the perfection of the thorn in the flesh of the modern state, the
status quo of German political theory expresses the imperfection of the
modern state, the defectiveness of its flesh itself.
Even as the resolute opponent of the previous form of German
political consciousness the criticism of speculative philosophy of
law turns, not towards itself, but towards problems which can only
be solved by one means—practice.
182 Karl Marx
It is asked: can Germany attain a practice à la hauteur des
principes, i. e., a revolution which will raise it not only to the official
level of the modern nations but to the height of humanity which will
be the near future of those nations?
The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism by
weapons, material force must be overthrown by material force;
but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped
the masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as it
demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon
as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the root of the
matter. But for man the root is man himself. The evident proof of
the radicalism of German theory, and hence of its practical
energy, is that it proceeds from a resolute positive abolition of
religion. The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man
is the highest being for man, hence with the categorical imperative to
overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved,
forsaken, despicable being, relations which cannot be better
described than by the exclamation of a Frenchman when it was
planned to introduce a tax on dogs: Poor dogs! They want to treat
you like human beings!
Even historically, theoretical emancipation has specific practical
significance for Germany. For Germany's revolutionary past is
theoretical, it is the Reformation. As the revolution then began in
the brain of the monk, so now it begins in the brain of the
philosopher.
Luther, we grant, overcame the bondage of piety by replacing
it by the bondage of conviction. He shattered faith in authority
because he restored the authority of faith. He turned priests into
laymen because he turned laymen into priests. He freed man from
outer religiosity because he made religiosity the inner man. He
freed the body from chains because he enchained the heart.
But if Protestantism was not the true solution it was at least the
true setting of the problem. It was no longer a case of the
layman's struggle against the priest outside himself but of his
struggle against his own priest inside himself, his priestly nature. And
if the Protestant transformation of the German laymen into priests
emancipated the lay popes, the princes, with the whole of their
priestly clique, the privileged and philistines, the philosophical
transformation of priestly Germans into men will emancipate the
people. But secularisation will not stop at the pillaging of churches
practised mainly by hypocritical Prussia any more than emancipa-
tion stops at princes. The Peasant War, the most radical fact of
German history, came to grief because of theology. Today, when
Contribution to Critique öf Hegel's Philosophy of Law. Introduction 183
theology itself has come to grief, the most unfree fact of German
history, our status quo, will be shattered against philosophy. On the
eve of the Reformation official Germany was the most uncondi-
tional slave of Rome. On the eve of its revolution it is the
unconditional slave of less than Rome, of Prussia and Austria, of
country squires and philistines.
A major difficulty, however, seems to stand in the way of a
radical German revolution.
For revolutions require a passive element, a material basis.
Theory can be realised in a people only insofar as it is the
realisation of the needs of that people. But will the enormous
discrepancy between the demands of German thought and the
answers of German reality be matched by a corresponding
discrepancy between civil society and the state and between civil
society and itself? Will the theoretical needs be immediate practical
needs? It is not enough for thought to strive for realisation, reality
must itself strive towards thought.
But Germany did not go through the intermediary stages of
political emancipation at the same time as the modern riations. It
has not even reached in practice the stages which it has overtaken
in theory. How can it do a somersault, not only over its own
limitations, but at the same time over the limitations of the
modern nations, over limitations which in reality it must feel and
Religion, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law”
strive for as bringing emancipation from its real limitations? Only
a revolution of radical needs can be a radical revolution and it
seems that for this the preconditions and ground are lacking.
If however Germany has accompanied the development of the
modern nations only with the abstract activity of thought without
playing an effective role in the real struggle of that development,
it has, on the other hand, shared the sufferings of that develop-
ment, without sharing in its enjoyment or its partial satisfaction.
To abstract activity on the one hand corresponds abstract suffer-
ing on the other. That is why Germany will one day find itself on
the level of European decadence before ever having been on the
level of European emancipation. It will be comparable to a fetish
worshipper pining away with the diseases of Christianity.
If we now consider the German governments we find that because
of the existing state of affairs, because of Germany's condition,
because of the standpoint of German education and finally under
the impulse of their own fortunate instinct, they are driven to
combine the civilised shortcomings of the modern political world, the
advantages of which we do not enjoy, with the barbaric deficiencies
of the ancien régime, which we enjoy in full; hence Germany must
184 Karl Marx
share more and more, if not in the reasonableness, at least in the
unreasonableness of those state formations which are beyond the
bounds of its status quo. Is there in the world, for example, a
country which shares so naively in all the illusions of the
constitutional state without sharing in its realities as so-called
constitutional Germany? And was it not perforce a German
government's idea to combine the tortures of censorship with the
tortures of the French September laws which presuppose freedom
of the press? 34 As you could find the gods of all nations in the
Roman Pantheon, so you will find in the Germans' Holy Roman
Empire all the sins of all political forms. 35 That this eclecticism will
reach a height never dreamt of before is guaranteed in particular
by the political-aesthetic gourmandising of a German king* who
intends to play all the roles of monarchy, whether feudal or
bureaucratic, absolute or constitutional, autocratic or democratic, if
not in the person of the people, at least in his own person, and if
not for the people, at least for himself. Germany, as the deficiency of
the political present constituted as a particular world, will not be able to
throw down the specific German limitations without throwing
down the general limitation of the political present.
It is not the radical revolution, not the general human emancipa-
tion which is a Utopian dream for Germany, but rather the partial,
the merely political revolution, the revolution which leaves the
pillars of the house standing. On what is a partial, a merely
political revolution based? On the fact that part of civil society
emancipates itself and attains general domination; on the fact that
a definite class, proceeding from its particular situation, undertakes
the general emancipation of society. This class emancipates the
whole of society but only provided the whole of society is in the
same situation as this class, e.g., possesses money and education or
can acquire them at will.
No class of civil society can play this role without arousing a
moment of enthusiasm in itself and in the masses, a moment in
which it fraternises and merges with society in general, becomes
confused with it and is perceived and acknowledged as its general
representative; a moment in which its demands and rights are truly
the rights and demands of society itself; a moment in which it is
truly the social head and the social heart. Only in the name of the
general rights of society can a particular class lay claim to general
domination. For the storming of this emancipatory position, and
hence for the political exploitation of all spheres of society in the
' Frederick William IV.— Ed.
Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law. Introduction 185
interests of its own sphere, revolutionary energy and intellectual
self-confidence alone are not sufficient. For the revolution of a
nation and the emancipation of a particular class of civil society to
coincide, for one estate to be acknowledged as the estate of the
whole society, all the defects of society must conversely be
concentrated in another class, a particular estate must be the
general stumbling-block, the incorporation of the general limita-
tion, a particular social sphere must be looked upon as the notorious
crime of the whole of society, so that liberation from that sphere
appears as general self-libera tion. For one estate to be par excellence
the estate of liberation, another estate must conversely be the
obvious estate of oppression. The negative general significance
of the French nobility and the French clergy determined the
positive general significance of the immediately adjacent and
opposed class of the bourgeoisie.
But no particular class in Germany has the consistency, the
severity, the courage or the ruthlessness that could mark it out as
the negative representative of society. No more has any estate the
breadth of soul that identifies itself, even for a moment, with the
soul of the nation, the genius that inspires material might to
political violence, or that revolutionary audacity which flings at the
adversary the defiant words:/ am nothing and I should be everything.
The main stem of German morals and honesty, of the classes as
Religion, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law”
well as of individuals, is rather that modest egoism which asserts its
limitedness and allows it to be asserted against itself. The relation
of the various sections of German society is therefore not dramatic
but epic. Each of them begins to be aware of itself and to settle
down beside the others with all its particular claims not as soon as
it is oppressed, but as soon as the circumstances of the time,
without the section's own participation, create a social substratum
on which it can in turn exert pressure. Even the moral self-
confidence of the German middle class rests only on the consciousness
that it is the general representative of the philistine mediocrity of
all the other classes. It is therefore not only the German kings who
accede to the throne mal à propos; every section of civil society goes
through a defeat before it has celebrated victory, develops its own
limitations before it has overcome the limitations facing it and
asserts its narrow-hearted essence before it has been able to assert
its magnanimous essence. Thus the very opportunity of a great
role has on every occasion passed away before it is to hand, thus
every class, once it begins the struggle against the class above it, is
involved in the struggle against the class below it. Hence the
princes are struggling against the monarchy, the bureaucrats
186 Karl Marx
against the nobility, and the bourgeois against them all, while the
proletariat is already beginning to struggle against the bourgeoisie.
No sooner does the middle class dare to think of emancipation
from its own standpoint than the development of the social
conditions and the progress of political theory pronounce that
standpoint antiquated or at least problematic.
In France it is enough for somebody to be something for him to
want to be everything; in Germany one has to be nothing if one is
not to forego everything. In France partial emancipation is the
basis of universal emancipation; in Germany universal emancipa-
tion is the conditio sine qua non of any partial emancipation. In
France it is the reality of gradual liberation, in Germany the
impossibility of gradual liberation, that must give birth to complete
freedom. In France every class is politically idealistic and becomes
aware of itself at first not as a particular class but as the
representative of social requirements generally. The role of eman-
cipator therefore passes in dramatic motion to the various classes of
the French nation one after the other until it finally comes to the
class which implements social freedom no longer on the basis of
certain conditions lying outside man and yet created by human
society, but rather organises all conditions of human existence on
the presupposition of social freedom. In Germany, on the con-
trary, where practical life is as spiritless as spiritual life is
unpractical, no class in civil society has any need or capacity for
general emancipation until it is forced by its immediate condition,
by material necessity, by its very chains.
Where, then, is the positive possibility of a German emancipation?
Answer: In the formation of a class with radical chains, a class of
civil society which is not a class of civil society, an estate which is
the dissolution of all estates, a sphere which has a universal
character by its universal suffering and claims no particular right
because no particular wrong but wrong generally is perpetrated
against it; which can no longer invoke a historical but only a human
title; which does not stand in any one-sided antithesis to the
consequences but in an all-round antithesis to the premises of the
German state; a sphere, finally, which cannot emancipate itself
without emancipating itself from all other spheres of society and
thereby emancipating all other spheres of society, which, in a
word, is the complete loss of man and hence can win itself only
through the complete rewinning of man. This dissolution of society
as a particular estate is the proletariat.
The proletariat is coming into being in Germany only as a result
of the rising industrial development. For it is not the naturally
Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law. Introduction 187
arising poor but the artificially impoverished, not the human masses
mechanically oppressed by the gravity of society but the masses
resulting from the drastic dissolution of society, mainly of the
middle estate, that form the proletariat, although it is obvious that
gradually the naturally arising poor and the Christian-Germanic
serfs also join its ranks.
By proclaiming the dissolution of the hitherto existing world order the
proletariat merely states the secret of its own existence, for it is in fact
the dissolution of that world order. By demanding the negation of
private property, the proletariat merely raises to the rank of a
principle of society what society has made the principle of the
proletariat, what, without its own co-operation, is already incorporat-
ed in it as the negative result of society. In regard to the world
which is coming into being the proletarian then finds himself pos-
sessing the same right as the German king in regard to the world
which has come into being when he calls the people his people
as he calls the horse his horse. By declaring the people his private
property the king simply states that the property owner is king.
As philosophy finds its material weapons in the proletariat, so
the proletariat finds its spiritual weapons in philosophy. And once
the lightning of thought has squarely struck this ingenuous soil of
the people the emancipation of the Germans into human beings will
take place.
Religion, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law”
Let us sum up the result:
The only practically possible liberation of Germany is libera-
tion that proceeds from the standpoint of the theory which pro-
claims man to be the highest being for man. In Germany
emancipation from the Middle Ages is possible only as emancipa-
tion from the partial victories over the Middle Ages as well. In
Germany no kind of bondage can be broken without breaking every
kind of bondage. The thorough Germany cannot make a revolution
without making a thoroughgoing revolution. The emancipation of the
German is the emancipation of the human being. The head of this
emancipation is philosophy, its heart is the proletariat. Philosophy
cannot be made a reality without the abolition of the proletariat,
the proletariat cannot be abolished without philosophy being made
a reality.
When all inner requisites are fulfilled the day of German
resurrection will be proclaimed by the ringing call of the Gallic cock.
Written at the end of 1843-January 1844 Printed according to the journal
First published in the Deutsch-Französische
Jahrbücher, 1844
Signed: Karl Marx
Capitalism
Section “Estranged Labour”
from “Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts of 1844”
MECW 3, pp. 270 – 282
270 Karl Marx
tenant farmers, some of whom in this way [...]" sink into the prole-
tariat. On the other hand, many tenant farmers will take over
landed property; for the big proprietors, who with their comfortable
incomes have mostly given themselves over to extravagance and for
the most part are not competent to conduct large-scale agriculture,
often possess neither the capital nor the ability for the exploitation
of the land. Hence a section of this class, too, is completely ruined.
Eventually wages, which have already been reduced to a mini-
mum, must be reduced yet further, to meet the new competition.
This then necessarily leads to revolution.
Landed property had to develop in each of these two ways so as
to experience in both its necessary downfall, just as industry both
in the form of monopoly and in that of competition had to ruin
itself so as to learn to believe in man. IXXI11
[ESTRANGED LABOUR]
IIXXIII We have proceeded from the premises of political
economy. We have accepted its language and its laws. We
presupposed private property, the separation of labour, capital and
land, and of wages, profit of capital and rent of land—likewise
division of labour, competition, the concept of exchange-value, etc.
On the basis of political economy itself, in its own words, we have
shown that the worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes
indeed the most wretched of commodities; that the wretchedness of
the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of
his production; that the necessary result of competition is the
accumulation of capital in a few hands, and thus the restoration of
monopoly in a more terrible form; and that finally the distinction
between capitalist and land rentier, like that between the tiller of the
soil and the factory worker, disappears and that the whole of society
must fall apart into the two classes—the property owners and the
propertyless workers.
Political economy starts with the fact of private property; it does
not explain it to us. It expresses in general, abstract formulas the
material process through which private property actually passes, and
these formulas it then takes for laws. It does not comprehend these
Here one word in the manuscript cannot be deciphered.—Ed.
Economie and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 271
laws, i.e., it does not demonstrate how they arise from the very
nature of private property. Political economy throws no light on the
cause of the division between labour and capital, and between capital
and land. When, for example, it defines the relationship of wages to
profit, it takes the interest of the capitalists to be the ultimate cause,
i.e., it takes for granted what it is supposed to explain. Similarly,
competition comes in everywhere. It is explained from external
circumstances. As to how far these external and apparently
accidental circumstances are but the expression of a necessary course
of development, political economy teaches us nothing. We have seen
how exchange itself appears to it as an accidental fact. The only
wheels which political economy sets in motion are greed and the war
amongst the greedy—competition.*
Precisely because political economy does not grasp the way the
movement is connected, it was possible to oppose, for instance, the
doctrine of competition to the doctrine of monopoly, the doctrine of
the freedom of the crafts to the doctrine of the guild, the doctrine of
the division of landed property to the doctrine of the big estate— for
competition, freedom of the crafts and the division of landed
property were explained and comprehended only as accidental,
premeditated and violent consequences of monopoly, of the guild
system, and of feudal property, not as their necessary, inevitable and
natural consequences.
Now, therefore, we have to grasp the intrinsic connection between
private property, avarice, the separation of labour, capital and
landed property; the connection of exchange and competition, of
value and the devaluation of men, of monopoly and competition,
etc.— we have to grasp this whole estrangement connected with the
money system.
Do not let us go back to a fictitious primordial condition as the
political economist does, when he tries to explain. Such a primordial
condition explains nothing; it merely pushes the question away into a
grey nebulous distance. The economist assumes in the form of a fact,
of an event, what he is supposed to deduce—namely, the necessary
Capitalism, Section “Estranged Labour”
relationship between two things—between, for example, division of
labour and exchange. Thus the theologian explains the origin of evil
by the fall of man; that is, he assumes as a fact, in historical form,
what has to be explained.
We proceed from an actual economic fact.
The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces,
a
After the paragraph the following sentence is crossed out in the manuscript:
"We now have to examine the nature of this material movement of property."—Ed.
272 Karl Marx
the more his production increases in power and size. The worker
becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he
creates. T h e devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion
to the increasing value of the world of things. Labour produces not
only commodities: it produces itself and the worker as a commodity—
and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities in gen-
eral.
This fact expresses merely that the object which labour pro-
duces—labour's product—confronts it as something alien, as a power
independent of the producer. The product of labour is labour which
has been embodied in an object, which has become material: it is
the objectification of labour. Labour's realisation is its objectifica-
tion. Under these economic conditions this realisation of labour
appears as loss of realisation for the workers 71 ; objectification as loss
of the object and bondage to it; appropriation as estrangement, as
alienation.''2
So much does labour's realisation appear as loss of realisation that
the worker loses realisation to the point of starving to death. So much
does objectification appear as loss of the object that the worker is
robbed of the objects most necessary not only for his life but for his
work. Indeed, labour itself becomes an object which he can obtain
only with the greatest effort and with the most irregular interrup-
tions. So much does the appropriation of the object appear as
estrangement that the more objects the worker produces the less he
can possess and the more he falls under the sway of his product,
capital.
All these consequences are implied in the statement that the wor-
ker is related to the product of his labour as to an alien object. For on
this premise it is clear that the more the worker spends himself, the
more powerful becomes the alien world of objects which he creates
over and against himself, the poorer he himself—his inner world—
becomes, the less belongs to him as his own. It is the same in religion.
The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself. T h e
worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs
to him but to the object. Hence, the greater this activity, the more the
worker lacks objects. Whatever the product of his labour is, he is not.
Therefore the greater this product, the less is he himself. The
alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labour
becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him,
independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a
power on its own confronting him. It means that the life which he
has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and
alien.
Economie and Philosophie Manuscripts of 1844 273
IIXXIII/Let us now look more closely at the objectification, at the
production of the worker; and in it at trie estrangement, the loss of the
object, of his product.
The worker can create nothing without nature, without the sensuous
external world. It is the material on which his labour is realised, in
which it is active, from which and by means of which it produces.
But just as nature provides labour with [the] means of life in the
sense that labour cannot live without objects on which to operate, on
the other hand, it also provides the means of life in the more restricted
sense, i.e., the means for the physical subsistence of the worker
himself.
Thus the more the worker by his labour appropriates the external
world, sensuous nature, the more he deprives himself of means of life
in two respects: first, in that the sensuous external world more and
more ceases to be an object belonging to his labour—to be his
labour's means of life; and secondly, in that it more and more ceases to
be means of life in the immediate sense, means for the physical
subsistence of the worker.
In both respects, therefore, the worker becomes a servant of his
object, first, in that he receives an object of labour, i.e., in that he
receives work; and secondly, in that he receives means of subsistence.
This enables him to exist, first, as a worker; and, second, as a physical
subject. T h e height of this servitude is that it is only as a worker that he
can maintain himself as a physical subject, and that it is only as a
Physical subject that he is a worker.
(According to the economic laws the estrangement of the worker
in his object is expressed thus: the more the worker produces, the
less he has to consume; the more values he creates, the more
valueless, the more unworthy he becomes; the better formed his
product, the more deformed becomes the worker; the more civilised
his object, the more barbarous becomes the worker; the more
powerful labour becomes, the more powerless becomes the worker;
the more ingenious labour becomes, the less ingenious becomes the
worker and the more he becomes nature's servant.)
Capitalism, Section “Estranged Labour”
Political economy conceals the estrangement inherent in the nature of
labour by not considering the direct relationship between the worker
(labour) and production. It is true that labour produces wonderful
things for the rich — but for the worker it produces privation. It
produces palaces — but for the worker, hovels. It produces beau-
ty— but for the worker, deformity. It replaces labour by machines,
but it throws one section of the workers back to a barbarous type of
labour, and it turns the other section into a machine. It produces
intelligence — but for the worker, stupidity, cretinism.
274 Karl Marx
The direct relationship of labour to its products is the relationship of the
worker to the objects of his production. T h e relationship of the man of
means to the objects of production and to production itself is only a
consequence of this first relationship — and confirms it. We shall
consider this other aspect later. When we ask, then, what is the
essential relationship of labour we are asking about the relationship
of the worker to production.
Till now we have been considering the estrangement; the
alienation of the worker only in one of its aspects, i.e., the worker's
relationship to the products of his labour. But the estrangement is
manifested not only in the result but in the act of production, within
the producing activity itself. How could the worker come to face the
product of his activity as a stranger, were it not that in the very act of
production he was estranging himself from himself? T h e product is
after all but the summary of the activity, of production. If then the
product of labour is alienation, production itself must be active
alienation, the alienation of activity, the activity of alienation. In the
estrangement of the object of labour is merely summarised the
estrangement, the alienation, in the activity of labour itself.
What, then, constitutes the alienation of labour?
First, the fact that labour is external to the worker, i.e., it does not
belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not
affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but
unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but
mortifies his body and ruins his mind. T h e worker therefore only
feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself.
He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he
does not feel at home. His labour is therefore not voluntary, but
coerced; it is forced labour. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a
need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien
character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or
other compulsion exists, labour is shunned like the plague. External
labour, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of
self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of
labour for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but
someone else's, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs,
not to himself, but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous
activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the
human heart, operates on the individual independently of
him—that is, operates as an alien, divine or diabolical activity—so is
the worker's activity not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to
another; it is the loss of his self.
As a result, therefore, man (the worker) only feels himself freely
Economie and Philosophie Manuscripts of 1844 275
active in his animal functions—eating, drinking, procreating, or at
most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc.; and in his human
functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal.
What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes
animal.
Certainly eating, drinking, procreating, etc., are also genuinely
human functions. But taken abstractly, separated from the sphere of
all other human activity and turned into sole and ultimate ends, they
are animal functions.
We have considered the act of estranging practical human activity,
labour, in two of its aspects. (1) T h e relation of the worker to the
product of labour as an alien object exercising power over him. This
relation is at the same time the relation to the sensuous external
world, to the objects of nature, as an alien world inimically opposed
to him. (2) T h e relation of labour to the act of production within the
labour process. This relation is the relation of the worker to his own
activity as an alien activity not belonging to him; it is activity as
suffering, strength as weakness, begetting as emasculating, the
worker's own physical and mental energy, his personal life—for
what is life but activity?—as an activity which is turned against him,
independent of him and not belonging to him. Here we have
self-estrangement, as previously we had the estrangement of the thing.
IIXXIVI We have still a third aspect of estranged labour to deduce
from the two already considered.
Man is a species-being, 73 not only because in practice and in theory
he adopts the species (his own as well as those of other things) as his
object, but—and this is only another way of expressing it—also
because he treats himself as the actual, living species; because he
treats himself as a universal and therefore a free being.
The life of the species, both in man and in animals, consists
physically in the fact that man (like the animal) lives on inorganic
nature; and the more universal man (or the animal) is, the more
universal is the sphere of inorganic nature on which he lives. Just as
plants, animals, stones, air, light, etc., constitute theoretically a part
Capitalism, Section “Estranged Labour”
of human consciousness, partly as objects of natural science, partly as
objects of art—his spiritual inorganic nature, spiritual nourishment
which he must first prepare to make palatable and digestible—so
also in the realm of practice they constitute a part of human life and
human activity. Physically man lives only on these products of
nature, whether they appear in the form of food, heating, clothes, a
dwelling, etc. T h e universality of man appears in practice precisely in
the universality which makes all nature his inorganic body—both
inasmuch as nature is (1) his direct means of life, and (2) the
276 Karl Marx
material, the object, and the instrument of his life activity. Nature is
man's inorganic body—nature, that is, insofar as it is not itself human
body. Man lives on nature—means that nature is his body, with which
he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That
man's physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that
nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.
In estranging from man (1) nature, and (2) himself, his own active
functions, his life activity, estranged labour estranges the species from
man. It changes for him the life of the species into a means of
individual life. First it estranges the life of the species and individual
life, and secondly it makes individual life in its abstract form the
purpose of the life of the species, likewise in its abstract and
estranged form.
For labour, life activity, productive life itself, appears to man in the
first place merely as a means of satisfying a need—the need to
maintain physical existence. Yet the productive life is the life of the
species. It is life-engendering life. T h e whole character of a
species — its species-character—is contained in the character of its
life activity; and free, conscious activity is man's species-character.
Life itself appears only as a means to life.
The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It does not
distinguish itself from it. It is its life activity. Man makes his life
activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness. He has
conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he directly
merges. Conscious life activity distinguishes man immediately from
animal life activity. It is just because of this that he is a species-being.
Or it is only because he is a species-being that he is a conscious being,
i.e., that his own life is an object for him. Only because of that is his
activity free activity. Estranged labour reverses this relationship, so
that it is just because man is a conscious being that he makes his life
activity, his essential being, a mere means to his existence.
In creating a world of objects by his practical activity, in his work upon
inorganic nature, man proves himself a conscious species-being, i.e.,
as a being that treats the species as its own essential being, or that
treats itself as a species-being. Admittedly animals also produce.
They build themselves nests, dwellings, like the bees, beavers, ants,
etc. But an animal only produces what it immediately needs for itself
or its young. It produces one-sidedly, whilst man produces
universally. It produces only under the dominion of immediate
physical need, whilst man produces even when he is free from
physical need and only truly produces in freedom therefrom. An
animal produces only itself, whilst man reproduces the whole of
nature. An animal's product belongs immediately to its physical
Economie and Philosophie Manuscripts of 1844 277
body, whilst man freely confronts his product. An animal forms ob-
jects only in accordance with the standard and the need of the species
to which it belongs, whilst man knows how to produce in accordance
with the standard of every species, and knows how to apply
everywhere the inherent standard to the object. Man therefore also
forms objects in accordance with the laws of beauty.
It is just in his work upon the objective world, therefore, that man
really proves himself to be a species-being. This production is his
active species-life. Through this production, nature appears as his
work and his reality. T h e object of labour is, therefore, the
objectification of man's species-life: for he duplicates himself not only, as
in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and
therefore he sees himself in a world that he has created. In tearing
away from man the object of his production, therefore, estranged
labour tears from him his species-life, his real objectivity as a member
of the species, and transforms his advantage over animals into the
disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken away from
him.
Similarly, in degrading spontaneous, free activity to a means,
estranged labour makes man's species-life a means to his physical
existence.
The consciousness which man has of his species is thus trans-
formed by estrangement in such a way that species[-life] becomes for
him a means.
Estranged labour turns thus:
(3) Man's species-being, both nature and his spiritual species-
property, into a being alien to him, into a means for his individual
existence. It estranges from man his own body, as well as external
nature and his spiritual aspect, his human aspect.
(4) An immediate consequence of the fact that man is estranged
from the product of his labour, from his life activity, from his
species-being is the estrangement of man from man. When man
confronts himself, he confronts the other man. What applies to a
Capitalism, Section “Estranged Labour”
man's relation to his work, to the product of his labour and to
himself, also holds of a man's relation to the other man, and to the
other man's labour and object of labour.
In fact, the proposition that man's species-nature is estranged
from him means that one man is estranged from the other, as
each of them is from man's essential nature.
The estrangement of man, and in fact every relationship in
which man [stands] to himself, is realised and expressed only in
the relationship in which a man stands to other men.
278 Karl Marx Economie
Economie
and and
Philosophie
Philosophie
Manuscripts
Manuscripts
of 1844
of 1844 2 7 92 7 9

Hence within the relationship of estranged labour each man performed

performed in the
in the service,
service, underunder the thedominion,
dominion, the thecoercion,
coercion, andand
views the other in accordance with the standard and the relation- the the
yoke yoke of ofanother
another man. man.
ship in which he finds himself as a worker. EveryEvery self-estrangement
self-estrangement of of man, man, from from himself
himself andand from from na- na-
11XXVI We took our departure from a fact of political ture,ture,appears
appears in in the the relation
relation in in which
which he he places
places himself
himselfandand
economy—the estrangement of the worker and his product. We nature
nature to to menmen otherother than than andand differentiated
differentiated from from himself.
himself. ForFor
have formulated this fact in conceptual terms as estranged, alienated thisthis
reason
reason religious
religious self-estrangement
self-estrangement necessarily
necessarily appears
appears in in the the
labour. We have analysed this concept—hence analysing merely relationship
relationship of theof the laymanlayman to theto the priest,
priest,or or againagainto ato mediator,
a mediator,
a fact of political economy. etc.,etc.,
sincesincewe we are are herehere dealing
dealing withwith the the
intellectual
intellectual world.
world. In Inthe the
Let us now see, further, how the concept of estranged, alienated realreal
practical
practical worldworld self-estrangement
self-estrangement cancan onlyonly become
become manifest
manifest
labour must express and present itself in real life. through
through the therealrealpractical
practical relationship
relationship to other
to other men. men. T h eT hmedium
e medium
If the product of labour is alien to me, if it confronts me as an through
throughwhich which estrangement
estrangement takestakesplaceplaceis itself
is itself
practical.
practical. Thus Thus
alien power, to whom, then, does it belong? through
through estranged
estranged labour
labour manman not notonlyonlycreates
createshis his
relationship
relationship to to
If my own activity does not belong to me, if it is an alien, a the the
object
object andand to theto the
act act of production
of production as to as powers"
to powers" thatthatare are alienalien
coerced activity, to whom, then, does it belong? andand hostile
hostile to him;
to him; he he alsoalso creates
creates the the
relationship
relationship in which
in which otherother
To a being other than myself. menmenstand standto to his his production
productionandandto to his his product,
product, andandthe the
Who is this being? relationship
relationship in in which which he he standsstands to tothesethese other othermen. men. JustJust as ashe he
The gods? To be sure, in the earliest times the principal produc- creates
creates his his ownown production
production as as the thelossloss of of his hisreality,
reality, as as his his
tion (for example, the building of temples, etc., in Egypt, India punishment;
punishment; his his
ownown productproduct as aasloss,
a loss,
as aasproduct
a product not notbelonging
belonging
and Mexico) appears to be in the service of the gods, and the to him;
to him; so heso he creates
creates the the domination
domination of the
of the personperson whowho does does
not not
product belongs to the gods. However, the gods on their own were produce
produceoveroverproduction productionandandoverover the the product.
product. JustJust as as he he
never the lords of labour. No more was nature. And what a estranges
estranges his hisownown activity
activity from from himself,
himself, so he so he confers
confers upon upon the the
contradiction it would be if, the more man subjugated nature by stranger
stranger an an activity
activitywhich which is not
is not his his
own. own.
his labour and the more the miracles of the gods were rendered WeWe have haveuntil untilnownow considered
considered thisthis
relationship
relationship onlyonly from from the the
superfluous by the miracles of industry, the more man were to standpoint
standpoint of theof the worker
worker andand laterlater
we we shall shall
be beconsidering
considering it also
it also
renounce the joy of production and the enjoyment of the product from fromthe the standpoint
standpoint of of the the non-worker.
non-worker.
to please these powers. Through
Throughestranged, estranged, alienated
alienated labour,
labour, then, then, the theworker workerpro-pro-
The alien being, to whom labour and the product of labour duces
duces the the relationship
relationship to tothisthis labour
labour of of a man a man alien alien
to to labour
labour
belongs, in whose service labour is done and for whose benefit the andand standing
standing outside
outside it. Theit. The relationship
relationship of theof theworker
worker to labour
to labour
product of labour is provided, can only be man himself. creates
creates the the relation
relation to itto ofit the
of the capitalist
capitalist(or (orwhatever
whatever oneone chooses
chooses
If the product of labour does not belong to the worker, if it to tocallcallthe the mastermaster of of labour).
labour). Private
Private property
property is thus
is thus the the pro-pro-
confronts him as an alien power, then this can only be because it duct,
duct, the the result,
result, the thenecessary
necessary consequence,
consequence, of ofalienated
alienated labour,
labour,
belongs to some other man than the worker. If the worker's activity is of ofthe the external
external relation
relation of of the the worker
worker to to nature
nature andand to to him- him-
a torment to him, to another it must give satisfaction and pleasure. self.self.
Not the gods, not nature, but only man himself can be this alien Private
Private property
property thusthus results
results by by analysis
analysis from from the the concept
concept of of

Capitalism, Section “Estranged Labour”

power over man. alienated
alienated labour,
labour, i.e.,i.e.,
of of alienated
alienated man, man,of of estranged
estranged labour,
labour, of of
We must bear in mind the previous proposition that man's estranged
estranged life,life,
of estranged
of estranged man. man.
relation to himself only becomes for him objective and actual True,True, it isit asis aasresult
a result of theof the movement
movement of private
of private property
propertythatthat we we
through his relation to the other man. Thus, if the product of his havehave obtained
obtained the the concept
concept of of alienated
alienated labourlabour(of (of
alienated
alienated in in
life)life)
labour, his labour objectified, is for him an alien, hostile, powerful political
political economy.
economy. ButBut analysis
analysis of this
of thisconcept
concept showsshows thatthat thoughthough
object independent of him, then his position towards it is such that private
private property
property appears
appears to be to bethe thereason,
reason, the thecausecauseof of alienated
alienated
someone else is master of this object, someone who is alien,
labour,
labour, it isitrather
is rather its consequence,
its consequence, justjust
as the
as the gods gods
are are
originally
originally not not
hostile, powerful, and independent of him. If he treats his own
activity as an unfree activity, then he treats it as an activity
a
Inaa the
In the
manuscript
manuscript
Menschen (men)
Menschen (men)
instead
instead
of Mächte
of Mächte
(powers).—
(powers).—
Ed. Ed.
280 Karl Marx
the cause but the effect of man's intellectual confusion. Later this
relationship becomes reciprocal.
Only at the culmination of the development of private property
does this, its secret, appear again, namely, that on the one hand it is
the product of alienated labour, and that on the other it is the means by
which labour alienates itself, the realisation of this alienation.
This exposition immediately sheds light on various hitherto
unsolved conflicts.
(1) Political economy starts from labour as the real soul of
production; yet to labour it gives nothing, and to private property
everything. Confronting this contradiction, Proudhon has decided in
favour of labour against private property. 74 We understand,
however, that this apparent contradiction is the contradiction of
estranged labour with itself, and that political economy has merely
formulated the laws of estranged labour.
We also understand, therefore, that wages and private property are
identical. Indeed, where the product, as the object of labour, pays
for labour itself, there the wage is but a necessary consequence of
labour's estrangement. Likewise, in the wage of labour, labour does
not appear as an end in itself but as the servant of the wage. We shall
develop this point later, and meanwhile will only draw some con-
IIXXVII elusions. 75
An enforced increase of wages (disregarding all other difficulties,
including the fact that it would only be by force, too, that such an
increase, being an anomaly, could be maintained) would therefore be
nothing but better payment for the slave, and would not win either for
the worker or for labour their human status and dignity.
Indeed, even the equality of wages, as demanded by Proudhon, only
transforms the relationship of the present-day worker to his labour
into the relationship of all men to labour. Society is then conceived as
an abstract capitalist.
Wages are a direct consequence of estranged labour, and
estranged labour is the direct cause of private property. T h e
downfall of the one must therefore involve the downfall of the other.
(2) From the relationship of estranged labour to private property
it follows further that the emancipation of society from private
property, etc., from servitude, is expressed in the political form of the
emancipation of the workers; not that their emancipation alone is at
stake, but because the emancipation of the workers contains
universal human emancipation—and it contains this, because the
whole of human servitude is involved in the relation of the worker to
production, and all relations of servitude are but modifications and
consequences of this relation.
Economie and Philosophie Manuscripts of 1844 281
Just as we have derived the concept of private property from the
concept of estranged, alienated labour by analysis, so we can develop
every category of political economy with the help of these two factors;
and we shall find again in each category, e.g., trade, competition,
capital, money, only a particular and developed expressionof these first
elements.
Before considering this phenomenon, however, let us try to solve
two other problems.
(1) To define the general nature of private property, as it has arisen
as a result of estranged labour, in its relation to truly human and social
property.
(2) We have accepted the estrangement of labour, its alienation, as a
fact, and we have analysed this fact. How, we now ask, does man
come to alienate, to estrange, his labour} How is this estrangement
rooted in the nature of human development? We have already gone
a long way to the solution of this problem by transforming the
question of the origin of private property into the question of the
relation of alienated labour to the course of humanity's development.
For when one speaks of private property, one thinks of dealing with
something external to man. When one speaks of labour, one is
directly dealing with man himself. This new formulation of the
question already contains its solution.
As to (1): The general nature of private property and its relation to truly
human property.
Alienated labour has resolved itself for us into two components
which depend on one another, or which are but different
expressions of one and the same relationship. Appropriation appears
as estrangement, as alienation; and alienation appears as appropriation,
estrangement as truly becoming a citizen.7a
We have considered the one side—alienated labour in relation to
the worker himself, i.e., the relation of alienated labour to itself. T h e
product, the necessary outcome of this relationship, as we have seen,
is the property relation of the non-worker to the worker and to labour. Private
property, as the material, summary expression of alienated labour,
Capitalism, Section “Estranged Labour”
embraces both relations—the relation of the worker to labour and to the
product of his labour and to the non-worker, and the relation of the non-
worker to the worker and to the product of his labour.
Having seen that in relation to the worker who appropriates
nature by means of his labour, this appropriation appears as es-
trangement, his own spontaneous activity as activity for another
and as activity of another, vitality as a sacrifice of life, production
of the object as loss of the object to an alien power, to an
alien person—we shall now consider the relation to the worker, to
282 Karl Marx

labour and its object of this person who is alien to labour and the
worker.
First it has to be noted that everything which appears in the
worker as an activity of alienation, of estrangement, appears in the
non-worker as a state of alienation, of estrangement.
Secondly, that the worker's real, practical attitude in production
and to the product (as a state of mind) appears in the non-worker
confronting him as a theoretical attitude.
11XXVII | Thirdly, the non-worker does everything against the
worker which the worker does against himself; but he does not do
against himself what he does against the worker.
Let us look more closely at these three relations. 3 | XXVII ||

Capitalism, Section “Estranged Labour”

a
At this point the first manuscript breaks off unfinished.— Ed.
Rights and
Freedom
Section from
“On the Jewish Question”
MECW 3, pp. 161 – 169
 On the Jewish Question 161

content is participation in the community, and specifically in the

political community, in the life of the state. They come within the
category of political freedom, the category of civic rights, which, as
we have seen, in no way presuppose the incontrovertible and
positive abolition of religion, nor therefore of Judaism. There
remains to be examined the other part of the rights of man, the
droits de l'homme,* insofar as these differ from the droits du citoyen.*
Included among them is freedom of conscience, the right to
practise any religion one chooses. The privilege of faith is expressly
recognised either as a right of man or as the consequence of a right
of man, that of liberty.
Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, 1791, article 10: "Nul ne doit être
inquiété pour ses opinions même religieuses."0 "La liberté à tout homme d'exercer
le culte religieux auquel il est attaché"d is guaranteed as a right of man in Section I
of the Constitution of 1791.
Declaration des droits de l'homme, etc., 1793, includes among the rights of man,
Article 7: "Le libre exercice des cultes.'" Indeed, in regard to man's right to
express his thoughts and opinions, to hold meetings, and to exercise his religion, it
is even stated: "La nécessité d'énoncer ces droits suppose ou la présence ou le
souvenir récent du despotisme." f Compare the Constitution of 1795, Section XIV,
Article 3 5 4 . "
Constitution de Pensylvanie, article 9, § 3: "Tous les hommes ont reçu de la
nature le droit imprescriptible d'adorer le Tout-Puissant selon les inspirations de leur
conscience, et nul ne peut légalement être contraint de suivre, instituer ou soutenir
contre son gré aucun culte ou ministère religieux. Nulle autorité humaine ne peut,
dans aucun cas, intervenir dans les questions de conscience et contrôler les pouvoirs
de l'âme."«
Constitution de New-Hampshire, article 5 et 6: "Au nombre des droits naturels,
quelques-uns sont inaliénables de leur nature, parce que rien n'en peut être
1 équivalent. De ce nombre sont les droits de conscience." (Beaumont, op. cit., [t.
11,1 pp. 213, 214.)

Rights and Freedom, Section from “On the Jewish Question”

1
Rights of man.—Ed.
b
Rights of the citizen.—Ed.
c
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1791, Article 10: "No one is to
be subjected to annoyance because of his opinions, even religious opinions."—Ed.
"The freedom of every man to practise the religion of which he is an
adherent."—Ed.
e
The Declaration of the Rights of Man, etc., 1793, "The free exercise of
religion."—Ed.
"The necessity of proclaiming these rights presupposes either the existence or
the recent memory of despotism."—Ed.
9
Constitution of Pennsylvania, Article 9, § 3: "All men have received from nature
the imprescriptible right to worship the Almighty according to the dictates of their
conscience, and no one can be legally compelled to follow, establish or support
against his will any religion or religious ministry. No human authority can, in any
circumstances, intervene in a matter of conscience or control the forces of the
soul."—Ed.
h
Constitution of New Hampshire, Articles 5 and 6: "Among these natural rights
some are by nature inalienable since nothing can replace them. The rights of
conscience are among them."—Ed.
162 Karl Marx
Incompatibility between religion and the rights of man is to such
a degree absent from the concept of the rights of man that, on the
contrary, a man's right to be religious in any way he chooses, to
practise his own particular religion, is expressly included among
the rights of man. T h e privilege of faith is a universal right of man.
The droits de l'homme, the rights of man, are as such distinct from
the droits du citoyen, the rights of the citizen. Who is homme as
distinct from citoyen? None other than the member of civil society.
Why is the member of civil society called "man", simply man; why
are his rights called the rights of man} How is this fact to be
explained? From the relationship between the political state and
civil society, from the nature of political emancipation.
Above all, we note the fact that the so-called rights of man, the
droits de l'homme as distinct from the droits du citoyen, are nothing
but the rights of a member of civil society, i. e., the rights of egoistic
man, of man separated from other men and from the community.
Let us hear what the most radical Constitution, the Constitution of
1793, has to say:
Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen.
Article 2. "Ces droits, etc. (les droits naturels et imprescriptibles) sont: YégaÀité, la
liberté, la sûreté, la propriété."1
What constitutes liberty?
Article 6. "La liberté est le pouvoir qui appartient à l'homme de faire tout ce qui
ne nuit pas aux droits d'autrui", or, according to the Declaration of the Rights of
Man of 1791: "La liberté consiste à pouvoir faire tout ce qui ne nuit pas à autrui." b
Liberty, therefore, is the right to do everything that harms no
one else. T h e limits within which anyone can act without harming
someone else are defined by law, just as the boundary between
two fields is determined by a boundary post. It is a question of the
liberty of man as an isolated monad, withdrawn into himself. Why
is the Jew, according to Bauer, incapable of acquiring the rights of
man?
"As long as he is a Jew, the restricted nature which makes him a Jew is bound
to triumph over the human nature which should link him as a man with other
men, and will separate him from non-Jews."
But the right of man to liberty is based not on the association of
man with man, but on the separation of man from man. It is the
a
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Article 2. "These rights, etc.,
(the natural and imprescriptible rights) are: equality, liberty, security, properly."—Ed.
b
Article 6. "Liberty is the power which man has to do everything that does not
harm the rights of others", or... "Liberty consists in being able to do everything
which does not harm others."—Ed.
On the Jewish Question 163
right of this separation, the right of the restricted individual,
withdrawn into himself.
The practical application of man's right to liberty is man's right
to private property.
What constitutes man's right to private property?
Article 16 (Constitution de 1793): "Le droit de propriété est celui qui appartient à
tout citoyen de jouir et de disposer à son gré de ses biens, de ses revenus, du fruit
de son travail et de son industrie." 3
The right of man to private property is, therefore, the right to
enjoy one's property and to dispose of it at one's discretion (à son
gré), without regard to other men, independently of society, the
right of self-interest. This individual liberty and its application
form the basis of civil society. It makes every man see in other
men not the realisation of his own freedom, but the barrier to it.
But, above all, it proclaims the right of man
"de jouir et de disposer à son gré de ses biens, de ses revenus, du fruit de son
travail et de son industrie".
There remain the other rights of man: égalité and sûreté.
Égalité, used here in its non-political sense, is nothing but the
equality of the liberté described above, namely: each man is to the
same extent regarded as such a self-sufficient monad. The
Constitution of 1795 defines the concept of this equality, in
accordance with its significance, as follows:
Article 3 (Constitution de 1795): "L'égalité consiste en ce que la loi est la même
pour tous, soit qu'elle protège, soit qu'elle punisse." 0
And sûreté?
Article 8 (Constitution de 1793): "La sûreté consiste dans la protection accordée
Rights and Freedom, Section from “On the Jewish Question”
par la société à chacun de ses membres pour la conservation de sa personne, de ses
droits et de ses propriétés."
Security is the highest social concept of civil society, the concept
of police, expressing the fact that the whole of society exists only in
order to guarantee to each of its members the preservation of his
person, his rights, and his property. It is in this sense that Hegel
calls civil society "the state of need and reason". 0
* Article 16 (Constitution of 1793): "The right of property is that which every
citizen has of enjoying and of disposing at his discretion of his goods and income, of
the fruits of his labour and industry."—Ed.
"of enjoying and of disposing at his discretion of his goods and income, of the
fruits of his labour and industry".—Ed.
c
Article 3 (Constitution of 1795): "Equality consists in the law being the same
for all, whether it protects or punishes."—Ed.
d
Article 8 (Constitution of 1793): "Security consists in the protection afforded
by society to each of its members for the preservation of his person, his rights, and
his property."—Ed.
é
Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. Werke. Bd. VIII, S. 242.—Ed.
164 Karl Marx
The concept of security does not raise civil society above its
egoism. On the contrary, security is the insurance of its egoism.
None of the so-called rights of man, therefore, go beyond
egoistic man, beyond man as a member of civil society, that is, an
individual withdrawn into himself, into the confines of his private
interests and private caprice, and separated from the community.
In the rights of man, he is far from being conceived as a
species-being; on the contrary, species-life itself, society, appears as
a framework external to the individuals, as a restriction of their
original independence. T h e sole bond holding them together is
natural necessity, need and private interest, the preservation of
their property and their egoistic selves.
It is puzzling enough that a people which is just beginning to
liberate itself, to tear down all the barriers between its various
sections, and to establish a political community, that such a people
solemnly proclaims (Declaration of 1791) the rights of egoistic man
separated from his fellow men and from the community, and that
indeed it repeats this proclamation at a moment when only the
most heroic devotion can save the nation, and is therefore
imperatively called for, at a moment when the sacrifice of all the
interests of civil society must be the order of the day, and egoism
must be punished as a crime. (Declaration of the Rights of Man,
etc., of 1793.) This fact becomes still more puzzling when we see
that the political emancipators go so far as to reduce citizenship,
and the political community, to a mere means for maintaining these
so-called rights of man, that therefore the citoyen is declared to be
the servant of egoistic homme, that the sphere in which man acts as
a communal being is degraded to a level below the sphere in which
he acts as a partial being, and that, finally, it is not man as citoyen, but
man as bourgeois who is considered to be the essential and true
man.
"Le but de toute association politique est la conservation des droits naturels et
imprescriptibles de l'homme." (Déclaration des droits, etc., de 1791, article 2.) "Le
gouvernement est institué pour garantir à l'homme la jouissance de ses droits
naturels et imprescriptibles." (Déclaration, etc., de 1793, article 1.)
Hence even in moments when its enthusiasm still has the
freshness of youth and is intensified to an extreme degree by the
force of circumstances, political life declares itself to be a mere
means, whose purpose is the life of civil society. It is true that its
a
"The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and
imprescriptible rights o f man." (Declaration of the Rights, etc., of 1791, Article 2.)
"Government is instituted in order to guarantee man the enjoyment of his natural
and imprescriptible rights." (Declaration, etc., of 1793, Article 1.)—Ed.
On the Jewish Question 165
revolutionary practice is in flagrant contradiction with its theory.
Whereas, for example, security is declared one of the rights of
man, violation of the privacy of correspondence is openly declared
to be the order of the day. Whereas the "liberté indéfinie de la
presse" 3 (Constitution of 1793, Article 122) is guaranteed as a
consequence of the right of man to individual liberty, freedom of
the press is totally destroyed, because "la liberté de la presse ne
doit pas être permise lorsqu'elle compromet la liberté publique". b
(Robespierre jeune, Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française
par Bûchez et Roux, T. 28, p. 159.) That is to say, therefore: The
right of man to liberty ceases to be a right as soon as it comes into
conflict with political life, whereas in theory political life is only the
guarantee of human rights, the rights of the individual, and
therefore must be abandoned as soon as it comes into contradic-
tion with its aim, with these rights of man. But practice is merely
the exception, theory is the rule. But even if one were to regard
revolutionary practice as the correct presentation of the relation-
ship, there would still remain the puzzle of why the relationship is
turned upside-down in the minds of the political emancipators and
the aim appears as the means, while the means appears as the aim.
This optical illusion of their consciousness would still remain a
puzzle, although now a psychological, a theoretical puzzle.
The puzzle is easily solved.
Political emancipation is at the same time the dissolution of the
old society on which the state alienated from the people, the
sovereign power, is based. Political revolution is a revolution of
civil society. What was the character of the old society? It can be
Rights and Freedom, Section from “On the Jewish Question”
described in one word—feudalism. T h e character of the old civil
society was directly political, that is to say, the elements of civil life,
for example, property, or the family, or the mode of labour, were
raised to the level of elements of political life in the form of
seigniory, estates, and corporations. In this form they determined
the relation of the individual to the state as a whole, i.e., his political
relation, that is, his relation of separation and exclusion from the
other components of society. For that organisation of national life
did not raise property or labour to the level of social elements; on
the contrary, it completed their separation from the state as a whole
and constituted them as discrete societies within society. Thus, the
vital functions and conditions of life of civil society remained
nevertheless political, although political in the feudal sense, that is
a
"Unlimited freedom of the press".—Ed.
b
"Freedom of the press should not be permitted when it endangers public
liberty."—Ed.
166 Karl Marx
to say, they secluded the individual from the state as a whole and
they converted the particular relation of his corporation to the state
as a whole into his general relation to the life of the nation, just as
they converted his particular civil activity and situation into his
general activity and situation. As a result of this organisation, the
unity of the state, and also the consciousness, will and activity of
this unity, the general power of the state, are likewise bound to
appear as the particular affair of a ruler isolated from the people,
and of his servants.
The political revolution which overthrew this sovereign power
and raised state affairs to become affairs of the people, which
constituted the political state as a matter of general concern, that is,
as a real state, necessarily smashed all estates, corporations, guilds,
and privileges, since they were all manifestations of the separation
of the people from the community. The political revolution
thereby abolished the political character of civil society. It broke up
civil society into its simple component parts; on the one hand, the
individuals; on the other hand, the material and spiritual elements
constituting the content of the life and social position of these
individuals. It set free the political spirit, which had been, as it
were, split up, partitioned and dispersed in the various blind alleys
of feudal society. It gathered the dispersed parts of the political
spirit, freed it from its intermixture with civil life, and established
it as the sphere of the community, the general concern of the
nation, ideally independent of those particular elements of civil life.
A person's distinct activity and distinct situation in life were
reduced to a merely individual significance. They no longer
constituted the general relation of the individual to the state as a
whole. Public affairs as such, on the other hand, became the
general affair of each individual, and the political function became
the individual's general function.
But the completion of the idealism of the state was at the same
time the completion of the materialism of civil society. Throwing
off the political yoke meant at the same time throwing off the
bonds which restrained the egoistic spirit of civil society. Political
emancipation was at the same time the emancipation of civil
society from politics, from having even the semblance of a universal
content.
Feudal society was resolved into its basic element—man, but
man as he really formed its basis—egoistic man.
This man, the member of civil society, is thus the basis, the
precondition, of the political state. He is recognised as such by this
state in the rights of man.
On the Jewish Question 167
The liberty of egoistic man and the recognition of this liberty,
however, is rather the recognition of the unrestrained movement of
the spiritual and material elements which form the content of his
life.
Hence man was not freed from religion, he received religious
freedom. He was not freed from property, he received freedom to
own property. He was not freed from the egoism of business, he
received freedom to engage in business.
The establishment of the political state and the dissolution of civil
society into independent individuals—whose relations with one
another depend on law, just as the relations of men in the system
of estates and guilds depended on privilege—is accomplished by
one and the same act. Man as a member of civil society, unpolitical
man, inevitably appears, however, as the natura/ man. The droits de
l'homme appear as droits naturels, because conscious activity is
concentrated on the political act. Egoistic man is the passive result of
the dissolved society, a result that is simply found in existence, an
object of immediate certainty, therefore a natural object. The political
revolution resolves civil life into its component parts, without
revolutionising these components themselves or subjecting them to
criticism. It regards civil society, the world of needs, labour,
private interests, civil law, as the basis of its existence, as a
precondition not requiring further substantiation and therefore as its
natural basis. Finally, man as a member of civil society is held to
be man in the proper sense, homme as distinct from the citoyen, because
he is man in his sensuous, individual, immediate existence, whereas
political man is only abstract, artificial man, man as an allegorical,
Rights and Freedom, Section from “On the Jewish Question”
juridical person. T h e real man is recognised only in the shape of the
egoistic individual, the true man is recognised only in the shape of the
abstract citoyen.
Therefore Rousseau correctly describes the abstract idea of
political man as follows:
"Celui qui ose entreprendre d'instituer un peuple doit se sentir en état de
changer pour ainsi dire la nature humain«, de transformer chaque individu, qui par
lui-même est un tout parfait et solitaire, en partie d'un plus grand tout dont cet
individu reçoive en quelque sorte sa vie et son être, de substituer une existence
partielle et morale à l'existence physique et indépendante. Il faut qu'il ôte à l'homme
ses forces propres pour lui en donner qui lui soient étrangères et dont il ne puisse
faire usage sans le secours d'autrui."* (Contrat Social, livre II, Londres, 1782,
P- 67.)
a
"Whoever dares undertake to establish a people's institutions must feel him-
self capable of changing, as it were, human nature, of trans/orming each individual,
who by himself is a complete and solitary whole, into a part of a larger whole, from
which, in a sense, the individual receives his life and his being, of substituting a
168 Karl Marx

AW emancipation is a reduction of the human world and

relationships to man himself.
Political emancipation is the reduction of man, on the one hand,
to a member of civil society, to an egoistic, independent individual,
and, on the other hand, to a citizen, a juridical person.
Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the
abstract citizen, and as an individual human being has become a
species-being in his everyday life, in his particular work, and in his
particular situation, only when man has recognised and organised
his "forces propres"* as social forces, and consequently no longer
separates social power from himself in the shape of political power,
only then will human emancipation have been accomplished.

II
"Die Fähigkeit d e r h e u t i g e n J u d e n u n d Christen,
frei zu w e r d e n " .
V o n B r u n o B a u e r (Einundzwanzig Bogen, p p . 56-71).
It is in this form that Bauer deals with the relation between the
Jewish and the Christian religions, and also with their relation to
criticism. Their relation to criticism, is their relation "to the
capacity to become free".
The result arrived at is:
"The Christian has to surmount only one stage, namely, that of his religion, in
order to give up religion altogether", and therefore to become free. "The Jew, on
the other hand, has to break not only with his Jewish nature, but also with the
development towards perfecting his religion, a development which has remained

Rights and Freedom, Section from “On the Jewish Question”

alien to him." (P. 71.)
Thus Bauer here transforms the question of Jewish emancipa-
tion into a purely religious question. The theological problem as to
whether the Jew or the Christian has the better prospect of
salvation is repeated here in the enlightened form: which of them
is more capable of emancipation. No longer is the question asked: Is
it Judaism or Christianity that makes a man free? On the contrary,
the question is now: Which makes man freer, the negation of
Judaism or the negation of Christianity?
"If the Jews want to become free, they should profess belief not in Christianity,
but in the dissolution of Christianity, in the dissolution of religion in general, that
is to say, in enlightenment, criticism and its consequence, free humanity." (P. 70.)

limited and mental existence for the physical and independent existence. He has to
take from man his own powers, and give him in exchange alien powers which he
cannot employ without the help of other men."—Ed.
a
Own powers.—Ed.
Politics
Section “Bourgeois and
Proletarians” from “Manifesto
of the Communist Party”
MECW 6, pp. 481 – 496
 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 Czar, 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 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

Politics, Section “Bourgeois and Proletarians”

in London, and sketched the following Manifesto, to be published in
the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish lan-
guages.
 I
BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS*

T h e 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 op-
pressed, 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 re-constitution 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

* 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. [Note by Engels to the English edition of 1888.]
** That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social
organisation existing previous to recorded history, was all but unknown. Since then,
Haxthausen discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Maurer proved it to be

Politics, Section “Bourgeois and Proletarians”

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 Morgan's crowning discovery
of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of these
primeval communities society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally
antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retrace this process of dissolution in Der
Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats, 2nd edition, Stuttgart, 1886.
[Note by Engels to the English edition of 1888, and—less the last sentence—to the German
edition of 1890.]
*** Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a master within, not a head of a. Cover of the 1848 30-page edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party
guild. [Note by Engels to the English edition of 1888.]
 Manifesto of the Communist Party 485

gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians,

knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals,
guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, 3 serfs; in almost all of these
classes, again, subordinate gradations.
T h e 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.
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this
distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as
a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps,
into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and
Proletariat.
From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers
of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the
bourgeoisie were developed.
T h e discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up
fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and
Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the
colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities
generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse
never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in
the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.
The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production
was monopolised by closed guilds, b now no longer sufficed for the
growing wants of the new markets. T h e manufacturing system took
its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the
manufacturing middle class; c division of labour between the
different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour
in each single workshop.
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising.
Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and

Politics, Section “Bourgeois and Proletarians”

machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of
manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place of
the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of
whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

a
The German editions of 1848. 1872, 1883 and 1890 have "journeymen"
("Gesellen") instead of "journeymen, apprentices".—Ed.
In the German editions the beginning of the phrase is: "The former feudal, or
guild, organisation of industry".— Ed.
The German editions have here and below "middle estate" ("Mittelstand")
instead of "middle class".—Ed.

17*
486 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
Modern 3 industry has established the world market, for which the
discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an
immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communica-
tion by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the
extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce,
navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bour-
geoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the back-
ground every class handed down from the Middle Ages.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the
product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in
the modes of production and of exchange.
Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied
by a corresponding political advance of that class. b An oppressed
classc under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and
self-governing association in the medieval commune*; here indepen-
dent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany), there taxable "third
estate" of the monarchy (as in France), d afterwards, in the period of
manufacture proper, serving either the semi-feudal c or the absolute
monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact,
cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has
at last, since the establishment 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 is but a
committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bour-
geoisie.
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an
end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn
* "Commune" was the name taken, in France, by the nascent towns even before
they had conquered from their feudal lords and masters local self-government and
political rights as the "Third Estate". Generally speaking, for the economical
development of the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country; for its
political development, France. [Note by Engels to the English edition of 1888.]
This was the name given their urban communities by the townsmen of Italy and
France, after they had purchased or wrested their initial rights of self-government
from their feudal lords. [Note by Engels to the German edition of 1890.]
a
The German editions have here and below "large-scale" instead of
"modern".—Ed.
b
The words "of that class" were added in the English edition of 1888.—Ed.
c
The German editions have "estate" instead of "class".—Ed.
The words "medieval", "(as in Italy and Germany)", "(as in France)" were
added in the English edition of 1888.—Ed.
e
The German editions have "estate" instead of "semi-feudal".—Ed.
Manifesto of the Communist Party 487
asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural
superiors", and has left remaining no other nexus between man and
man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has
drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of
chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water
of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into
exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible
chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable free-
dom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious
and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct,
brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto
honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the
physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its
paid wage-labourers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil,
and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.
T h e bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal
display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists so much
admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence.
It has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It
has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids,
Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expedi-
tions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and
crusades.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising
the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of
production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conserva-
tion of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the
contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial
classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted
disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and
Politics, Section “Bourgeois and Proletarians”
agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All
fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable
prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones
become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into
air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face
with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his
kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products
chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must
nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions every-
where.
488 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
T h e bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market
given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in
every country. T o the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn
from unde r the feet of industry the national ground on which it
stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or
are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries,
whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised
nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw
material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries
whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every
quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the
productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their
satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the
old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have
intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of
nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The
intellectual creations of individual nations become common proper-
ty. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more
and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local
literatures, there arises a world literature.
T h e bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of
production, 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 with which it
batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians'
intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all
nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of
production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into
their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it
creates a world after its own image.
T h e bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns.
It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban
population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a
considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just
as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made
barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised
ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the
West.
T h e bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the
scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of
property. It has agglomerated population, centralised means of
production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The
necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Indepen-
Manifesto of the Communist Party 489
dent, or but loosely connected provinces with separate interests, laws,
governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into
one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national
class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff.
T h e bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has
created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have
all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to
man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agricul-
ture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of
whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole
populations conjured out of the ground—what earlier century had
even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap
of social labour?
We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose
foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal
society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of
production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal
society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of
agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal
relations of property became no longer compatible with the already
developed productive forces3; they became so many fetters. They
had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.
Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social
and political constitution adapted to it, and by the economical and
political sway of the bourgeois class.
A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern
bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of
property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of
production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer
able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called u p
by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and
commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive
Politics, Section “Bourgeois and Proletarians”
forces against modern conditions of production, against the
property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the
bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial
crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more
threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society. In these
crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the
previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In
a
The German editions add: "they hindered production instead of developing
it".—Ed.
490 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
these crises there breaks out an epidemic 2 that, in all earlier epochs,
would have seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of over-production.
Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary
barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation
had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and
commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too
much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry,
too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society
no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of
bourgeois property 0 ; on the contrary, they have become too
powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so
soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the
whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois
property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to
comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie
get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a
mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new
markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones.
That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more
destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are
prevented.
The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the
ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring
death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to
wield those weapons—the modern working class—the proletarians. 0
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the
same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class,
developed—a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find
work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases
capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a
commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are conse-
quently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the
fluctuations of the market.
Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour,
the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and,
consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an append-
a
The German editions have: "a social epidemic".—Ed.
The German editions of 1848 have: "bourgeois civilisation and the conditions of
bourgeois property".—Ed.
c
The German editions have: "the modern workers, the proletarians".—Ed.
Manifesto of the Communist Party 491
age of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous,
and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the
cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the
means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for
the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and
therefore also of labour, 258 is equal to its cost of production. In
proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the
wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery
and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden
of toil3 also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours,
by increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed
of the machinery, etc.
Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the
patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.
Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like
soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the
command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only
are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they
are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker,
and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself.
T h e more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and
aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.
T h e less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual
labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes
developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of
women.11 Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive
social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour,
more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.
No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer,
so far, at an end, and he receives his wages in cash, than he is set
upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the
shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.
Politics, Section “Bourgeois and Proletarians”
The lower strata of the middle class c —the small tradespeople,
shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, d the handicraftsmen
and peasants—all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly
a
The German editions have: "the quantity of labour".—Ed.
b
The German 23-page edition of 1848 has: "of women and children".—Ed.
c
The German editions have: "The former lower strata of the middle
estate".—Ed.
d
T h e German editions have: "and rentiers" instead of "and retired tradesmen
generally".—Ed.
492 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on
which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the
competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised
skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the
proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.
T h e proletariat goes through various stages of development. With
its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is
carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a
factory, then by the operatives of one trade, in one locality, against
the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct
their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but
against the instruments of production themselves 3 ; they destroy
imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces
machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the
vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.
At this stage the labourers still form an incoherent13 mass scattered
over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition.
If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet
the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the
bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is
compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover
yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians
do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the
remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial
bourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie. Thus the whole historical move-
ment is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so
obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.
But with the development of industry the proletariat not only
increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its
strength grows, and it feels that strength more. T h e various interests
and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more
and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all
distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the
same low level. T h e growing competition among the bourgeois, and
the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever
more fluctuating. T h e unceasing improvement of machinery, ever
more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more
precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individu-
a
The German editions have: "They direct their attacks not only against the
bourgeois conditions of production, they direct them against the instruments of
production themselves."—Ed.
b
This word was inserted in the English edition of 1888.—Ed.
Manifesto of the Communist Party 493
al bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between
two classes. Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations
(Trades' Unions) 3 against the bourgeois; they club together in order
to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in
order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts.
Here and there the contest breaks out into riots.
Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The
real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the
ever-expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the
improved means of communication that are created by modern
industry and that place the workers of different localities in contact
with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to
centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character,
into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is
a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers
of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centu-
ries, the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few
years.
This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and consequently
into a political party, is continually being upset again by the
competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up
again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition
of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the
divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus the ten-hours' bill in
England was carried. 259
Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further,
in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The
bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the
aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself,
whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry;
at all times, with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these
battles it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for
Politics, Section “Bourgeois and Proletarians”
its help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie
itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of
political and general 13 education, in other words, it furnishes the
proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.
Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling
classes are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the
proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence.
a
T h e words in parentheses were inserted in the English edition of 1888.—Ed.
The words "political and general" were added in the English edition of
1888.—Ed.
494 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlighten-
ment and progress. 2
Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour,
the process of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact
within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring
character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and
joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its
hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility
went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie
goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the
bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of
comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.
Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today,
the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes
decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the
proletariat is its special and essential product.
The lower middle class,b the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper,
the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to
save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class.
They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more,
they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If
by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their
impending transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their
present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint
to place themselves at that of the proletariat.
The "dangerous class", the social scum,c that passively rotting
mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society may, here and
there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its
conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a
bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.
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 labour,
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
a
The German editions have "elements of education" instead of "elements of
enlightenment and progress".—Ed.
The German editions have here and below "middle estates" instead of "the
lower middle class" and "the middle class".—Ed.
The German editions have "lumpen proletariat" instead of "the dangerous class,
the social scum".—Ed.
Manifesto of the Communist Party 495
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 3 movements were movements of minorities,
or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the
self-conscious, 3 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 superincumbent strata of official society being
sprung into the air.
Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the
proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The
proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters
with its own bourgeoisie.
In depicting the most general phases of the development of the
proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within
existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open
revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays
the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.
Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already
seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in
order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it
under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in
the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the
commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal
Politics, Section “Bourgeois and Proletarians”
absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern
labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of
industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence
of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops
more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes
evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class
in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an
over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure
an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help
3
This word was added in the English edition of 1888.—Ed.
496 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of
being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie,
in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.
The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the
bourgeois class, isa the formation and augmentation of capital; the
condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on
competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose
involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the
labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination,
due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore,
cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the
bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bour-
geoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its
fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

Politics, Section “Bourgeois and Proletarians”

a
The German editions have here: "The accumulation of wealth in the hands of
i ndividuals".—Ed.
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goethe.de/indonesien

Goethe.Indonesien

@GI_Indonesien

@goetheinstitut.indonesien