In his article, Louis Wirth explores the profound social changes brought about by urbanization, emphasizing that urbanism transcends the confines of cities and influences rural lifestyles as well. He argues that traditional definitions of a city fail to capture the complexity of urban life, necessitating a sociological approach to understand its essence and the diverse forms it takes across different urban centers. Wirth advocates for a holistic view of urbanism that integrates its characteristics into a broader context, acknowledging the interconnections between urban and rural societies.

1. Personal Qualities
Why?
Issues
Stance on Issues

2. Urbanism as a Way of Life
Author(s): Louis Wirth
Source: The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 44, No. 1
(Jul., 1938), pp. 1-24

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THE AMERICAN
JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
VOLUME XLIV JULY 1938 NUMBER 1
URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE
LOUIS WIRTH
ABSTRACT
The urbanization of the world, which is one of the most
impressive facts of modern
times, has wrought profound changes in virtually every phase of
social life. The recency
and rapidity of urbanization in the United States accounts for
the acuteness of our
urban problems and our lack of awareness of them. Despite the
dominance of urbanism
in the modern world we still lack a sociological definition of
the city which would take
adequate account of the fact that while the city is the
characteristic locus of urbanism,
the urban mode of life is not confined to cities. For sociological
purposes a city is a
relatively large, dense, and permanent settlement of
heterogeneous individuals. Large

5. numbers account for individual variability, the relative absence
of intimate personal
acquaintanceship, the segmentalization of human relations
which are largely anony-
mous, superficial, and transitory, and associated characteristics.
Density involves di-
versification and specialization, the coincidence of close
physical contact and distant
social relations, glaring contrasts, a complex pattern of
segregation, the predominance
of formal social control, and accentuated friction, among other
phenomena. Hetero-
geneity tends to break down rigid social structures and to
produce increased mobility,
instability, and insecurity, and the affiliation of the individuals
with a variety of inter-
secting and tangential social groups with a high rate of
membership turnover. The
pecuniary nexus tends to displace personal relations, and
institutions tend to cater to
mass rather than to individual requirements. The individual thus
becomes effective
only as he acts through organized groups. The complicated
phenomena of urbanism
may acquire unity and coherence if the sociological analysis
proceeds in the light of
such a body of theory. The empirical evidence concerning the
ecology, the social
organization, and the social psychology of the urban mode of
life confirms the fruit-
fulness of this approach.
I. THE CITY AND CONTEMPORARY CIVILIZATION
Just as the beginning of Western civilization is marked by the
permanent settlement of formerly nomadic peoples in the

6. Mediter-
ranean basin, so the begilning of what is distinctively modern in
our civilization is best signalized by the growth of great cities.
Nowhere has mankind been farther removed from organic nature
2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
than under the conditions of life characteristic of great cities.
The
contemporary world no longer presents a picture of small
isolated
groups of human beings scattered over a vast territory, as
Sumner
described primitive society.' The distinctive feature of the mode
of
living of man in the modern age is his concentration into
gigantic
aggregations around which cluster lesser centers and from
which
radiate the ideas and practices that we call civilization.
The degree to which the contemporary world may be said to be
"urban" is not fully or accurately measured by the proportion of
the
total population living in cities. The influences which cities
exert
upon the social life of man are greater than the ratio of the
urban
population would indicate, for the city is not only in ever larger
degrees the dwelling-place and the workshop of modern man,
but
it is the initiating and controlling center of economic, political,
and
cultural life that has drawn the most remote parts of the world

7. into
its orbit and woven diverse areas, peoples, and activities into a
cosmos.
The growth of cities and the urbanization of the world is one of
the most impressive facts of modern times. Although it is
impossible
to state precisely what proportion of the estimated total world-
population of approximately i,8oo,ooo,ooo is urban, 69.2 per
cent
of the total population of those countries that do distinguish be-
tween urban and rural areas is urban.2 Considering the fact,
more-
over, that the world's population is very unevenly distributed
and
that the growth of cities is not very far advanced in some of the
countries that have only recently been touched by industrialism,
this average understates the extent to which urban concentration
has proceeded in those countries where the impact of the
industrial
revolution has been more forceful and of less recent date. This
shift
from a rural to a predominantly urban society, which has taken
place within the span of a single generation in such
industrialized
areas as the United States and Japan, has been accompanied by
profound changes in virtually every phase of social life. It is
these
changes and their ramifications that invite the attention of the
so-
ciologist to the study of the differences between the rural and
the
x William Graham Sumner, Folkways (Boston, 1906), p. 12.
2 S. V. Pearson, The Growth and Distribution of Population
(New York, 1935), p. 211.

8. URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE 3
urban mode of living. The pursuit of this interest is an
indispensable
prerequisite for the comprehension and possible mastery of
some of
the most crucial contemporary problems of social life since it is
likely to furnish one of the most revealing perspectives for the
under-
standing of the ongoing changes in human nature and the social
order.3
Since the city is the product of growth rather than of instantane-
ous creation, it is to be expected that the influences which it
exerts
upon the modes of life should not be able to wipe out
completely
the previously dominant modes of human association. To a
greater
or lesser degree, therefore, our social life bears the imprint of
an
earlier folk society, the characteristic modes of settlement of
which
were the farm, the manor, and the village. This historic
influence
is reinforced by the circumstance that the population of the city
itself is in large measure recruited from the countryside, where
a
mode of life reminiscent of this earlier form of existence
persists.
Hence we should not expect to find abrupt and discontinuous
varia-
tion between urban and rural types of personality. The city and

9. the
country may be regarded as two poles in reference to one or the
other of which all human settlements tend to arrange
themselves.
In viewing urban-industrial and rural-folk society as ideal types
of
communities, we may obtain a perspective for the analysis of
the
basic models of human association as they appear in
contemporary
civilization.
II. A SOCIOLOGICAL DEFINITION OF THE CITY
Despite the preponderant significance of the city in our civiliza-
tion, however, our knowledge of the nature of urbanism and the
process of urbanization is meager. Many attempts have indeed
been
made to isolate the distinguishing characteristics of urban life.
Ge-
ographers, historians, economists, an?d political scientists have
in-
3 Whereas rural life in the United States has for a long time
been a subject of con-
siderable interest on the part of governmental bureaus, the most
notable case of a
comprehensive report being that submitted by the Country Life
Commission to Presi-
dent Theodore Roosevelt in I909, it is worthy of note that no
equally comprehensive
official inquiry-into urban life was undertaken until the
establishment of a Research
Committee on Urbanism of the National Resources Committee.
(Cf. Our Cities: Their
Role in the National Economy [Washington: Government

10. Printing Office, 1937].)
4 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
corporated the points of view of their respective disciplines into
diverse definitions of the city. While in no sense intended to
super-
sede these, the formulation of a sociological approach to the
city
may incidentally serve to call attention to the interrelations be-
tween them by emphasizing the peculiar characteristics of the
city
as a particular form of human association. A sociologically
signifi-
cant definition of the city seeks to select those elements of
urbanism
which mark it as a distinctive mode of human group life.
The characterization of a community as urban on the basis of
size alone is obviously arbitrary. It is difficult to defend the
present
census definition which designates a community of 2,500 and
above
as urban and all others as rural. The situation would be the same
if
the criterion were 4,000, 8,ooo, IO,OOO, 25,000, or ioo,ooo
popula-
tion, for although in the latter case we might feel that we were
more
nearly dealing with an urban aggregate than would be the case
in-
communities of lesser size, no definition of urbanism can hope
to be
completely satisfying as long as numbers are regarded as the

11. sole
criterion. Moreover, it is not difficult to demonstrate that
communi-
ties of less than the arbitrarily set number of inhabitants lying
with-
in the range of influence of metropolitan centers have greater
claim
to recognition as urban communities than do larger ones leading
a more isolated existence in a predominantly rural area. Finally,
it
should be recognized that census definitions are unduly
influenced
by the fact that the city, statistically speaking, is always an ad-
ministrative concept in that the corporate limits play a decisive
role in delineating the urban area. Nowhere is this more clearly
apparent than in the concentrations of population on the
peripheries
of great metropolitan centers which cross arbitrary
administrative
boundaries of city, county, state, and nation.
As long as we identify urbanism with the physical entity of the
city, viewing it merely as rigidly delimited in space, and
proceed as
if urban attributes abruptly ceased to be manifested beyond an
arbitrary boundary line, we are not likely to arrive at any
adequate
conception of urbanism as a mode of life. The technological
develop-
ments in transportation and communication which virtually
mark
a new epoch in human history have accentuated the role of
cities
as dominant elements in our civilization and have enormously
ex-

12. IURBANISM AS A WAY OF LIPE 5
tended the urban mode of living beyond the confines of the city
itself. The dominance of the city, especially of the great city,
may
be regarded as a consequence of the concentration in cities of
in-
dustrial and commercial, financial and administrative facilities
and
activities, transportation and communication lines, and cultural
and recreational equipment such as the press, radio stations,
thea-
ters, libraries, museums, concert halls, operas, hospitals, higher
edu-
cational institutions, research and publishing centers,
professional
organizations, and religious and welfare institutions. Were it
not
for the attraction and suggestions that the city exerts through
these
instrumentalities upon the rural population, the differences
between
the rural and the urban modes of life would be even greater than
they are. Urbanization no longer denotes merely the process by
which persons are attracted to a place called the city and
incorpo-
rated into its system of life. It refers also to that cumulative ac-
centuation of the characteristics distinctive of the mode of life
which is associated with the growth of cities, and finally to the
changes in the direction of modes of life recognized as urban
which
are apparent among people, wherever they may be, who have
come
under the spell of the influences which the city exerts by virtue

13. of
the power of its institutions and personalities operating through
the
means of communication and transportation.
The shortcomings which attach to number of inhabitants as a
criterion of urbanism apply for the most part to density of
popula-
tion as well. Whether we accept the density of io,ooo persons
per
square mile as Mark Jefferson4 proposed, or I,OOO, which
Willcox5
preferred to regard as the criterion of urban settlements, it is
clear
that unless density is correlated with significant social
characteris-
tics it can furnish only an arbitrary basis for differentiating
urban
from rural communities. Since our census enumerates the night
rather than the day population of an area, the locale of the most
intensive urban life-the city center-generally has low population
density. and the industrial and commercial areas of the city,
which
4 "The Anthropogeography of Some Great Cities," Bull.
American Geographical
Society, XLI (I909), 537-66.
5 Walter F. Willcox, "A Definition of 'City' in Terms of
Density," in E. W. Burgess,
The Urban Community (Chicago, I926), p. II9.
6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

14. contain the most characteristic economic activities underlying
urban
society, would scarcely anywhere be truly urban if density were
literally interpreted as a mark of urbanism. Nevertheless, the
fact
that the urban community is distinguished by a large
aggregation
and relatively dense concentration of population can scarcely be
left out of account in a definition of the city. But these criteria
must
be seen as relative to the general cultural context in which cities
arise and exist and are sociologically relevant only in so far as
they
operate as conditioning factors in social life.
The same criticisms apply to such criteria as the occupation of
the inhabitants, the existence of certain physical facilities,
institu-
tions, and forms of political organization. The question is not
whether cities in our civilization or in others do exhibit these
dis-
tinctive traits, but how potent they are in molding the character
of social life into its specifically urban form. Nor in
formulating a
fertile definition can we afford to overlook the great variations
be-
tween cities. By means of a typology of cities based upon size,
location, age, and function, such. as we have undertaken to
establish
in our recent report to the National Resources Committee,6 we
have
found it feasible to array and classify urban communities
ranging
from struggling small towns to thriving world-metropolitan
centers;
from isolated trading-centers in the midst of agricultural regions

15. to
thriving world-ports and commercial and industrial
conurbations.
Such differences as these appear crucial because the social char-
acteristics and influences of these different "cities" vary widely.
A serviceable definition of urbanism should not only denote the
essential characteristics which all cities-at least those in our
cul-
ture-have in common, but should lend itself to the discovery of
their variations. An industrial city will differ significantly in
social
respects from a commercial, mining, fishing, resort, university,
and
capital city. A one-industry city will present different sets of
social
characteristics from a multi-industry city, as will an industrially
balanced from an imbalanced city, a suburb from a satellite, a
resi-
dential suburb from an industrial suburb, a city within a
metropoli-
tan region from one lying outside, an old city from a new one, a
6 Op. cit., p. 8.
URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE 7
southern city from a New England, a middle-western from a
Pacific
Coast city, a growing from a stable and from a dying city.
A sociological definition must obviously be inclusive enough to
comprise whatever essential characteristics these different types
of cities have in common as social entities, but it obviously

16. cannot
be so detailed as to take account of all the variations implicit in
the manifold classes sketched above. Presumably some of the
char-
acteristics of cities are more significant in conditioning the
nature of
urban life than others, and we may expect the outstanding
features
of the urban-social scene to vary in accordance with size,
density,
and differences in the functional type of cities. Moreover, we
may
infer that rural life will bear the imprint of urbanism in the
measure
that through contact and communication it comes under the in-
fluence of cities. It may contribute to the clarity of the
statements
that follow to repeat that while the locus of urbanism as a mode
of
life is, of course, to be found characteristically in places which
fulfil
the requirements we shall set up as a definition of the city,
urbanism
is not confined to such localities but is manifest in varying
degrees
wherever the influences of the city reach.
While urbanism, or that complex of traits which makes up the
characteristic mode of life in cities, and urbanization, which
denotes
the development and extensions of these factors, are thus not
ex-
clusively found in settlements which are cities in the physical
and
demographic sense, they do, nevertheless, find their most pro-
nounced expression in such areas, especially in metropolitan

17. cities.
In formulating a definition of the city it is necessary to exercise
caution in order to avoid identifying urbanism as a way of life
with
any specific locally or historically conditioned cultural
influences
which, while they may significantly affect the specific character
of
the community, are not the essential determinants of its
character
as a city.
It is particularly important to call attention to the danger of
confusing urbanism with industrialism and modern capitalism.
The
rise of cities in the modern world is undoubtedly not
independent
of the emergence of modern power-driven machine technology,
mass
production, and capitalistic enterprise. B'ut different as the
cities
of earlier epochs may have been by virtue of their development
in a
8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
preindustrial and precapitalistic order from the great cities of
today,
they were, nevertheless, cities.
For sociological purposes a city may be defined as a relatively
large, dense, and permanent settlement of socially
heterogeneous
individuals. On the basis of the postulates which this minimal

18. defi-
nition suggests, a theory of urbanism may be formulated in the
light of existing knowledge concerning social groups.
III. A THEORY OF URBANISM
In the rich literature on the city we look in vain for a theory of
urbanism presenting in a systematic fashion the available
knowledge
concerning the city as a social entity. We do indeed have
excellent
formulations of theories on such special problems as the growth
of
the city viewed as a historical trend and as a recurrent process,7
and
we have a wealth of literature presenting insights of
sociological
relevance and empirical studies offering detailed information on
a
variety of particular aspects of urban life. But despite the multi-
plication of research and textbooks on the city, we do not as yet
have a comprehensive body of compendent hypotheses which
may
be derived from a set of postulates implicitly contained in a
socio-
logical definition of the city, and from our general sociological
knowl-
edge which may be substantiated through empirical research.
The
closest approximations to a systematic theory of urbanism that
we
have are to be found in a penetrating essay, "Die Stadt," by Max
Weber,8 and a memorable paper by Robert E. Park on "The
City:
Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the
Urban

19. Environment."9 But even these excellent contributions are far
from
constituting an ordered and coherent framework of theory upon
which research might profitably proceed.
In the pages that follow we shall seek to set forth a limited
number
of identifying characteristics of the city. Given these
characteristics
we shall then indicate what consequences or further
characteristics
follow from them in the light of general sociological theory and
7 See Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess, et al., The City
(Chicago, I925), esp.
chaps. ii and iii; Werner Sombart, "Stadtische Siedlung, Stadt,"
Handwdrterbutch der
Soziologie, ed. Alfred Vierkandt (Stuttgart, I93I); see also
bibliography.
8 Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Tiubingen, I925), Part II, chap.
viii, pp. 5I4-60I.
9 Park, Burgess, et al., op. cit., chap. i.
URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE 9
empirical research. We hope in this manner to arrive at the
essential
propositions comprising a theory of urbanism. Some of these
propo-
sitions can be supported by a considerable body of already
available
research materials; others may be accepted as hypotheses for
which

20. a certain amount of presumptive evidence exists, but for which
more
ample and exact verification would be required. At least such a
procedure will, it is hoped, show what in the way of systematic
knowledge of the city we now have and what are the crucial and
fruitful hypotheses for future research.
The central problem of the sociologist of the city is to discover
the
forms of social action and organization that typically emerge in
relatively permanent, compact settlements of large numbers of
heterogeneous individuals. We must also infer that urbanism
will
assume its most characteristic and extreme form in the measure
in
which the conditions with which it is congruent are present.
Thus
the larger, the more densely populated, and the more
heterogeneous
a community, the more accentuated the characteristics
associated
with urbanism will be. It should be recognized, however, that in
the
social world institutions and practices may be accepted and con-
tinued for reasons other than those that originally brought them
into existence, and that accordingly the urban mode of life may
be
perpetuated under conditions quite foreign to those necessary
for
its origin.
Some justification may be in order for the choice of the
principal
terms comprising our definition of the city. The attempt has
been
made to make it as inclusive and at the same time as denotative

21. as
possible without loading it with unnecessary assumptions. To
say
that large numbers are necessary to constitute a city means, of
course, large numbers in relation to a restricted area or high
density
of settlement. There are, nevertheless, good reasons for treating
large numbers and density as separate factors, since each may
be
connected with significantly different social consequences.
Similarly
the need for adding heterogeneity to numbers of population as a
necessary and distinct criterion of urbanism might be
questioned,
since we should expect the range of differences to increase with
numbers. In defense, it may be said that the city shows a kind
and
degree of heterogeneity of population which cannot be wholly
ac-
Io THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
counted for by the law of large numbers or adequately
represented
by means of a normal distribution curve. Since the population of
the city does not reproduce itself, it must recruit its migrants
from
other cities, the countryside, and-in this country until recently-
from other countries. The city has thus historically been the
melt-
ing-pot of races, peoples, and cultures, and a most favorable
breed-
ing-ground of new biological and cultural hybrids. It has not
only

22. tolerated but rewarded individual differences. It has brought to-
gether people from the ends of the earth because they are
different
and thus useful to one another, rather than because they are
homo-
geneous and like-minded.Io
There are a number of sociological propositions concerning the
relationship between (a) numbers of population, (b) density of
settle-
ment, (c) heterogeneity of inhabitants and group life, which can
be
formulated on the basis of observation and research.
SIZE OF THE POPULATION AGGREGATE
Ever since Aristotle's Politics,", it has been recognized that in-
creasing the number of inhabitants in a settlement beyond a
certain
limit will affect the relationships between them and the
character
-0 The justification for including the term "permanent" in the
definition may appear
necessary. Our failure to give an extensive justification for this
qualifying mark of the
urban rests on the obvious fact that unless human settlements
take a fairly permanent
root in a locality the characteristics of urban life cannot arise,
and conversely the living
together of large numbers of heterogeneous individuals under
dense conditions is not
possible without the development of a more or less
technological structure.
I" See esp. vii. 4. 4-I4. Translated by B. Jowett, from which the

23. following may be
quoted:
"To the size of states there is a limit, as there is to other things,
plants, animals,
implements; for none of these retain their natural power when
they are too large or too
small, but they either wholly lose their nature, or are spoiled
..... [A] state when
composed of too few is not as a state ought to be, self-sufficing;
when of too many,
though self-sufficing in all mere necessaries, it is a nation and
not a state, being almost
incapable of constitutional government. For who can be the
general of such a vast
multitude, or who the herald, unless he have the voice of a
Stentor?
"A state then only begins to exist when it has attained a
population sufficient for a
good life in the political community: it may indeed somewhat
exceed this number.
But, as I was saying, there must be a limit. What should be the
limit will be easily
ascertained by experience. For both governors and governed
have duties to perform;
the special functions of a governor are to command and to
judge. But if the citizens
of a state are to judge and to distribute offices according to
merit, then they must know
each other's characters; where they do not possess this
knowledge, both the election to
URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE II

24. of the city. Large numbers involve, as has been pointed out, a
greater range of individual variation. Furthermore, the greater
the
number of individuals participating in a process of interaction,
the
greater is the potential differentiation between them. The
personal
traits, the occupations, the cultural life, and the ideas of the
mem-
bers of an urban community may, therefore, be expected to
range
between more widely separated poles than those of rural inhabi-
tants.
That such variations should give rise to the spatial segregation
of individuals according to color, ethnic heritage, economic and
social
status, tastes and preferences, may readily be inferred. The
bonds
of kinship, of neighborliness, and the sentiments arising out of
living
together for generations under a common folk tradition are
likely
to be absent or, at best, relatively weak in an aggregate the
members
of which have such diverse origins and backgrounds. Under
such
circumstances competition and formal control mechanisms
furnish
the substitutes for the bonds of solidarity that are relied upon to
hold a folk society together.
Increase in the number of inhabitants of a community beyond a
few hundred is bound to limit the possibility of each member of
the

25. community knowing all the others personally. Max Weber, in
recog-
nizing the social significance of this fact, pointed out that from
a
sociological point of view large numbers of inhabitants and
density
of settlement mean that the personal mutual acquaintanceship
be-
tween the inhabitants which ordinarily inheres in a
neighborhood
is lacking.,2 The increase in numbers thus involves a changed
char-
acter of the social relationships. As Simmel points out:
[If] the unceasing external contact of numbers of persons in the
city should
be met by the same number of inner reactions as in the small
town, in which
one knows almost every person he meets and to each of whom
he has a positive
offices and the decision of lawsuits will go wrong. When the
population is very large
they are manifestly settled at haphazard, which clearly ought
not to be. Besides, in an
overpopulous state foreigners and metics will readily acquire
the rights of citizens, for
who will find them out? Clearly, then, the best limit of the
population of a state is the
largest number which suffices for the purposes of life, and can
be taken in at a single
view. Enough concerning the size of a city."
I2 Op. cit., p. 5I4.

26. I2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
relationship, one would be completely atomized internally and
would fall into
an unthinkable mental condition.13
The multiplication of persons in a state of interaction under
condi-
tions which make their contact as full personalities impossible
pro-
duces that segmentalization of human relationships which has
some-
times been seized upon by students of the mental life of the
cities
as an explanation for the "schizoid" character of urban
personality.
This is not to say that the urban inhabitants have fewer
acquaint-
ances than rural inhabitants, for the reverse may actually be
true;
it means rather that in relation to the number of people whom
they
see and with whom they rub elbows in the course of daily life,
they
know a smaller proportion, and of these they have less intensive
knowledge.
Characteristically, urbanites meet one another in highly seg-
mental roles. They are, to be sure, dependent upon more people
for the satisfactions of their life-needs than are rural people and
thus
are associated with a greater number of organized groups, but
they
are less dependent upon particular persons, and their
dependence

27. upon others is confined to a highly fractionalized aspect of the
other's
round of activity. This is essentially what is meant by saying
that
the city is characterized by secondary rather than primary
contacts.
The contacts of the city may indeed be face to face, but they are
nevertheless impersonal, superficial, transitory, and segmental.
The
reserve, the indifference, and the blase outlook which urbanites
manifest in their relationships may thus be regarded as devices
for
immunizing themselves against the personal claims and expecta-
tions of others.
The superficiality, the anonymity, and the transitory character
of urban-social relations make intelligible, also, the
sophistication
and the rationality generally ascribed to city-dwellers. Our ac-
quaintances tend to stand in a relationship of utility to us in the
sense that the role which each one plays in our life is
overwhelmingly
regarded as a means for the achievement of our own ends.
Whereas,
therefore, the individual gains, on the one hand, a certain degree
of
emancipation or freedom from the personal and emotional
controls
13 Georg Simmel, "Die Grossstadte und das Geistesleben," Die
Grossstadt, ed.
Theodor Petermann (Dresden, I903), pp. I87-206.
URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE I3

28. of intimate groups, he loses, on the other hand, the spontaneous
self-expression, the morale, and the sense of participation that
comes
with living in an integrated society. This constitutes essentially
the
state of anomie or the social void to which Durkheim alludes in
at-
tempting to account for the various forms of social
disorganization
in technological society.
The segmental character and utilitarian accent of interpersonal
relations in the city find their institutional expression in the
prolifer-
ation of specialized tasks which w1e see in their most
developed form
in the professions. The operations of the pecuniary nexus leads
to
predatory relationships, which tend to obstruct the efficient
function-
ing of the social order unless checked by professional codes and
occu-
pational etiquette. The premium put upon utility and efficiency
sug-
gests the adaptability of the corporate device for the
organization of
enterprises in which individuals can engage only in groups. The
advantage that the corporation has over the individual
entrepreneur
and the partnership in the urban-industrial world derives not
only
from the possibility it affords of centralizing the resources of
thou-
sands of individuals or from the legal privilege of limited
liability

29. and perpetual succession, but from the fact that the corporation
has no soul.
The specialization of individuals, particularly in their occupa-
tions, can proceed only, as Adam Smith pointed out, upon the
basis
of an enlarged market, which in turn accentuates the division of
labor. This enlarged market is only in part supplied by the city's
hinterland; in large measure it is found among the large
numbers
that the city itself contains. The dominance of the city over the
surrounding hinterland becomes explicable in terms of the
division
of labor which urban life occasions and promotes. The extreme
de-
gree of interdependence and the unstable equilibrium of urban
life
are closely associated with the division of labor and the
specializa-
tion of occupations. This interdependence and instability is in-
creased by the tendency of each city to specialize in those
functions
in which it has the greatest advantage.
In a commnunity composed of a larger number of individuals
than
can know one another intimately and can be assembled in one
spot,
it becomes necessary to communicate through indirect mediums
and
14 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
to articulate individual interests by a process of delegation.

30. Typical-
ly in the city, interests are made effective through
representation.
The individual counts for little, but the voice of the
representative
is heard with a deference roughly proportional to the numbers
for
whom he speaks.
While this characterization of urbanism, in so far as it derives
from large numbers, does not by any means exhaust the
sociological
inferences that might be drawn from our knowledge of the rela-
tionship of the size of a group to the characteristic behavior of
the
members, for the sake of brevity the assertions made may serve
to
exemplify the sort of propositions that might be developed.
DENSITY
As in the case of numbers, so in the case of concentration in
limi-
ted space, certain consequences of relevance in sociological
analysis
of the city emerge. Of these only a few can be indicated.
As Darwin pointed out for flora and fauna and as Durkheim'4
noted in the case of human societies, an increase in numbers
when
area is held constant (i.e., an increase in density) tends to
produce
differentiation and specialization, since only in this way can the
area support increased numbers. Density thus reinforces the
effect
of numbers in diversifying men and their activities and in

31. increasing
the complexity of the social structure.
On the subjective side, as Simmel has suggested, the close
physical
contact of numerous individuals necessarily produces a shift in
the
mediums through which we orient ourselves to the urban milieu,
es-
pecially to our fellow-men. Typically, our physical contacts are
close
but our social contacts are distant. The urban world puts a
premium
on visual recognition. We see the uniform which denotes the
role
of the functionaries and are oblivious to the personal
eccentricities
that are hidden behind the uniform. We tend to acquire and
develop
a sensitivity to a world of artefacts and become progressively
farther
removed from the world of nature.
We are exposed to glaring contrasts between splendor and
squalor,
between riches and poverty, intelligence and ignorance, order
and
chaos. The competition for space is great, so that each area gen-
14 E. Durkheim, De la division du travail social (Paris, I932), p.
248.
URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE I5

32. erally tends to be put to the use which yields the greatest
economic
return. Place of work tends to become dissociated from place of
residence, for the proximity of industrial and commercial
establish-
ments makes an area both economically and socially undesirable
for
residential purposes.
Density, land values, rentals, accessibility, healthfulness,
prestige,
aesthetic consideration, absence of nuisances such as noise,
smoke,
and dirt determine the desirability of various areas of the city as
places of settlement for different sections of the population.
Place
and nature of work, income, racial and ethnic characteristics,
social
status, custom, habit, taste, preference, and prejudice are among
the significant factors in accordance with which the urban
popula-
tion is selected and distributed into more or less distinct
settlements.
Diverse population elements inhabiting a compact settlement
thus
tend to become segregated from one another in the degree in
which
their requirements and modes of life are incompatible with one
another and in the measure in which they are antagonistic to one
another. Similarly, persons of homogeneous status and needs
un-
wittingly drift into, consciously select, or are forced by circum-
stances into, the same area. The different parts of the city thus
acquire specialized functions. The city consequently tends to re-
semble a mosaic of social worlds in which the transition from
one

33. to the other is abrupt. The juxtaposition of divergent
personalities
and modes of life tends to produce a relativistic perspective and
a
sense of toleration of differences which may be regarded as pre-
requisites for rationality and which lead toward the
secularization
of life.'5
The close living together and working together of individuals
who
have no sentimental and emotional ties foster a spirit of
competition,
aggrandizement, and mutual exploitation. To counteract
irresponsi-
bility and potential disorder, formal controls tend to be resorted
to. Without rigid adherence to predictable routines a large
compact
is The extent to which the segregation of the population into
distinct ecological and
cultural areas and the resulting social attitude of tolerance,
rationality, and secular
mentality are functions of density as distinguished from
heterogeneity is difficult to
determine. Most likely we are dealing here with phenomena
which are consequences of
the simultaneous operation of both factors.
ii6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
society would scarcely be able to maintain itself. The clock and
the
traffic signal are symbolic of the basis of our social order in the

34. urban world. Frequent close physical contact, coupled with
great
social distance, accentuates the reserve of unattached
individuals
toward one another and, unless compensated for by other
opportuni-
ties for response, gives rise to loneliness. The necessary
frequent
movement of great numbers of individuals in a congested
habitat
gives occasion to friction and irritation. Nervous tensions which
derive from such personal frustrations are accentuated by the
rapid
tempo and the complicated technology under which life in dense
areas must be lived.
HETEROGENEITY
The social interaction among such a variety of personality types
in the urban milieu tends to break down the rigidity of caste
lines
and to complicate the class structure, and thus induces a more
ramified and differentiated framework of social stratification
than
is found in more integrated societies. The heightened mobility
of
the individual, which brings him within the range of stimulation
by a great number of diverse individuals and subjects him to
fluc-
tuating status in the differentiated social groups that compose
the
social structure of the city, tends toward the acceptance of
instability
and insecurity in the world at large as a norm. This fact helps to
account, too, for the sophistication and cosmopolitanism of the
urbanite. No single group has the undivided allegiance of the

35. indi-
vidual. The groups with which he is affiliated do not lend them-
selves readily to a simple hierarchical arrangement. By virtue of
his different interests arising out of different aspects of social
life,
the individual acquires membership in widely divergent groups,
each of which functions only with reference to a single segment
of
his personality. Nor do these groups easily permit of a
concentric
arrangement so that the narrower ones fall within the
circumference
of the more inclusive ones, as is more likely to be the case in
the
rural community or in primitive societies. Rather the groups
with
which the person typically is affiliated are tangential to each
other
or intersect in highly variable fashion.
Partly as a result of the physical footlooseness of the population
and partly as a result of their social mobility, the turnover in
group
URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE I7
membership generally is rapid. Place of residence, place and
char-
acter of employment, income and interests fluctuate, and the
task
of holding organizations together and maintaining and
promoting
intimate and lasting acquaintanceship between the members is
difficult. This applies strikingly to the local areas within the

36. city
into which persons become segregated more by virtue of
differences
in race, language, income, and social status, than through choice
or positive attraction to people like themselves.
Overwhelmingly
the city-dweller is not a home-owner, and since a transitory
habitat
does not generate binding traditions and sentiments, only rarely
is he truly a neighbor. There is little opportunity for the
individual
to obtain a conception of the city as a whole or to survey his
place
in the total scheme. Consequently he finds it difficult to
determine
what is to his own "best interests" and to decide between the
issues
and leaders presented to him by the agencies of mass
suggestion.
Individuals who are thus detached from the organized bodies
which
integrate society comprise the fluid masses that make collective
be-
havior in the urban community so unpredictable and hence so
problematical.
Although the city, through the recruitment of variant types to
perform its diverse tasks and the accentuation of their
uniqueness
through competition and the premium upon eccentricity,
novelty,
efficient performance, and inventiveness, produces a highly
differ-
entiated population, it also exercises a leveling influence.
Wherever
large numbers of differently constituted individuals congregate,

37. the
process of depersonalization also enters. This leveling tendency
in-
heres in part in the economic basis of the city. The development
of
large cities, at least in the modern age, was largely dependent
upon
the concentrative force of steam. The rise of the factory made
possi-
ble mass production for an impersonal market. The fullest
exploita-
tion of the possibilities of the division of labor and mass
production,
however, is possible only with standardization of processes and
products. A money economy goes hand in hand with such a
system
of production. Progressively as cities have developed upon a
back-
ground of this system of production, the pecuniary nexus which
implies the purchasability of services and things has displaced
per-
sonal relations as the basis of association. Individuality under
these
i8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
circumstances must be replaced by categories. When large
numbers
have to make common use of facilities and institutions, an
arrange-
ment must be made to adjust the facilities and institutions to the
needs of the average person rather than to those of particular
indi-
viduals. The services of the public utilities, of the recreational,

38. educational, and cultural institutions must be adjusted to mass
re-
quirements. Similarly, the cultural institutions, such as the
schools,
the movies, the radio, and the newspapers, by virtue of their
mass
clientele, must necessarily operate as leveling influences. The
po-
litical process as it appears in urban life could not be
understood
without taking account of the mass appeals made through
modern
propaganda techniques. If the individual would participate at all
in the social, political, and economic life of the city, he must
sub-
ordinate some of his individuality to the demands of the larger
com-
munity and in that measure immerse himself in mass
movements.
IV. THE RELATION BETWEEN A THEORY OF URBANISM
AND SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH
By means of a body of theory such as that illustratively
sketched
above, the complicated and many-sided phenomena of urbanism
may be analyzed in terms of a limited number of basic
categories.
The sociological approach to the city thus acquires an essential
unity and coherence enabling the empirical investigator not
merely
to focus more distinctly upon the problems and processes that
prop-
erly fall in his province but also to treat his subject matter in a
more
integrated and systematic fashion. A few typical findings of em-

39. pirical research in the field of urbanism, with special reference
to
the United States, may be indicated to substantiate the
theoretical
propositions set forth in the preceding pages, and some of the
crucial
problems for further study may be outlined.
On the basis of the three variables, number, density of
settlement,
and degree of heterogeneity, of the urban population, it appears
possible to explain the characteristics of urban life and to
account
for the differences between cities of various sizes and types.
Urbanism as a characteristic mode of life may be approached
empirically from three interrelated perspectives: (i) as a
physical
structure comprising a population base, a technology, and an
eco-
URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE I9
logical order; (2) as a system of social organization involving a
characteristic social structure, a series of social institutions, and
a
typical pattern of social relationships; and (3) as a set of
attitudes
and ideas, and a constellation of personalities engaging in
typical
forms of collective behavior and subject to characteristic
mecha-
nisms of social control,

40. URBANISM IN ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
Since in the case of physical structure and ecological processes
we are able to operate with fairly- objective indices, it becomes
pos-
sible to arrive at quite precise and generally quantitative results.
The dominance of the city over its hinterland becomes
explicable
through the functional characteristics of the city which derive in
large measure from the effect of numbers and density. Many of
the technical facilities and the skills and organizations to which
urban life gives rise can grow and prosper only in cities where
the
demand is sufficiently great. The nature and scope of the
services
rendered by these organizations and institutions and the
advantage
which they enjoy over the less developed facilities of smaller
towns
enhances the dominance of the city and the dependence of ever
wider regions upon the central metropolis.
The urban-population composition shows the operation of selec-
tive and differentiating factors. Cities contain a larger
proportion
of persons in the prime of life than rural areas which contain
more
old and very young people. In this, as in so many other respects,
the larger the city the more this specific characteristic of
urbanism
is apparent. With the exception of the largest cities, which have
attracted the bulk of the foreign-born males, and a few other
special
types of cities, women predominate numerically over men. The
heterogeneity of the urban population is further indicated along
racial and ethnic lines. The foreign born and their children

41. consti-
tute nearly two-thirds of all the inhabitants of cities of one
million
and over. Their proportion in the urban population declines as
the
size of the city decreases, until in the rural areas they comprise
only
about one-sixth of the total population. The larger cities
similarly
have attracted more Negroes and other racial groups than have
the
smaller communities. Considering that age, sex, race, and ethnic
20 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
origin are associated with other factors such as occupation and
interest, it becomes clear that one major characteristic of the
urban-
dweller is his dissimilarity from his fellows. Never before have
such
large masses of people of diverse traits as we find in our cities
been
thrown together into such close physical contact as in the great
cities
of America. Cities generally, and American cities in particular,
com-
prise a motley of peoples and cultures, of highly differentiated
modes
of life between which there often is only the faintest
communication,
the greatest indifference and the broadest tolerance,
occasionally
bitter strife, but always the sharpest contrast.

42. The failure of the urban population to reproduce itself appears
to be a biological consequence of a combination of factors in
the
complex of urban life, and the decline in the birth-rate generally
may be regarded as one of the most significant signs of the
urbaniza-
tion of the Western world. While the proportion of deaths in
cities
is slightly greater than in the country, the outstanding
difference
between the failure of present-day cities to maintain their
popula-
tion and that of cities of the past is that in former times it was
due
to the exceedingly high death-rates in cities, whereas today,
since
cities have become more livable from a health standpoint, it is
due
to low birth-rates. These biological characteristics of the urban
population are significant sociologically, not merely because
they
reflect the urban mode of existence but also because they
condition
the growth and future dominance of cities and their basic social
organization. Since cities are the consumers rather than the pro-
ducers of men, the value of human life and the social estimation
of
the personality will not be unaffected by the balance between
births
and deaths. The pattern of land use, of land values, rentals, and
ownership, the nature and functioning of the physical structures,
of
housing, of transportation and communication facilities, of
public
utilities-these and many other phases of the physical mechanism
of the city are not isolated phenomena unrelated to the city as a

43. social entity, but are affected by and affect the urban mode of
life.
URBANISM AS A FORM OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
The distinctive features of the urban mode of life have often
been described sociologically as consisting of the substitution
of sec-
URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE 2I
ondary for primary contacts, the weakening of bonds of kinship,
and the declining social significance of the family, the
disappearance
of the neighborhood, and the undermining of the traditional
basis
of social solidarity. All these phenomena can be substantially
veri-
fied through objective indices. Thus, for instance, the low and
de-
clining urban-reproduction rates suggest that the city is not con-
ducive to the traditional type of family life, including the
rearing
of children and the maintenance of the home as the locus of a
whole
round of vital activities. The transfer of industrial, educational,
and recreational activities to specialized institutions outside the
home has deprived the family of some of its most characteristic
historical functions. In cities mothers are more likely to be em-
ployed, lodgers are more frequently part of the household,
marriage
tends to be postponed, and the proportion of single and
unattached
people is greater. Families are smaller and more frequently

44. without
children than in the country. The family as a unit of social life
is
emancipated from the larger kinship group characteristic of the
country, and the individual members pursue their own diverging
interests in their vocational, educational, religious, recreational,
and
political life.
Such functions as the maintenance of health, the methods of
alleviating the hardships associated with personal and social in-
security, the provisions for education, recreation, and cultural
ad-
vancement have given rise to highly specialized institutions on
a
community-wide, statewide, or even national basis. The same
factors
which have brought about greater personal insecurity also
underlie
the wider contrasts between individuals to be found in the urban
world. While the city has broken down the rigid caste lines of
pre-
industrial society, it has sharpened and differentiated income
and
status groups. Generally, a larger proportion of the adult-urban
population is gainfully employed than is the case with the adult-
rural population. The white-collar class, comprising those
employed
in trade, in clerical, and in professional work, are
proportionately
more numerous in large cities and in metropolitan centers and in
smaller towns than in the country.
On the whole, the city discourages an economic life in which
the
individual in time of crisis has a basis of subsistence to fall

45. back
22 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
upon, and it discourages self-employment. While incomes of
city
people are on the average higher than those of country people,
the
cost of living seems to be higher in the larger cities. Home
owner-
ship involves greater burdens and is rarer. Rents are higher and
absorb a larger proportion of the income. Although the urban-
dweller has the benefit of many communal services, he spends a
large proportion of his income for such items as recreation and
ad-
vancement and a smaller proportion for food. What the
communal
services do not furnish the urbanite must purchase, and there is
virtually no human need which has remained unexploited by
com-
mercialism. Catering to thrills and furnishing means of escape
from
drudgery, monotony, and routine thus become one of the major
functions of urban recreation, which at its best furnishes means
for
creative self-expression and spontaneous group association, but
which more typically in the urban world results in passive
spectator-
ism on the one hand, or sensational record-smashing feats on
the
other.
Being reduced to a stage of virtual impotence as an individual,
the urbanite is bound to exert himself by joining with others of

46. similar interest into organized groups to obtain his ends. This
re-
sults in the enormous multiplication of voluntary organizations
di-
rected toward as great a variety of objectives as there are human
needs and interests. While on the one hand the traditional ties of
human association are weakened, urban existence involves a
much
greater degree of interdependence between man and man and a
more complicated, fragile, and volatile form of mutual
interrelations
over many phases of which the individual as such can exert
scarcely
any control. Frequently there is only the most tenuous relation-
ship between the economic position or other basic factors that
de-
termine the individual's existence in the urban world and the
vol-
untary groups with which he is affiliated. While in a primitive
and
in a rural society it is generally possible to predict on the basis
of
a few known factors who will belong to what and who will
associate
with whom in almost every relationship of life, in the city we
can
only project the general pattern of group formation and
affiliation,
and this pattern will display many incongruities and contradic-
tions.
URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE 23
URBAN PERSONALITY AND COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR

47. It is largely through the activities of the voluntary groups, be
their objectives economic, political, educational, religious,
recrea-
tional, or cultural, that the urbanite expresses and develops his
personality, acquires status, and is able to carry on the round of
activities that constitute his life-career. It may easily be
inferred,
however, that the organizational framework which these highly
dif-
ferentiated functions call into being does not of itself insure the
consistency and integrity of the personalities whose interests it
en-
lists. Personal disorganization, mental breakdown, suicide,
delin-
quency, crime, corruption, and disorder might be expected
under
these circumstances to be more prevalent in the urban than in
the
rural community. This has been confirmed in so far as
comparable
indices are available; but the mechanisms underlying these phe-
nomena require further analysis.
Since for most group purposes it is impossible in the city to
appeal
individually to the large number of discrete and differentiated
indi-
viduals, and since it is only through the organizations to which
men
belong that their interests and resources can be enlisted for a
col-
lective cause, it may be inferred that social control in the city
should
typically proceed through formally organized groups. It follows,
too, that the masses of men in the city are subject to

48. manipulation
by symbols and stereotypes managed by individuals working
from
afar or operating invisibly behind the scenes through their
control
of the instruments of communication. Self-government either in
the
economic, the political, or the cultural realm is under these
circum-
stances reduced to a mere figure of speech or, at best, is subject
to
the unstable equilibrium of pressure groups. In view of the
ineffec-
tiveness of actual kinship ties we create fictional kinship
groups.
In the face of the disappearance of the territorial unit as a basis
of
social solidarity we create interest units. Meanwhile the city as
a
community resolves itself into a series of tenuous segmental
rela-
tionships superimposed upon a territorial base with a definite
center
but without a definite periphery and upon a division of labor
which
far transcends the immediate locality and is world-wide in
scope.
The larger the number of persons in a state of interaction with
one
another the lower is the level of communication and the greater
is
24 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

49. the tendency for communication to proceed on an elementary
level,
i.e., on the basis of those things which are assumed to be
common
or to be of interest to all.
It is obviously, therefore, to the emerging trends in the com-
munication system and to the production and distribution
technolo-
gy that has come into existence with modern civilization that we
must look for the symptoms which will indicate the probable
future
development of urbanism as a mode of social life. The direction
of
the ongoing changes in urbanism will for good or ill transform
not
only the city but the world. Some of the more basic of these
factors
and processes and the possibilities of their direction and control
invite further detailed study.
It is only in so far as the sociologist has a clear conception of
the
city as a social entity and a workable theory of urbanism that he
can hope to develop a unified body of reliable knowledge,
which
what passes as "urban sociology" is certainly not at the present
time. By taking his point of departure from a theory of urbanism
such as that sketched in the foregoing pages to be elaborated,
tested,
and revised in the light of further analysis and empirical
research,
it is to be hoped that the criteria of relevance and validity of
factual
data can be determined. The miscellaneous assortment of
discon-

50. nected information which has hitherto found its way into socio-
logical treatises on the city may thus be sifted and incorporated
into a coherent body of knowledge. Incidentally, only by means
of
some such theory will the sociologist escape the futile practice
of
voicing in the name of sociological science a variety of often
un-
supportable judgments concerning such problems as poverty,
hous-
ing, city-planning, sanitation, municipal administration,
policing,
marketing, transportation, and other technical issues. While the
sociologist cannot solve any of these practical problems-at least
not by himself-he may, if he discovers his proper function, have
an
important contribution to make to their comprehension and solu-
tion. The prospects for doing this are brightest through a
general,
theoretical, rather than through an ad hoc approach.
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Article Contentsp. 1p. 2p. 3p. 4p. 5p. 6p. 7p. 8p. 9p. 10p. 11p.
12p. 13p. 14p. 15p. 16p. 17p. 18p. 19p. 20p. 21p. 22p. 23p.
24Issue Table of ContentsThe American Journal of Sociology,
Vol. 44, No. 1 (Jul., 1938), pp. i-xvi+1-186Volume Information
[pp. ]Urbanism as a Way of Life [pp. 1-24]The Influence of
Disparity of Incomes on Welfare [pp. 25-35]Intelligence as a
Selective Factor in Rural-Urban Migrations [pp. 36-
58]Population Succession in Chicago: 1898-1930 [pp. 59-
69]Ecological Areas and Marriage Rates [pp. 70-85]The
Isometric Map as a Technique of Social Research [pp. 86-
96]Culture Conflict and Crime [pp. 97-103]Higher Degrees in
Sociology Conferred in 1937 [pp. 104-112]Student's
Dissertations in Sociology [pp. 113-131]Letters to the Editor
[pp. 132-135]News and Notes [pp. 136-147]Book

51. ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 148-150]Review: untitled [pp.
150-151]Review: untitled [pp. 151-152]Review: untitled [pp.
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156]Review: untitled [pp. 156-157]Review: untitled [pp. 157-
158]Review: untitled [pp. 158-160]Review: untitled [pp.
160]Review: untitled [pp. 160-161]Review: untitled [pp. 161-
162]Review: untitled [pp. 162-163]Review: untitled [pp.
163]Review: untitled [pp. 164]Review: untitled [pp.
164]Review: untitled [pp. 165]Review: untitled [pp.
165]Review: untitled [pp. 166]Review: untitled [pp. 166-
167]Review: untitled [pp. 167-168]Review: untitled [pp. 168-
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171]Review: untitled [pp. 171-172]Review: untitled [pp.
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180]Review: untitled [pp. 180]Review: untitled [pp.
180]Review: untitled [pp. 180]Review: untitled [pp.
181]Review: untitled [pp. 181]Review: untitled [pp.
181]Bibliography [pp. 182-186]
41
The Weberian Theory
of Rationalization and
the McDonaldization of
Contemporary Society
George Ritzer
George Ritzer is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the

52. University of Maryland.
His major areas of interest are sociological theory,
globalization, and the sociology of
consumption. He has served as chair of the American
Sociological Association’s sections
on theory (1989–1990) and organizations and occupations
(1980–1981). He has been
a distinguished scholar-teacher at the University of Maryland
and has been awarded a
teaching excellence award. He has held the UNESCO chair in
social theory at the
Russian Academy of Sciences and has received a Fulbright-
Hays Fellowship. He has
been a scholar-in-residence at the Netherlands Institute for
Advanced Study and the
Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences.
A revised New Century
edition of The McDonaldization of Society was published by
Pine Forge in 2004. The
book has been translated into 16 different languages, including
German, French,
Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and Chinese. Several books have
been published that
are devoted to analyzing the McDonaldization thesis. His most
recent book is The
Globalization of Nothing (Sage, 2004).
In this chapter, I apply one of the most famous and important
theories in the history of sociology, Max Weber’s (1864–1920)
theory of rationalization, to contemporary society.
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53. In Weber’s view, modern society, especially the Western world,
is growing
increasingly rationalized. As the reader will see, Weber
regarded bureaucracy as
the ultimate example of rationalization. Thus, Weber can be
seen as being focally
concerned with the rationalization of society in general and,
more specifically, its
bureaucratization.
This chapter is premised on the idea that, whereas the processes
of rationalization
and bureaucratization described by Weber have continued, if not
accelerated, the
bureaucracy has been supplanted by the fast-food restaurant as
the best exemplifica-
tion of this process. Furthermore, we will see that the rational
principles that lie at the
base of the fast-food restaurant are spreading throughout
American society as well as
the rest of the world. On the basis of Weber’s ideas on the
rationalization process, in
this chapter I describe the continuation and even acceleration of
this process, or what
I have termed the “McDonaldization” of society (Ritzer, 1983,
2004).
Four types of rationality lie at the heart of Weber’s theory of
rationalization
(Brubaker, 1984; Habermas, 1984; Kalberg, 1980; Levine,
1981). Practical rationality
is to be found in people’s mundane, day-to-day activities and
reflects their worldly
interests (Weber, 1904–1905/1958). In Weber’s (1958) terms,
through practical ratio-

54. nality people seek the “methodical attainment of a definitely
given and practical end
by means of an increasingly precise calculation of adequate
means” (p. 293). Therefore,
actors calculate all possible means available to them, choose the
alternative that best
allows them to reach their ultimate end, and then follow that
line of action. All
human beings engage in practical rationality in attempting to
solve the routine and
daily problems of life (Levine, 1981, p. 12).
Theoretical rationality involves “an increasingly theoretical
mastery of reality by
means of increasingly precise and abstract concepts” (Weber,
1958, p. 293). Among
other things, it involves logical deduction, the attribution of
causality, and the
arrangement of symbolic meanings. It is derived from the
inherent need of actors
to give some logical meaning to a world that appears haphazard
(Kalberg, 1980).
Whereas practical rationality involves action, theoretical
rationality is a cognitive
process and has tended to be the province of intellectuals.
Substantive rationality involves value postulates, or clusters of
values, that guide
people in their daily lives, especially in their choice of means to
ends. These clusters
of values are rational when they are consistent with specific
value postulates pre-
ferred by actors (Kalberg, 1980). Substantive rationality can be
linked more specifi-
cally to economic action. To Weber (1921/1968), economic
action is substantively

55. rational to “the degree to which the provisioning of given
groups of persons with
goods is shaped by economically oriented social action under
some criterion (past,
present, or potential) of ultimate values, regardless of the nature
of these ends.” Thus,
substantive rationality involves a choice of means to ends
guided by some larger sys-
tem of human values.
Formal rationality involves the rational calculation of means to
ends based on
universally applied rules, regulations, and laws (Kalberg, 1980).
Formal rationality is
institutionalized in such large-scale structures as the
bureaucracy, modern law, and
the capitalist economy. The choice of means to ends is
determined by these larger
structures and their rules and laws.
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In looking for the best means of attaining a given objective
under formal rational-
ity, we are not left to our own devices, but rather we use
existing rules, regulations,
and structures that either predetermine the optimum methods or
help us discover
them. This, clearly, is a major development in the history of the
world. In the past,
people had to discover such mechanisms on their own or with
only vague and gen-

56. eral guidance from larger value systems. Now, we no longer
have to discover for our-
selves the optimum means to some given end, because that
optimum means has
already been discovered: it is incorporated into the rules,
regulations, and structures
of our social institutions.
Formal rationality often leads to decisions that disregard the
needs and values
of actors, implying that substantive rationality is unimportant.
One example is
a formally rational economic system. The needs that come to be
emphasized
and realized are those for which actors are able to outbid others
because they have
an abundance of money, not because those needs are of greater
importance or have
more human value. Profits are the primary focus rather than
issues of humanity.
Weber (1921/1968) stresses this disregard for humanity in a
formally rational eco-
nomic system when he writes, “decisive are the need for
competitive survival and
the conditions of the labor, money and commodity markets;
hence matter-of-fact
considerations that are simply nonethical determine individual
behavior and
interpose impersonal forces between the persons involved” (p.
1186). The primary
concern of the entrepreneur within a formally rational economic
system that is cap-
italist is such nonethical objectives as continuous profit making.
The workers, in
turn, are dominated by the entrepreneurs who subject the
workers to “masterless

57. slavery” in the formal rational economic system (Weber, 1903–
1906/1975). In other
words, the formally economic system robs the workers of their
basic humanity by
enslaving them in a world denuded of human values.
Unlike the first three types of rationality, formal rationality has
not existed at all
times and in all places. Rather, it was created in, and came to
dominate, the modern,
Western, industrialized world. Weber believed that formal
rationality was coming to
overwhelm and to supplant the other types of rationality within
the Western world.
He saw a titanic struggle taking place in his time between
formal and substantive
rationality. Weber anticipated, however, that this struggle
would end with the ero-
sion of substantive rationality in the face of the forward march
of formal rational-
ity. The fading away of substantive rationality was regretted by
Weber because it
“embodied Western civilization’s highest ideals: the
autonomous and free individual
whose actions were given continuity by their reference to
ultimate values” (quoted
in Kalberg, 1980, p. 1176). Instead of people whose actions
were guided by these high
ideals, we were to be left in the modern world with people who
simply followed the
rules without regard to larger human values.
Weber saw bureaucracy as the epitome of formally rational
domination. Weber
(1921/1968) links bureaucracies and rationalization as follows:

58. Bureaucratic rationalization . . . revolutionizes with technical
means, in princi-
ple, as does every economic reorganization, “from without”: It
first changes the
material and social orders, and through them the people, by
changing the
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conditions of adaptation, and perhaps the opportunities for
adaptation, through
a rational determination of means to ends. (p. 1116)
The bureaucracy “strongly furthers the development of ‘rational
matter-of-
factness’ and the personality type of the professional expert”
(Weber, 1946, p. 240).
These “experts” possess a “spirit of formalistic impersonality . .
. without hatred or
passion, and hence without affection or enthusiasms”
(Brubaker,1984, p. 21). The top
officials of the bureaucracy develop rules and regulations that
lead lower-level offi-
cials to choose the best means to ends already chosen at the
highest levels. The rules
and regulations represent the bureaucracy’s institutional
memory, which contempo-
raries need only to use (and not invent and continually reinvent)
to attain some end.
The bureaucracies themselves are structured in such a way as to
guide or even to

59. force people to choose certain means to ends. Each task is
broken up into a number
of components, and each office is responsible for a separate
portion of the larger
task. Employees in each office handle only their own part of the
task, usually by fol-
lowing rules and regulations in a predetermined sequence. The
goal is attained when
each incumbent has completed his or her required task in proper
order. The bureau-
cracy thereby utilizes what its past history has shown to be
optimum means to the
end in question.
Weber’s overall theoretical perspective was that it was largely
the unique devel-
opment of formal rationality that accounted for the distinctive
development of the
West. Weber suggests that it was key to the development of the
Western world, that
it came into conflict with the other types of rationality,
especially substantive ratio-
nality, and that it acted to reduce them in importance and
ultimately to subordinate,
if not totally eliminate, them in terms of their importance to
Western society.
For Weber, the bureaucracy was the height of (formal)
rationality, which he
defined in terms of the five elements of efficiency,
predictability, quantifiability (or
calculability), control through substituting nonhuman
technology for human judg-
ment, and the irrationality of rationality.
Bureaucracies operate in a highly predictable manner.

60. Incumbents in one office
understand very well how the incumbents of other offices will
behave. They know
what they will be provided with and when they will receive it.
Recipients of the
service provided by bureaucracies know with a high degree of
assurance what they
will receive and when they will receive it. Because
bureaucracies quantify as many
activities as possible, employees perform their duties as a series
of specified steps at
quantifiable rates of speed. As with all rationalized systems that
focus exclusively on
quantity, however, the handling of large numbers of things is
equated with excel-
lence, and little or no evaluation is made of the actual quality of
what is done in each
case. Bureaucracies control people by replacing human
judgment with nonhuman
technology. Indeed, bureaucracy itself may be seen as one huge
nonhuman technol-
ogy that functions more or less automatically. The adaptability
of human decisions
vanishes into the dictates of rules, regulations, and institutional
structures. The work
to be done is divided up so that each office is allocated a
limited number of well-
defined tasks. Incumbents must do those tasks and no others.
The tasks must be
done in the manner prescribed by the organization; idiosyncratic
performance will
get one demoted or even fired. The idea is to get the job done in
a certain way by
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a certain time without mistakes. The bureaucracy’s clients are
also controlled. The
organization provides only certain services, and not others; one
must apply for the
services on a specific form by a specific date, and one will
receive those services only
in a certain way.
Weber praised bureaucracies for their advantages over other
mechanisms for dis-
covering and implementing optimum means to ends, but at the
same time he was
painfully aware of the irrationalities of formally rational
systems. Instead of being
efficient systems, bureaucracies often become inefficient as the
regulations that are
used to make them rational degenerate into “red tape.”
Bureaucracies often become
unpredictable as employees grow unclear about what they are
supposed to do and
clients do not get the services they expect. The emphasis on
quantifiability often
leads to large amounts of poor quality work. Anger at the
nonhuman technologies
that are replacing them often leads employees to undercut or
sabotage the operation
of these technologies. By then, bureaucracies have begun to lose
control over their
workers as well as their constituents, and what was designed to
be a highly rational
operation often ends up irrational and quite out of control.

62. Although Weber was concerned about the irrationalities of
formally rational sys-
tems, he was even more deeply disturbed by what he called the
“iron cage of ratio-
nality.” Weber saw the bureaucracy as a rationalized cage that
encased increasing
numbers of human beings. He described bureaucracies as
“escape proof,”“practically
unshatterable,” and among the hardest institutions to destroy
once they are created.
The individual bureaucrat is seen as “harnessed” into this
bureaucratic cage and
unable to “squirm out” of it. Given its strength, and our
inability to escape, Weber
concludes resignedly and with considerable unease, to put it
mildly, that “the future
belongs to bureaucratization” (Weber, 1921/1968, p. 1401). He
feared that more sec-
tors of society would come to be dominated by rationalized
principles so that peo-
ple would be locked into a series of rationalized workplaces,
rationalized recreational
settings, and rationalized homes. Society would become nothing
more that a seam-
less web of rationalized structures.
Weber has a highly pessimistic view of the future. He saw no
hope in the social-
istic movements of his day, which he felt (and time has borne
him out) would only
succeed in increasing the spread of bureaucratization and formal
rationality.
There is little question that the process of rationalization has
spread further
and become even more firmly entrenched than it was in Weber’s

63. day. The fast-food
restaurant, of which McDonald’s is the best-known chain, has
employed all the ratio-
nal principles pioneered by the bureaucracy and is part of the
bureaucratic system
because huge conglomerates now own many of the fast-food
chains. McDonald’s uti-
lized bureaucratic principles and combined them with others,
and the outcome is the
process of McDonaldization.
A decade and a half ago, I wrote an essay titled “The
McDonaldization of Society.”
The main thesis of that essay was that Max Weber was right
about the inex-
orable march of formal rationality but that his paradigm case of
that type of ratio-
nality and the spearhead in its expansion, the bureaucracy, have
been superseded
in contemporary American society by the fast-food restaurant. It
is the fast-food
restaurant that today best represents and leads the process of
formal rationalization
and its basic components—efficiency, predictability,
quantification, control through
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the substitution of nonhuman for human technology,1 and the
ultimate irrational-
ity of formal rationality. A decade after the original essay, as
we had begun progress-

64. ing through the 1990s, I once again examined the process of
McDonaldization. I was
astounded by the forward progress of McDonaldization during
the previous decade
and the degree to which it has spread its tentacles ever farther
into contemporary
society.
The most obvious, and perhaps least important, extension is that
fast-food restau-
rants themselves have grown and expanded. The McDonald’s
chain, which began
operation in 1955, now operates more than 30,000 restaurants in
119 countries serv-
ing nearly 50 million people a day (see
www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about.html); the
largest 500 U.S. restaurant chains did $199.9 billion in sales in
2005 alone (Ramirez,
1990).2 No longer restricted to the good old American
hamburger, fast-food chains
now traffic in pizza and Italian, Mexican, Chinese, and Cajun
food, among others.
Nor are the fast-food chains limited any longer to low-priced
restaurants—now there
are “upscale” chains, such as Sizzler (steaks), Red Lobster
(seafood), Starbucks (coffee),
and Fuddruckers (gourmet burgers), as well as trendy saloons
such as Bennigan’s and
TGI Fridays. While America expands its chains, many other
countries are developing
their own, most notably the fast-food croissanteries spreading
throughout
one of the most unlikely of locations for such a phenomenon,
the center of gourmet
dining: Paris.

65. Instead of being content to surround college campuses, fast-
food chains are
increasingly found on those campuses. There is also more
involvement by the chains
in the food served at the nation’s high schools and grade
schools (Farhi, 1990). Once
characterized by an odd and unpredictable mix of restaurants,
the nation’s interstate
highways are coming to be increasingly populated by fast-food
chains. A similar
thing has happened at the nation’s airports. The military has
been forced to serve fast
food at its bases and on its ships. Fast-food outlets are turning
up increasingly in
hospitals, despite the innumerable attacks on the nutritional
value of the food. Yet
another incursion of the fast-food chains is into the nation’s
baseball parks and other
sports venues.
Still another element involves the degree to which a wide array
of other kinds of
businesses are coming to be operated on the basis of the
principles pioneered by
the fast-food chains. For example, the vice chairman of one of
these chains, Toys “R”
Us, said, “We want to be thought of as a sort of McDonald’s of
toys” (Egan, 1990, p. 29).
Other chains with a similar model and similar ambitions include
Jiffy Lube, AAMCO
Transmissions, Midas Muffler, Hair Plus, H&R Block, Pearle
Vision Centers,
Kampgrounds of America (KOA), KinderCare (dubbed
“Kentucky Fried Children”),
NutriSystem, Jenny Craig, Curves, and many more.

66. McDonald’s influence is also felt in the number of social
phenomena that have
come to be prefaced by “Mc.” Examples include McDentists,
McDoctors, McChild
care centers, McStables (for the nationwide racehorse training
operation of Wayne
Lucas), and McPaper (for USA Today; its short news articles
are sometimes called
“News McNuggets”) (Prichard, 1987). When USA Today began
a (later aborted)
television program modeled after the newspaper, it was
immediately dubbed “News
McRather.” (Zoglin, 1988). With the latter kinds of extensions,
we get to the real core
of the expansion of McDonaldization and the real reason for
revisiting the process.
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In the past decade, McDonaldization has extended its reach into
more and more
regions of society, and those areas are increasingly remote from
the heart of the
process in the fast-food business. As the previous examples
make clear, dentistry,
medicine, child care, the training of racehorses, newspapers,
and television news
have come to be modeled after food chains. Thus,
McDonaldization is the process by
which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to
dominate more and
more sectors of society.

67. Even the derivatives of McDonald’s are, in turn, having their
own influence. The
success of USA Today (“McPaper”) has led to changes (shorter
stories and color
weather maps) in many newspapers across the nation. One USA
Today editor
stated, “The same newspaper editors who call us McPaper have
been stealing our
McNuggets” (Zoglin, 1988). The influence of USA Today is
manifested most
blatantly in the Boca Raton News, a Knight-Ridder newspaper.
This newspaper is
described as “a sort of smorgasbord of snippets, a newspaper
that slices and dices
the news into even smaller portions than does USA Today,
spicing it with color
graphics and fun facts and cute features like ‘Today’s Hero’ and
‘Critter Watch’”
(Zoglin, 1988). As in USA Today, stories in the Boca Raton
News do not usually
“jump” from one page to another; they start and finish on the
same page. To meet
this need, long and complex stories often have to be reduced to
a few paragraphs.
Much of a story’s context, and much of what the principals have
to say, are severely
cut back or omitted entirely. The main function of the
newspaper seems to be to
entertain, with its emphasis on light and celebrity news, color
maps, and graphics.
The objective of the remainder of this chapter is to demonstrate
the continued rel-
evance of Weberian theory by attempting to get at the full reach
of McDonald’s influ-

68. ence throughout society. I will do this by breaking
McDonaldization down into its key
elements (Weber’s five dimensions of rationalization) and then
demonstrating how
each of these elements is being manifested in more and more
sectors of society.
Efficiency
The first element of McDonaldization is efficiency, or the
choice of the optimum
means to an end. Many aspects of the fast-food restaurant
illustrate efficiency, espe-
cially from the viewpoint of the restaurant, but none better than
the degree to which
the customer is turned into an unpaid laborer. The fast-food
restaurant did not cre-
ate the idea of imposing work on the consumer—getting the
consumer to be what
is, in effect, an unpaid employee—but it institutionalized and
expedited this devel-
opment. Customers are expected to stand in line and order their
own food (rather
than having a waiter do it) and to “bus” their own paper and
plastic (rather than hav-
ing it done by a busperson). Fast-food chains have also
pioneered the movement
toward handing the consumer little more than the basics of the
meal. The consumer
is expected to take the naked burger to the “fixin’s bar” and
there turn it into the
desired sandwich by adding such things as lettuce, tomatoes,
and onions. We all are
expected to log a few minutes a week as sandwich makers. We
are also now handed
an empty cup and expected to go to the fountain and fill our

69. glasses with ice and a
soft drink, thereby spending a few moments as what used to be
called a “soda jerk.”
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In some ultramodern fast-food restaurants, customers are met by
a computer screen
when they enter and they must punch in their own order. In
these and other ways,
the fast-food restaurant has grown more efficient.
The salad bar, also popularized if not pioneered by the fast-food
restaurant, is a
classic example of putting the consumer to work. The customer
buys an empty
plate and then loads up on the array of vegetables (and other
foods) available.
Quickly seeing the merit in all this, many supermarkets have
now instituted their
own salad bars with a more elaborate array of alternative foods
available to the con-
sumer. The salad lover can now work as a salad chef at the
lunch hour in the fast-
food restaurant and then do it all over again in the evening at
the supermarket by
making the salad for the evening meal. All this is very efficient
from the perspective
of the fast-food restaurant and the supermarket because only a
very small number
of employees are needed to keep the various compartments well
stocked.

70. There are many other examples of this process of imposing
work on the consumer.
Virtually gone are gas station attendants who filled gas tanks,
checked oil, and cleaned
windows. We now put in a few minutes a week as unpaid gas
station attendants pump-
ing gas, checking oil, and cleaning windows. Instead of having
a readily available atten-
dant to pay for gasoline, we must trek into the station to pay for
our gas. Or, for
customers who do not want to make that trek, they can simply
put their own credit
cards in a slot, pump the gas, and their account is automatically
charged the correct
(we hope) amount for the gas pumped, and finally the receipt
and the card are
retrieved with no contact with, or work done by, anyone
working in the gas station.
The latter development was pioneered in the banking industry
with the advent of
the cash machine, which allows us all to work for at least a few
moments as unpaid
bank tellers.
When calling many businesses these days, instead of dealing
with a human oper-
ator who makes the desired connection for us, we must deal
with “voice mail” and
follow a series of instructions from a computer voice by
pushing a bewildering
array of numbers and codes before we get, it is hoped, to the
desired extension
(Barron, 1989).

71. Efficiency has been extended to the booming diet industry,
which encompasses diet
drugs, diet books, exercise videotapes, diet meals, diet drinks,
weight loss clinics, and
“fat farms” (Kleinfeld, 1986, p. 1). Diet books promising all
kinds of efficient shortcuts
to weight loss are often at the top of the best-seller lists. Losing
weight is normally dif-
ficult and time-consuming. Hence the lure of various diet books
that promise to make
weight loss easier and quicker—that is, more efficient. For
those on a diet—and many
people are on more or less perpetual diets—the preparation of
low-calorie food has
been made more efficient. Instead of cooking diet foods from
scratch, an array of
preprepared diet foods is available in frozen or microwavable
form. For those who do
not wish to go through the inefficient process of eating these
diet meals, there are diet
shakes such as Slim-Fast that can be consumed in a matter of
seconds.
In addition, there is the growth of diet centers such as
NutriSystem and Jenny
Craig (“Big People, Big Business,” 1988). Dieters at
NutriSystem are provided (at
substantial cost) with prepackaged freeze-dried food. The dieter
needs only to add
water when it is time for the next meal. Freeze-dried foods are
efficient not only
for the dieter but also for NutriSystem because they can be
efficiently packaged,
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transported, and stored. Furthermore, the company no longer
even operates any
brick-and-mortar stores. Instead, clients can only speak to
counselors through the
Web or on the telephone.3
Calculability
The second dimension of McDonaldization is calculability.
McDonaldization
involves an emphasis on things that can be calculated, counted,
and quantified.
In terms of the latter, it means a tendency to emphasize quantity
rather than qual-
ity. This leads to a sense that quality is equal to certain, usually
large, quantities
of things.
As in many other aspects of its operation, the emphasis of
McDonald’s on quan-
tity (as reflected in the Big Mac) is mirrored by the other fast-
food restaurants. The
most notable is Burger King, which stresses the quantity of the
meat in its ham-
burger, called the “Whopper” or even the “Triple Whopper,”
and of the fish in its
sandwich called the “BK Big Fish.” At Wendy’s, we are offered
a variety of “Biggies.”
Similarly, 7-Eleven offers its customers a hot dog called the
“Big Bite” and a large soft
drink called the “Big Gulp,” and now, the even larger “Super
Big Gulp.” This empha-

73. sis on quantity in a McDonaldized society is not restricted to
fast-food restaurants.
American Airlines boasts that it serves more cities than any
other U.S. airline.
What is particularly interesting about all this emphasis on
quantity is the seem-
ing absence of interest in communicating anything about
quality. Thus, United
Airlines does not tell us anything about the quality (passenger
comfort) of its
numerous flights. The result is a growing concern among critics
about the decline
or even the absence of quality in society as a whole (Tuchman,
1980).
As with efficiency, calculability has been extended from eating
in food chains to
many settings, including dieting. Given its very nature, the diet
industry is obsessed
with things that can be quantified. Weight, weight loss (or
gain), and time periods
are measured precisely. Food intake is carefully measured and
monitored. Labels on
diet foods detail number of ounces of food, number of calories,
and many other
things necessary for clients to be informed dieters.
Another interesting extension of the emphasis on quantity rather
than quality is
found in USA Today. This newspaper is noted for its “junk-food
journalism”—the
lack of substance in its stories (Prichard, 1987, p. 8). Instead of
offering detailed
stories, USA Today offers a large number of short, easily and
quickly read stories.

74. One executive stated, “USA Today must sell news/info at a fast,
hard pace” (p. 113).
One observer underscored the newspaper’s corresponding lack
of concern for qual-
ity and, in the process, its relationship to the fast-food
restaurant: “Like parents who
take their children to a different fast-food restaurant every night
and keep the
refrigerator stocked with ice cream, USA Today gives its
readers only what they
want, no spinach, no bran, no liver” (p. 196).
There is also a growing emphasis on the number of credentials
one possesses.
For example, people in various occupations are increasingly
using long lists of ini-
tials after their names to convince prospective clients of their
competence. Said one
insurance appraiser with ASA, FSVA, FAS, CRA, and CRE
after his name, “the more
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[initials] you tend to put after your name, the more impressed
they [potential
clients] become” (Gervasi, 1990, p. D5). The sheer number of
credentials, however,
tells us little about the competence of the person sporting them.
The emphasis on quantity rather than quality of publications
among academics
led to an announcement by then president of Stanford

75. University, Donald Kennedy,
that there would be a change in the university’s emphasis on the
quantity of an indi-
vidual’s publications in the decision to hire, promote, or grant
tenure to faculty
members. He was disturbed by a report that indicated “nearly
half of faculty mem-
bers believe that their scholarly writings are merely counted—
not evaluated—when
personnel decisions are made” (quoted in Cooper, 1991, p.
A12). Kennedy stated,
First, I hope we can agree that the quantitative use of research
output as a crite-
rion for appointment or promotion is a bankrupt idea. . . . The
overproduction
of routine scholarship is one of the most egregious aspects of
contemporary aca-
demic life: It tends to conceal really important work by sheer
volume; it wastes
time and valuable resources. (p. A12)
To deal with this problem, Kennedy proposed to limit the
number of publica-
tions used in making personnel decisions. He hoped that the
proposed limits would
“reverse the appalling belief that counting and weighing are the
important means
of evaluating faculty research” (Cooper, 1991, p. A12). It
remains to be seen whether
Stanford, to say nothing of the rest of American academia, will
be able to limit the
emphasis on quantity rather than quality.
Predictability

76. Rationalization involves the increasing effort to ensure
predictability from one time
or place to another. In a rational society, people want to know
what to expect in all
settings and at all times. They neither want nor expect surprises.
They want to know
that when they order their Big Mac today, it is going to be
identical to the one they
ate yesterday and the one they will eat tomorrow.
The movie industry is increasingly characterized by
predictability. One manifesta-
tion of this is the growing reliance on sequels to successful
movies rather than pro-
ducing completely new movies based on new concepts, ideas,
and characters. The
Hitchcock classic Psycho, for example, was followed by several
sequels (of course, not
made by Hitchcock), as were other less artistically successful
horror films such as
Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street. Outside of the horror
movie genre, a range
of other movies have been succeeded by one or more sequels,
including X-Men, Harry
Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, and many more. Some, such as
The Lord of the Rings,
are being released premised on the idea that one must watch a
number of sequels in
order to get the full story. Most recently, some movies have
even been released as “pre-
quels,” as with the very successful release of the Star Wars
prequel trilogy.
The routine use of sequels is a relatively new phenomenon in
Hollywood. Its
development parallels, and is part of, the McDonaldization of

77. society. The attraction
of sequels is their predictability. From the point of view of the
studios, the same
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characters, actors, and basic plot lines can be used over and
over. Furthermore, there
seems to be a greater likelihood that sequels will be successful
at the box office than
completely original movies; profit levels are more predictable.
From the viewers’
perspective, there is great comfort in knowing that they will
once again encounter
favorite characters played by familiar actors who find
themselves in accustomed set-
tings. Moviegoers seem more willing to shell out money for a
safe and familiar
movie than for a movie that is completely new to them. Like a
McDonald’s meal,
these sequels are typically not as high quality as the originals,
but at least the con-
sumers know what they are getting.
One of the early manifestations of predictability, the TV dinner,
has now been
joined, and in some cases superseded, by even more rational
meals eaten at home.
The microwavable dinner is more efficient to store and cook. To
this list of advances,
we can now add the freeze-dried foods that blossom into
predictable dishes merely

78. through the addition of water and the ready-to-eat, prepackaged
Lunchables by
Kraft Foods.
A similar process can be seen in the way people go camping.
Although some
people still “rough it,” many others have sought to eliminate
most, if not all, of the
unpredictability from camping. We have witnessed the
development of “country-club
campgrounds,” spearheaded by such franchises as KOA
(Johnson, 1986, p. B1).
Instead of simple tents, modern campers might venture forth in
an RV to protect
them from the unexpected thunderstorms, tick bites, and snakes.
Of course, “camp-
ing” in an RV also tends to reduce the likelihood of catching
sight of the wander-
ing deer or bear (“Country-Club Campgrounds,” 1984, p. 90).
Furthermore, the
Winnebago carries within it the predictable video recorder,
stereo, and so on. One
camper, relaxing in his air-conditioned 32-foot trailer, stated,
“We’ve got everything
right here. . . . It doesn’t matter how hard it rains or how the
wind blows” (Johnson,
1986, p. B1).
Much of the attraction of the shopping mall is traceable to its
predictability. The
unpredictabilities of weather are eliminated:
One kid who works here told me why he likes the mall. . . . It’s
because no matter
what the weather is outside, it’s always the same in here. He
likes that. He

79. doesn’t want to know it’s raining—it would depress him.
(Kowinski, 1985, p. 27)
The malls, like fast-food restaurants, are virtually the same
from one place or time
to another. One finds the same chains represented in malls
throughout the country.
Finally, those who spend their days wandering through malls are
relatively free from
the unpredictabilities of crime that beset them when they
wander through city streets.
Part of the success of USA Today is traceable to its
predictability. Because it is a
national newspaper, travelers are reassured by the fact that the
familiar masthead
and contents will be available wherever they go. The structure
and makeup of the
newspaper is highly predictable from one day to another. The
stories are all pre-
dictably short and easily digestible. There are as few surprises
in one’s daily USA
Today as in one’s daily Big Mac; in fact, they are best
consumed together.
I close this discussion of predictability in a McDonaldized
society with the
example of modern, suburban housing. Many of Steven
Spielberg’s early movies
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80. took place in these rationalized and highly predictable suburbs.
Spielberg’s strategy
is to lure the viewer into this highly predictable world and then
to have a highly
unpredictable event occur. For example, in ET, the
extraterrestrial wanders into a
suburban development of tract houses and is discovered by a
child who lives in one
of those houses and who, up to that point, has lived a highly
predictable suburban
existence. The unpredictable ET eventually disrupts not only the
lives of the child
and his family but also those of the entire community.
Similarly, Poltergeist takes
place in a suburban household, and the evil spirits ultimately
disrupt its predictable
tranquility. The great success of Spielberg’s movies may be
traceable to our longing
for some unpredictability, even if it is frightening and
menacing, in our increasingly
predictable lives.
Replacing People With Nonhuman Technologies
I combine the discussion of two elements of McDonaldization—
increased control
and the replacement of human with nonhuman technology. The
reason for the
combination is that these two elements are closely linked.
Specifically, replacement
of human with nonhuman technology is often oriented toward
greater control. The
great sources of uncertainty and unpredictability in any
rationalizing system are
people—either the people who work within those systems or the
people who are

81. served by them. McDonald’s seeks to exert increasing control
over both its employ-
ees and its customers. It is most likely to do this by steadily
replacing people with
nonhuman technologies. After all, technologies like robots and
computers are far
easier to control than humans. In addition to eliminating some
people by replacing
them with technologies, those who continue to labor within
McDonald’s are better
controlled by these new technologies. These nonhuman
technologies also exert
increasing control over people served by the system.
As in the production and consumption of food in the fast-food
restaurant, the
production of some of the raw materials required by such
restaurants—bread, fish,
meat, and eggs—has also come to be characterized by
increasing control through
replacing people with nonhuman technologies. In the case of
raising animals for
food, relatively small, family-run farms are being rapidly
replaced by “factory
farms,” in which people and animals are controlled by
nonhuman technologies
(Singer, 1975). One of the first animals to find its way into the
factory farm was the
chicken. Among its other advantages, chicken farms allow one
person to manage
more than 50,000 chickens. Raising chickens in this way
involves a series of highly
predictable steps. The chickens themselves will be far more
predictable in size and
weight than free-ranging chickens. It is also obviously far more
efficient to “har-

82. vest” chickens confined in this way than it is to catch chickens
that are free to roam
over large areas.
Confining chickens in such crowded quarters, however, creates
such unpre-
dictabilities as violence and even cannibalism among the
animals. These irrational
“vices” are dealt with in a variety of ways, such as dimming of
the light as the chick-
ens approach full size and the “debeaking” of chickens so that
they cannot harm one
another.
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The replacement of people with nonhuman technology, and the
consequent
increase in control, is found not only in food production and the
fast-food restau-
rant but also in home cooking. Technologies such as the
microwave or conventional
oven with a temperature probe “decide” when food is done
rather than leaving that
judgment to the cook. Ovens, coffee makers, and other
appliances are now able to
turn themselves on and off. The instructions on all kinds of
packaged foods dictate
precisely how the food is to be prepared and cooked. Even the
now old-fashioned
cookbook was designed to take creativity away from the cook,
who would be

83. inclined to flavor to taste, and put it in the hands of the rigid
guidelines laid down
by the book.
A very similar development has taken place in supermarkets. In
the past, prices
were marked on food products, and the supermarket checker had
to read the price
and enter it into the cash register. As with all human activities,
there was a chance
for human error. To counter this problem, most supermarkets
have installed opti-
cal scanners. Instead of the human checker reading the price,
the mechanical scan-
ner “reads” the code and the price for a given code number that
has been entered
into the computer, which is the heart of the modern “cash
register.” This nonhuman
technology has eliminated some of the human uncertainty from
the job of super-
market checker. It has also reduced the number and level of
sophistication of the
tasks performed by the checker. The checker no longer needs to
read the amount
and enter it in the cash register. Left are less skilled tasks such
as scanning the food
and bagging it. In other words, the supermarket checker has
undergone “deskilling”—
a decline in the amount of skill required on the job.
The next step in this development was to have the customer do
the scanning,
thereby eliminating the need for a checkout person. The next
“advance” was a tech-
nology that permits the insertion of the customer’s credit card
into the scanning sys-

84. tem, thereby avoiding the need to move on to a human cashier
and pay for the food.
The supermarket scanners permit other kinds of control over
customers as well.
Prior to the scanner, customers could examine their purchases
and see how much
each cost; they could also check to be sure that they were not
being overcharged at
the cash register. With the advent of the scanner, goods no
longer have prices listed
on them, only bar codes. This change gave the supermarket
greater control over
customers; it is almost impossible for the consumer to keep tabs
on the checkers.
When the scanners were instituted at my local market,
management announced
that it was issuing marking pens to customers who were
interested in writing the
price on each item. This, again, is consistent with the trend
toward getting the con-
sumer to do work historically done by others, in this case by
grocery clerks who
worked deep into the night to mark each item. In any case, the
supermarkets did
not keep the markers very long because few hurried shoppers
had the desire to
spend several additional minutes a day as grocery clerks.
Telemarketing is increasingly ubiquitous in modern society.
Many of us are
called several times a day in efforts to get us to buy something.
Those who work in
these telemarketing “factories” are rigidly controlled. They
often have scripts that
they must follow mindlessly. Furthermore, there are a range of

85. alternative scripts
designed to handle most foreseeable contingencies. Those doing
the phoning are
often listened in on by supervisors to be sure the correct
procedures are followed.
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There are rigid demands for number of calls and sales required
in a given time
period. If employees fail to meet the quotas, they are summarily
fired. Following the
usual progression of technological advances, instead of having
people solicit us over
the phone, some companies are now using computer calls.
Computer voices are far
more predictable than even the most rigidly controlled human
operator. Not only
do we have computer calls but we are also now seeing the
utilization of computers
that respond to the human voice. A person receiving a long-
distance collect call
might be asked whether he or she will accept the charges. The
computer voice
demands, “Say yes or no” or “Press one for no, zero for yes.”
Although efficient and
cost saving, such a system is anonymous and dehumanizing:
The person senses that he cannot use free-flowing speech. He’s
being constrained.
The computer is controlling him. It can be simply frustrating. . .
. People adapt to

86. it, but only by filing it away subconsciously as another
annoyance of living in our
technological world. (Langer, 1990, p. H3)
An even more extreme version of this is found in the
educational variant of the
fast-food restaurant, KinderCare. KinderCare tends to hire
short-term employees
with little or no training in education. What these employees do
in the “classroom”
is determined by a uniform “instruction book” that includes a
preset, ready-made
curriculum. All that is required is that the staff member open up
the manual to the
appropriate place where all activities are spelled out in detail on
a day-by-day basis.
Clearly, a skilled, experienced, and creative teacher is not the
kind of person McChild
care centers seek to hire. Rather, relatively untrained employees
are more easily con-
trolled by the nonhuman technology of the omnipresent
instruction book.
The modern, computerized airplane, such as Boeing’s 777,
represents an interest-
ing case of substituting nonhuman for human control. Instead of
flying “by the seat
of their pants” or using old-fashioned autopilots for simple
maneuvers, modern
pilots “can push a few buttons and lean back while the plane
flies to its destination
and lands on a predetermined runway.” Said one Federal
Aviation Administration
official, “We’re taking more and more of these functions out of
human control and
giving them to machines.” The new, automated airplanes are in

87. many ways safer and
more reliable than older, less technologically advanced models.
There is a fear, how-
ever, that pilots dependent on these technologies will lose the
ability to find creative
ways of handling emergency situations. An airline manager
stated, “If we have human
operators subordinated to technology, then we’re going to lose
that creativity. I don’t
have computers that will do that [be creative]; I just don’t”
(Lavin, 1989, p. 1).
The Irrationality of Rationality
There are great gains involved in increasing rationalization,
resulting from increases
in efficiency, predictability, calculability, and control through
the substitution of
nonhuman for human technology. I enumerate some of the
advantages of the fast-
food restaurant and, more generally, other elements of
McDonaldized society. The
fast-food restaurant has expanded the alternatives available to
consumers: More
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people now have ready access to Italian, Mexican, Chinese, and
Cajun foods; the
salad bar enables people to make salads exactly the way they
want them; microwave
ovens and microwavable foods allow us to have dinner in

88. minutes or even seconds;
for those with a wide range of shopping needs, supermarkets
and shopping malls
are efficient sites, and home shopping networks allow us to
shop even more effi-
ciently without ever leaving home; today’s high-tech, for-profit
hospitals are likely
to provide higher quality medical care than their predecessors;
we can get almost
instantaneous medical attention at our local, drive-in
McDoctors; computerized
phone systems allow people to do things (like getting a bank
balance in the middle
of the night) that were impossible before, and automated bank
teller machines
allow people to obtain money any time of the day or night;
package tours permit
large numbers of people to visit countries that they would
otherwise be unlikely to
see because of apprehensions about undertaking an individual
travel experience;
diet centers such as NutriSystem allow people to lose weight in
a carefully regulated
and controlled system; Winnebagos let the modern camper avoid
excessive heat,
rain, insects, and the like; and suburban tract houses allow large
numbers of people
to afford single-family homes.
The rational systems also allow us to avoid the problems
created by nonrational
systems in other societies. The following is a description of a
recent visit by an
American journalist to a pizzeria in Havana, Cuba:
The pizza’s not much to rave about—they skimp on tomato

89. sauce, and the
dough is mushy.
It was about 7:30 p.m., and as usual the place was standing-
room only, with
people two deep jostling for a stool to come open and a waiting
line spilling
out onto the sidewalk.
The menu is similarly Spartan. . . . To drink, there is tap water.
That’s it—
no toppings, no soda, no beer, no coffee, no salt, no pepper.
And no special
orders. The waiter wears a watch around his belt loop, but he
hardly needs it;
time is evidently not his chief concern. After a while, tempers
begin to fray.
But right now, it’s 8:45 p.m. at the pizzeria, I’ve been waiting
an hour and
a quarter for two small pies. (Hochstadter, 1991, p. A12.
Reprinted with
permission)
Few would prefer such irrational systems to the rationalized
elements of U.S.
society.
Although there are many advantages to a McDonaldized society,
there are also
great costs associated with McDonaldization that can be dealt
with largely under
the heading of the “irrationality of rationality.” In other words,
it is my thesis, fol-
lowing Weber, that rational systems inevitably spawn a series of
irrationalities that

90. serve to limit, ultimately compromise, and perhaps even defeat,
their rationality.
We can conceive of the irrationality of rationality in several
ways. At the most
general level, it is simply the overarching label for all the
negative aspects and effects
of McDonaldization. More specifically, it can be seen as the
opposite of rationality
and its several dimensions. That is, McDonaldization can be
viewed as leading to
inefficiency, unpredictability, incalculability, and loss of
control. Most specifically,
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irrationality means that rational systems are unreasonable
systems. By that, I mean
they serve to deny the basic humanity, the human reason, of the
people who work
within or are served by them. Rational systems are
dehumanizing systems. Although
in other contexts rationality and reason are often used
interchangeably, here they
are employed to mean antithetical phenomena.
The most obvious manifestation of the inefficiency of the fast-
food restaurant is
the long lines of people that are often found at the counters or
at the drive-through
windows. What is purported to be an efficient way of obtaining
a meal turns out to

91. be quite inefficient. The fast-food restaurant is far from the
only aspect of the
McDonaldized society that operates inefficiently. Columnist
Richard Cohen (1990)
described the inefficiencies of the automated teller machines
(ATMs) as follows:
Oh Lord, with each advance of the computer age, I was told I
would benefit.
But with each “benefit,” I wind up doing more work. This is the
ATM rule of
life. . . . I was told—nay promised—that I could avoid lines at
the bank and
make deposits or withdrawals any time of the day. Now, there
are lines at the
ATMs, the bank seems to take a percentage of whatever I
withdraw or deposit,
and of course, I’m doing what tellers (remember them?) used to
do. Probably,
with the new phone, I’ll have to climb telephone poles in the
suburbs during ice
storms. (p. 5)
At least three different irrationalities are being underscored in
the previous quo-
tation: Rational systems are not less expensive; they force us to
do a range of unpaid
work; and, most important from the point of view of this
discussion, they are often
inefficient. It might be more efficient to deal with a human
teller, either in the bank
or at the drive-through window, than to wait in line at an ATM
machine, perhaps
on a cold, snowy night. For many, it would be far more efficient
to prepare a meal
at home than to load the family in the car, drive to McDonald’s,

92. fill up on food, and
then drive home again. This may not be true of some meals
cooked at home from
scratch, but it is certainly true of TV dinners, microwave meals,
or full-course meals
brought in from the supermarket. Many people, however, persist
in the belief,
fueled by endless propaganda from the fast-food restaurants,
that it is more
efficient to eat there than to eat at home.
The main reason McDonaldization can be seen as irrational, and
ultimately
unreasonable, is that it tends to become a dehumanizing system
that may become
antihuman or even destructive of human beings. In terms of the
latter, there are a
number of ways in which the health, and perhaps the lives, of
people have been
threatened by progressive rationalization (Spencer, 1983). One
example is the high
calorie, fat, cholesterol, salt, and sugar content of the food
served at fast-food
restaurants. Such meals are the last things the vast majority of
Americans need.
Many suffer from being overweight or have high cholesterol
levels, high blood
pressure, and perhaps diabetes. The kinds of meals typically
served at fast-food
restaurants only tend to make these health problems much
worse. Even more
worrisome, they help to create eating habits in children that
contribute to the
development of these and other health problems later in life. It
can be argued

93. that, with their appeal to children, fast-food restaurants are
creating not only
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lifelong devotees of fast food but also people who will grow
addicted to diets high
in salt, sugar, and fat.
The fast-food industry has run afoul of not only nutritionists but
also environ-
mentalists. It produces an enormous amount of trash, some of
which is non-
biodegradable. Many people have been critical of the public
eyesore created by litter
from innumerable fast-food meals strewn across the
countryside. McDonaldized
institutions have a negative effect not only on our health and on
the environment
but also on some of our most cherished institutions, most
notably the family. A key
technology in the destruction of the family meal is the
microwave oven and the vast
array of microwavable foods it helped generate (Visser, 1989).
A Wall Street Journal
poll in the late 1980s indicated that Americans consider the
microwave their
favorite household product. In fact, the microwave in a
McDonaldizing society is
seen as an advance over the fast-food restaurant. One consumer
researcher stated,
“It has made even fast-food restaurants not seem fast because at

94. home you don’t
have to wait in line.” Consumers are demanding meals that take
no more than 10
minutes to microwave, whereas previously people were more
willing to spend a half
hour or even an hour cooking dinner. This emphasis on speed
has, of course,
brought with it poorer taste and lower quality, but people do not
seem to mind this
loss: “We’re just not as critical of food as we used to be” (“The
Microwave Cooks,”
1989, p. B1).
The speed of microwave cooking, as well as the wide variety of
foods available in
that form, makes it possible for family members to eat at
different times and places.
To give even children independence, companies are marketing
products such as Kid
Cuisine and My Own Meals. As a result, “Those qualities of the
family meal, the
ones that imparted feelings of security and well-being, might be
lost forever where
food is ‘zapped’ or ‘nuked’ instead of cooked” (Visser, 1989, p.
40).
The advances in microwave cooking continue. There are already
plastic strips on
some foods that turn blue when the food is done. The industry is
promising strips
in the future that communicate cooking information directly to
the microwave oven:
With cooking reduced to pushing a button, the kitchen may
wind up as a sort of
filling station. Family members will pull in, push a few buttons,

95. fill up and leave.
To clean up, all we need do is throw away plastic plates.
(Visser, 1989, p. 42)
What is lost, of course, is the family meal, and we must decide
whether we can
afford the loss:
The communal meal is our primary ritual for encouraging the
family to gather
together every day. If it is lost to us, we shall have to invent
new ways to be a
family. It is worth considering whether the shared joy that food
can provide is
worth giving up. (Visser, 1989, p. 42)
Thus, it is my argument that, contrary to McDonald’s
propaganda and the
widespread belief in it, fast-food restaurants, as well as the
innumerable other
McDonaldized institutions, are not truly rational systems. They
spawn all kinds of
problems for the health of their customers and the well-being of
the environment,
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they tend to be dehumanizing and therefore unreasonable in
various ways, and they
often lead to the opposite of what they are supposed to create—
for example, they
lead to inefficiency rather than increased efficiency. All this is

96. not to deny the many
advantages of McDonaldization mentioned previously, but
rather to point to the
fact that there are counterbalancing and perhaps even
overwhelming problems
associated with the fast-food society.
Perhaps the ultimate irrationality of McDonaldization is the
possibility that
people could ultimately lose control over the system, and it
would come to control
us. Already, many aspects of our lives are controlled by these
rational systems. It at
least appears, however, that these systems are ultimately
controlled by people. These
rational systems, however, can spin beyond the control of even
the people who
occupy the highest level positions within those systems. This is
one of the senses in
which we can, following Weber, talk of an “iron cage of
McDonaldization.” It can
become a system that comes to control all of us.
There is another fear: that these interlocking rational systems
can fall into the
hands of a small number of leaders who, through them, can
exercise enormous
control over all society. Thus, there are authoritarian and
totalitarian possibilities
associated with the process of McDonaldization. We may come
to be increasingly
controlled by the rational systems themselves or by a few
leaders who master those
systems.
This kind of fear has animated many science fiction writers and

97. is manifest in
such sci-fi classics as 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451,
and The Matrix. The
problem is that these stories describe a feared and fearsome
future world, whereas
McDonaldization is with us now, has been with us for awhile,
and is extending its
reach throughout society.
Conclusion
The objective in this chapter has been to show the continued, if
not increasing, rel-
evance of Max Weber’s theory of rationalization to the modern
world. Although the
bureaucracy may have been replaced by the fast-food restaurant
as the ultimate
example of a rational structure and bureaucratization by
McDonaldization as the
heart of the process, the rationalization that undergirds both sets
of structures and
processes remains at least as powerful a force today as it was in
Weber’s day. In fact,
the old sites remain rationalized while new ones are coming
under the sway of the
rationalization process. In this sense, we seem even closer to
the iron cage of ratio-
nalization today than was the case in Weber’s day.
Notes
1. In this essay, I combine control and using nonhuman for
human technology, whereas
in the previous essay they were differentiated.

98. 2. See also
http://www.technomic.com/pressroom/top500_left_5_31_06.htm
l.
3. I thank Dora Giemza for these and other insights into
NutriSystem.
58——CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
02-45282-kivisto.qxd 6/30/2007 10:58 AM Page 58
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102. 02-45282-kivisto.qxd 6/30/2007 10:58 AM Page 59
Manifesto of the Communist Party
by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
February 1848
Written: Late 1847;
First Published: February 1848;
Source: Marx/Engels Selected Works, Vol. One, Progress
Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp. 98-137;
Translated: Samuel Moore in cooperation with Frederick
Engels, 1888;
Transcribed: by Zodiac and Brian Baggins;
Proofed: and corrected against 1888 English Edition by Andy
Blunden 2004;
Copyleft: Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 1987, 2000,
2010. Permission is granted to
distribute this document under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License.
Table of Contents
Editorial Introduction
........................................................................................... ....
....................... 2
Preface to The 1872 German Edition
..............................................................................................
4
Preface to The 1882 Russian Edition
..............................................................................................
5
Preface to The 1883 German Edition

103. ..............................................................................................
6
Preface to The 1888 English
Edition....................................................................................
........... 7
Preface to The 1890 German Edition
............................................................................................
10
Preface to The 1892 Polish Edition
...............................................................................................
12
Preface to The 1893 Italian
Edition....................................................................................
........... 13
Manifesto of the Communist
Party.......................................................................................
......... 14
I. Bourgeois and Proletarians
...............................................................................................
......... 14
II. Proletarians and Communists
...............................................................................................
.... 22
III. Socialist and Communist Literature
........................................................................................ 28
1. Reactionary Socialism
...............................................................................................
........ 28
A. Feudal Socialism
...............................................................................................
....... 28
B. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism
....................................................................................... 29
C. German or “True” Socialism
.................................................................................... 29

104. 2. Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism
............................................................................... 31
3. Critical-Utopian Socialism and
Communism.................................................................... 32
IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various
Existing Opposition Parties ............. 34
Letter from Engels to Marx, 24 November 1847
.......................................................................... 35
Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith
................................................................................... 36
The Principles of Communism
...............................................................................................
....... 41
Demands of the Communist Party in
Germany............................................................................. 55
The Paris Commune. Address to the International
Workingmen’s Association, May 1871......... 58
Endnotes
...............................................................................................
......................................... 67
2 Introduction
Editorial Introduction
The “Manifesto of the Communist Party” was written by Marx
and Engels as the Communist
League’s programme on the instruction of its Second Congress
(London, November 29-December 8,
1847), which signified a victory for the followers of a new
proletarian line during the discussion of the
programme questions.

105. When Congress was still in preparation, Marx and Engels
arrived at the conclusion that the final
programme document should be in the form of a Party manifesto
(see Engels’ letter to Marx of
November 23-24, 1847). The catechism form usual for the
secret societies of the time and retained in
the “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith” and “Principles
of Communism,” was not suitable for
a full and substantial exposition of the new revolutionary world
outlook, for a comprehensive
formulation of the proletarian movement’s aims and tasks. See
also “Demands of the Communist
Party in Germany,” issued by Marx soon after publication of the
Manifesto, which addressed the
immediate demands of the movement.
Marx and Engels began working together on the Manifesto
while they were still in London
immediately after the congress, and continued until about
December 13 when Marx returned to
Brussels; they resumed their work four days later (December
17) when Engels arrived there. After
Engels’ departure for Paris at the end of December and up to his
return on January 31, Marx worked
on the Manifesto alone.
Hurried by the Central Authority of the Communist League
which provided him with certain
documents (e.g., addresses of the People’s Chamber (Halle) of
the League of the Just of November
1846 and February 1847, and, apparently, documents of the
First Congress of the Communist League
pertaining to the discussion of the Party programme), Marx
worked intensively on the Manifesto
through almost the whole of January 1848. At the end of
January the manuscript was sent on to
London to be printed in the German Workers’ Educational
Society’s print shop owned by a German

106. emigrant J. E. Burghard, a member of the Communist League.
The manuscript of the Manifesto has not survived. The only
extant materials written in Marx’s hand
are a draft plan for Section III, showing his efforts to improve
the structure of the Manifesto, and a
page of a rough copy.
The Manifesto came off the press at the end of February 1848.
On February 29, the Educational
Society decided to cover all the printing expenses.
The first edition of the Manifesto was a 23-page pamphlet in a
dark green cover. In April-May 1848
another edition was put out. The text took up 30 pages, some
misprints of the first edition were
corrected, and the punctuation improved. Subsequently this text
was used by Marx and Engels as a
basis for later authorised editions. Between March and July
1848 the Manifesto was printed in the
Deutsche Londoner Zeitung, a democratic newspaper of the
German emigrants. Already that same
year numerous efforts were made to publish the Manifesto in
other European languages. A Danish, a
Polish (in Paris) and a Swedish (under a different title: “The
Voice of Communism. Declaration of the
Communist Party”) editions appeared in 1848. The translations
into French, Italian and Spanish made
at that time remained unpublished. In April 1848, Engels, then
in Barmen, was translating the
Manifesto into English, but he managed to translate only half of
it, and the first English translation,
made by Helen Macfarlane, was not published until two years
later, between June and November 1850,
in the Chartist journal The Red Republican. Its editor, Julian
Harney, named the authors for the first
time in the introduction to this publication. All earlier and many
subsequent editions of the Manifesto
were anonymous.

107. The growing emancipation struggle of the proletariat in the ’60s
and ’70s of the 19th century led to
new editions of the Manifesto. The year 1872 saw a new
German edition with minor corrections and a
preface by Marx and Engels where they drew some conclusions
from the experience of the Paris
3 Introduction
Commune of 1871. This and subsequent German editions (1883
and 1890) were entitled the
Communist Manifesto. In 1872 the Manifesto was first
published in America in Woodhull & Claflin’s
Weekly.
The first Russian edition of the Manifesto, translated by
Mikhail Bakunin with some distortions,
appeared in Geneva in 1869. The faults of this edition were
removed in the 1882 edition (translation
by Georgi Plekhanov), for which Marx and Engels, who
attributed great significance to the
dissemination of Marxism in Russia, had written a special
preface.
After Marx’s death, the Manifesto ran into several editions.
Engels read through them all, wrote
prefaces for the 1883 German edition and for the 1888 English
edition in Samuel Moore’s translation,
which he also edited and supplied with notes. This edition
served as a basis for many subsequent
editions of the Manifesto in English – in Britain, the United
States and the USSR. In 1890, Engels
prepared a further German edition, wrote a new preface to it,
and added a number of notes. In 1885,
the newspaper Le Socialiste published the French translation of
the Manifesto made by Marx’s

108. daughter Laura Lafargue and read by Engels. He also wrote
prefaces to the 1892 Polish and 1893
Italian editions.
This edition includes the two earlier versions of the Manifesto,
namely the draft “Communist
Confession of Faith” and “The Principles of Communism,” both
authored by Engels, as well as the
letter from Engels to Marx which poses the idea of publishing a
“manifesto,” rather than a catechism.
The Manifesto addressed itself to a mass movement with
historical significance, not a political sect.
On the other hand, the “Demands of the Communist Party in
Germany” is included to place the
publication of the Manifesto in the context of the mass
movement in Germany at the time, whose
immediate demands are reflected by Marx in this pamphlet.
Clearly the aims of the Manifesto were
more far-reaching the movement in Germany at the time, and
unlike the “Demands,” was intended to
outlive the immediate conditions.
The “Third Address to the International Workingmen’s
Association” is included because in this
speech Marx examines the movement of the working class
manifested in the Paris Commune, and his
observations here mark the only revisions to his social and
historical vision made during his lifetime
as a result of the development of the working class movement
itself, clarifying some points and
making others more concrete.
Preface to The 1872 German Edition

109. The Communist League, an international association of workers,
which could of course be only a
secret one, under conditions obtaining at the time,
commissioned us, the undersigned, at the
Congress held in London in November 1847, to write for
publication a detailed theoretical and
practical programme for the Party. Such was the origin of the
following Manifesto, the
manuscript of which travelled to London to be printed a few
weeks before the February [French]
Revolution [in 1848]. First published in German, it has been
republished in that language in at
least twelve different editions in Germany, England, and
America. It was published in English for
the first time in 1850 in the Red Republican, London, translated
by Miss Helen Macfarlane, and
in 1871 in at least three different translations in America. The
French version first appeared in
Paris shortly before the June insurrection of 1848, and recently
in Le Socialiste of New York. A
new translation is in the course of preparation. A Polish version
appeared in London shortly after
it was first published in Germany. A Russian translation was
published in Geneva in the sixties1.
Into Danish, too, it was translated shortly after its appearance.
However much that state of things may have altered during the
last twenty-five years, the general
principles laid down in the Manifesto are, on the whole, as
correct today as ever. Here and there,
some detail might be improved. The practical application of the
principles will depend, as the
Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the
historical conditions for the time being
existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the
revolutionary measures proposed at
the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be

110. very differently worded today. In
view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and
of the accompanying improved
and extended organization of the working class, in view of the
practical experience gained, first in
the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris
Commune, where the proletariat for the
first time held political power for two whole months, this
programme has in some details been
antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune,
viz., that “the working class
cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and
wield it for its own purposes.”
(See The Civil War in France: Address of the General Council
of the International Working
Men’s Association, 1871, where this point is further developed.)
Further, it is self-evident that the
criticism of socialist literature is deficient in relation to the
present time, because it comes down
only to 1847; also that the remarks on the relation of the
Communists to the various opposition
parties (Section IV), although, in principle still correct, yet in
practice are antiquated, because the
political situation has been entirely changed, and the progress
of history has swept from off the
earth the greater portion of the political parties there
enumerated.
But then, the Manifesto has become a historical document which
we have no longer any right to
alter. A subsequent edition may perhaps appear with an
introduction bridging the gap from 1847
to the present day; but this reprint was too unexpected to leave
us time for that.
Karl Marx & Frederick Engels
June 24, 1872, London

111. Preface to The 1882 Russian Edition
The first Russian edition of the Manifesto of the Communist
Party, translated by Bakunin, was
published early in the ‘sixties by the printing office of the
Kolokol [a reference to the Free
Russian Printing House]. Then the West could see in it (the
Russian edition of the Manifesto)
only a literary curiosity. Such a view would be impossible
today.
What a limited field the proletarian movement occupied at that
time (December 1847) is most
clearly shown by the last section: the position of the
Communists in relation to the various
opposition parties in various countries. Precisely Russia and the
United States are missing here. It
was the time when Russia constituted the last great reserve of
all European reaction, when the
United States absorbed the surplus proletarian forces of Europe
through immigration. Both
countries provided Europe with raw materials and were at the
same time markets for the sale of
its industrial products. Both were, therefore, in one way of
another, pillars of the existing
European system.
How very different today. Precisely European immigration
fitted North American for a gigantic
agricultural production, whose competition is shaking the very
foundations of European landed
property – large and small. At the same time, it enabled the
United States to exploit its
tremendous industrial resources with an energy and on a scale

112. that must shortly break the
industrial monopoly of Western Europe, and especially of
England, existing up to now. Both
circumstances react in a revolutionary manner upon America
itself. Step by step, the small and
middle land ownership of the farmers, the basis of the whole
political constitution, is succumbing
to the competition of giant farms; at the same time, a mass
industrial proletariat and a fabulous
concentration of capital funds are developing for the first time
in the industrial regions.
And now Russia! During the Revolution of 1848-9, not only the
European princes, but the
European bourgeois as well, found their only salvation from the
proletariat just beginning to
awaken in Russian intervention. The Tsar was proclaimed the
chief of European reaction. Today,
he is a prisoner of war of the revolution in Gatchina 2 , and
Russia forms the vanguard of
revolutionary action in Europe.
The Communist Manifesto had, as its object, the proclamation
of the inevitable impending
dissolution of modern bourgeois property. But in Russia we
find, face-to-face with the rapidly
flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois property, just
beginning to develop, more than half the
land owned in common by the peasants. Now the question is:
can the Russian obshchina, though
greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership
of land, pass directly to the
higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the
contrary, must it first pass through the
same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical
evolution of the West?
The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian
Revolution becomes the signal for a

113. proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement
each other, the present Russian
common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a
communist development.
Karl Marx & Frederick Engels
January 21, 1882, London
Preface to The 1883 German Edition
The preface to the present edition I must, alas, sign alone.
Marx, the man to whom the whole
working class of Europe and America owes more than to any
one else – rests at Highgate
Cemetery and over his grave the first grass is already growing.
Since his death [March 14, 1883],
there can be even less thought of revising or supplementing the
Manifesto. But I consider it all the
more necessary again to state the following expressly:
The basic thought running through the Manifesto – that
economic production, and the structure of
society of every historical epoch necessarily arising therefrom,
constitute the foundation for the
political and intellectual history of that epoch; that
consequently (ever since the dissolution of the
primaeval communal ownership of land) all history has been a
history of class struggles, of
struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated
and dominating classes at various
stages of social evolution; that this struggle, however, has now
reached a stage where the
exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer
emancipate itself from the class

114. which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie), without at the
same time forever freeing the
whole of society from exploitation, oppression, class struggles –
this basic thought belongs solely
and exclusively to Marx.*
I have already stated this many times; but precisely now is it
necessary that it also stand in front
of the Manifesto itself.
Frederick Engels
June 28, 1883, London
* “This proposition,” I wrote in the preface to the English
translation, “which, in my opinion, is destined to do for
history what Darwin’ s theory has done for biology, we both of
us, had been gradually approaching for some years
before 1845. How far I had independently progressed towards it
is best shown by my Conditions of the Working Class
in England. But when I again met Marx at Brussels, in spring
1845, he had it already worked out and put it before me
in terms almost as clear as those in which I have stated it here.”
[Note by Engels to the German edition of 1890]
Preface to The 1888 English Edition
The Manifesto was published as the platform of the Communist
League, a working men’ s
association, first exclusively German, later on international, and
under the political conditions of
the Continent before 1848, unavoidably a secret society. At a
Congress of the League, held in
November 1847, Marx and Engels were commissioned to

115. prepare a complete theoretical and
practical party programme. Drawn up in German, in January
1848, the manuscript was sent to the
printer in London a few weeks before the French Revolution of
February 24. A French translation
was brought out in Paris shortly before the insurrection of June
1848. The first English
translation, by Miss Helen Macfarlane, appeared in George
Julian Harney’ s Red Republican,
London, 1850. A Danish and a Polish edition had also been
published.
The defeat of the Parisian insurrection of June 1848 – the first
great battle between proletariat and
bourgeoisie – drove again into the background, for a time, the
social and political aspirations of
the European working class. Thenceforth, the struggle for
supremacy was, again, as it had been
before the Revolution of February, solely between different
sections of the propertied class; the
working class was reduced to a fight for political elbow-room,
and to the position of extreme
wing of the middle-class Radicals. Wherever independent
proletarian movements continued to
show signs of life, they were ruthlessly hunted down. Thus the
Prussian police hunted out the
Central Board of the Communist League, then located in
Cologne. The members were arrested
and, after eighteen months’ imprisonment, they were tried in
October 1852. This celebrated
“Cologne Communist Trial” lasted from October 4 till
November 12; seven of the prisoners were
sentenced to terms of imprisonment in a fortress, varying from
three to six years. Immediately
after the sentence, the League was formally dissolved by the
remaining members. As to the
Manifesto, it seemed henceforth doomed to oblivion.

116. When the European workers had recovered sufficient strength
for another attack on the ruling
classes, the International Working Men’ s Association sprang
up. But this association, formed
with the express aim of welding into one body the whole
militant proletariat of Europe and
America, could not at once proclaim the principles laid down in
the Manifesto. The International
was bound to have a programme broad enough to be acceptable
to the English trade unions, to the
followers of Proudhon in France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain, and
to the Lassalleans in Germany.*
Marx, who drew up this programme to the satisfaction of all
parties, entirely trusted to the
intellectual development of the working class, which was sure
to result from combined action and
mutual discussion. The very events and vicissitudes in the
struggle against capital, the defeats
even more than the victories, could not help bringing home to
men’ s minds the insufficiency of
their various favorite nostrums, and preparing the way for a
more complete insight into the true
conditions for working-class emancipation. And Marx was right.
The International, on its
breaking in 1874, left the workers quite different men from
what it found them in 1864.
Proudhonism in France, Lassalleanism in Germany, were dying
out, and even the conservative
English trade unions, though most of them had long since
severed their connection with the
International, were gradually advancing towards that point at
which, last year at Swansea, their
president [W. Bevan] could say in their name: “Continental
socialism has lost its terror for us.” In
fact, the principles of the Manifesto had made considerable
headway among the working men of

117. all countries.
* Lassalle personally, to us, always acknowledged himself to be
a disciple of Marx, and, as such, stood on the ground of
the Manifesto. But in his first public agitation, 1862-1864, he
did not go beyond demanding co-operative workshops
supported by state credit.
8 Preface to the 1888 English Edition
The Manifesto itself came thus to the front again. Since 1850,
the German text had been reprinted
several times in Switzerland, England, and America. In 1872, it
was translated into English in
New York, where the translation was published in Woorhull and
Claflin’s Weekly. From this
English version, a French one was made in Le Socialiste of New
York. Since then, at least two
more English translations, more or less mutilated, have been
brought out in America, and one of
them has been reprinted in England. The first Russian
translation, made by Bakunin, was
published at Herzen’ s Kolokol office in Geneva, about 1863; a
second one, by the heroic Vera
Zasulich, also in Geneva, in 1882. A new Danish edition is to be
found in Socialdemokratisk
Bibliothek, Copenhagen, 1885; a fresh French translation in Le
Socialiste, Paris, 1886. From this
latter, a Spanish version was prepared and published in Madrid,
1886. The German reprints are
not to be counted; there have been twelve altogether at the least.
An Armenian translation, which
was to be published in Constantinople some months ago, did not

118. see the light, I am told, because
the publisher was afraid of bringing out a book with the name of
Marx on it, while the translator
declined to call it his own production. Of further translations
into other languages I have heard
but had not seen. Thus the history of the Manifesto reflects the
history of the modern working-
class movement; at present, it is doubtless the most wide
spread, the most international
production of all socialist literature, the common platform
acknowledged by millions of working
men from Siberia to California.
Yet, when it was written, we could not have called it a socialist
manifesto. By Socialists, in 1847,
were understood, on the one hand the adherents of the various
Utopian systems: Owenites in
England, Fourierists in France, both of them already reduced to
the position of mere sects, and
gradually dying out; on the other hand, the most multifarious
social quacks who, by all manner of
tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to capital
and profit, all sorts of social
grievances, in both cases men outside the working-class
movement, and looking rather to the
“educated” classes for support. Whatever portion of the working
class had become convinced of
the insufficiency of mere political revolutions, and had
proclaimed the necessity of total social
change, called itself Communist. It was a crude, rough-hewn,
purely instinctive sort of
communism; still, it touched the cardinal point and was
powerful enough amongst the working
class to produce the Utopian communism of Cabet in France,
and of Weitling in Germany. Thus,
in 1847, socialism was a middle-class movement, communism a
working-class movement.

119. Socialism was, on the Continent at least, “respectable”;
communism was the very opposite. And
as our notion, from the very beginning, was that “the
emancipation of the workers must be the act
of the working class itself,” there could be no doubt as to which
of the two names we must take.
Moreover, we have, ever since, been far from repudiating it.
The Manifesto being our joint production, I consider myself
bound to state that the fundamental
proposition which forms the nucleus belongs to Marx. That
proposition is: That in every
historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production
and exchange, and the social
organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon
which it is built up, and from that
which alone can be explained the political and intellectual
history of that epoch; that consequently
the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive
tribal society, holding land in
common ownership) has been a history of class struggles,
contests between exploiting and
exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; That the history of
these class struggles forms a series of
evolutions in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where
the exploited and oppressed class
– the proletariat – cannot attain its emancipation from the sway
of the exploiting and ruling class
– the bourgeoisie – without, at the same time, and once and for
all, emancipating society at large
from all exploitation, oppression, class distinction, and class
struggles.
This proposition, which, in my opinion, is destined to do for
history what Darwin’ s theory has
done for biology, we both of us, had been gradually approaching
for some years before 1845.
How far I had independently progressed towards it is best

120. shown by my “Conditions of the
Working Class in England.” But when I again met Marx at
Brussels, in spring 1845, he had it
9 Preface to the 1888 English Edition
already worked out and put it before me in terms almost as clear
as those in which I have stated it
here.
From our joint preface to the German edition of 1872, I quote
the following:
“However much that state of things may have altered during the
last twenty-five
years, the general principles laid down in the Manifesto are, on
the whole, as
correct today as ever. Here and there, some detail might be
improved. The
practical application of the principles will depend, as the
Manifesto itself states,
everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the
time being
existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the
revolutionary
measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage would,
in many respects,
be very differently worded today. In view of the gigantic strides
of Modern
Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and
extended
organization of the working class, in view of the practical
experience gained, first
in the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris
Commune, where the

121. proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole
months, this
programme has in some details been antiquated. One thing
especially was proved
by the Commune, viz., that “the working class cannot simply
lay hold of ready-
made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” (See
The Civil War in
France: Address of the General Council of the International
Working Men’ s
Association 1871, where this point is further developed.)
Further, it is self-evident
that the criticism of socialist literature is deficient in relation to
the present time,
because it comes down only to 1847; also that the remarks on
the relation of the
Communists to the various opposition parties (Section IV),
although, in principle
still correct, yet in practice are antiquated, because the political
situation has been
entirely changed, and the progress of history has swept from off
the Earth the
greater portion of the political parties there enumerated.
“But then, the Manifesto has become a historical document
which we have no
longer any right to alter.”
The present translation is by Mr Samuel Moore, the translator of
the greater portion of Marx’ s
“Capital.” We have revised it in common, and I have added a
few notes explanatory of historical
allusions.
Frederick Engels
January 30, 1888, London

122. Preface to The 1890 German Edition
Since [the first German preface of 1883] was written, a new
German edition of the Manifesto has
again become necessary, and much has also happened to the
Manifesto which should be recorded
here.
A second Russian translation – by Vera Zasulich – appeared in
Geneva in 1882; the preface to
that edition was written by Marx and myself. Unfortunately, the
original German manuscript has
gone astray; I must therefore retranslate from the Russian which
will in no way improve the text.
It reads:
[Reprint of the 1882 Russian Edition ]
At about the same date, a new Polish version appeared in
Geneva: Manifest Kommunistyczny.
Furthermore, a new Danish translation has appeared in the
Socialdemokratisk Bibliothek,
Copenhagen, 1885. Unfortunately, it is not quite complete;
certain essential passages, which seem
to have presented difficulties to the translator, have been
omitted, and, in addition, there are signs
of carelessness here and there, which are all the more
unpleasantly conspicuous since the
translation indicates that had the translator taken a little more
pains, he would have done an
excellent piece of work.
A new French version appeared in 1886, in Le Socialiste of
Paris; it is the best published to date.
From this latter, a Spanish version was published the same year
in El Socialista of Madrid, and

123. then reissued in pamphlet form: Manifesto del Partido
Communista por Carlos Marx y F. Engels,
Madrid, Administracion de El Socialista, Hernan Cortes 8.
As a matter of curiosity, I may mention that in 1887 the
manuscript of an Armenian translation
was offered to a publisher in Constantinople. But the good man
did not have the courage to
publish something bearing the name of Marx and suggested that
the translator set down his own
name as author, which the latter however declined.
After one, and then another, of the more or less inaccurate
American translations had been
repeatedly reprinted in England, an authentic version at last
appeared in 1888. This was my friend
Samuel Moore, and we went through it together once more
before it went to press. It is entitled:
Manifesto of the Communist Party, by Karl Marx and Frederick
Engels. Authorized English
translation, edited and annotated by Frederick Engels, 1888,
London, William Reeves, 185 Fleet
Street, E.C. I have added some of the notes of that edition to the
present one.
The Manifesto has had a history of its own. Greeted with
enthusiasm, at the time of its
appearance, by the not at all numerous vanguard of scientific
socialism (as is proved by the
translations mentioned in the first place), it was soon forced
into the background by the reaction
that began with the defeat of the Paris workers in June 1848,
and was finally excommunicated
“by law” in the conviction of the Cologne Communists in
November 1852. With the
disappearance from the public scene of the workers’ movement
that had begun with the February
Revolution, the Manifesto too passed into the background.
When the European workers had again gathered sufficient

124. strength for a new onslaught upon the
power of the ruling classes, the International Working Men’ s
Association came into being. Its
aim was to weld together into one huge army the whole militant
working class of Europe and
America. Therefore it could not set out from the principles laid
down in the Manifesto. It was
bound to have a programme which would not shut the door on
the English trade unions, the
French, Belgian, Italian, and Spanish Proudhonists, and the
German Lassalleans. This programme
– the considerations underlying the Statutes of the International
– was drawn up by Marx with a
master hand acknowledged even by the Bakunin and the
anarchists. For the ultimate final triumph
11 Preface to the 1890 German Edition
of the ideas set forth in the Manifesto, Marx relied solely upon
the intellectual development of the
working class, as it necessarily has to ensue from united action
and discussion. The events and
vicissitudes in the struggle against capital, the defeats even
more than the successes, could not but
demonstrate to the fighters the inadequacy of their former
universal panaceas, and make their
minds more receptive to a thorough understanding of the true
conditions for working-class
emancipation. And Marx was right. The working class of 1874,
at the dissolution of the
International, was altogether different from that of 1864, at its
foundation. Proudhonism in the
Latin countries, and the specific Lassalleanism in Germany,
were dying out; and even the ten

125. arch-conservative English trade unions were gradually
approaching the point where, in 1887, the
chairman of their Swansea Congress could say in their name:
“Continental socialism has lost its
terror for us.” Yet by 1887 continental socialism was almost
exclusively the theory heralded in
the Manifesto. Thus, to a certain extent, the history of the
Manifesto reflects the history of the
modern working-class movement since 1848. At present, it is
doubtless the most widely
circulated, the most international product of all socialist
literature, the common programme of
many millions of workers of all countries from Siberia to
California.
Nevertheless, when it appeared, we could not have called it a
socialist manifesto. In 1847, two
kinds of people were considered socialists. On the one hand
were the adherents of the various
utopian systems, notably the Owenites in England and the
Fourierists in France, both of whom, at
that date, had already dwindled to mere sects gradually dying
out. On the other, the manifold
types of social quacks who wanted to eliminate social abuses
through their various universal
panaceas and all kinds of patch-work, without hurting capital
and profit in the least. In both cases,
people who stood outside the labor movement and who looked
for support rather to the
“educated” classes. The section of the working class, however,
which demanded a radical
reconstruction of society, convinced that mere political
revolutions were not enough, then called
itself Communist. It was still a rough-hewn, only instinctive and
frequently somewhat crude
communism. Yet, it was powerful enough to bring into being
two systems of utopian communism

126. – in France, the “Icarian” communists of Cabet, and in Germany
that of Weitling. Socialism in
1847 signified a bourgeois movement, communism a working-
class movement. Socialism was,
on the Continent at least, quite respectable, whereas
communism was the very opposite. And
since we were very decidedly of the opinion as early as then
that “the emancipation of the
workers must be the task of the working class itself,” [from the
General Rules of the
International] we could have no hesitation as to which of the
two names we should choose. Nor
has it ever occurred to us to repudiate it.
“Working men of all countries, unite!” But few voices
responded when we proclaimed these
words to the world 42 years ago, on the eve of the first Paris
Revolution in which the proletariat
came out with the demands of its own. On September 28, 1864,
however, the proletarians of most
of the Western European countries joined hands in the
International Working Men’ s Association
of glorious memory. True, the International itself lived only
nine years. But that the eternal union
of the proletarians of all countries created by it is still alive and
lives stronger than ever, there is
no better witness than this day. Because today3, as I write these
lines, the European and American
proletariat is reviewing its fighting forces, mobilized for the
first time, mobilized as one army,
under one flag, for one immediate aim: the standard eight-hour
working day to be established by
legal enactment, as proclaimed by the Geneva Congress of the
International in 1866, and again by
the Paris Workers’ Congress of 1889. And today’ s spectacle
will open the eyes of the capitalists
and landlords of all countries to the fact that today the

127. proletarians of all countries are united
indeed.
If only Marx were still by my side to see this with his own eyes!
Frederick Engels
May 1, 1890, London
Preface to The 1892 Polish Edition
The fact that a new Polish edition of the Communist Manifesto
has become necessary gives rise
to various thoughts.
First of all, it is noteworthy that of late the Manifesto has
become an index, as it were, of the
development of large-scale industry on the European continent.
In proportion as large-scale
industry expands in a given country, the demand grows among
the workers of that country for
enlightenment regarding their position as the working class in
relation to the possessing classes,
the socialist movement spreads among them and the demand for
the Manifesto increases. Thus,
not only the state of the labour movement but also the degree of
development of large-scale
industry can be measured with fair accuracy in every country by
the number of copies of the
Manifesto circulated in the language of that country.
Accordingly, the new Polish edition indicates a decided
progress of Polish industry. And there
can be no doubt whatever that this progress since the previous
edition published ten years ago has
actually taken place. Russian Poland, Congress Poland, has
become the big industrial region of

128. the Russian Empire. Whereas Russian large-scale industry is
scattered sporadically – a part round
the Gulf of Finland, another in the centre (Moscow and
Vladimir), a third along the coasts of the
Black and Azov seas, and still others elsewhere – Polish
industry has been packed into a
relatively small area and enjoys both the advantages and
disadvantages arising from such
concentration. The competing Russian manufacturers
acknowledged the advantages when they
demanded protective tariffs against Poland, in spit of their
ardent desire to transform the Poles
into Russians. The disadvantages – for the Polish manufacturers
and the Russian government –
are manifest in the rapid spread of socialist ideas among the
Polish workers and in the growing
demand for the Manifesto.
But the rapid development of Polish industry, outstripping that
of Russia, is in its turn a new
proof of the inexhaustible vitality of the Polish people and a
new guarantee of its impending
national restoration. And the restoration of an independent and
strong Poland is a matter which
concerns not only the Poles but all of us. A sincere international
collaboration of the European
nations is possible only if each of these nations is fully
autonomous in its own house. The
Revolution of 1848, which under the banner of the proletariat,
after all, merely let the proletarian
fighters do the work of the bourgeoisie, also secured the
independence of Italy, Germany and
Hungary through its testamentary executors, Louis Bonaparte
and Bismarck; but Poland, which
since 1792 had done more for the Revolution than all these
three together, was left to its own
resources when it succumbed in 1863 to a tenfold greater

129. Russian force. The nobility could
neither maintain nor regain Polish independence; today, to the
bourgeoisie, this independence is,
to say the last, immaterial. Nevertheless, it is a necessity for the
harmonious collaboration of the
European nations. It can be gained only by the young Polish
proletariat, and in its hands it is
secure. For the workers of all the rest of Europe need the
independence of Poland just as much as
the Polish workers themselves.
F. Engels
London, February 10, 1892
Preface to The 1893 Italian Edition
Publication of the Manifesto of the Communist Party coincided,
one may say, with March 18,
1848, the day of the revolution in Milan and Berlin, which were
armed uprisings of the two
nations situated in the centre, the one, of the continent of
Europe, the other, of the Mediterranean;
two nations until then enfeebled by division and internal strife,
and thus fallen under foreign
domination. While Italy was subject to the Emperor of Austria,
Germany underwent the yoke, not
less effective though more indirect, of the Tsar of all the
Russias. The consequences of March 18,
1848, freed both Italy and Germany from this disgrace; if from
1848 to 1871 these two great
nations were reconstituted and somehow again put on their own,
it was as Karl Marx used to say,
because the men who suppressed the Revolution of 1848 were,
nevertheless, its testamentary

130. executors in spite of themselves.
Everywhere that revolution was the work of the working class;
it was the latter that built the
barricades and paid with its lifeblood. Only the Paris workers,
in overthrowing the government,
had the very definite intention of overthrowing the bourgeois
regime. But conscious though they
were of the fatal antagonism existing between their own class
and the bourgeoisie, still, neither
the economic progress of the country nor the intellectual
development of the mass of French
workers had as yet reached the stage which would have made a
social reconstruction possible. In
the final analysis, therefore, the fruits of the revolution were
reaped by the capitalist class. In the
other countries, in Italy, in Germany, in Austria, the workers,
from the very outset, did nothing
but raise the bourgeoisie to power. But in any country the rule
of the bourgeoisie is impossible
without national independence Therefore, the Revolution of
1848 had to bring in its train the
unity and autonomy of the nations that had lacked them up to
then: Italy, Germany, Hungary.
Poland will follow in turn.
Thus, if the Revolution of 1848 was not a socialist revolution, it
paved the way, prepared the
ground for the latter. Through the impetus given to large-scaled
industry in all countries, the
bourgeois regime during the last forty-five years has
everywhere created a numerous,
concentrated and powerful proletariat. It has thus raised, to use
the language of the Manifesto, its
own grave-diggers. Without restoring autonomy and unity to
each nation, it will be impossible to
achieve the international union of the proletariat, or the
peaceful and intelligent co-operation of

131. these nations toward common aims. Just imagine joint
international action by the Italian,
Hungarian, German, Polish and Russian workers under the
political conditions preceding 1848!
The battles fought in 1848 were thus not fought in vain. Nor
have the forty-five years separating
us from that revolutionary epoch passed to no purpose. The
fruits are ripening, and all I wish is
that the publication of this Italian translation may augur as well
for the victory of the Italian
proletariat as the publication of the original did for the
international revolution.
The Manifesto does full justice to the revolutionary part played
by capitalism in the past. The first
capitalist nation was Italy. The close of the feudal Middle Ages,
and the opening of the modern
capitalist era are marked by a colossal figured: an Italian,
Dante, both the last poet of the Middle
Ages and the first poet of modern times. Today, as in 1300, a
new historical era is approaching.
Will Italy give us the new Dante, who will mark the hour of
birth of this new, proletarian era?
Frederick Engels
London, February 1, 1893
Manifesto of the Communist Party
A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism. All
the powers of old Europe have
entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and
Tsar, Metternich and Guizot,
French Radicals and German police-spies.

132. Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as
communistic by its opponents in
power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the
branding reproach of communism,
against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against
its reactionary adversaries?
Two things result from this fact:
I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers
to be itself a
power.
II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of
the whole world,
publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this
nursery tale of the
Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.
To this end, Communists of various nationalities have
assembled in London and sketched the
following manifesto, to be published in the English, French,
German, Italian, Flemish and Danish
languages.
I. Bourgeois and Proletarians*
The history of all hitherto existing society† is the history of
class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-
master‡ and journeyman, in a
word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to
one another, carried on an
uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each
time ended, either in a revolutionary
reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the
contending classes.
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a

133. complicated arrangement of society
into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In
ancient Rome we have patricians,
knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords,
vassals, guild-masters, journeymen,
apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again,
subordinate gradations.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins
of feudal society has not done
away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes,
new conditions of oppression,
new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
* By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists,
owners of the means of social production and employers of
wage labour. By proletariat, the class of modern wage labourers
who, having no means of production of their own, are
reduced to selling their labour power in order to live. [Engels,
1888 English edition]
† That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society,
the social organisation existing previous to recorded
history, all but unknown. Since then, August von Haxthausen
(1792-1866) discovered common ownership of land in
Russia, Georg Ludwig von Maurer proved it to be the social
foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history,
and, by and by, village communities were found to be, or to
have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from
India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this primitive
communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by
Lewis Henry Morgan's (1818-1861) crowning discovery of the
true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With
the dissolution of the primeval communities, society begins to
be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic
classes. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in The
Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, second

134. edition, Stuttgart, 1886. [Engels, 1888 English Edition and 1890
German Edition (with the last sentence omitted)]
‡ Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a master
within, not a head of a guild. [Engels, 1888 English Edition]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-
family/index.htm
15 Manifesto of the Communist Party
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however,
this distinct feature: it has
simplified 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.
The 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, in which industrial production
was monopolised by closed guilds,
now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new
markets. The manufacturing system
took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by
the manufacturing middle class;
division of labour between the different corporate guilds

135. vanished in the face of division of labour
in each single workshop.
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever
rising. Even manufacturer no longer
sufficed. Thereupon, steam and 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 the whole industrial
armies, the modern bourgeois.
Modern 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
communication 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 bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into
the background 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. An oppressed class under the sway of the
feudal nobility, an armed and
self-governing association in the medieval commune*: here
independent urban republic (as in
Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the
monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the
period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal
or the absolute monarchy as a
counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of

136. 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
bourgeoisie.
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 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
* This was the name given their urban communities by the
townsmen of Italy and France, after they had purchased or
conquered their initial rights of self-government from their
feudal lords. [Engels, 1890 German edition] “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. [Engels, 1888
English Edition]
16 Manifesto of the Communist Party

137. 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 freedom – 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.
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the
brutal display of vigour in the Middle
Ages, which reactionaries 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 expeditions 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.
Conservation 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

138. uncertainty and 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 entire
surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle
everywhere, establish connexions
everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market
given a cosmopolitan character
to production and consumption in every country. To the great
chagrin of Reactionists, it has
drawn from under 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
production 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

139. intellectual production. The intellectual
creations of individual nations become common property.
National one-sidedness and narrow-
mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the
numerous national and local
literatures, there arises a world literature.
The 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 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.
17 Manifesto of the Communist Party
The 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.
The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the
scattered state of the population, of

140. the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated
population, centralised the means
of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
The necessary consequence of this
was political centralisation. Independent, 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.
The 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 agriculture, 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
forces; 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

141. adapted in it, and the economic 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 up by his spells.
For many a decade past the
history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt
of modern productive forces
against modern conditions of production, against the property
relations that are the conditions for
the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to
mention the commercial crises that
by their periodical return put the existence of the entire
bourgeois society on its trial, each time
more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the
existing products, but also of the
previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed.
In these crises, there breaks out
an epidemic 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; on the contrary, they have
become too powerful for these

142. 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.
18 Manifesto of the Communist Party
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.
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 consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition,

143. to all the fluctuations of the
market.
Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of
labour, the work of the
proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently,
all charm for the workman. He
becomes an appendage 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 maintenance, and for
the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and
therefore also of labour, 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 toil also
increases, whether by prolongation of the
working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given
time or by increased speed of
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. The more
openly this despotism proclaims
gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and

144. the more embittering it is.
The 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.
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, that 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.
The lower strata of the middle class – the small tradespeople,
shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen
generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants – all these sink
gradually into the proletariat, partly
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.
The 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 operative 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; they destroy imported wares
that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery,

145. they set factories ablaze, they
seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of
the Middle Ages.
19 Manifesto of the Communist Party
At this stage, the labourers still form an incoherent 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 bourgeois.
Thus, the whole historical
movement 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. The 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. The growing competition among
the bourgeois, and the resulting
commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more

146. fluctuating. The increasing
improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing,
makes their livelihood more and more
precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and
individual bourgeois take more and
more the character of collisions between two classes.
Thereupon, the workers begin to form
combinations (Trades’ Unions) 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 centuries, the
modern proletarian, 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-

147. hours’ bill in England was carried.
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 time with
the bourgeoisie of foreign
countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal
to the proletariat, to ask for 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
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
class are, by the advance of
industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least
threatened in their conditions of existence.
These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of
enlightenment and progress.
Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive
hour, the progress 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
20 Manifesto of the Communist Party
period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so

148. 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, 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 only so 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”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that
passively rotting mass thrown
off by the lowest layers of the 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 condition 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 industry
labour, modern subjection to
capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in

149. Germany, has stripped him of every
trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him
so many bourgeois 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 movements were movements of
minorities, or in the interest of minorities.
The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, 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.

150. 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 the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a
bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the
contrary, instead of rising with the process 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
21 Manifesto of the Communist Party
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 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 conditions for the existence and for the sway of
the bourgeois class is 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

151. promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the
labourers, due to competition, by the
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 bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all,
are its own grave-diggers. Its fall
and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
II. Proletarians and Communists
In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as
a whole?
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the
other working-class parties.
They have no interests separate and apart from those of the
proletariat as a whole.
They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by
which to shape and mould the
proletarian movement.
The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class
parties by this only: 1. In the
national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries,
they point out and bring to the
front the common interests of the entire proletariat,
independently of all nationality. 2. In the
various stages of development which the struggle of the
working class against the bourgeoisie has
to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the
interests of the movement as a whole.
The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the
most advanced and resolute

152. section of the working-class parties of every country, that
section which pushes forward all
others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great
mass of the proletariat the
advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the
conditions, and the ultimate general
results of the proletarian movement.
The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all
other proletarian parties:
formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the
bourgeois supremacy, conquest of
political power by the proletariat.
The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way
based on ideas or principles that
have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be
universal reformer.
They merely express, in general terms, actual relations
springing from an existing class struggle,
from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The
abolition of existing property
relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism.
All property relations in the past have continually been subject
to historical change consequent
upon the change in historical conditions.
The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property
in favour of bourgeois property.
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of
property generally, but the
abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private
property is the final and most
complete expression of the system of producing and
appropriating products, that is based on class
antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up
in the single sentence: Abolition
of private property.

153. We Communists have been reproached with the desire of
abolishing the right of personally
acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which
property is alleged to be the
groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.
Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the
property of petty artisan and of
the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the
bourgeois form? There is no need to
abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent
already destroyed it, and is still
destroying it daily.
Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?
But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not
a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that
kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot
increase except upon condition of
begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation.
Property, in its present form, is
23 Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists
based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Let us
examine both sides of this
antagonism.
To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a
social status in production. Capital
is a collective product, and only by the united action of many
members, nay, in the last resort,
only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set
in motion.
Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.
When, therefore, capital is converted into common property,
into the property of all members of

154. society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social
property. It is only the social
character of the property that is changed. It loses its class
character.
Let us now take wage-labour.
The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e.,
that quantum of the means of
subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in
bare existence as a labourer.
What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his
labour, merely suffices to
prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend
to abolish this personal
appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is
made for the maintenance and
reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus
wherewith to command the labour of
others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable
character of this appropriation, under
which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is
allowed to live only in so far as the
interest of the ruling class requires it.
In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase
accumulated labour. In Communist
society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich,
to promote the existence of the
labourer.
In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present;
in Communist society, the present
dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent
and has individuality, while the
living person is dependent and has no individuality.
And the abolition of this state of things is called by the
bourgeois, abolition of individuality and
freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois
individuality, bourgeois independence, and

155. bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.
By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of
production, free trade, free
selling and buying.
But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying
disappears also. This talk about free
selling and buying, and all the other “brave words” of our
bourgeois about freedom in general,
have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling
and buying, with the fettered
traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed
to the Communistic abolition of
buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production,
and of the bourgeoisie itself.
You are horrified at our intending to do away with private
property. But in your existing society,
private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of
the population; its existence for the
few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-
tenths. You reproach us,
therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property,
the necessary condition for whose
existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense
majority of society.
In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with
your property. Precisely so; that is
just what we intend.
From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into
capital, money, or rent, into a
social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the
moment when individual property can
no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital,
from that moment, you say,
individuality vanishes.

156. 24 Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists
You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no
other person than the bourgeois,
than the middle-class owner of property. This person must,
indeed, be swept out of the way, and
made impossible.
Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the
products of society; all that it does
is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others
by means of such appropriations.
It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property,
all work will cease, and universal
laziness will overtake us.
According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have
gone to the dogs through sheer
idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing,
and those who acquire anything do
not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression
of the tautology: that there can no
longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.
All objections urged against the Communistic mode of
producing and appropriating material
products, have, in the same way, been urged against the
Communistic mode of producing and
appropriating intellectual products. Just as, to the bourgeois, the
disappearance of class property
is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance
of class culture is to him identical
with the disappearance of all culture.
That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous
majority, a mere training to act as
a machine.
But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended
abolition of bourgeois property,

157. the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law,
&c. Your very ideas are but the
outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and
bourgeois property, just as your
jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for
all, a will whose essential character
and direction are determined by the economical conditions of
existence of your class.
The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into
eternal laws of nature and of reason,
the social forms springing from your present mode of
production and form of property –
historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of
production – this misconception you
share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you
see clearly in the case of ancient
property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are
of course forbidden to admit in
the case of your own bourgeois form of property.
Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical
flare up at this infamous proposal of
the Communists.
On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family,
based? On capital, on private
gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only
among the bourgeoisie. But this
state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of
the family among the proletarians,
and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its
complement vanishes, and both
will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of
children by their parents? To this crime
we plead guilty.
But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when

158. we replace home education by
social.
And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by
the social conditions under which
you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society,
by means of schools, &c.? The
Communists have not invented the intervention of society in
education; they do but seek to alter
the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from
the influence of the ruling class.
The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about
the hallowed co-relation of parents
and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the
action of Modern Industry, all the
25 Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists
family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their
children transformed into simple
articles of commerce and instruments of labour.
But you Communists would introduce community of women,
screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.
The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production.
He hears that the instruments of
production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can
come to no other conclusion that
the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.
He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do
away with the status of women as
mere instruments of production.
For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous
indignation of our bourgeois at the
community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and
officially established by the

159. Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce
community of women; it has existed
almost from time immemorial.
Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of
their proletarians at their disposal,
not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in
seducing each other’s wives.
Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common
and thus, at the most, what the
Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they
desire to introduce, in substitution for
a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of
women. For the rest, it is self-
evident that the abolition of the present system of production
must bring with it the abolition of
the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of
prostitution both public and private.
The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish
countries and nationality.
The working men have no country. We cannot take from them
what they have not got. Since the
proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must
rise to be the leading class of the
nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself
national, though not in the bourgeois
sense of the word.
National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily
more and more vanishing, owing
to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce,
to the world market, to
uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of
life corresponding thereto.
The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still
faster. United action, of the
leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions
for the emancipation of the

160. proletariat.
In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another
will also be put an end to, the
exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to.
In proportion as the antagonism
between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one
nation to another will come to an
end.
The charges against Communism made from a religious, a
philosophical and, generally, from an
ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious
examination.
Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas,
views, and conception, in one
word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the
conditions of his material
existence, in his social relations and in his social life?
What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual
production changes its character
in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling
ideas of each age have ever been the
ideas of its ruling class.
When people speak of the ideas that revolutionise society, they
do but express that fact that
within the old society the elements of a new one have been
created, and that the dissolution of the
old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old
conditions of existence.
When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient
religions were overcome by
Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th
century to rationalist ideas, feudal
26 Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists

161. society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary
bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious
liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the
sway of free competition within
the domain of knowledge.
“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical,
and juridical ideas have been
modified in the course of historical development. But religion,
morality, philosophy, political
science, and law, constantly survived this change.”
“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice,
etc., that are common to all states of
society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes
all religion, and all morality,
instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in
contradiction to all past historical
experience.”
What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all
past society has consisted in the
development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed
different forms at different epochs.
But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to
all past ages, viz., the exploitation
of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the
social consciousness of past ages,
despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within
certain common forms, or general
ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total
disappearance of class antagonisms.
The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with
traditional property relations; no
wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture
with traditional ideas.
But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to
Communism.

162. We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the
working class is to raise the
proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of
democracy.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by
degree, all capital from the
bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the
hands of the State, i.e., of the
proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the
total productive forces as rapidly as
possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by
means of despotic inroads on the
rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois
production; by means of measures,
therefore, which appear economically insufficient and
untenable, but which, in the course of the
movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon
the old social order, and are
unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of
production.
These measures will, of course, be different in different
countries.
Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be
pretty generally applicable.
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of
land to public
purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of
a national bank
with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport

163. in the hands of the
State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned
by the State; the
bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement
of the soil generally
in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial
armies, especially for
agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries;
gradual abolition of
all the distinction between town and country by a more equable
distribution of the
27 Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists
populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition
of children’s
factory labour in its present form. Combination of education
with industrial
production, &c, &c.
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have
disappeared, and all production has
been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the
whole nation, the public power will
lose its political character. Political power, properly so called,
is merely the organised power of
one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its
contest with the bourgeoisie is
compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a
class, if, by means of a

164. revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps
away by force the old conditions
of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have
swept away the conditions for the
existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and
will thereby have abolished its own
supremacy as a class.
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class
antagonisms, we shall have an
association, in which the free development of each is the
condition for the free development of
all.
III. Socialist and Communist Literature
1. Reactionary Socialism
A. Feudal Socialism
Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of the
aristocracies of France and
England to write pamphlets against modern bourgeois society.
In the French Revolution of July
1830, and in the English reform agitation4, these aristocracies
again succumbed to the hateful
upstart. Thenceforth, a serious political struggle was altogether
out of the question. A literary
battle alone remained possible. But even in the domain of
literature the old cries of the restoration
period had become impossible.*
In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose
sight, apparently, of its own
interests, and to formulate their indictment against the
bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited

165. working class alone. Thus, the aristocracy took their revenge by
singing lampoons on their new
masters and whispering in his ears sinister prophesies of coming
catastrophe.
In this way arose feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half
lampoon; half an echo of the past, half
menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive
criticism, striking the bourgeoisie
to the very heart’s core; but always ludicrous in its effect,
through total incapacity to comprehend
the march of modern history.
The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the
proletarian alms-bag in front for a
banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw on their
hindquarters the old feudal coats
of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.
One section of the French Legitimists and “Young England”
exhibited this spectacle.
In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to
that of the bourgeoisie, the
feudalists forget that they exploited under circumstances and
conditions that were quite different
and that are now antiquated. In showing that, under their rule,
the modern proletariat never
existed, they forget that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary
offspring of their own form of
society.
For the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionary character
of their criticism that their chief
accusation against the bourgeois amounts to this, that under the
bourgeois régime a class is being
developed which is destined to cut up root and branch the old
order of society.
What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it
creates a proletariat as that it creates
a revolutionary proletariat.

166. In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive
measures against the working class; and in
ordinary life, despite their high-falutin phrases, they stoop to
pick up the golden apples dropped
from the tree of industry, and to barter truth, love, and honour,
for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar,
and potato spirits.†
As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so
has Clerical Socialism with
Feudal Socialism.
* Not the English Restoration (1660-1689), but the French
Restoration (1814-1830). [Note by Engels to the English
edition of 1888.]
† This applies chiefly to Germany, where the landed aristocracy
and squirearchy have large portions of their estates
cultivated for their own account by stewards, and are, moreover,
extensive beetroot-sugar manufacturers and distillers
of potato spirits. The wealthier British aristocracy are, as yet,
rather above that; but they, too, know how to make up for
declining rents by lending their names to floaters or more or
less shady joint-stock companies. [Note by Engels to the
English edition of 1888.]
29 Chapter III: Socialist and Communist Literature
Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist
tinge. Has not Christianity
declaimed against private property, against marriage, against
the State? Has it not preached in the
place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification
of the flesh, monastic life and
Mother Church? Christian Socialism is but the holy water with

167. which the priest consecrates the
heart-burnings of the aristocrat.
B. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism
The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by
the bourgeoisie, not the only
class whose conditions of existence pined and perished in the
atmosphere of modern bourgeois
society. The medieval burgesses and the small peasant
proprietors were the precursors of the
modern bourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little
developed, industrially and
commercially, these two classes still vegetate side by side with
the rising bourgeoisie.
In countries where modern civilisation has become fully
developed, a new class of petty
bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletariat and
bourgeoisie, and ever renewing
itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The
individual members of this class,
however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat
by the action of competition, and,
as modern industry develops, they even see the moment
approaching when they will completely
disappear as an independent section of modern society, to be
replaced in manufactures,
agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and
shopmen.
In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more
than half of the population, it was
natural that writers who sided with the proletariat against the
bourgeoisie should use, in their
criticism of the bourgeois régime, the standard of the peasant
and petty bourgeois, and from the
standpoint of these intermediate classes, should take up the
cudgels for the working class. Thus

168. arose petty-bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi was the head of this
school, not only in France but
also in England.
This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the
contradictions in the conditions of
modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of
economists. It proved,
incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and
division of labour; the concentration of
capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it
pointed out the inevitable ruin of the
petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the
anarchy in production, the crying
inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of
extermination between nations, the
dissolution of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of
the old nationalities.
In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires
either to restoring the old means of
production and of exchange, and with them the old property
relations, and the old society, or to
cramping the modern means of production and of exchange
within the framework of the old
property relations that have been, and were bound to be,
exploded by those means. In either case,
it is both reactionary and Utopian.
Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal
relations in agriculture.
Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all
intoxicating effects of self-deception,
this form of Socialism ended in a miserable fit of the blues.
C. German or “True” Socialism
The Socialist and Communist literature of France, a literature
that originated under the pressure
of a bourgeoisie in power, and that was the expressions of the

169. struggle against this power, was
introduced into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie, in that
country, had just begun its
contest with feudal absolutism.
German philosophers, would-be philosophers, and beaux esprits
(men of letters), eagerly seized
on this literature, only forgetting, that when these writings
immigrated from France into
Germany, French social conditions had not immigrated along
with them. In contact with German
30 Chapter III: Socialist and Communist Literature
social conditions, this French literature lost all its immediate
practical significance and assumed a
purely literary aspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of the
Eighteenth Century, the demands
of the first French Revolution were nothing more than the
demands of “Practical Reason” in
general, and the utterance of the will of the revolutionary
French bourgeoisie signified, in their
eyes, the laws of pure Will, of Will as it was bound to be, of
true human Will generally.
The work of the German literati consisted solely in bringing the
new French ideas into harmony
with their ancient philosophical conscience, or rather, in
annexing the French ideas without
deserting their own philosophic point of view.
This annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign
language is appropriated, namely,
by translation.
It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic
Saints over the manuscripts on
which the classical works of ancient heathendom had been

170. written. The German literati reversed
this process with the profane French literature. They wrote their
philosophical nonsense beneath
the French original. For instance, beneath the French criticism
of the economic functions of
money, they wrote “Alienation of Humanity”, and beneath the
French criticism of the bourgeois
state they wrote “Dethronement of the Category of the General”,
and so forth.
The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of
the French historical criticisms,
they dubbed “Philosophy of Action”, “True Socialism”,
“German Science of Socialism”,
“Philosophical Foundation of Socialism”, and so on.
The French Socialist and Communist literature was thus
completely emasculated. And, since it
ceased in the hands of the German to express the struggle of one
class with the other, he felt
conscious of having overcome “French one-sidedness” and of
representing, not true requirements,
but the requirements of Truth; not the interests of the
proletariat, but the interests of Human
Nature, of Man in general, who belongs to no class, has no
reality, who exists only in the misty
realm of philosophical fantasy.
This German socialism, which took its schoolboy task so
seriously and solemnly, and extolled its
poor stock-in-trade in such a mountebank fashion, meanwhile
gradually lost its pedantic
innocence.
The fight of the Germans, and especially of the Prussian
bourgeoisie, against feudal aristocracy
and absolute monarchy, in other words, the liberal movement,
became more earnest.
By this, the long-wished for opportunity was offered to “True”
Socialism of confronting the

171. political movement with the Socialist demands, of hurling the
traditional anathemas against
liberalism, against representative government, against bourgeois
competition, bourgeois freedom
of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and
equality, and of preaching to the masses
that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this
bourgeois movement. German
Socialism forgot, in the nick of time, that the French criticism,
whose silly echo it was,
presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its
corresponding economic
conditions of existence, and the political constitution adapted
thereto, the very things those
attainment was the object of the pending struggle in Germany.
To the absolute governments, with their following of parsons,
professors, country squires, and
officials, it served as a welcome scarecrow against the
threatening bourgeoisie.
It was a sweet finish, after the bitter pills of flogging and
bullets, with which these same
governments, just at that time, dosed the German working-class
risings.
While this “True” Socialism thus served the government as a
weapon for fighting the German
bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, directly represented a
reactionary interest, the interest of German
Philistines. In Germany, the petty-bourgeois class, a relic of the
sixteenth century, and since then
constantly cropping up again under the various forms, is the real
social basis of the existing state
of things.
31 Chapter III: Socialist and Communist Literature

172. To preserve this class is to preserve the existing state of things
in Germany. The industrial and
political supremacy of the bourgeoisie threatens it with certain
destruction – on the one hand,
from the concentration of capital; on the other, from the rise of
a revolutionary proletariat. “True”
Socialism appeared to kill these two birds with one stone. It
spread like an epidemic.
The robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of
rhetoric, steeped in the dew of
sickly sentiment, this transcendental robe in which the German
Socialists wrapped their sorry
“eternal truths”, all skin and bone, served to wonderfully
increase the sale of their goods amongst
such a public.
And on its part German Socialism recognised, more and more,
its own calling as the bombastic
representative of the petty-bourgeois Philistine.
It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the
German petty Philistine to be the
typical man. To every villainous meanness of this model man, it
gave a hidden, higher, Socialistic
interpretation, the exact contrary of its real character. It went to
the extreme length of directly
opposing the “brutally destructive” tendency of Communism,
and of proclaiming its supreme and
impartial contempt of all class struggles. With very few
exceptions, all the so-called Socialist and
Communist publications that now (1847) circulate in Germany
belong to the domain of this foul
and enervating literature.*
2. Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism
A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social
grievances in order to secure the

173. continued existence of bourgeois society.
To this section belong economists, philanthropists,
humanitarians, improvers of the condition of
the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies
for the prevention of cruelty to
animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of
every imaginable kind. This form of
socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete
systems.
We may cite Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misère as an example
of this form.
The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern
social conditions without the
struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They
desire the existing state of society,
minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish
for a bourgeoisie without a
proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in
which it is supreme to be the best;
and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception
into various more or less complete
systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system,
and thereby to march straightway
into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the
proletariat should remain within
the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its
hateful ideas concerning the
bourgeoisie.
A second, and more practical, but less systematic, form of this
Socialism sought to depreciate
every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class
by showing that no mere political
reform, but only a change in the material conditions of
existence, in economical relations, could
be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material
conditions of existence, this form of

174. Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the
bourgeois relations of production,
an abolition that can be affected only by a revolution, but
administrative reforms, based on the
continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that
in no respect affect the relations
between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and
simplify the administrative work,
of bourgeois government.
* The revolutionary storm of 1848 swept away this whole
shabby tendency and cured its protagonists of the desire to
dabble in socialism. The chief representative and classical type
of this tendency is Mr Karl Gruen. [Note by Engels to
the German edition of 1890.]
32 Chapter III: Socialist and Communist Literature
Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression when, and only
when, it becomes a mere figure
of speech.
Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective
duties: for the benefit of the working
class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working class. This
is the last word and the only
seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism.
It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois – for
the benefit of the working class.
3. Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism
We do not here refer to that literature which, in every great
modern revolution, has always given
voice to the demands of the proletariat, such as the writings of

175. Babeuf and others.
The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends,
made in times of universal
excitement, when feudal society was being overthrown,
necessarily failed, owing to the then
undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to the absence of
the economic conditions for its
emancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, and could
be produced by the impending
bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that
accompanied these first movements of
the proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character. It
inculcated universal asceticism and
social levelling in its crudest form.
The Socialist and Communist systems, properly so called, those
of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen,
and others, spring into existence in the early undeveloped
period, described above, of the struggle
between proletariat and bourgeoisie (see Section I. Bourgeois
and Proletarians).
The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class
antagonisms, as well as the action of the
decomposing elements in the prevailing form of society. But the
proletariat, as yet in its infancy,
offers to them the spectacle of a class without any historical
initiative or any independent political
movement.
Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace
with the development of industry, the
economic situation, as they find it, does not as yet offer to them
the material conditions for the
emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search after a
new social science, after new social
laws, that are to create these conditions.
Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive action;
historically created conditions of

176. emancipation to fantastic ones; and the gradual, spontaneous
class organisation of the proletariat
to an organisation of society especially contrived by these
inventors. Future history resolves
itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the practical
carrying out of their social plans.
In the formation of their plans, they are conscious of caring
chiefly for the interests of the
working class, as being the most suffering class. Only from the
point of view of being the most
suffering class does the proletariat exist for them.
The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own
surroundings, causes Socialists
of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class
antagonisms. They want to improve
the condition of every member of society, even that of the most
favoured. Hence, they habitually
appeal to society at large, without the distinction of class; nay,
by preference, to the ruling class.
For how can people, when once they understand their system,
fail to see in it the best possible
plan of the best possible state of society?
Hence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary
action; they wish to attain their
ends by peaceful means, necessarily doomed to failure, and by
the force of example, to pave the
way for the new social Gospel.
Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when
the proletariat is still in a very
undeveloped state and has but a fantastic conception of its own
position, correspond with the first
instinctive yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction
of society.

177. 33 Chapter III: Socialist and Communist Literature
But these Socialist and Communist publications contain also a
critical element. They attack every
principle of existing society. Hence, they are full of the most
valuable materials for the
enlightenment of the working class. The practical measures
proposed in them – such as the
abolition of the distinction between town and country, of the
family, of the carrying on of
industries for the account of private individuals, and of the
wage system, the proclamation of
social harmony, the conversion of the function of the state into
a more superintendence of
production – all these proposals point solely to the
disappearance of class antagonisms which
were, at that time, only just cropping up, and which, in these
publications, are recognised in their
earliest indistinct and undefined forms only. These proposals,
therefore, are of a purely Utopian
character.
The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism
bears an inverse relation to
historical development. In proportion as the modern class
struggle develops and takes definite
shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest, these
fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical
value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the
originators of these systems were,
in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every
case, formed mere reactionary
sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in
opposition to the progressive
historical development of the proletariat. They, therefore,
endeavour, and that consistently, to
deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class

178. antagonisms. They still dream of experimental
realisation of their social Utopias, of founding isolated
“phalansteres”, of establishing “Home
Colonies”, or setting up a “Little Icaria”* – duodecimo editions
of the New Jerusalem – and to
realise all these castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal
to the feelings and purses of the
bourgeois. By degrees, they sink into the category of the
reactionary [or] conservative Socialists
depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic
pedantry, and by their fanatical and
superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social
science.
They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part
of the working class; such action,
according to them, can only result from blind unbelief in the
new Gospel.
The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France,
respectively, oppose the Chartists and the
Réformistes.
* Phalanstéres were Socialist colonies on the plan of Charles
Fourier; Icaria was the name given by Cabet to his Utopia
and, later on, to his American Communist colony. [Note by
Engels to the English edition of 1888.]
“Home Colonies” were what Owen called his Communist model
societies. Phalanstéres was the name of the public
palaces planned by Fourier. Icaria was the name given to the
Utopian land of fancy, whose Communist institutions
Cabet portrayed. [Note by Engels to the German edition of
1890.]

179. IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the
Various Existing Opposition Parties
Section II has made clear the relations of the Communists to the
existing working-class parties,
such as the Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in
America.
The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims,
for the enforcement of the
momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement
of the present, they also represent
and take care of the future of that movement. In France, the
Communists ally with the Social-
Democrats* against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie,
reserving, however, the right to take
up a critical position in regard to phases and illusions
traditionally handed down from the great
Revolution.
In Switzerland, they support the Radicals, without losing sight
of the fact that this party consists
of antagonistic elements, partly of Democratic Socialists, in the
French sense, partly of radical
bourgeois.
In Poland, they support the party that insists on an agrarian
revolution as the prime condition for
national emancipation, that party which fomented the
insurrection of Cracow in 1846.
In Germany, they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in
a revolutionary way, against the
absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty
bourgeoisie.
But they never cease, for a single instant, to instil into the
working class the clearest possible
recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and
proletariat, in order that the
German workers may straightway use, as so many weapons

180. against the bourgeoisie, the social
and political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily
introduce along with its supremacy,
and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in
Germany, the fight against the
bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin.
The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany,
because that country is on the eve of a
bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more
advanced conditions of European
civilisation and with a much more developed proletariat than
that of England was in the
seventeenth, and France in the eighteenth century, and because
the bourgeois revolution in
Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following
proletarian revolution.
In short, the Communists everywhere support every
revolutionary movement against the existing
social and political order of things.
In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading
question in each, the property
question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.
Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of
the democratic parties of all
countries.
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They
openly declare that their ends can
be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social
conditions. Let the ruling classes
tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have
nothing to lose but their chains. They
have a world to win.
Working Men of All Countries, Unite!5

181. * The party then represented in Parliament by Ledru-Rollin, in
literature by Louis Blanc, in the daily
press by the Réforme. The name of Social-Democracy signifies,
with these its inventors, a section of
the Democratic or Republican Party more or less tinged with
socialism. [Engels, English Edition
1888]
Letter from Engels to Marx, 24 November 1847*
Paris, 23-24 November 1847
Dear Marx,
Not until this evening was it decided that I should be coming.
Saturday evening, then, in Ostend,
Hôtel de la Couronne, just opposite the railway station beside
the harbour, and Sunday morning
across the water. If you take the train that leaves between 4 and
5, you’ll arrive at about the
same time as I do. ...
Tuesday evening
Verte [PTO]
Give a little thought to the “Confession of Faith.” I think we
would do best to abandon the
catechetical form and call the thing “Communist Manifesto.”
Since a certain amount of history
has to be narrated in it, the form hitherto adopted is quite
unsuitable. I shall be bringing with me
the one from here, which I did [“Principles of Communism”]; it
is in simple narrative form, but
wretchedly worded, in a tearing hurry. I start off by asking:
What is communism? and then
straight on to the proletariat – the history of its origins, how it
differs from earlier workers,

182. development of the antithesis between the proletariat and the
bourgeoisie, crises, conclusions. In
between, all kinds of secondary matter and, finally, the
communists’ party policy, in so far as it
should be made public. The one here has not yet been submitted
in its entirety for endorsement
but, save for a few quite minor points, I think I can get it
through in such a form that at least there
is nothing in it which conflicts with our views. ...
* From MECW Volume 38, p. 146; Written: 24 November 1847;
First published: in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F.
Engels und K. Marx, 1913.
http://marx.org../../1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm
Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith*
This document is the draft programme discussed at the First
Congress of the Communist League in
London on June 2-9, 1847.
The Congress was a final stage in the reorganisation of the
League of the Just – an organisation of
German workers and craftsmen, which was founded in Paris in
1836-37 and soon acquired an
international character, having communities in Germany,
France, Switzerland, Britain and Sweden.
The activity of Marx and Engels directed towards the
ideological and organisational unity of the
socialists and advanced workers prompted the leaders of the
League (Karl Schapper, Joseph Moll,
Heinrich Bauer), who resided in London front November 1846,
to ask for their help in reorganising

183. the League and drafting its new program me. When Marx and
Engels were convinced that the leaders
of the League of the Just were ready to accept the principles of
scientific communism as its
programme they accepted the offer to join the League made to
them late in January 1847.
Engels’ active participation in the work of the Congress (Marx
was unable to go to London) affected
the course and the results of its proceedings. The League was
renamed the Communist League, the old
motto of the League of the Just “All men are brothers” was
replaced by a new, Marxist one: “Working
Men of All Countries, Unite! “ The draft programme and the
draft Rules of the League were approved
at the last sitting on June 9, 1847.
The full text of the “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith”
(Credo) became known only in 1968.
It was found by the Swiss scholar Bert Andréas together with
the draft Rules and the circular of the
First Congress to the members of the League in the archives of
Joachim Friedrich Martens, an active
member of the Communist League, which are kept in the State
and University Library in Hamburg.
This discovery made it possible to ascertain a number of
important points in the history of the
Communist League and the drafting of its programme
documents. It had been previously assumed that
the First Congress did no more than adopt a decision to draw up
a programme and that the draft itself
was made by the London Central Authority of the Communist
League (Joseph Moll, Karl Schapper
and Heinrich Bauer) after the Congress between June and
August 1847. The new documents show that
the draft was ready by June 9, 1847 and that its author was
Engels (the manuscript found in Martens’
archives, with the exception of some inserted words, the

184. concluding sentence and the signatures of the
president and the secretary of the Congress, was written in
Engels’ hand).
The document testifies to Engels’ great influence on the
discussion of the programme at the Congress
– the formulation of the answers to most of the questions is a
Marxist one. Besides, while drafting the
programme, Engels had to take into account that the members of
the League had not yet freed
themselves from the influence of utopian ideas and this was
reflected in the formulation of the first six
questions and answers. The form of a “revolutionary catechism”
was also commonly used in the
League of the Just and other organisations of workers and
craftsmen at the time. It may he assumed
that Engels intended to give greater precision to some of the
formulations of the programme document
in the course of further discussion and revision.
After the First Congress of the Communist League, the “Draft
of a Communist Confession of Faith”
was sent, together with the draft Rules, to the communities for
discussion, the results of which were to
be taken into account at the time of the final approval of the
programme and the Rules at the Second
Congress. When working on another, improved draft
programme, the Principles of Communism, in
late October 1847, Engels made direct use of the “Confession of
Faith”, as can be seen from the
coincidences of the texts, and also from references in the
Principles to the earlier document when
Engels had apparently decided to leave formulations of some of
the answers as they were.
* From MECW Volume 6, p. 92; written by Engels, June 9
1847; first published in Gründungsdokumente des Bundes

185. der Kommunisten, Hamburg, 1969, in English in Birth of the
Communist Manifesto, International Publishers, 1971.
37 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith
A Communist Confession of Faith
Question 1: Are you a Communist?
Answer: Yes.
Question 2: What is the aim of the Communists?
Answer: To organise society in such a way that every member
of it can develop
and use all his capabilities and powers in complete freedom and
without thereby
infringing the basic conditions of this society.
Question 3: How do you wish to achieve this aim?
Answer: By the elimination of private property and its
replacement by community
of property.
Question 4: On what do you base your community of property?
Answer: Firstly, on the mass of productive forces and means of
subsistence
resulting from the development of industry, agriculture, trade
and colonisation,
and on the possibility inherent in machinery, chemical and other
resources of their
infinite extension.
Secondly, on the fact that in the consciousness or feeling of
every individual there
exist certain irrefutable basic principles which, being the result
of the whole of

186. historical development, require no proof.
Question 5: What are such principles?
Answer: For example, every individual strives to be happy. The
happiness of the
individual is inseparable from the happiness of all, etc.
Question 6: How do you wish to prepare the way for your
community of property?
Answer: By enlightening and uniting the proletariat.
Question 7: What is the proletariat?
Answer: The proletariat is that class of society which lives
exclusively by its
labour and not on the profit from any kind of capital; that class
whose weal and
woe, whose life and death, therefore, depend on the alternation
of times of good
and bad business;. in a word, on the fluctuations of competition.
Question 8: Then there have not always been proletarians?
Answer: No. There have always been poor and working classes;
and those who
worked were almost always the poor. But there have not always
been proletarians,
just as competition has not always been free.
Question 9: How did the proletariat arise?
Answer: The proletariat came into being as a result of the
introduction of the
machines which have been invented since the middle of the last
century and the
most important of which are: the steam-engine, the spinning
machine and the
power loom. These machines, which were very expensive and
could therefore

187. only be purchased by rich people, supplanted the workers of the
time, because by
the use of machinery it was possible to produce commodities
more quickly and
cheaply than could the workers with their imperfect spinning
wheels and hand-
looms. The machines thus delivered industry entirely into the
hands of the big
capitalists and rendered the workers’ scanty property which
consisted mainly of
their tools, looms, etc., quite worthless, so that the capitalist
was left with
everything, the worker with nothing. In this way the factory
system was
38 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith
introduced. Once the capitalists saw how advantageous this was
for them, they
sought to extend it to more and more branches of labour. They
divided work more
and more between the workers so that workers who formerly
had made a whole
article now produced only a part of it. Labour simplified in this
way produced
goods more quickly and therefore more cheaply and only now
was it found in
almost every branch of labour that here also machines could be
used. As soon as
any branch of labour went over to factory production it ended
up, just as in the
case of spinning and weaving. in the hands of the big
capitalists, and the workers
were deprived of the last remnants of their independence. We

188. have gradually
arrived at the position where almost all branches of labour are
run on a factory
basis. This has increasingly brought about the ruin of the
previously existing
middle class, especially of the small master craftsmen,
completely transformed the
previous position of the workers, and two new classes which are
gradually
swallowing up all other classes have come into being, namely:
I. The, class of the big capitalists, who in all advanced countries
are in almost
exclusive possession of the means of subsistence and those
means (machines,
factories, workshops, etc.) by which these means of subsistence
are produced.
This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie.
II. The class of the completely propertyless, who are compelled
to sell their labour
to the first class, the bourgeois, simply to obtain from them in
return their means
of subsistence. Since the parties to this trading in labour are not
equal, but the
bourgeois have the advantage, the propertyless must submit to
the bad conditions
laid down by the bourgeois. This class, dependent on the
bourgeois, is called the
class of the proletarians or the proletariat.
Question 10: In what way does the proletarian differ from the
slave?
Answer: The slave is sold once and for all, the proletarian has
to sell himself by
the day and by the hour. The slave is the property of one master
and for that very
reason has a guaranteed subsistence, however wretched it may

189. be. The proletarian
is, so to speak, the slave of the entire bourgeois class, not of
one master, and
therefore has no guaranteed subsistence, since nobody buys his
labour if he does
not need it. The slave is accounted a thing and not a member of
civil society. The
proletarian is recognised as a person, as a member of civil
society. The slave may,
therefore, have a better subsistence than the proletarian but the
latter stands at a
higher stage of development. The slave frees himself by
becoming a proletarian,
abolishing from the totality of property relationships only the
relationship of
slavery. The proletarian can free himself only by abolishing
property in general.
Question 11: In what way does the proletarian differ from the
serf?
Answer: The serf has the use of a piece of land, that is, of an
instrument of
production, in return for handing over a greater or lesser portion
of the yield. The
proletarian works with instruments of production which belong
to someone else
who, in return for his labour, hands over to him a portion,
determined by
competition, of the products. In the case of the serf, the share of
the labourer is
determined by his own labour, that is, by himself. In the case of
the proletarian it
is determined by competition, therefore in the first place by the
bourgeois. The
serf has guaranteed subsistence, the proletarian has not. The
serf frees himself by

190. driving out his feudal lord and becoming a property owner
himself, thus entering
into competition and joining for the time being the possessing
class, the privileged
class. The proletarian frees himself by doing away with
property, competition, and
all class differences.
39 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith
Question 12: In what way does the proletarian differ from the
handicraftsman?
Answer: As opposed to the proletarian, the so-called
handicraftsman, who still
existed nearly everywhere during the last century and still exists
here and there, is
at most a temporary proletarian. His aim is to acquire capital
himself and so to
exploit other workers. He can often achieve this aim where the
craft guilds still
exist or where freedom to follow a trade has not yet led to the
organisation of
handwork on a factory basis and to intense competition. But as
soon as the factory
system is introduced into handwork and competition is in full
swing, this prospect
is eliminated and the handicraftsman becomes more and more a
proletarian. The
handicraftsman therefore frees himself either by becoming a
bourgeois or in
general passing over into the middle class, or, by becoming a
proletarian as a
result of competition (as now happens in most cases) and
joining the movement of

191. the proletariat – i. e., the more or less conscious communist
movement.
Question 13: Then you do not believe that community of
property has been possible at any time?
Answer: No. Communism has only arisen since machinery and
other inventions
made it possible to hold out the prospect of an all-sided
development, a happy
existence, for all members of society. Communism is the theory
of a liberation
which was not possible for the slaves, the serfs, or the
handicraftsmen, but only
for the proletarians and hence it belongs of necessity to the 19th
century and was
not possible in any earlier period.
Question 14: Let m go back to the sixth question. As you wish
to prepare for community of
property by the enlightening and uniting of the proletariat, then
you reject revolution?
Answer: We are convinced not only of the uselessness but even
of the
harmfulness of all conspiracies. We are also aware that
revolutions are not made
deliberately and arbitrarily but that everywhere and at all times
they are the
necessary consequence of circumstances which are not in any
way whatever
dependent either on the will or on the leadership of individual
parties or of whole
classes. But we also see that the development of the proletariat
in almost all
countries of the world is forcibly repressed by the possessing
classes and that thus

192. a revolution is being forcibly worked for by the opponents of
communism. If, in
the end, the oppressed proletariat is thus driven into a
revolution, then we will
defend the cause of the proletariat just as well by our deeds as
now by our words.
Question 15: Do you intend to replace the existing social order
by community of Property at one
stroke?
Answer: We have no such intention. The development of the
masses cannot he
ordered by decree. It is determined by the development of the
conditions in which
these masses live, and therefore proceeds gradually.
Question 16: How do you think the transition from the present
situation to community of
Property is to be effected?
Answer: The first, fundamental condition for the introduction of
community of
property is the political liberation of the proletariat through a
democratic
constitution.
Question 17: What will be your first measure once you have
established democracy?
Answer: Guaranteeing the subsistence of the proletariat.
Question 18: How will you do this?
40 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

193. Answer. I. By limiting private property in such a way that it
gradually prepares
the way for its transformation into social property, e. g., by
progressive taxation,
limitation of the right of inheritance in favour of the state, etc.,
etc.
II. By employing workers in national workshops and factories
and on national
estates.
III. By educating all children at the expense of the state.
Question 19: How will you arrange this kind of education
during the period of transition?
Answer: All children will be educated in state establishments
from the time when
they can do without the first maternal care.
Question 20: Will not the introduction of community of
property be accompanied by the
proclamation of the community of women?
Answer: By no means. We will only interfere in the personal
relationship between
men and women or with the family in general to the extent that
the maintenance of
the existing institution would disturb the new social order.
Besides, we are well
aware that the family relationship has been modified in the
course of history by
the property relationships and by periods of development, and
that consequently
the ending of private property will also have a most important
influence on it.
Question 21: Will nationalities continue to exist under

194. communism?
Answer: The nationalities of the peoples who join together
according to the
principle of community will be just as much compelled by this
union to merge
with one another and thereby supersede themselves as the
various differences
between estates and classes disappear through the superseding
of their basis –
private property.
Question 22. Do Communists reject existing religions?
Answer: All religions which have existed hitherto were
expressions of historical
stages of development of individual peoples or groups of
peoples. But
communism is that stage of historical development which makes
all existing
religions superfluous and supersedes them.
In the name and on the mandate of the Congress.
Secretary: Heide [Alias of Wilhelm Wolff in the League of the
Just]
President: Karl Schill [Alias of Karl Schapper in the League of
the Just]
London, June 9, 1847
The Principles of Communism*
In 1847 Engels wrote two draft programmes for the Communist
League in the form of a catechism,
one in June and the other in October. The latter, which is known

195. as Principles of Communism, was
first published in 1914. The earlier document “Draft of the
Communist Confession of Faith”, was only
found in 1968. It was first published in 1969 in Hamburg,
together with four other documents
pertaining to the first congress of the Communist League, in a
booklet entitled Gründungs Dokumente
des Bundes der Kommunisten (Juni bis September 1847)
[Founding Documents of the Communist
League].
At the June 1847 Congress of the League of the Just, which was
also the founding conference of the
Communist League, it was decided to issue a draft “confession
of faith” to be submitted for discussion
to the sections of the League. The document which has now
come to light is almost certainly this
draft. Comparison of the two documents shows that Principles
of Communism is a revised edition of
this earlier draft. In Principles of Communism, Engels left three
questions unanswered, in two cases
with the notation “unchanged” (bleibt); this clearly refers to the
answers provided in the earlier draft.
The new draft for the programme was worked out by Engels on
the instructions of the leading body of
the Paris circle of the Communist League. The instructions were
decided on after Engels’ sharp
criticism at the committee meeting, on October 22, 1847, of the
draft programme drawn up by the
“true socialist“ Moses Hess, which was then rejected.
Still considering Principles of Communism as a preliminary
draft, Engels expressed the view, in a
letter to Marx dated November 23-24 1847, that it would be best
to drop the old catechistic form and
draw up a programme in the form of a manifesto.
At the second congress of the Communist League (November
29-December 8, 1847) Marx and Engels

196. defended the fundamental scientific principles of communism
and were trusted with drafting a
programme in the form of a manifesto of the Communist Party.
In writing the manifesto the founders
of Marxism made use of the propositions enunciated in
Principles of Communism.
Engels uses the term Manufaktur, and its derivatives, which
have been translated “manufacture”,
“manufacturing”, etc., Engels used this word literally, to
indicate production by hand, not factory
production for which Engels uses “big industry”. Manufaktur
differs from handicraft (guild production
in mediaeval towns), in that the latter was carried out by
independent artisans. Manufacktur is carried
out by homeworkers working for merchant capitalists, or by
groups of craftspeople working together
in large workshops owned by capitalists. It is therefore a
transitional mode of production, between
guild (handicraft) and modern (capitalist) forms of production.
* Written: October-November 1847; Source: Selected Works,
Volume One, p. 81-97, Progress Publishers, Moscow,
1969; first published: 1914, by Eduard Bernstein in the German
Social Democratic Party’s Vorwärts!; translated: Paul
Sweezy; Transcribed: Zodiac, MEA 1993; marxists.org 1999;
proofed and corrected by Andy Blunden, February 2005.
Footnotes are from the Chinese Edition of Marx/Engels Selected
Works Peking, Foreign Languages Press, 1977, with
editorial additions by marxists.org.
42 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith
The Principles of Communism

197. – 1 –
What is Communism?
Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of
the proletariat.
– 2 –
What is the proletariat?
The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from
the sale of its labor and does not
draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe,
whose life and death, whose sole
existence depends on the demand for labor – hence, on the
changing state of business, on the
vagaries of unbridled competition. The proletariat, or the class
of proletarians, is, in a word, the
working class of the 19th century.6
– 3 –
Proletarians, then, have not always existed?
No. There have always been poor and working classes; and the
working class have mostly been
poor. But there have not always been workers and poor people
living under conditions as they are
today; in other words, there have not always been proletarians,
any more than there has always
been free unbridled competitions.
– 4 –
How did the proletariat originate?
The Proletariat originated in the industrial revolution, which
took place in England in the last half

198. of the last (18th) century, and which has since then been
repeated in all the civilized countries of
the world.
This industrial revolution was precipitated by the discovery of
the steam engine, various spinning
machines, the mechanical loom, and a whole series of other
mechanical devices. These machines,
which were very expensive and hence could be bought only by
big capitalists, altered the whole
mode of production and displaced the former workers, because
the machines turned out cheaper
and better commodities than the workers could produce with
their inefficient spinning wheels and
handlooms. The machines delivered industry wholly into the
hands of the big capitalists and
rendered entirely worthless the meagre property of the workers
(tools, looms, etc.). The result was
that the capitalists soon had everything in their hands and
nothing remained to the workers. This
marked the introduction of the factory system into the textile
industry.
Once the impulse to the introduction of machinery and the
factory system had been given, this
system spread quickly to all other branches of industry,
especially cloth- and book-printing,
pottery, and the metal industries.
Labor was more and more divided among the individual workers
so that the worker who
previously had done a complete piece of work now did only a
part of that piece. This division of
labor made it possible to produce things faster and cheaper. It
reduced the activity of the
individual worker to simple, endlessly repeated mechanical
motions which could be performed
not only as well but much better by a machine. In this way, all
these industries fell, one after

199. another, under the dominance of steam, machinery, and the
factory system, just as spinning and
weaving had already done.
But at the same time, they also fell into the hands of big
capitalists, and their workers were
deprived of whatever independence remained to them.
Gradually, not only genuine manufacture
but also handicrafts came within the province of the factory
system as big capitalists increasingly
43 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith
displaced the small master craftsmen by setting up huge
workshops, which saved many expenses
and permitted an elaborate division of labor.
This is how it has come about that in civilized countries at the
present time nearly all kinds of
labor are performed in factories – and, in nearly all branches of
work, handicrafts and
manufacture have been superseded. This process has, to an ever
greater degree, ruined the old
middle class, especially the small handicraftsmen; it has
entirely transformed the condition of the
workers; and two new classes have been created which are
gradually swallowing up all the others.
These are:
(i) The class of big capitalists, who, in all civilized countries,
are already in almost
exclusive possession of all the means of subsistence and of the
instruments
(machines, factories) and materials necessary for the production
of the means of
subsistence. This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie.

200. (ii) The class of the wholly propertyless, who are obliged to sell
their labor to the
bourgeoisie in order to get, in exchange, the means of
subsistence for their
support. This is called the class of proletarians, or the
proletariat.
– 5 –
Under what conditions does this sale of the
labor of the proletarians to the bourgeoisie take place?
Labor is a commodity, like any other, and its price is therefore
determined by exactly the same
laws that apply to other commodities. In a regime of big
industry or of free competition – as we
shall see, the two come to the same thing – the price of a
commodity is, on the average, always
equal to its cost of production. Hence, the price of labor is also
equal to the cost of production of
labor.
But, the costs of production of labor consist of precisely the
quantity of means of subsistence
necessary to enable the worker to continue working, and to
prevent the working class from dying
out. The worker will therefore get no more for his labor than is
necessary for this purpose; the
price of labor, or the wage, will, in other words, be the lowest,
the minimum, required for the
maintenance of life.
However, since business is sometimes better and sometimes
worse, it follows that the worker
sometimes gets more and sometimes gets less for his
commodities. But, again, just as the
industrialist, on the average of good times and bad, gets no
more and no less for his commodities
than what they cost, similarly on the average the worker gets no

201. more and no less than his
minimum.
This economic law of wages operates the more strictly the
greater the degree to which big
industry has taken possession of all branches of production.
– 6 –
What working classes were there before the industrial
revolution?
The working classes have always, according to the different
stages of development of society,
lived in different circumstances and had different relations to
the owning and ruling classes.
In antiquity, the workers were the slaves of the owners, just as
they still are in many backward
countries and even in the southern part of the United States.
In the Middle Ages, they were the serfs of the land-owning
nobility, as they still are in Hungary,
Poland, and Russia. In the Middle Ages, and indeed right up to
the industrial revolution, there
were also journeymen in the cities who worked in the service of
petty bourgeois masters.
44 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith
Gradually, as manufacture developed, these journeymen became
manufacturing workers who
were even then employed by larger capitalists.
– 7 –
In what way do proletarians differ from slaves?
The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell

202. himself daily and hourly.
The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an
existence, however miserable it may
be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proletarian,
property as it were of the entire
bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has
need of it, has no secure existence.
This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.
The slave is outside competition; the proletarian is in it and
experiences all its vagaries.
The slave counts as a thing, not as a member of society. Thus,
the slave can have a better
existence than the proletarian, while the proletarian belongs to a
higher stage of social
development and, himself, stands on a higher social level than
the slave.
The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private
property, he abolishes only the
relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the
proletarian can free himself only by
abolishing private property in general.
– 8 –
In what way do proletarians differ from serfs?
The serf possesses and uses an instrument of production, a piece
of land, in exchange for which
he gives up a part of his product or part of the services of his
labor.
The proletarian works with the instruments of production of
another, for the account of this other,
in exchange for a part of the product.
The serf gives up, the proletarian receives. The serf has an
assured existence, the proletarian has
not. The serf is outside competition, the proletarian is in it.
The serf liberates himself in one of three ways: either he runs

203. away to the city and there becomes
a handicraftsman; or, instead of products and services, he gives
money to his lord and thereby
becomes a free tenant; or he overthrows his feudal lord and
himself becomes a property owner. In
short, by one route or another, he gets into the owning class and
enters into competition. The
proletarian liberates himself by abolishing competition, private
property, and all class differences.
– 9 –
In what way do proletarians differ from handicraftsmen?
In contrast to the proletarian, the so-called handicraftsman, as
he still existed almost everywhere
in the past (eighteenth) century and still exists here and there at
present, is a proletarian at most
temporarily. His goal is to acquire capital himself wherewith to
exploit other workers. He can
often achieve this goal where guilds still exist or where freedom
from guild restrictions has not
yet led to the introduction of factory-style methods into the
crafts nor yet to fierce competition
But as soon as the factory system has been introduced into the
crafts and competition flourishes
fully, this perspective dwindles away and the handicraftsman
becomes more and more a
proletarian. The handicraftsman therefore frees himself by
becoming either bourgeois or entering
the middle class in general, or becoming a proletarian because
of competition (as is now more
often the case). In which case he can free himself by joining the
proletarian movement, i.e., the
more or less communist movement.7

204. 45 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith
– 10 –
In what way do proletarians differ from manufacturing
workers?
The manufacturing worker of the 16th to the 18th centuries still
had, with but few exception, an
instrument of production in his own possession – his loom, the
family spinning wheel, a little plot
of land which he cultivated in his spare time. The proletarian
has none of these things.
The manufacturing worker almost always lives in the
countryside and in a more or less
patriarchal relation to his landlord or employer; the proletarian
lives, for the most part, in the city
and his relation to his employer is purely a cash relation.
The manufacturing worker is torn out of his patriarchal relation
by big industry, loses whatever
property he still has, and in this way becomes a proletarian.
– 11 –
What were the immediate consequences of the industrial
revolution and of the division of society into bourgeoisie
and proletariat?
First, the lower and lower prices of industrial products brought
about by machine labor totally
destroyed, in all countries of the world, the old system of
manufacture or industry based upon
hand labor.
In this way, all semi-barbarian countries, which had hitherto
been more or less strangers to
historical development, and whose industry had been based on
manufacture, were violently

205. forced out of their isolation. They bought the cheaper
commodities of the English and allowed
their own manufacturing workers to be ruined. Countries which
had known no progress for
thousands of years – for example, India – were thoroughly
revolutionized, and even China is now
on the way to a revolution.
We have come to the point where a new machine invented in
England deprives millions of
Chinese workers of their livelihood within a year’s time.
In this way, big industry has brought all the people of the Earth
into contact with each other, has
merged all local markets into one world market, has spread
civilization and progress everywhere
and has thus ensured that whatever happens in civilized
countries will have repercussions in all
other countries.
It follows that if the workers in England or France now liberate
themselves, this must set off
revolution in all other countries – revolutions which, sooner or
later, must accomplish the
liberation of their respective working class.
Second, wherever big industries displaced manufacture, the
bourgeoisie developed in wealth and
power to the utmost and made itself the first class of the
country. The result was that wherever
this happened, the bourgeoisie took political power into its own
hands and displaced the hitherto
ruling classes, the aristocracy, the guildmasters, and their
representative, the absolute monarchy.
The bourgeoisie annihilated the power of the aristocracy, the
nobility, by abolishing the
entailment of estates – in other words, by making landed
property subject to purchase and sale,
and by doing away with the special privileges of the nobility. It
destroyed the power of the

206. guildmasters by abolishing guilds and handicraft privileges. In
their place, it put competition –
that is, a state of society in which everyone has the right to
enter into any branch of industry, the
only obstacle being a lack of the necessary capital.
The introduction of free competition is thus public declaration
that from now on the members of
society are unequal only to the extent that their capitals are
unequal, that capital is the decisive
power, and that therefore the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, have
become the first class in society.
46 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith
Free competition is necessary for the establishment of big
industry, because it is the only
condition of society in which big industry can make its way.
Having destroyed the social power of the nobility and the
guildmasters, the bourgeois also
destroyed their political power. Having raised itself to the
actual position of first class in society,
it proclaims itself to be also the dominant political class. This it
does through the introduction of
the representative system which rests on bourgeois equality
before the law and the recognition of
free competition, and in European countries takes the form of
constitutional monarchy. In these
constitutional monarchies, only those who possess a certain
capital are voters – that is to say, only
members of the bourgeoisie. These bourgeois voters choose the
deputies, and these bourgeois
deputies, by using their right to refuse to vote taxes, choose a
bourgeois government.
Third, everywhere the proletariat develops in step with the

207. bourgeoisie. In proportion, as the
bourgeoisie grows in wealth, the proletariat grows in numbers.
For, since the proletarians can be
employed only by capital, and since capital extends only
through employing labor, it follows that
the growth of the proletariat proceeds at precisely the same pace
as the growth of capital.
Simultaneously, this process draws members of the bourgeoisie
and proletarians together into the
great cities where industry can be carried on most profitably,
and by thus throwing great masses
in one spot it gives to the proletarians a consciousness of their
own strength.
Moreover, the further this process advances, the more new
labor-saving machines are invented,
the greater is the pressure exercised by big industry on wages,
which, as we have seen, sink to
their minimum and therewith render the condition of the
proletariat increasingly unbearable. The
growing dissatisfaction of the proletariat thus joins with its
rising power to prepare a proletarian
social revolution.
– 12 –
What were the further consequences of the industrial
revolution?
Big industry created in the steam engine, and other machines,
the means of endlessly expanding
industrial production, speeding it up, and cutting its costs. With
production thus facilitated, the
free competition, which is necessarily bound up with big
industry, assumed the most extreme
forms; a multitude of capitalists invaded industry, and, in a
short while, more was produced than
was needed.

208. As a consequence, finished commodities could not be sold, and
a so-called commercial crisis
broke out. Factories had to be closed, their owners went
bankrupt, and the workers were without
bread. Deepest misery reigned everywhere.
After a time, the superfluous products were sold, the factories
began to operate again, wages rose,
and gradually business got better than ever.
But it was not long before too many commodities were again
produced and a new crisis broke
out, only to follow the same course as its predecessor.
Ever since the beginning of this (19th) century, the condition of
industry has constantly fluctuated
between periods of prosperity and periods of crisis; nearly every
five to seven years, a fresh crisis
has intervened, always with the greatest hardship for workers,
and always accompanied by
general revolutionary stirrings and the direct peril to the whole
existing order of things.
– 13 –
What follows from these periodic commercial crises?
First:
That, though big industry in its earliest stage created free
competition, it has now
outgrown free competition;
47 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith
that, for big industry, competition and generally the
individualistic organization of
production have become a fetter which it must and will shatter;
that, so long as big industry remains on its present footing, it

209. can be maintained
only at the cost of general chaos every seven years, each time
threatening the
whole of civilization and not only plunging the proletarians into
misery but also
ruining large sections of the bourgeoisie;
hence, either that big industry must itself be given up, which is
an absolute
impossibility, or that it makes unavoidably necessary an entirely
new organization
of society in which production is no longer directed by mutually
competing
individual industrialists but rather by the whole society
operating according to a
definite plan and taking account of the needs of all.
Second: That big industry, and the limitless expansion of
production which it makes possible,
bring within the range of feasibility a social order in which so
much is produced that every
member of society will be in a position to exercise and develop
all his powers and faculties in
complete freedom.
It thus appears that the very qualities of big industry which, in
our present-day society, produce
misery and crises are those which, in a different form of
society, will abolish this misery and
these catastrophic depressions.
We see with the greatest clarity:
(i) That all these evils are from now on to be ascribed solely to
a social order
which no longer corresponds to the requirements of the real
situation; and
(ii) That it is possible, through a new social order, to do away
with these evils

210. altogether.
– 14 –
What will this new social order have to be like?
Above all, it will have to take the control of industry and of all
branches of production out of the
hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a
system in which all these
branches of production are operated by society as a whole – that
is, for the common account,
according to a common plan, and with the participation of all
members of society.
It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with
association.
Moreover, since the management of industry by individuals
necessarily implies private property,
and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form
in which the control of industry
by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that
private property cannot be separated
from competition and the individual management of industry.
Private property must, therefore, be
abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of
all instruments of production and
the distribution of all products according to common agreement
– in a word, what is called the
communal ownership of goods.
In fact, the abolition of private property is, doubtless, the
shortest and most significant way to
characterize the revolution in the whole social order which has
been made necessary by the
development of industry – and for this reason it is rightly
advanced by communists as their main
demand.

211. 48 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith
– 15 –
Was not the abolition of private property possible at an
earlier time?
No. Every change in the social order, every revolution in
property relations, is the necessary
consequence of the creation of new forces of production which
no longer fit into the old property
relations.
Private property has not always existed.
When, towards the end of the Middle Ages, there arose a new
mode of production which could
not be carried on under the then existing feudal and guild forms
of property, this manufacture,
which had outgrown the old property relations, created a new
property form, private property.
And for manufacture and the earliest stage of development of
big industry, private property was
the only possible property form; the social order based on it was
the only possible social order.
So long as it is not possible to produce so much that there is
enough for all, with more left over
for expanding the social capital and extending the forces of
production – so long as this is not
possible, there must always be a ruling class directing the use of
society’s productive forces, and
a poor, oppressed class. How these classes are constituted
depends on the stage of development.
The agrarian Middle Ages give us the baron and the serf; the
cities of the later Middle Ages show
us the guildmaster and the journeyman and the day laborer; the
17th century has its

212. manufacturing workers; the 19th has big factory owners and
proletarians.
It is clear that, up to now, the forces of production have never
been developed to the point where
enough could be developed for all, and that private property has
become a fetter and a barrier in
relation to the further development of the forces of production.
Now, however, the development of big industry has ushered in a
new period. Capital and the
forces of production have been expanded to an unprecedented
extent, and the means are at hand
to multiply them without limit in the near future. Moreover, the
forces of production have been
concentrated in the hands of a few bourgeois, while the great
mass of the people are more and
more falling into the proletariat, their situation becoming more
wretched and intolerable in
proportion to the increase of wealth of the bourgeoisie. And
finally, these mighty and easily
extended forces of production have so far outgrown private
property and the bourgeoisie, that
they threaten at any moment to unleash the most violent
disturbances of the social order. Now,
under these conditions, the abolition of private property has
become not only possible but
absolutely necessary.
– 16 –
Will the peaceful abolition of private property be possible?
It would be desirable if this could happen, and the communists
would certainly be the last to
oppose it. Communists know only too well that all conspiracies
are not only useless, but even
harmful. They know all too well that revolutions are not made
intentionally and arbitrarily, but

213. that, everywhere and always, they have been the necessary
consequence of conditions which were
wholly independent of the will and direction of individual
parties and entire classes.
But they also see that the development of the proletariat in
nearly all civilized countries has been
violently suppressed, and that in this way the opponents of
communism have been working
toward a revolution with all their strength. If the oppressed
proletariat is finally driven to
revolution, then we communists will defend the interests of the
proletarians with deeds as we now
defend them with words.
49 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith
– 17 –
Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at
one stroke?
No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke
be multiplied to the extent
necessary for the creation of a communal society.
In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform
existing society gradually and will be
able to abolish private property only when the means of
production are available in sufficient
quantity.
– 18 –
What will be the course of this revolution?
Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and
through this, the direct or indirect

214. dominance of the proletariat. Direct in England, where the
proletarians are already a majority of
the people. Indirect in France and Germany, where the majority
of the people consists not only of
proletarians, but also of small peasants and petty bourgeois who
are in the process of falling into
the proletariat, who are more and more dependent in all their
political interests on the proletariat,
and who must, therefore, soon adapt to the demands of the
proletariat. Perhaps this will cost a
second struggle, but the outcome can only be the victory of the
proletariat.
Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it
were not immediately used as a
means for putting through measures directed against private
property and ensuring the livelihood
of the proletariat. The main measures, emerging as the
necessary result of existing relations, are
the following:
(i) Limitation of private property through progressive taxation,
heavy inheritance
taxes, abolition of inheritance through collateral lines (brothers,
nephews, etc.)
forced loans, etc.
(ii) Gradual expropriation of landowners, industrialists, railroad
magnates and
shipowners, partly through competition by state industry, partly
directly through
compensation in the form of bonds.
(iii) Confiscation of the possessions of all emigrants and rebels
against the
majority of the people.
(iv) Organization of labor or employment of proletarians on
publicly owned land,
in factories and workshops, with competition among the

215. workers being abolished
and with the factory owners, in so far as they still exist, being
obliged to pay the
same high wages as those paid by the state.
(v) An equal obligation on all members of society to work until
such time as
private property has been completely abolished. Formation of
industrial armies,
especially for agriculture.
(vi) Centralization of money and credit in the hands of the state
through a national
bank with state capital, and the suppression of all private banks
and bankers.
(vii) Increase in the number of national factories, workshops,
railroads, ships;
bringing new lands into cultivation and improvement of land
already under
cultivation – all in proportion to the growth of the capital and
labor force at the
disposal of the nation.
(viii) Education of all children, from the moment they can leave
their mother’s
care, in national establishments at national cost. Education and
production
together.
50 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith
(ix) Construction, on public lands, of great palaces as communal
dwellings for
associated groups of citizens engaged in both industry and
agriculture and
combining in their way of life the advantages of urban and rural
conditions while

216. avoiding the one-sidedness and drawbacks of each.
(x) Destruction of all unhealthy and jerry-built dwellings in
urban districts.
(xi) Equal inheritance rights for children born in and out of
wedlock.
(xii) Concentration of all means of transportation in the hands
of the nation.
It is impossible, of course, to carry out all these measures at
once. But one will always bring
others in its wake. Once the first radical attack on private
property has been launched, the
proletariat will find itself forced to go ever further, to
concentrate increasingly in the hands of the
state all capital, all agriculture, all transport, all trade. All the
foregoing measures are directed to
this end; and they will become practicable and feasible, capable
of producing their centralizing
effects to precisely the degree that the proletariat, through its
labor, multiplies the country’s
productive forces.
Finally, when all capital, all production, all exchange have been
brought together in the hands of
the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord,
money will become superfluous, and
production will so expand and man so change that society will
be able to slough off whatever of
its old economic habits may remain.
– 19 –
Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one
country alone?
No. By creating the world market, big industry has already
brought all the peoples of the Earth,
and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation

217. with one another that none is
independent of what happens to the others.
Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the
civilized countries to such an extent
that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the
decisive classes, and the struggle
between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the
communist revolution will not
merely be a national phenomenon but must take place
simultaneously in all civilized countries –
that is to say, at least in England, America, France, and
Germany.
It will develop in each of the these countries more or less
rapidly, according as one country or the
other has a more developed industry, greater wealth, a more
significant mass of productive forces.
Hence, it will go slowest and will meet most obstacles in
Germany, most rapidly and with the
fewest difficulties in England. It will have a powerful impact on
the other countries of the world,
and will radically alter the course of development which they
have followed up to now, while
greatly stepping up its pace.
It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a
universal range.
– 20 –
What will be the consequences of the
ultimate disappearance of private property?
Society will take all forces of production and means of
commerce, as well as the exchange and
distribution of products, out of the hands of private capitalists
and will manage them in
accordance with a plan based on the availability of resources
and the needs of the whole society.

218. In this way, most important of all, the evil consequences which
are now associated with the
conduct of big industry will be abolished.
There will be no more crises; the expanded production, which
for the present order of society is
overproduction and hence a prevailing cause of misery, will
then be insufficient and in need of
51 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith
being expanded much further. Instead of generating misery,
overproduction will reach beyond the
elementary requirements of society to assure the satisfaction of
the needs of all; it will create new
needs and, at the same time, the means of satisfying them. It
will become the condition of, and the
stimulus to, new progress, which will no longer throw the whole
social order into confusion, as
progress has always done in the past. Big industry, freed from
the pressure of private property,
will undergo such an expansion that what we now see will seem
as petty in comparison as
manufacture seems when put beside the big industry of our own
day. This development of
industry will make available to society a sufficient mass of
products to satisfy the needs of
everyone.
The same will be true of agriculture, which also suffers from
the pressure of private property and
is held back by the division of privately owned land into small
parcels. Here, existing
improvements and scientific procedures will be put into
practice, with a resulting leap forward
which will assure to society all the products it needs.

219. In this way, such an abundance of goods will be able to satisfy
the needs of all its members.
The division of society into different, mutually hostile classes
will then become unnecessary.
Indeed, it will be not only unnecessary but intolerable in the
new social order. The existence of
classes originated in the division of labor, and the division of
labor, as it has been known up to
the present, will completely disappear. For mechanical and
chemical processes are not enough to
bring industrial and agricultural production up to the level we
have described; the capacities of
the men who make use of these processes must undergo a
corresponding development.
Just as the peasants and manufacturing workers of the last
century changed their whole way of
life and became quite different people when they were drawn
into big industry, in the same way,
communal control over production by society as a whole, and
the resulting new development, will
both require an entirely different kind of human material.
People will no longer be, as they are today, subordinated to a
single branch of production, bound
to it, exploited by it; they will no longer develop one of their
faculties at the expense of all others;
they will no longer know only one branch, or one branch of a
single branch, of production as a
whole. Even industry as it is today is finding such people less
and less useful.
Industry controlled by society as a whole, and operated
according to a plan, presupposes well-
rounded human beings, their faculties developed in balanced
fashion, able to see the system of
production in its entirety.
The form of the division of labor which makes one a peasant,
another a cobbler, a third a factory

220. worker, a fourth a stock-market operator, has already been
undermined by machinery and will
completely disappear. Education will enable young people
quickly to familiarize themselves with
the whole system of production and to pass from one branch of
production to another in response
to the needs of society or their own inclinations. It will,
therefore, free them from the one-sided
character which the present-day division of labor impresses
upon every individual. Communist
society will, in this way, make it possible for its members to put
their comprehensively developed
faculties to full use. But, when this happens, classes will
necessarily disappear. It follows that
society organized on a communist basis is incompatible with the
existence of classes on the one
hand, and that the very building of such a society provides the
means of abolishing class
differences on the other.
A corollary of this is that the difference between city and
country is destined to disappear. The
management of agriculture and industry by the same people
rather than by two different classes
of people is, if only for purely material reasons, a necessary
condition of communist association.
The dispersal of the agricultural population on the land,
alongside the crowding of the industrial
population into the great cities, is a condition which
corresponds to an undeveloped state of both
agriculture and industry and can already be felt as an obstacle to
further development.
52 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

221. The general co-operation of all members of society for the
purpose of planned exploitation of the
forces of production, the expansion of production to the point
where it will satisfy the needs of
all, the abolition of a situation in which the needs of some are
satisfied at the expense of the needs
of others, the complete liquidation of classes and their conflicts,
the rounded development of the
capacities of all members of society through the elimination of
the present division of labor,
through industrial education, through engaging in varying
activities, through the participation by
all in the enjoyments produced by all, through the combination
of city and country – these are the
main consequences of the abolition of private property.
– 21 –
What will be the influence of communist society on the
family?
It will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely
private matter which concerns only
the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to
intervene. It can do this since it
does away with private property and educates children on a
communal basis, and in this way
removes the two bases of traditional marriage – the dependence
rooted in private property, of the
women on the man, and of the children on the parents.
And here is the answer to the outcry of the highly moral
philistines against the “community of
women”. Community of women is a condition which belongs
entirely to bourgeois society and
which today finds its complete expression in prostitution. But
prostitution is based on private
property and falls with it. Thus, communist society, instead of

222. introducing community of women,
in fact abolishes it.
– 22 –
What will be the attitude of communism to existing
nationalities?
The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in
accordance with the principle of
community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a
result of this association and thereby
to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class
distinctions must disappear through the
abolition of their basis, private property.8
– 23 –
What will be its attitude to existing religions?
All religions so far have been the expression of historical stages
of development of individual
peoples or groups of peoples. But communism is the stage of
historical development which
makes all existing religions superfluous and brings about their
disappearance.9
– 24 –
How do communists differ from socialists?
The so-called socialists are divided into three categories.
[ Reactionary Socialists: ]
The first category consists of adherents of a feudal and
patriarchal society which has already been
destroyed, and is still daily being destroyed, by big industry and
world trade and their creation,
bourgeois society. This category concludes, from the evils of

223. existing society, that feudal and
patriarchal society must be restored because it was free of such
evils. In one way or another, all
their proposals are directed to this end.
53 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith
This category of reactionary socialists, for all their seeming
partisanship and their scalding tears
for the misery of the proletariat, is nevertheless energetically
opposed by the communists for the
following reasons:
(i) It strives for something which is entirely impossible.
(ii) It seeks to establish the rule of the aristocracy, the
guildmasters, the small
producers, and their retinue of absolute or feudal monarchs,
officials, soldiers, and
priests – a society which was, to be sure, free of the evils of
present-day society
but which brought it at least as many evils without even
offering to the oppressed
workers the prospect of liberation through a communist
revolution.
(iii) As soon as the proletariat becomes revolutionary and
communist, these
reactionary socialists show their true colors by immediately
making common
cause with the bourgeoisie against the proletarians.
[ Bourgeois Socialists: ]
The second category consists of adherents of present-day
society who have been frightened for its
future by the evils to which it necessarily gives rise. What they

224. want, therefore, is to maintain this
society while getting rid of the evils which are an inherent part
of it.
To this end, some propose mere welfare measures – while others
come forward with grandiose
systems of reform which, under the pretense of re-organizing
society, are in fact intended to
preserve the foundations, and hence the life, of existing society.
Communists must unremittingly struggle against these
bourgeois socialists because they work for
the enemies of communists and protect the society which
communists aim to overthrow.
[ Democratic Socialists: ]
Finally, the third category consists of democratic socialists who
favor some of the same measures
the communists advocate, as described in Question 18, not as
part of the transition to
communism, however, but as measures which they believe will
be sufficient to abolish the misery
and evils of present-day society.
These democratic socialists are either proletarians who are not
yet sufficiently clear about the
conditions of the liberation of their class, or they are
representatives of the petty bourgeoisie, a
class which, prior to the achievement of democracy and the
socialist measures to which it gives
rise, has many interests in common with the proletariat.
It follows that, in moments of action, the communists will have
to come to an understanding with
these democratic socialists, and in general to follow as far as
possible a common policy with them
– provided that these socialists do not enter into the service of
the ruling bourgeoisie and attack
the communists.
It is clear that this form of co-operation in action does not

225. exclude the discussion of differences.
– 25 –
What is the attitude of the communists to the
other political parties of our time?
This attitude is different in the different countries.
In England, France, and Belgium, where the bourgeoisie rules,
the communists still have a
common interest with the various democratic parties, an interest
which is all the greater the more
closely the socialistic measures they champion approach the
aims of the communists – that is, the
more clearly and definitely they represent the interests of the
proletariat and the more they depend
on the proletariat for support. In England, for example, the
working-class Chartists10 are infinitely
closer to the communists than the democratic petty bourgeoisie
or the so-called Radicals.
54 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith
In America, where a democratic constitution has already been
established, the communists must
make the common cause with the party which will turn this
constitution against the bourgeoisie
and use it in the interests of the proletariat – that is, with the
agrarian National Reformers.11
In Switzerland, the Radicals, though a very mixed party, are the
only group with which the
communists can co-operate, and, among these Radicals, the
Vaudois and Genevese are the most
advanced.
In Germany, finally, the decisive struggle now on the order of

226. the day is that between the
bourgeoisie and the absolute monarchy. Since the communists
cannot enter upon the decisive
struggle between themselves and the bourgeoisie until the
bourgeoisie is in power, it follows that
it is in the interest of the communists to help the bourgeoisie to
power as soon as possible in order
the sooner to be able to overthrow it. Against the governments,
therefore, the communists must
continually support the radical liberal party, taking care to
avoid the self-deceptions of the
bourgeoisie and not fall for the enticing promises of benefits
which a victory for the bourgeoisie
would allegedly bring to the proletariat. The sole advantages
which the proletariat would derive
from a bourgeois victory would consist
(i) in various concessions which would facilitate the unification
of the proletariat
into a closely knit, battle-worthy, and organized class; and
(ii) in the certainly that, on the very day the absolute
monarchies fall, the struggle
between bourgeoisie and proletariat will start. From that day on,
the policy of the
communists will be the same as it now is in the countries where
the bourgeoisie is
already in power.
Demands of the Communist Party in Germany
“Demands of the Communist Party in Germany” were written by
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in
Paris between March 21 (when Engels arrived in Paris from

227. Brussels) and March 24, 1848. This
document was discussed by members of the Central Authority,
who approved and signed it as the.
political programme of the Communist League in the revolution
that broke out in Germany. In March
it was printed as a leaflet, for distribution among revolutionary
German emigrant workers who were
about to return home. Austrian and German diplomats in Paris
informed their respective governments
about this as early as March 27, 28 and 29. (The Austrian
Ambassador enclosed in his letter a copy of
the leaflet which he dated “March 25”.) The leaflet soon
reached members of the Communist League
in other countries, in particular, German emigrant workers in
London.
Early in April, the “Demands of the Communist Party in
Germany” were published in such German
democratic papers as Berliner Zeitungs-Halle (special
supplement to No. 82, April 5, 1848),
Düsseldorfer Zeitung (No. 96, April 5, 1848), Mannheimer
Abendzeitung (No. 96, April 6, 1848),
Trier’sche Zeitung (No. 97, April 6, 1848, supplement),
Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (No. 100, April
9, 1848, supplement), and Zeitung für das deutsche Volk (No. 2
1, April 9, 1848).
Marx and Engels, who left for Germany round about April 6 and
some time later settled in Cologne,
did their best along with their followers to popularise this
programme document during the revolution.
In 1848 and 1849 it was repeatedly published in the periodical
press and in leaflet form. Not later than
September 10, 1848, the “Demands” were printed in Cologne as
a leaflet for circulation by the
Cologne Workers’ Association both in the town itself and in a
number of districts of Rhenish Prussia.
In addition to minor stylistic changes, point 10 in the text of the

228. leaflet was worded differently from
that published in March-April 1848. At the Second Democratic
Congress held in Berlin in October
1848, Friedrich Beust, delegate from the Cologne Workers’
Association, spoke, on behalf of the social
question commission, in favour of adopting a programme of
action closely following the “Demands”.
In November and December 1848, various points of the
“Demands” were discussed at meetings of the
Cologne Workers’ Association. Many editions of the
“Demands” published during the revolution and
after its defeat have survived to this day in their original form,
some of them as copies kept in the
police archives.
At the end of 1848 or the beginning of 1849 an abridged version
of the “Demands” was published in
pamphlet form by Weller Publishers in Leipzig. The slogan at
the beginning of the document, the
second paragraph of point 9 and the last sentence of point 10
were omitted, and the words “The
Committee” were not included among the signatories. In 1853,
an abridged version of the “Demands”
was printed, together with other documents of the Communist
League, in the first part of the book Die
Communisten-Verschworungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts
published in Berlin for purposes of
information by Wermuth and Stieber, two police officials, who
staged a trial against the Communists
in Cologne in 1852. Later Engels reproduced the main points of
the “Demands” in his essay On the
History of the Communist League, published in November 1885
in the newspaper Sozialdemokrat, and
as an introduction to the pamphlet: K. Marx, Enthüllungen über
den Kommunisten Prozess zu Köln,
Hottingen-Zürich, 1885.
English translations of the “Demands of the Communist Party in

229. Germany” appeared in the
collections: The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels with an introduction and
explanatory notes by D. Ryazanoff, Martin Lawrence, London
(1930); K. Marx, Selected Works, Vol.
II, ed. V. Adoratsky, Moscow-Leningrad, Co-operative
Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the
USSR (1936); ibid., New York (1 936); Birth of the Communist
Manifesto, edited and annotated, with
an Introduction by D. J. Struik, International Publishers, New
York, 197 1, and in other publications.
The text is from From MECW Volume 7, p. 3.
56 Demands of the Communist Party in Germany
Demands of the Communist Party in Germany
“Workers of all countries, unite!”
1. The whole of Germany shall be declared a single and
indivisible republic.
2. Every German, having reached the age of 21, shall have the
right to vote and to be elected,
provided he has not been convicted of a criminal offence.
3. Representatives of the people shall receive payment so that
workers, too, shall be able to
become members of the German parliament.
4. Universal arming of the people. In future the armies shall be
simultaneously labour armies, so
that the troops shall not, as formerly, merely consume, but shall
produce more than is necessary

230. for their upkeep.
This will moreover be conducive to the organisation of labour.
5. Legal services shall be free of charge.
6. All feudal obligations, dues, corvées, tithes etc., which have
hitherto weighed upon the rural
population, shall be abolished without compensation.
7. Princely and other feudal estates, together with mines, pits,
and so forth, shall become the
property of the state. The estates shall be cultivated on a large
scale and with the most up-to-date
scientific devices in the interests of the whole of society.
8. Mortgages on peasant lands shall be declared the property of
the state. Interest on such
mortgages shall be paid by the peasants to the state.
9. In localities where the tenant system is developed, the land
rent or the quit-rent shall be paid to
the state as a tax.
The measures specified in Nos. 6, 7, 8 and 9 are to be adopted
in order to reduce the communal
and other burdens hitherto imposed upon the peasants and small
tenant farmers without curtailing
the means available for defraying state expenses and without
imperilling production.
The landowner in the strict sense, who is neither a peasant nor a
tenant farmer, has no share in
production. Consumption on his part is, therefore, nothing but
abuse.
10. A state bank, whose paper issues are legal tender, shall
replace all private banks.
This measure will make it possible to regulate the credit system

231. in the interest of the people as a
whole, and will thus undermine the dominion of the big
financial magnates. Further, by gradually
substituting paper money for gold and silver coin, the universal
means of exchange (that
indispensable prerequisite of bourgeois trade and commerce)
will be cheapened, and gold and
silver will be set free for use in foreign trade. Finally, this
measure is necessary in order to bind
the interests of the conservative bourgeoisie to the Government.
11. All the means of transport, railways, canals, steamships,
roads, the posts etc. shall be taken
over by the state. They shall become the property of the state
and shall be placed free at the
disposal of the impecunious classes.
12. All civil servants shall receive the same salary, the only
exception being that civil servants
who have a family to support and who therefore have greater
requirements, shall receive a higher
salary.
13. Complete separation of Church and State. The clergy of
every denomination shall be paid
only by the voluntary contributions of their congregations.
14. The right of inheritance to be curtailed.
57 Demands of the Communist Party in Germany
15. The introduction of steeply graduated taxes, and the
abolition of taxes on articles of
consumption.

232. 16. Inauguration of national workshops. The state guarantees a
livelihood to all workers and
provides for those who are incapacitated for work.
17. Universal and free education of the people.
It is to the interest of the German proletariat, the petty
bourgeoisie and the small peasants to
support these demands with all possible energy. Only by the
realisation of these demands will the
millions in Germany, who have hitherto been exploited by a
handful of persons and whom the
exploiters would like to keep in further subjection, win the
rights and attain to that power to
which they are entitled as the producers of all wealth.
The Committee
Karl Marx, Karl Schapper, H. Bauer, F. Engels, J. Moll, W.
Wolff
The Paris Commune.
Address to the International Workingmen’s Association, May
1871
The “Paris Commune” was composed by Karl Marx as an
address to the General Council of the
International, and included in a book, “The Civil War in
France,” with the aim of distributing to
workers of all countries a clear understanding of the character
and world-wide significance of the
heroic struggle of the Communards and their historical
experience to learn from. The book was widely
circulated by 1872 it was translated into several languages and
published throughout Europe and the

233. United States.
The first address was delivered on July 23rd, 1870, five days
after the beginning of the Franco-
Prussian War. The second address, delivered on September 9,
1870, gave a historical overview of the
events a week after the army of Bonaparte was defeated. The
third address, delivered on May 30,
1871, two days after the defeat of the Paris Commune – detailed
the significance and the underlining
causes of the first workers government ever created.
The Civil War in France was originally published by Marx as
only the third address, only the first
half of which is reproduced here. In 1891, on the 20th
anniversary of the Paris Commune, Engels
put together a new collection of the work. Engels decided to
include the first two addresses that
Marx made to the International.
The Address is included here because it can be regarded as an
amendment to the Manifesto,
clarifying a number of issues relating to the state based on the
experience of the Commune.
On the dawn of March 18, Paris arose to the thunder-burst of
“Vive la Commune!” What is the
Commune, that sphinx so tantalizing to the bourgeois mind?
“The proletarians of Paris,” said the Central Committee in its
manifesto of March 18, “amidst the
failures and treasons of the ruling classes, have understood that
the hour has struck for them to
save the situation by taking into their own hands the direction
of public affairs.... They have
understood that it is their imperious duty, and their absolute
right, to render themselves masters of
their own destinies, by seizing upon the governmental power.”
But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made
state machinery, and wield

234. it for its own purposes.
The centralized state power, with its ubiquitous organs of
standing army, police, bureaucracy,
clergy, and judicature – organs wrought after the plan of a
systematic and hierarchic division of
labor – originates from the days of absolute monarchy, serving
nascent bourgeois society as a
mighty weapon in its struggle against feudalism. Still, its
development remained clogged by all
manner of medieval rubbish, seignorial rights, local privileges,
municipal and guild monopolies,
and provincial constitutions. The gigantic broom of the French
Revolution of the 18th century
swept away all these relics of bygone times, thus clearing
simultaneously the social soil of its last
hindrances to the superstructure of the modern state edifice
raised under the First Empire, itself
the offspring of the coalition wars of old semi-feudal Europe
against modern France.
During the subsequent regimes, the government, placed under
parliamentary control – that is,
under the direct control of the propertied classes – became not
only a hotbed of huge national
debts and crushing taxes; with its irresistible allurements of
place, pelf, and patronage, it became
not only the bone of contention between the rival factions and
adventurers of the ruling classes;
but its political character changed simultaneously with the
economic changes of society. At the
same pace at which the progress of modern industry developed,
widened, intensified the class
antagonism between capital and labor, the state power assumed
more and more the character of
the national power of capital over labor, of a public force
organized for social enslavement, of an
engine of class despotism.

235. 59 Third Address to the International Working Men’s
Association, May 1871
After every revolution marking a progressive phase in the class
struggle, the purely repressive
character of the state power stands out in bolder and bolder
relief. The Revolution of 1830,
resulting in the transfer of government from the landlords to the
capitalists, transferred it from the
more remote to the more direct antagonists of the working men.
The bourgeois republicans, who,
in the name of the February Revolution, took the state power,
used it for the June [1848]
massacres, in order to convince the working class that “social”
republic means the republic
entrusting their social subjection, and in order to convince the
royalist bulk of the bourgeois and
landlord class that they might safely leave the cares and
emoluments of government to the
bourgeois “republicans.”
However, after their one heroic exploit of June, the bourgeois
republicans had, from the front, to
fall back to the rear of the “Party of Order” – a combination
formed by all the rival fractions and
factions of the appropriating classes. The proper form of their
joint-stock government was the
parliamentary republic, with Louis Bonaparte for its president.
Theirs was a regime of avowed
class terrorism and deliberate insult towards the “vile
multitude.”
If the parliamentary republic, as M. Thiers said, “divided them
[the different fractions of the
ruling class] least,” it opened an abyss between that class and

236. the whole body of society outside
their spare ranks. The restraints by which their own divisions
had under former regimes still
checked the state power, were removed by their union; and in
view of the threatening upheaval of
the proletariat, they now used that state power mercilessly and
ostentatiously as the national war
engine of capital against labor.
In their uninterrupted crusade against the producing masses,
they were, however, bound not only
to invest the executive with continually increased powers of
repression, but at the same time to
divest their own parliamentary stronghold – the National
Assembly – one by one, of all its own
means of defence against the Executive. The Executive, in the
person of Louis Bonaparte, turned
them out. The natural offspring of the “Party of Order” republic
was the Second Empire.
The empire, with the coup d’état for its birth certificate,
universal suffrage for its sanction, and
the sword for its sceptre, professed to rest upon the peasantry,
the large mass of producers not
directly involved in the struggle of capital and labor. It
professed to save the working class by
breaking down parliamentarism, and, with it, the undisguised
subserviency of government to the
propertied classes. It professed to save the propertied classes by
upholding their economic
supremacy over the working class; and, finally, it professed to
unite all classes by reviving for all
the chimera of national glory.
In reality, it was the only form of government possible at a time
when the bourgeoisie had already
lost, and the working class had not yet acquired, the faculty of
ruling the nation. It was acclaimed
throughout the world as the savior of society. Under its sway,

237. bourgeois society, freed from
political cares, attained a development unexpected even by
itself. Its industry and commerce
expanded to colossal dimensions; financial swindling celebrated
cosmopolitan orgies; the misery
of the masses was set off by a shameless display of gorgeous,
meretricious and debased luxury.
The state power, apparently soaring high above society and the
very hotbed of all its corruptions.
Its own rottenness, and the rottenness of the society it had
saved, were laid bare by the bayonet of
Prussia, herself eagerly bent upon transferring the supreme seat
of that regime from Paris to
Berlin. Imperialism is, at the same time, the most prostitute and
the ultimate form of the state
power which nascent bourgeois society had commenced to
elaborate as a means of its own
emancipation from feudalism, and which full-grown bourgeois
society had finally transformed
into a means for the enslavement of labor by capital.
The direct antithesis to the empire was the Commune. The cry
of “social republic,” with which
the February [1848] Revolution was ushered in by the Paris
proletariat, did but express a vague
aspiration after a republic that was not only to supercede the
monarchical form of class rule, but
class rule itself. The Commune was the positive form of that
republic.
60 Third Address to the International Working Men’s
Association, May 1871
Paris, the central seat of the old governmental power, and, at
the same time, the social stronghold

238. of the French working class, had risen in arms against the
attempt of Thiers and the Rurals to
restore and perpetuate that old governmental power bequeathed
to them by the empire. Paris
could resist only because, in consequence of the siege, it had
got rid of the army, and replaced it
by a National Guard, the bulk of which consisted of working
men. This fact was now to be
transformed into an institution. The first decree of the
Commune, therefore, was the suppression
of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed
people.
The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen
by universal suffrage in the
various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short
terms. The majority of its members
were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives
of the working class. The
Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body,
executive and legislative at the same
time.
Instead of continuing to be the agent of the Central
Government, the police was at once stripped
of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at
all times revocable, agent of the
Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the
administration. From the members of
the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at
workman’s wage. The vested
interests and the representation allowances of the high
dignitaries of state disappeared along with
the high dignitaries themselves. Public functions ceased to be
the private property of the tools of
the Central Government. Not only municipal administration, but
the whole initiative hitherto
exercised by the state was laid into the hands of the Commune.

239. Having once got rid of the standing army and the police – the
physical force elements of the old
government – the Commune was anxious to break the spiritual
force of repression, the “parson-
power,” by the disestablishment and disendowment of all
churches as proprietary bodies. The
priests were sent back to the recesses of private life, there to
feed upon the alms of the faithful in
imitation of their predecessors, the apostles.
The whole of the educational institutions were opened to the
people gratuitously, and at the same
time cleared of all interference of church and state. Thus, not
only was education made accessible
to all, but science itself freed from the fetters which class
prejudice and governmental force had
imposed upon it.
The judicial functionaries were to be divested of that sham
independence which had but served to
mask their abject subserviency to all succeeding governments to
which, in turn, they had taken,
and broken, the oaths of allegiance. Like the rest of public
servants, magistrates and judges were
to be elective, responsible, and revocable.
The Paris Commune was, of course, to serve as a model to all
the great industrial centres of
France. The communal regime once established in Paris and the
secondary centres, the old
centralized government would in the provinces, too, have to
give way to the self-government of
the producers.
In a rough sketch of national organisation, which the Commune
had no time to develop, it states
clearly that the Commune was to be the political form of even
the smallest country hamlet, and
that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced
by a national militia, with an

240. extremely short term of service. The rural communities of every
district were to administer their
common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town,
and these district assemblies
were again to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris,
each delegate to be at any time
revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal
instructions) of his constituents. The few
but important functions which would still remain for a central
government were not to be
suppressed, as has been intentionally misstated, but were to be
discharged by Communal and
thereafter responsible agents.
The unity of the nation was not to be broken, but, on the
contrary, to be organized by Communal
Constitution, and to become a reality by the destruction of the
state power which claimed to be
61 Third Address to the International Working Men’s
Association, May 1871
the embodiment of that unity independent of, and superior to,
the nation itself, from which it was
but a parasitic excrescence.
While the merely repressive organs of the old governmental
power were to be amputated, its
legitimate functions were to be wrested from an authority
usurping pre-eminence over society
itself, and restored to the responsible agents of society. Instead
of deciding once in three or six
years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the
people in Parliament, universal
suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes, as
individual suffrage serves every

241. other employer in the search for the workmen and managers in
his business. And it is well-known
that companies, like individuals, in matters of real business
generally know how to put the right
man in the right place, and, if they for once make a mistake, to
redress it promptly. On the other
hand, nothing could be more foreign to the spirit of the
Commune than to supercede universal
suffrage by hierarchical investiture.12
It is generally the fate of completely new historical creations to
be mistaken for the counterparts
of older, and even defunct, forms of social life, to which they
may bear a certain likeness. Thus,
this new Commune, which breaks with the modern state power,
has been mistaken for a
reproduction of the medieval Communes, which first preceded,
and afterward became the
substratum of, that very state power. The Communal
Constitution has been mistaken for an
attempt to break up into the federation of small states, as dreamt
of by Montesquieu and the
Girondins13, that unity of great nations which, if originally
brought about by political force, has
now become a powerful coefficient of social production. The
antagonism of the Commune
against the state power has been mistaken for an exaggerated
form of the ancient struggle against
over-centralization. Peculiar historical circumstances may have
prevented the classical
development, as in France, of the bourgeois form of
government, and may have allowed, as in
England, to complete the great central state organs by corrupt
vestries, jobbing councillors, and
ferocious poor-law guardians in the towns, and virtually
hereditary magistrates in the counties.
The Communal Constitution would have restored to the social

242. body all the forces hitherto
absorbed by the state parasite feeding upon, and clogging the
free movement of, society. By this
one act, it would have initiated the regeneration of France.
The provincial French bourgeois saw in the Commune an
attempt to restore the sway their order
had held over the country under Louis Philippe, and which,
under Louis Napoleon, was
supplanted by the pretended rule of the country over the towns.
In reality, the Communal
Constitution brought the rural producers under the intellectual
lead of the central towns of their
districts, and there secured to them, in the working men, the
natural trustees of their interests. The
very existence of the Commune involved, as a matter of course,
local municipal liberty, but no
longer as a check upon the now superseded state power. It could
only enter into the head of a
Bismarck – who, when not engaged on his intrigues of blood
and iron, always likes to resume his
old trade, so befitting his mental calibre, of contributor to
Kladderadatsch (the Berlin Punch14) –
it could only enter into such a head to ascribe to the Paris
Commune aspirations after the
caricature of the old French municipal organization of 1791, the
Prussian municipal constitution
which degrades the town governments to mere secondary wheels
in the police machinery of the
Prussian state. The Commune made that catchword of bourgeois
revolutions – cheap government
– a reality by destroying the two greatest sources of
expenditure: the standing army and state
functionarism. Its very existence presupposed the non-existence
of monarchy, which, in Europe at
least, is the normal encumbrance and indispensable cloak of
class rule. It supplied the republic

243. with the basis of really democratic institutions. But neither
cheap government nor the “true
republic” was its ultimate aim; they were its mere concomitants.
The multiplicity of interpretations to which the Commune has
been subjected, and the multiplicity
of interests which construed it in their favor, show that it was a
thoroughly expansive political
form, while all the previous forms of government had been
emphatically repressive. Its true secret
was this: It was essentially a working class government, the
product of the struggle of the
62 Third Address to the International Working Men’s
Association, May 1871
producing against the appropriating class, the political form at
last discovered under which to
work out the economical emancipation of labor.
Except on this last condition, the Communal Constitution would
have been an impossibility and a
delusion. The political rule of the producer cannot co-exist with
the perpetuation of his social
slavery. The Commune was therefore to serve as a lever for
uprooting the economical foundation
upon which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of class
rule. With labor emancipated,
every man becomes a working man, and productive labor ceases
to be a class attribute.
It is a strange fact. In spite of all the tall talk and all the
immense literature, for the last 60 years,
about emancipation of labor, no sooner do the working men
anywhere take the subject into their
own hands with a will, than uprises at once all the apologetic
phraseology of the mouthpieces of

244. present society with its two poles of capital and wage-slavery
(the landlord now is but the
sleeping partner of the capitalist), as if the capitalist society
was still in its purest state of virgin
innocence, with its antagonisms still undeveloped, with its
delusions still unexploded, with its
prostitute realities not yet laid bare. The Commune, they
exclaim, intends to abolish property, the
basis of all civilization!
Yes, gentlemen, the Commune intended to abolish that class
property which makes the labor of
the many the wealth of the few. It aimed at the expropriation of
the expropriators. It wanted to
make individual property a truth by transforming the means of
production, land, and capital, now
chiefly the means of enslaving and exploiting labor, into mere
instruments of free and associated
labor. But this is communism, “impossible” communism! Why,
those member of the ruling
classes who are intelligent enough to perceive the impossibility
of continuing the present system
– and they are many – have become the obtrusive and full-
mouthed apostles of co-operative
production. If co-operative production is not to remain a sham
and a snare; if it is to supersede the
capitalist system; if united co-operative societies are to regulate
national production upon
common plan, thus taking it under their own control, and
putting an end to the constant anarchy
and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of capitalist
production – what else, gentlemen,
would it be but communism, “possible” communism?
The working class did not expect miracles from the Commune.
They have no ready-made utopias
to introduce par decret du peuple. They know that in order to
work out their own emancipation,

245. and along with it that higher form to which present society is
irresistibly tending by its own
economical agencies, they will have to pass through long
struggles, through a series of historic
processes, transforming circumstances and men. They have no
ideals to realize, but to set free the
elements of the new society with which old collapsing
bourgeois society itself is pregnant. In the
full consciousness of their historic mission, and with the heroic
resolve to act up to it, the working
class can afford to smile at the coarse invective of the
gentlemen’s gentlemen with pen and
inkhorn, and at the didactic patronage of well-wishing
bourgeois-doctrinaires, pouring forth their
ignorant platitudes and sectarian crotchets in the oracular tone
of scientific infallibility.
When the Paris Commune took the management of the
revolution in its own hands; when plain
working men for the first time dared to infringe upon the
governmental privilege of their “natural
superiors,” and, under circumstances of unexampled difficulty,
performed it at salaries the highest
of which barely amounted to one-fifth what, according to high
scientific authority*, is the
minimum required for a secretary to a certain metropolitan
school-board – the old world writhed
in convulsions of rage at the sight of the Red Flag, the symbol
of the Republic of Labor, floating
over the Hôtel de Ville.
And yet, this was the first revolution in which the working class
was openly acknowledged as the
only class capable of social initiative, even by the great bulk of
the Paris bourgeois –
shopkeepers, tradesmen, merchants – the wealthy capitalist
alone excepted. The Commune had

246. * Professor Huxley. [Note to the German addition of 1871.]
63 Third Address to the International Working Men’s
Association, May 1871
saved them by a sagacious settlement of that ever recurring
cause of dispute among the bourgeois
themselves – the debtor and creditor accounts.15 The same
portion of the bourgeois, after they had
assisted in putting down the working men’s insurrection of June
1848, had been at once
unceremoniously sacrificed to their creditors16 by the then
Constituent Assembly. But this was
not their only motive for now rallying around the working class.
They felt there was but one
alternative – the Commune, or the empire – under whatever
name it might reappear. The empire
had ruined them economically by the havoc it made of public
wealth, by the wholesale financial
swindling it fostered, by the props it lent to the artificially
accelerated centralization of capital,
and the concomitant expropriation of their own ranks. It had
suppressed them politically, it had
shocked them morally by its orgies, it had insulted their
Voltairianism by handing over the
education of their children to the fréres Ignorantins,17 it had
revolted their national feeling as
Frenchmen by precipitating them headlong into a war which left
only one equivalent for the ruins
it made – the disappearance of the empire. In fact, after the
exodus from Paris of the high
Bonapartist and capitalist boheme, the true bourgeois Party of
Order came out in the shape of the
“Union Republicaine,”18 enrolling themselves under the colors

247. of the Commune and defending it
against the wilful misconstructions of Thiers. Whether the
gratitude of this great body of the
bourgeois will stand the present severe trial, time must show.
The Commune was perfectly right in telling the peasants that
“its victory was their only hope.” Of
all the lies hatched at Versailles and re-echoed by the glorious
European penny-a-liner, one of the
most tremendous was that the Rurals represented the French
peasantry. Think only of the love of
the French peasant for the men to whom, after 1815, he had to
pay the milliard indemnity.19 In the
eyes of the French peasant, the very existence of a great landed
proprietor is in itself an
encroachment on his conquests of 1789. The bourgeois, in 1848,
had burdened his plot of land
with the additional tax of 45 cents, in the franc; but then he did
so in the name of the revolution;
while now he had fomented a civil war against revolution, to
shift on to the peasant’s shoulders
the chief load of the 5 milliards of indemnity to be paid to the
Prussian. The Commune, on the
other hand, in one of its first proclamations, declared that the
true originators of the war would be
made to pay its cost. The Commune would have delivered the
peasant of the blood tax – would
have given him a cheap government – transformed his present
blood-suckers, the notary,
advocate, executor, and other judicial vampires, into salaried
communal agents, elected by, and
responsible to, himself. It would have freed him of the tyranny
of the garde champetre, the
gendarme, and the prefect; would have put enlightenment by the
schoolmaster in the place of
stultification by the priest. And the French peasant is, above all,
a man of reckoning. He would

248. find it extremely reasonable that the pay of the priest, instead of
being extorted by the tax-
gatherer, should only depend upon the spontaneous action of the
parishioners’ religious instinct.
Such were the great immediate boons which the rule of the
Commune – and that rule alone – held
out to the French peasantry. It is, therefore, quite superfluous
here to expatiate upon the more
complicated but vital problems which the Commune alone was
able, and at the same time
compelled, to solve in favor of the peasant – viz., the
hypothecary debt, lying like an incubus
upon his parcel of soil, the prolétariat foncier (the rural
proletariat), daily growing upon it, and
his expropriation from it enforced, at a more and more rapid
rate, by the very development of
modern agriculture and the competition of capitalist farming.
The French peasant had elected Louis Bonaparte president of
the republic; but the Party of Order
created the empire. What the French peasant really wants he
commenced to show in 1849 and
1850, by opposing his maire to the government’s prefect, his
school-master to the government’s
priest, and himself to the government’s gendarme. All the laws
made by the Party of Order in
January and February 1850 were avowed measures of repression
against the peasant. The peasant
was a Bonapartist, because the Great Revolution, with all its
benefits to him, was, in his eyes,
personified in Napoleon. This delusion, rapidly breaking down
under the Second Empire (and in
64 Third Address to the International Working Men’s
Association, May 1871

249. its very nature hostile to the Rurals), this prejudice of the past,
how could it have withstood the
appeal of the Commune to the living interests and urgent wants
of the peasantry?
The Rurals – this was, in fact, their chief apprehension – knew
that three months’ free
communication of Communal Paris with the provinces would
bring about a general rising of the
peasants, and hence their anxiety to establish a police blockade
around Paris, so as to stop the
spread of the rinderpest [cattle pest – contagious disease].
If the Commune was thus the true representative of all the
healthy elements of French society,
and therefore the truly national government, it was, at the same
time, as a working men’s
government, as the bold champion of the emancipation of labor,
emphatically international.
Within sight of that Prussian army, that had annexed to
Germany two French provinces, the
Commune annexed to France the working people all over the
world.
The Second Empire had been the jubilee of cosmopolitan
blackleggism, the rakes of all countries
rushing in at its call for a share in its orgies and in the plunder
of the French people. Even at this
moment, the right hand of Thiers is Ganessco, the foul
Wallachian, and his left hand is
Markovsky, the Russian spy. The Commune admitted all
foreigners to the honor of dying for an
immortal cause. Between the foreign war lost by their treason,
and the civil war fomented by their
conspiracy with the foreign invader, the bourgeoisie had found
the time to display their patriotism
by organizing police hunts upon the Germans in France. The
Commune made a German working

250. man [Leo Frankel] its Minister of Labor. Thiers, the
bourgeoisie, the Second Empire, had
continually deluded Poland by loud professions of sympathy,
while in reality betraying her to,
and doing the dirty work of, Russia. The Commune honoured
the heroic sons of Poland [J.
Dabrowski and W. Wróblewski] by placing them at the head of
the defenders of Paris. And, to
broadly mark the new era of history it was conscious of
initiating, under the eyes of the
conquering Prussians on one side, and the Bonapartist army, led
by Bonapartist generals, on the
other, the Commune pulled down that colossal symbol of
martial glory, the Vendôme Column.20
The great social measure of the Commune was its own working
existence. Its special measures
could but betoken the tendency of a government of the people
by the people. Such were the
abolition of the nightwork of journeymen bakers; the
prohibition, under penalty, of the
employers’ practice to reduce wages by levying upon their
workpeople fines under manifold
pretexts – a process in which the employer combines in his own
person the parts of legislator,
judge, and executor, and filches the money to boot. Another
measure of this class was the
surrender to associations of workmen, under reserve of
compensation, of all closed workshops
and factories, no matter whether the respective capitalists had
absconded or preferred to strike
work.
The financial measures of the Commune, remarkable for their
sagacity and moderation, could
only be such as were compatible with the state of a besieged
town. Considering the colossal
robberies committed upon the city of Paris by the great

251. financial companies and contractors,
under the protection of Haussman,21 the Commune would have
had an incomparably better title to
confiscate their property than Louis Napoleon had against the
Orleans family. The Hohenzollern
and the English oligarchs, who both have derived a good deal of
their estates from church
plunders, were, of course, greatly shocked at the Commune
clearing but 8,000f out of
secularization.
While the Versailles government, as soon as it had recovered
some spirit and strength, used the
most violent means against the Commune; while it put down the
free expression of opinion all
over France, even to the forbidding of meetings of delegates
from the large towns; while it
subjected Versailles and the rest of France to an espionage far
surpassing that of the Second
Empire; while it burned by its gendarme inquisitors all papers
printed at Paris, and sifted all
correspondence from and to Paris; while in the National
Assembly the most timid attempts to put
in a word for Paris were howled down in a manner unknown
even to the Chambre introuvable of
65 Third Address to the International Working Men’s
Association, May 1871
1816; with the savage warfare of Versailles outside, and its
attempts at corruption and conspiracy
inside Paris – would the Commune not have shamefully
betrayed its trust by affecting to keep all
the decencies and appearances of liberalism as in a time of
profound peace? Had the government

252. of the Commune been akin to that of M. Thiers, there would
have been no more occasion to
suppress Party of Order papers at Paris that there was to
suppress Communal papers at Versailles.
It was irritating indeed to the Rurals that at the very same time
they declared the return to the
church to be the only means of salvation for France, the infidel
Commune unearthed the peculiar
mysteries of the Picpus nunnery22, and of the Church of St.
Laurent. It was a satire upon M.
Thiers that, while he showered grand crosses upon the
Bonapartist generals in acknowledgment
of their mastery in losing battles, singing capitulations, and
turning cigarettes at Wilhelmshöhe,23
the Commune dismissed and arrested its generals whenever they
were suspected of neglecting
their duties. The expulsion from, and arrest by, the Commune of
one of its members [Blanchet]
who had slipped in under a false name, and had undergone at
Lyons six days’ imprisonment for
simple bankruptcy, was it not a deliberate insult hurled at the
forger, Jules Favre, then still the
foreign minister of France, still selling France to Bismarck, and
still dictating his orders to that
paragon government of Belgium? But indeed the Commune did
not pretend to infallibility, the
invariable attribute of all governments of the old stamp. It
published its doings and sayings, it
initiated the public into all its shortcomings.
In every revolution there intrude, at the side of its true agents,
men of different stamp; some of
them survivors of and devotees to past revolutions, without
insight into the present movement,
but preserving popular influence by their known honesty and
courage, or by the sheer force of
tradition; others mere brawlers who, by dint of repeating year

253. after year the same set of
stereotyped declarations against the government of the day,
have sneaked into the reputation of
revolutionists of the first water. After March 18, some such men
did also turn up, and in some
cases contrived to play pre-eminent parts. As far as their power
went, they hampered the real
action of the working class, exactly as men of that sort have
hampered the full development of
every previous revolution. They are an unavoidable evil: with
time they are shaken off; but time
was not allowed to the Commune.
Wonderful, indeed, was the change the Commune had wrought
in Paris! No longer any trace of
the tawdry Paris of the Second Empire! No longer was Paris the
rendezvous of British landlords,
Irish absentees, 24 American ex-slaveholders and shoddy men,
Russian ex-serfowners, and
Wallachian boyards. No more corpses at the morgue, no
nocturnal burglaries, scarcely any
robberies; in fact, for the first time since the days of February
1848, the streets of Paris were safe,
and that without any police of any kind.
“We,” said a member of the Commune, “hear no longer of
assassination, theft, and personal
assault; it seems indeed as if the police had dragged along with
it to Versailles all its Conservative
friends.”
The cocottes had refound the scent of their protectors – the
absconding men of family, religion,
and, above all, of property. In their stead, the real women of
Paris showed again at the surface –
heroic, noble, and devoted, like the women of antiquity.
Working, thinking fighting, bleeding
Paris – almost forgetful, in its incubation of a new society, of
the Cannibals at its gates – radiant

254. in the enthusiasm of its historic initiative!
Opposed to this new world at Paris, behold the old world at
Versailles – that assembly of the
ghouls of all defunct regimes, Legitimists and Orleanists, eager
to feed upon the carcass of the
nation – with a tail of antediluvian republicans, sanctioning, by
their presence in the Assembly,
the slaveholders’ rebellion, relying for the maintenance of their
parliamentary republic upon the
vanity of the senile mountebank at its head, and caricaturing
1789 by holding their ghastly
66 Third Address to the International Working Men’s
Association, May 1871
meetings in the Jeu de Paume.1 There it was, this Assembly, the
representative of everything dead
in France, propped up to the semblance of life by nothing but
the swords of the generals of Louis
Bonaparte. Paris all truth, Versailles all lie; and that lie vented
through the mouth of Thiers.
Thiers tells a deputation of the mayors of the Seine-et-Oise –
“You may rely upon my word,
which I have never broken!”
He tells the Assembly itself that “it was the most freely elected
and most liberal Assembly France
ever possessed”; he tells his motley soldiery that it was “the
admiration of the world, and the
finest army France ever possessed”; he tells the provinces that
the bombardment of Paris by him
was a myth: “If some cannon-shots have been fired, it was not
the deed of the army of Versailles,
but of some insurgents trying to make believe that they are
fighting, while they dare not show

255. their faces.” He again tells the provinces that “the artillery of
Versailles does not bombard Paris,
but only cannonades it.” He tells the Archbishop of Paris that
the pretended executions and
reprisals (!) attributed to the Versailles troops were all
moonshine. He tells Paris that he was only
anxious “to free it from the hideous tyrants who oppress it,” and
that, in fact, the Paris of the
Commune was “but a handful of criminals.”
The Paris of M. Thiers was not the real Paris of the “vile
multitude,” but a phantom Paris, the
Paris of the francs-fileurs,25 the Paris of the Boulevards, male
and female – the rich, the capitalist,
the gilded, the idle Paris, now thronging with its lackeys, its
blacklegs, its literary bohome, and its
cocottes at Versailles, Saint-Denis, Rueil, and Saint-Germain;
considering the civil war but an
agreeable diversion, eyeing the battle going on through
telescopes, counting the rounds of
cannon, swearing by their own honour and that of their
prostitutes, that the performance was far
better got up than it used to be at the Porte St. Martin. The men
who fell were really dead; the
cries of the wounded were cries in good earnest; and, besides,
the whole thing was so intensely
historical.
This is the Paris of M. Thiers, as the emigration of Coblenz was
the France of M. de Calonne.26
1 The tennis court where the National Assembly of 1789
adopted its famous decisions. [Note to the German addition of
1871.]

256. 67 Third Address to the International Working Men’s
Association, May 1871
Endnotes
1 The first Russian translation of the Manifesto of the
Communist Party was made by Bakunin, who
despite being one of Marx and Engels’ most pronounced
opponents in the working class movement,
saw the great revolutionary importance contained within the
Manifesto. Published in Geneva in 1869
(printing it in Russia was impossible due to state censorship),
Bakunin’ s translation was not
completely accurate, and was replaced a decade later by
Plekhanov’s translation in 1882, for which
both Marx and Engels wrote a preface.
2 A reference to the events that occurred in Russia after the
assassination, on March, 1, 1881, of
Emperor Alexander II by Narodnaya Volya members. Alexander
III, his successor, was staying in
Gatchina for fear of further terrorism.
3 This preface was written by Engels on May 1, 1890, when, in
accordance with the decision of the
Paris Congress of the Second International (July 1889), mass
demonstrations, strikes and meetings
were held in numerous European and American countries. The
workers put forward the demand for an
8 hour working day and other demands set forth by the
Congress. From that day forward workers all
over the world celebrate the first of May as a day of
international proletarian solidarity.
4 A reference to the movement for an electoral reform which,
under the pressure of the working class,
was passed by the British House of Commons in 1831 and
finally endorsed by the House of Lords in

257. June, 1832. The reform was directed against monopoly rule of
the landed and finance aristocracy and
opened the way to Parliament for the representatives of the
industrial bourgeoisie. Neither workers nor
the petty-bourgeois were allowed electoral rights, despite
assurances they would.
5 The famous final phrase of the Manifesto, “Working Men of
All Countries, Unite!”, in the original
German is: “Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt euch!” Thus, a
more correct translation would be
“Proletarians of all countries, Unite!”
“Workers of the World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but
your chains!” is a popularisation of the
last three sentences, and is not found in any official translation.
Since this English translation was
approved by Engels, we have kept the original intact.
6 In their works written in later periods, Marx and Engels
substituted the more accurate concepts of
“sale of labour power”, “value of labour power” and “price of
labour power” (first introduced by
Marx) for “sale of labour”, “value of labour” and “price of
labour”, as used here.
7 Engels left half a page blank here in the manuscript. The
“Draft of the Communist Confession of
Faith,” has the answer shown for the same question (Number
12).
8 Engels’ put “unchanged” here, referring to the answer in the
June draft under No. 21 as shown.
9 Similarly, this refers to the answer to Question 23 in the June
draft.
10 The Chartists were the participants in the political movement
of the British workers which lasted
from the 1830s to the middle 1850s and had as its slogan the
adoption of a People’s Charter,
demanding universal franchise and a series of conditions
guaranteeing voting rights for all workers.

258. Lenin defined Chartism as the world’s “first broad, truly mass
and politically organized proletarian
revolutionary movement” (Collected Works, Eng. ed., Progress
Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Vol. 29, p.
309.) The decline of the Chartist movement was due to the
strengthening of Britain’s industrial and
commercial monopoly and the bribing of the upper stratum of
the working class (“the labour
aristocracy”) by the British bourgeoisie out of its super-profits.
Both factors led to the strengthening of
opportunist tendencies in this stratum as expressed, in
particular, by the refusal of the trade union
leaders to support Chartism.
11 Probably a references to the National Reform Association,
founded during the 1840s by George H.
Evans, with headquarters in New York City, which had for its
motto, “Vote Yourself a Farm”.
68 Third Address to the International Working Men’s
Association, May 1871
12 A top-down system of appointing officials in bourgeois
systems, where high-up officials appoint
many or all lower officials.
13 Girondins – The party of the influential bourgeoisie during
the French revolution at the end of the
18th century. (The name is derived from the Department of
Gironde.) It came out against the Jacobin
government and the revolutionary masses which supported it,
under the banner of defending the
departments’ right to autonomy and federation.
14 The party of the influential bourgeoisie during the French
revolution at the end of the 18th century.

259. (The name is derived from the Department of Gironde.) It came
out against the Jacobin government
and the revolutionary masses which supported it, under the
banner of defending the departments’ right
to autonomy and federation.
15 A reference to the Paris Commune’s decree of April 16,
1871, providing for payment of all debts in
instalments over three years and abolition of interest on them.
16 On Aug. 22, 1848, the Constituent Assembly rejected the bill
on “amiable agreements” (concordats
á l’amiable) aimed to introduce the deferred payment of debts.
As a result of this measure, a
considerable section of the petty-bourgeoisie were utterly
ruined and found themselves completely
dependent on the creditors of the richest bourgeoisie.
17 Fréres Ignorantins – Ignorant Brothers, a nickname for a
religious order, founded in Rheims in
1680, whose members pledged themselves to educate children
of the poor. The pupils received a
predominantly religious education and barely any knowledge
otherwise.
18 Alliance républicaine des Départements – a political
association of petty-bourgeois representatives
from the various departments of France, who lived in Paris;
calling on the people to fight against the
Versailles government and the monarchist National Assembly
and to support the Commune
throughout the country.
19 The law of April 27, 1825 on the payment of compensation
to the former émigrés for the landed
states confiscated from them during the preceding French
Revolution.
20 The Vendôme Column was erected between 1806 and 1810 in
Paris in honour of the victories of
Napoleonic France; it was made out of the bronze captured from
enemy guns and was crowned by a

260. statue of Napoleon. On May 16, 1871, by order of the Paris
Commune, the Vendôme Column was
pulled down.
21 During the Second Empire, Baron Haussmann was Prefect of
the Department of the Seine (the City
of Paris). He introduced a number of changes in the layout of
the city for the purpose of crushing
workers’ revolts.
22 In the Picpus nunnery cases of the nuns being incarcerated in
cells for many years were exposed and
instruments of torture were found; in the church of St. Laurent a
secret cemetery was found attesting
to the murders that had been committed there. These facts were
exposed by the Commune’s
newspaper Mot d’Ordre on May 5, 1871, and in a pamphlet Les
Crimes des congrégations religieuses.
23 The chief occupation of the French prisoners of war in
Wilhelmshöhe (those captured after the
Battle of Sedan) was making cigars for their own use.
24 Rich landowners who hardly ever visited their estates, but
instead had their land managed by agents
or leased it to petty-bourgeois who, in their turn, sub-leased the
land at high rents.
25 Francs-fileurs – literally rendered: “free absconder,” the
nickname given to the Paris bourgeois who
fled from the city during the siege. The name carried brazen
historical irony as a result of its
resemblance to the word “francs-tireurs” (“free sharpshooters”)
– French guerrillas who actively
fought against the Prussians.
26 A city in Germany; during the French Revolution at the end
of the 18th-century it was the centre
where the landlord monarchist emigrés made preparations for
intervention against revolutionary
France. Coblenz was the seat of the emigré government headed
by the rabid reactionary de Calonne, a

261. former minister of Louis XVI.
Manifesto of the Communist PartyEditorial IntroductionPreface
to The 1872 German EditionPreface to The 1882 Russian
EditionPreface to The 1883 German EditionPreface to The 1888
English EditionPreface to The 1890 German EditionPreface to
The 1892 Polish EditionPreface to The 1893 Italian
EditionManifesto of the Communist PartyI. Bourgeois and
Proletarians*II. Proletarians and CommunistsIII. Socialist and
Communist LiteratureA. Feudal SocialismB. Petty-Bourgeois
SocialismC. German or “True” SocialismIV. Position of the
Communists in Relation to the Various ExLetter from Engels to
Marx, 24 November 1847*Draft of a Communist Confession of
Faith*The Principles of Communism*Demands of the
Communist Party in GermanyThe Paris Commune.�Address to
the International Workingmen’sEndnotes
1
EMILE DURKHEIM
From Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society,
(Translated by George Simpson). by
New York: The Free Press, 1947.
The Division of Labor
[We] shall recognize only two kinds of positive solidarity which
are distinguishable by the
following qualities:

262. 1. The first binds the individual directly to society without any
intermediary. In the second, he
depends upon society, because he depends upon the parts of
which it is composed.
2. Society is not seen in the same aspect in the two cases. In the
first, what we call society is a
more or less organized totality of beliefs and sentiments
common to all the members of the group:
this is the collective type. On the other hand, the society in
which we are solitary in the second
instance is a system of different, special functions which
definite relations unite. These two
societies really make up only one. They are two aspects of one
and the same reality, but none the
less they must be distinguished.
3. From this second difference there arises another which helps
us to characterize and name the
two kinds of solidarity.
The first can be strong only if the ideas and tendencies common
to all the members of the society
are greater in number and intensity than those which pertain
personally to each member. It is as
much stronger as the excess is more considerable. But what
makes our personality is how much
of our own individual qualities we have, what distinguishes us
from others. This solidarity can
grow only in inverse ratio to personality. There are in each of
us, as we have said, two
consciences: one which is common to our group in its entirety,
which, consequently, is not
ourself, but society living and acting within us; the other, on the
contrary, represents that in us
which is personal and distinct, that which makes us an

263. individual. [1] Solidarity which comes
from likenesses is at its maximum when the collective
conscience completely envelops our
whole conscience and coincides in all points with it. But, at that
moment, our individuality is nil.
It can be born only if the community takes smaller toll of us.
There are, here, two contrary forces,
one centripetal, the other centrifugal, which cannot flourish at
the same time. We cannot, at one
and the same time, develop ourselves in two opposite senses. If
we have a lively desire to think
and act for ourselves, we cannot be strongly inclined to think
and act as others do. If our ideal is
to present a singular and personal appearance, we do not want
to resemble everybody else.
2
Moreover, at the moment when this solidarity exercises its
force, our personality vanishes, as our
definition permits us to say, for we are no longer ourselves, but
the collective life.
The social molecules which can be coherent in this way can act
together only in the measure that
they have no actions of their own, as the molecules of inorganic
bodies. That is why we propose
to call this type of solidarity mechanical. The term does not
signify that it is produced by
mechanical and artificial means. We call it that only by analogy
to the cohesion which unites the
elements of an inanimate body, as opposed to that which makes
a unity out of the elements of a

264. living body. What justifies this term is that the link which thus
unites the individual to society is
wholly analogous to that which attaches a thing to a person. The
individual conscience,
considered in this light, is a simple dependent upon the
collective type and follows all of its
movements, as the possessed object follows those of its owner.
In societies where this type of
solidarity is highly developed, the individual does not appear,
as we shall see later. Individuality
is something which the society possesses. Thus, in these social
types, personal rights are not yet
distinguished from real rights.
It is quite otherwise with the solidarity which the division of
labor produces. Whereas the
previous type implies that individuals resemble each other, this
type presumes their difference.
The first is possible only in so far as the individual personality
is absorbed into the collective
personality; the second is possible only if each one has a sphere
of action which is peculiar to
him; that is, a personality. It is necessary, then, that the
collective conscience leave open a part of
the individual conscience in order that special functions may be
established there, functions
which it cannot regulate. The more this region is extended, the
stronger is the cohesion which
results from this solidarity. In effect, on the one hand, each one
depends as much more strictly
on society as labor is more divided; and, on the other, the
activity of each is as much more
personal as it is more specialized. Doubtless, as circumscribed
as it is, it is never completely
original. Even in the exercise of our occupation, we conform to
usages, to practices which are

265. common to our whole professional brotherhood. But, even in
this instance, the yoke that we
submit to is much less heavy than when society completely
controls us, and it leaves much more
place open for the free play of our initiative. Here, then, the
individuality of all grows at the same
time as that of its parts. Society becomes more capable of
collective movement, at the same time
that each of its elements has more freedom of movement. This
solidarity resembles that which
we observe among the higher animals. Each organ, in effect, has
its special physiognomy, its
autonomy. And, moreover, the unity of the organism is as great
as the individuation of the parts
is more marked. Because of this analogy, we propose to call the
solidarity which is due to the
division of labor, organic.
In determining the principal cause of the progress of the
division of labor, we have at the same
time determined the essential factor of what is called
civilization.
Civilization is itself the necessary consequence of the changes
which are produced in the volume
and in the density of societies. If science, art, and economic
activity develop it is in accordance
with a necessity which is imposed upon men. It is because there
is, for them, no other way of
3

266. living in the new conditions in which they have been placed.
From the time that the number of
individuals among whom social relations are established begins
to increase, they can maintain
themselves only by greater specialization, harder work, and
intensification of their faculties.
From this general stimulation, there inevitably results a much
higher degree of culture. From this
point of view, civilization appears, not as an end which moves
people by its attraction for them,
not as a good foreseen and desired in advance, of which they
seek to assure themselves the
largest possible part, but as the effect of a cause, as the
necessary resultant of a given state. It is
not the pole towards which historic development is moving and
to which men seek to get nearer
in order to be happier or better, for neither happiness nor
morality necessarily increases with the
intensity of life. They move because they must move, and what
determines the speed of this
march is the more or less strong pressure which they exercise
upon one another, according to
their number.
This does not mean that civilization has no use, but that it is not
the services that it renders that
make it progress. It develops because it cannot fail to develop.
Once effectuated, this
development is found to be generally useful, or, at least, it is
utilized. It responds to needs
formed at the same time because they depend upon the same
causes. But this is an adjustment
after the fact. Yet, we must notice that the good it renders in
this direction is not a positive
enrichment, a growth in our stock of happiness, but only repairs
the losses that it has itself

267. caused. It is because this super activity of general life fatigues
and weakens our nervous system
that it needs reparations proportionate to its expenditures, that
is to say, more varied and complex
satisfactions. In that, we see even better how false it is to make
civilization the function of the
division of labor; it is only a consequence of it. It can explain
neither the existence nor the
progress of the division of labor, since it has, of itself, no
intrinsic or absolute value, but, on the
contrary, has a reason for existing only in so far as the division
of labor is itself found necessary.
We shall not be astonished by the importance attached to the
numerical factor if we notice the
very capital role it plays in the history of organisms. In effect,
what defines a living being is the
double property it has of nourishing itself and reproducing
itself, and reproduction is itself only a
consequence of nourishment. Therefore, the intensity of organic
life is proportional, all things
being equal, to the activity of nourishment, that is, to the
number of elements that the organism is
capable of incorporating. Hence, what has not only made
possible, but even necessitated the
appearance of complex organisms is that, under certain
conditions, the more simple organisms
remain grouped together in a way to form more voluminous
aggregates. As the constitutive parts
of the animal are more numerous, their relations are no longer
the same, the conditions of social
life are changed, and it is these changes which, in turn,
determine both the division of labor,
polymorphism, and the concentration of vital forces and their
greater energy. The growth of
organic substance is, then, the fact which dominates all

268. zoological development. It is not
surprising that social development is submitted to the same law.
Moreover, without recourse to arguments by analogy, it is easy
to explain the fundamental role
of this factor. All social life is made up of a system of facts
which come from positive and
durable relations established between a plurality of individuals.
It is, thus, as much more intense
as the reactions exchanged between the component units are
themselves more frequent and more
energetic. But, upon what does this frequency and this energy
depend? Upon the nature of the
4
elements present, upon their more or less great vitality? But . . .
individuals are much more a
product of common life than they are determinants of it. If from
each of them we take away
everything due to social action, the residue that we obtain,
besides being picayune, is not capable
of presenting much variety. Without the diversity of social
conditions upon which they depend,
the differences which separate them would be inexplicable. It is
not, then, in the unequal
aptitudes of men that we must seek the cause for the unequal
development of societies. Will it be
in the unequal duration of these relations? But time, by itself,
produces nothing. It is only
necessary in bringing latent energies to light. There remains no
other variable factor than the
number of individuals in relation and their material and moral

269. proximity, that is to say, the
volume and density of society. The more numerous they are and
the more they act upon one
another, the more they react with force and rapidity;
consequently, the more intense social life
becomes. But it is this intensification which constitutes
civilization. [2]
But, while being an effect of necessary causes, civilization can
become an end, an object of
desire, in short, an ideal. Indeed, at each moment of a society's
history, there is a certain intensity
of the collective life which is normal, given the number and
distribution of the social units.
Assuredly, if everything happens normally, this state will be
realized of itself, but we cannot
bring it to pass that things will happen normally. If health is in
nature, so is sickness. Health is,
indeed, in societies as in individual organisms, only an ideal
type which is nowhere entirely
realized. Each healthy individual has more or less numerous
traits of it, but there is none that
unites them all. Thus, it is an end worthy of pursuit to seek to
bring society to this degree of
perfection.
Moreover, the direction to follow in order to attain this end can
be laid out. If, instead of letting
causes engender their effects by chance and according to the
energy in them, thought intervenes
to direct the course, it can spare men many painful efforts. The
development of the individual
reproduces that of the species in abridged fashion; he does not
pass through all the stages that it
passed through; there are some he omits and others he passes
through more quickly because the

270. experiences of the race help him to accelerate them. But thought
can produce analogous results,
for it is equally a utilization of anterior experience, with a view
to facilitating future experience.
By thought, moreover, one must not understand exclusively
scientific knowledge of means and
ends. Sociology, in its present state, is hardly in a position to
lead us efficaciously to the solution
of these practical problems. But beyond these clear
representations in the milieu in which the
scholar moves, there are obscure ones to which tendencies are
linked. For need to stimulate the
will, it is not necessary that it be clarified by science. Obscure
gropings are enough to teach men
that there is something lacking, to awaken their aspirations and
at the same time make them feel
in what direction they ought to bend their efforts.
Hence, a mechanistic conception of society does not preclude
ideals, and it is wrong to reproach
it with reducing man to the status of an inactive witness of his
own history. What is an ideal,
really, if not an anticipated representation of a desired result
whose realization is possible only
thanks to this very anticipation? Because things happen in
accordance with laws, it does not
follow that we have nothing to do. We shall perhaps find such
an objective mean, because, in
sum, it is only a question of living in a state of health. But this
is to forget that, for the cultivated
man, health consists in regularly satisfying his most elevated
needs as well as others, for the first
5

271. are no less firmly rooted in his nature than the second. It is true
that such an ideal is near, that the
horizons it opens before us have nothing unlimited about them.
In any event, it cannot consist in
exalting the forces of society beyond measure, but only in
developing them to the limit marked
by the definite state of the social milieu. All excess is bad as
well as all insufficiency. But what
other ideal can we propose? To seek to realize a civilization
superior to that demanded by the
nature of surrounding conditions is to desire to turn illness
loose in the very society of which we
are part, for it is not possible to increase collective activity
beyond the degree determined by the
state of the social organism without compromising health. In
fact, in every epoch there is a
certain refinement of civilization whose sickly character is
attested by the uneasiness and
restlessness which accompanies it. But there is never anything
desirable about sickness.
But if the ideal is always definite, it is never definitive. Since
progress is a consequence of
changes in the social milieu, there is no reason for supposing
that it must ever end. For it to have
a limit, it would be necessary for the milieu to become
stationary at some given moment. But
such an hypothesis is contrary to the most legitimate inductions.
As long as there are distinct
societies, the number of social units will necessarily be variable
in each of them. Even supposing
that the number of births ever becomes constant, there will
always be movements of population
from one country to another, through violent conquests or slow

272. and unobtrusive infiltrations.
Indeed, it is impossible for the strongest peoples not to tend to
incorporate the feeblest, as the
most dense overflow into the least dense. That is a mechanical
law of social equilibrium not less
necessary than that which governs the equilibrium of liquids.
For it to be otherwise, it would be
necessary for all human societies to have the same vital energy
and the same density. What is
irrepresentable would only be so because of the diversity of
habitats.
It is true that this source of variations would be exhausted if all
humanity formed one and the
same society. But, besides our not knowing whether such an
ideal is realizable, in order for
progress to cease it would still be necessary for the relations
between social units in the interior
of this gigantic society to be themselves recalcitrant to all
change. It would be necessary for them
always to remain distributed in the same way, for not only the
total aggregate but also each of the
elementary aggregates of which it would be formed, to keep the
same dimensions. But such a
uniformity is impossible, solely because these partial groups do
not all have the same extent nor
the same vitality. Population cannot be concentrated in the same
way at all points; it is inevitable
that the greatest centres, those where life is most intense,
exercise an attraction for the others
proportionate to their importance. The migrations which are
thus produced result in further
concentrating social units in certain regions, and, consequently,
in determining new advances
there which irradiate little by little from the homes in which
they were born into the rest of the

273. country. Moreover, these changes call forth others, without it
being possible to say where the
repercussions stop. In fact, far from societies approaching a
stationary position in proportion to
their development, they become, on the contrary, more mobile
and more plastic.
With societies, individuals are transformed in accordance with
the changes produced in the
number of social units and their relations.
6
First, they are made more and more free of the yoke of the
organism. An animal is almost
completely under the influence of his physical environment; its
biological constitution
predetermines its existence. Man, on the contrary, is dependent
upon social causes. Of course,
animals also form societies, but, as they are very restricted,
collective life is very simple. They
are also stationary because the equilibrium of such small
societies is necessarily stable. For these
two reasons, it easily fixes itself in the organism. It not only has
its roots in the organism, but it is
entirely enveloped in it to such a point that it loses its own
characteristics. It functions through a
system of instincts, of reflexes which are not essentially distinct
from those which assure the
functioning of organic life. They present, it is true, the
particular characteristic of adapting the
individual to the social environment, not to the physical

274. environment, and are caused by
occurrences of the common life. They are not of different
nature, however, from those which, in
certain cases, determine without any previous education the
necessary movements in locomotion.
It is quite otherwise with man, because the societies he forms
are much vaster. Even the smallest
we know of are more extensive than the majority of animal
societies. Being more complex, they
also change more, and these two causes together see to it that
social life with man is not
congealed in a biological form. Even where it is most simple, it
clings to its specificity. There are
always beliefs and practices common to men which are not
inscribed in their tissues. But this
character is more manifest as the social mass and density grow.
The more people there are in
association, and the more they react upon one another, the more
also does the product of these
reactions pass beyond the bounds of the organism. Man thus
finds himself placed under the sway
of causes sui generis whose relative part in the constitution of
human nature becomes ever more
considerable.
Moreover, the influence of this factor increases not only in
relative value, but also in absolute
value. The same cause which increases the importance of the
collective environment weakens the
organic environment in such a manner as to make it accessible
to the action of social causes and
to subordinate it to them. Because there are more individuals
living together, common life is
richer and more varied, but for this variety to be possible, the
organic type must be less definite
to be able to diversify itself. We have seen, in effect, that the

275. tendencies and aptitudes
transmitted by heredity became ever more general and more
indeterminate, more refractory
consequently, to assuming the form of instincts. Thus, a
phenomenon is produced which is
exactly the inverse of that which we observe at the beginning of
evolution. With animals, the
organism assimilates social facts to it, and, stripping them of
their special nature, transforms
them into biological facts. Social life is materialized. In man,
on the contrary, and particularly in
higher societies, social causes substitute themselves for organic
causes. The organism is
spiritualized.
The individual is transformed in accordance with this change in
dependence. Since this activity
which calls forth the special action of social causes cannot be
fixed in the organism, a new life,
also sui generis, is superimposed upon that of the body. Freer,
more complex, more independent
of the organs which support it, its distinguishing characteristics
become ever more apparent as it
progresses and becomes solid. From this description we can
recognize the essential traits of
psychic life. To be sure, it would be exaggerating to say that
psychic life begins only with
societies, but certainly it becomes extensive only as societies
develop. That is why, as has often
been remarked, the progress of conscience is in inverse ratio to
that of instinct. Whatever may be
said of them, it is not the first which breaks up the second.
Instinct, the product of the

276. 7
accumulated experience of generations, has a much greater
resistive force to dissolution simply
because it becomes conscious. Truly, conscience only invades
the ground which instinct has
ceased to occupy, or where instinct cannot be established.
Conscience does not make instinct
recede; it only fills the space instinct leaves free. Moreover, if
instinct regresses rather than
extends as general life extends, the greater importance of the
social factor is the cause of this.
Hence, the great difference which separates man from animals,
that is, the greater development
of his psychic life, comes from his greater sociability. To
understand why psychic functions have
been carried, from the very beginnings of the human species, to
a degree of perfection unknown
among animal species, one would first have to know why it is
that men, instead of living in
solitude or in small bands, were led to form more extensive
societies. To put it in terms of the
classical definition, if man is a reasonable animal, that is
because he is a sociable animal, or at
least infinitely more sociable than other animals. [3]
This is not all. In so far as societies do not reach certain
dimensions nor a certain degree of
concentration, the only psychic life which may be truly
developed is that which is common to all
the members of the group, which is found identical in each. But,
as societies become more vast
and, particularly, more condensed, a psychic life of a new sort
appears. Individual diversities, at
first lost and confused amidst the mass of social likenesses,

277. become disengaged, become
conspicuous, and multiply. A multitude of things which used to
remain outside consciences
because they did not affect the collective being become objects
of representations. Whereas
individuals used to act only by involving one another, except in
cases where their conduct was
determined by physical needs, each of them becomes a source of
spontaneous activity. Particular
personalities become constituted, take conscience of
themselves. Moreover, this growth of
psychic life in the individual does not obliterate the psychic life
of society, but only transforms it.
It becomes freer, more extensive, and as it has, after all, no
other bases than individual
consciences, these extend, become complex, and thus become
flexible.
Hence, the cause which called forth the differences separating
man from animals is also that
which has forced him to elevate himself above himself. The
ever growing distance between the
savage and the civilized man has no other source. If the faculty
of ideation is slowly disengaged
from the confused feeling of its origin, if man has learned to
formulate concepts and laws, if his
spirit has embraced more and more extensive portions of space
and time, if, not content with
clinging to the past, he has trespassed upon the future, if his
emotions and his tendencies, at first
simple and not very numerous, have multiplied and diversified,
that is because the social milieu
has changed without interruption. In effect, unless these
transformations were born from nothing,
they can have had for causes only the corresponding
transformations of surrounding milieux. But,

278. man depends only upon three sorts of milieux: the organism, the
external world, society. If one
leaves aside the accidental variations due to combinations of
heredity,--and their role in human
progress is certainly not very considerable,--the organism is not
automatically modified; it is
necessary that it be impelled by some external cause. As for the
physical world, since the
beginning of history it has remained sensibly the same, at least
if one does not take account of
novelties which are of social origin. [4] Consequently, there is
only society which has changed
enough to be able to explain the parallel changes in individual
nature.
8
It is not, then, audacious to affirm that, from now on, whatever
progress is made in psycho-
physiology will never represent more than a fraction of
psychology, since the major part of
psychic phenomena does not come from organic causes. This is
what spiritualist philosophers
have learned, and the great service that they have rendered
science has been to combat the
doctrines which reduce psychic life merely to an efflorescence
of physical life. They have very
justly felt that the first, in its highest manifestations, is much
too free and complex to be merely a
prolongation of the second. Because it is partly independent of
the organism, however, it does
not follow that it depends upon no natural cause, and that it
must be put outside nature. But all

279. these facts whose explanation we cannot find in the constitution
of tissues derive from properties
of the social milieu. This hypothesis assumes, at least, very
great probability from what has
preceded. But the social realm is not less natural than the
organic realm. Consequently, because
there is a vast region of conscience whose genesis is
unintelligible through psycho-physiology
alone, we must not conclude that it has been formed of itself
and that it is, accordingly, refractory
to scientific investigation, but only that it derives from some
other positive science which can be
called sociopsychology. The phenomena which would constitute
its matter are, in effect, of a
mixed nature. They have the same essential characters as other
psychic facts, but they arise from
social causes.
NOTES
1. However, these two consciences are not in regions
geographically distinct from us, but
penetrate from all sides.
2. We do not here have to look to see if the fact which
determines the progress of the division of
labor and civilization, growth in social mass and density,
explains itself automatically; if it is a
necessary product of efficient causes, or else an imagined
means in view of a desired end or of a
very great foreseen good. We content ourselves with stating this
law of gravitation in the social
world without going any farther. It does not seem, however, that
there is a greater demand here

280. than elsewhere for a teleological explanation. The walls which
separate different parts of society
are torn down by the force of things, through a sort of natural
usury, whose effect can be further
enforced by the action of violent causes. The movements of
population thus become more
numerous and rapid and the passage-lines through which these
movements are effected—the
means of communication--deepen. They are more particularly
active at points where several of
these lines cross; these are cities. Thus social density grows. As
for the growth in volume, it is
due to causes of the same kind. The barriers which separate
peoples are analogous to those which
separate the different cells of the same society and they
disappear in the same way.
3. The definition of de Quatrefages which makes man a
religious animal is a particular instance
of the preceding, for man's religiosity is a consequence of his
eminent sociability. See supra,
pp.168ff.
4. Transformations of the soil, of streams, through the art of
husbandry, engineers, etc.
The Meaning of Place
Due: WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20th
BETEEN 2:00PM-5:00PM IN SHEPARD HALL, RM 550
Aim: The goal of this assignment is to write an essay in which
you analyze the film, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, using the
sociological theories and concepts we have read in Section III,
“The Meaning of Place: A Little Theory Goes a Long Way.”

281. Directions: Answer ONE of the following questions in a clearly
written 5 page typed essay. Students MUST use the assigned
course readings (Marx, Durkheim, Ritzer (Weber), Wirth, Gans,
and your textbook). Cite all course related references within the
body of the essay, for example, (Giddens et al, p.100), (Gans,
p.35); and (Ritzer, p.11); and for the film (Capra). You do not
need to re-type the question. Indicate the question you are
answering by number. Use a 12-point font, double spacing and
standard, one inch, margins. Papers must be securely stapled
together.
Good answers are those that result from paying careful attention
to the precise wording of the question and careful thinking
about the structure and outline of the essay. That is, have a
clear thesis statement in your first paragraph. This thesis
statement should answer your question and provide a brief
overview of how the paper will progress. The following
paragraphs elaborate on this brief introductory paragraph.
Here, students need to support their argument with the course
readings. The final paragraph summarizes what you have
discussed. Make sure that this concluding paragraph does not
introduce new or contradictory information, but wraps up the
essay.
Questions
1. According to Peter Saunders (1986):
There is, in Anglo-Saxon culture, a deep and enduring tension
between the image of the “town” and that of the “countryside.”
The imagery is that of opposites, for the virtues of rural life –
family, traditional morality, community – are mirrored in the
vices of the city – egoism, materialism, anonymity – while the
advantages of urban living are similarly reflected in the
disadvantages of rural existence (p. 84).

282. How does Capra, in his film Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, depict
this “imagery of opposites” of “town” and “countryside?”
Discuss this imagery using illustrations form the film. How
would Wirth and Gans explain this “imagery of opposites?”
That is, how would they discuss this imagery in light of their
particular approaches to urban and non-urban settlement types?
Please be sure to properly identify quotes and paraphrases that
you use from the film.
2. How would Durkheim, Marx and Weber analyze Capra’s film,
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town? Then, discuss which theorist you
think provides the most compelling analysis? Please be sure to
properly identify quotes and paraphrases that you use from the
film.
3. Does Capra’s film, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, suggest that
there is an “urban way of lie?” That is, does the film suggest
that settlement types we label “town” and “countryside” are
fundamentally different with respect to “ways of life?” Using
Wirth or Gans, and one of the classical theorists (Marx,
Durkheim or Weber) address whether or not the film suggests
that there is an “urban way of life” that is tied to settlement
types or that what is labeled as an “urban way of life,” is better
understood as a product of other sociological influences. That
is, are there sociological variables that do a better job of
explaining peoples actions and behaviors?