The Communist Manifesto of 1848 briefly. Communist Manifesto. Property is the master key of all problems

In this work, with brilliant clarity and brightness, a new worldview is outlined, consistent materialism, which also embraces the field of social life, dialectics, as the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of development, the theory of the class struggle and the world-historical revolutionary role of the proletariat, the creator of a new, communist society.

1. Bourgeois and proletarians
2. Proletarians and Communists
3. Socialist and communist literature
   1. reactionary socialism
      1. Feudal socialism
      2. Petty-bourgeois socialism
      3. German or "true" socialism
   2. Conservative or bourgeois socialism
   3. Critically utopian socialism and communism
4. Attitude of communists towards various opposition parties

Meaning

In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels, for the first time in social science, defined a place in the history of mankind, showed its progressiveness in comparison with previous formations and the inevitability of its death. The founders of scientific communism showed that the entire history of society, with the exception of the primitive communal system (as Engels added in the preface to the German edition of the Manifesto, 1883), was the history of class struggle. In bourgeois society, an irreconcilable struggle between themselves is waged by two main classes hostile to each other - and. Having become the economically dominant class, the bourgeoisie has seized state power and is using it as a weapon to defend its selfish class interests and to suppress the working people. Marx and Engels revealed in the Manifesto the irreconcilable internal contradictions of bourgeois society. The capitalist relations of production, which contributed to the enormous growth of the productive forces, at a certain stage become an obstacle to the further development of production. The contradiction between the social character of production and the private form of appropriation - the main contradiction of capitalism - gives rise to economic crises, during which a significant part of finished products and productive forces are constantly destroyed.

In The Communist Manifesto, the world-historical role of the proletariat as the gravedigger of capitalist society and the builder of communism, the only completely consistent revolutionary class acting in the interests of all working people, is open and comprehensively substantiated. It is the working class that will deliver society from the yoke of capitalism by destroying the capitalist form of property and replacing it with public property. But to accomplish this task, the authors of the Manifesto point out, the working class can only use revolutionary violence against the bourgeoisie, through the proletarian socialist revolution. Marx and Engels substantiated the need to create a political party of the proletariat, revealed its historical role, defined its tasks, and explained the relationship between the party and the working class. In practice, the Communists, wrote the authors of the Manifesto,

“... they are the most resolute part of the workers’ parties of all countries, always encouraging them to move forward, and in theoretical terms they have an advantage over the rest of the mass of the proletariat in understanding the conditions, course and general results of the proletarian movement”

Although Marx and Engels in the "Manifesto" did not yet use the term "", however, the idea of ​​the proletarian dictatorship in this work was already expressed and substantiated by them.

“... The first step in the workers' revolution,” wrote Marx and Engels, “is the transformation of the proletariat into the ruling class, the conquest of democracy. The proletariat uses its political domination to wrest all capital from the bourgeoisie step by step, to centralize all the instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., the proletariat organized as the ruling class, and to increase the sum of the productive forces as quickly as possible.

The "Manifesto of the Communist Party" emphasizes that the destruction of the capitalist system, the elimination of the exploitation of man by man will put an end to national oppression and ethnic hatred. Marx and Engels noted that one of the main principles of the revolutionary activity of communists in various countries is their mutual assistance and support in the struggle against social oppression and exploitation, due to their common goals. The substantiation of this principle - the principle of proletarian internationalism - permeates the entire content of the Manifesto. Explaining the great and humane goals of the communists, Marx and Engels showed the complete groundlessness of the attacks on the communists by bourgeois ideologists, revealed the class limitations and self-serving nature of the bourgeoisie's ideas about marriage, morality, property, fatherland, etc.

In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels subjected the socialist and communist literature of those years to scientific criticism; they revealed the class essence of the concepts underlying feudal socialism, petty-bourgeois socialism, so-called German or "true" socialism, as well as conservative or bourgeois socialism. The founders of scientific communism expressed their attitude towards the systems of critical utopian socialism, showed the unreality of these systems and at the same time revealed rational elements in the views of utopian socialists -,. Marx and Engels put forward important propositions on the tactics of the proletarian party. Communists, the Manifesto explained, are members of a consistently revolutionary party. They are

“...they fight for the immediate goals and interests of the working class, but at the same time, in the movement of today, they also defend the future of the movement”

The "Manifesto of the Communist Party" opened the way to a new era in the history of mankind, marked the beginning of a great revolutionary movement for the socialist transformation of the world. This little book, - V. I. Lenin wrote about the "Manifesto", - is worth whole volumes: the entire organized and fighting proletariat of the civilized world still lives and moves in its spirit.

Specificity of transformations

When presenting the content of the measures carried out by the proletariat, it is stipulated that in different countries their set may be different. Thus, in the most advanced countries, the following measures can be applied:

1. Expropriation of landed property and conversion of land rent to cover public expenditures.
2. High progressive tax.
3. Cancellation of inheritance rights.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state through a national bank with state capital and with an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of all transport in the hands of the state.
7. An increase in the number of state factories, tools of production, clearing for arable land and improvement of land according to the general plan.
8. The same obligation of labor for all, the establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. The connection of agriculture with industry, the promotion of the gradual elimination of the distinction between town and country.
10. Public and free education of all children. Elimination of factory labor of children in its modern form. The combination of education with material production, etc.

Recognizing that "arbitrary interference with property rights and bourgeois production relations" are measures "which seem economically insufficient and untenable", the authors of the Manifesto emphasized that in the course of the movement (these processes) these measures "outgrow themselves", and that they are inevitable as "a means for a revolution in the whole mode of production", and not as an end in themselves. It is significant that Marx at the same time harshly criticized the utopian "crude and ill-conceived communism" of those who simply extended the principle of private property to everyone ("common private property"). Crude communism, according to Marx, is the product of "worldwide envy".

Editions

The Manifesto is one of the most widespread works of scientific and political thought. In terms of the number of publications, it can be compared, perhaps, only with. The Communist Manifesto was first published in 1848 in London in German. It has been published in at least 70 countries, in more than 100 languages, over 1,000 times, with a total circulation of over 30 million copies. Almost 120 years ago, Engels already had every reason to state that “The history of the Manifesto largely reflects the history of the modern labor movement; at present it is undoubtedly the most widespread, the most international work of all socialist literature, a common program recognized by millions of workers from Siberia to California..

According to incomplete data, during the period 1848-71 there were about 770 editions in 50 languages. In the USSR, as of January 1, 1973, 447 editions of the Communist Manifesto were published with a total circulation of 24,341,000 copies in 74 languages.

Translations into Russian

• 1869 - the first edition of the "Manifesto" in Russian in Geneva. The authorship of the translation is attributed, although the translator was not indicated on the book itself. The translation distorted the most important provisions of this document
• 1882 - edition of the "Manifesto" in translation. With a special preface by Marx and Engels.
• 1948 - anniversary edition of the "Manifesto" by IMEL (the translation of 1939 has been updated)
• 1955 - Volume 4 of the "Works" of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (2nd edition) prepared by the Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin Institute under the Central Committee of the CPSU is published. Is included latest version translation of the Communist Manifesto.

Notes

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Communist Manifesto

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Karl Marx Friedrich Engels Manifesto of the Communist Party
A ghost haunts Europe - the ghost of communism. All the forces of old Europe have united for the sacred persecution of this ghost: the pope and the tsar, Metternich and Guizot, the French radicals and the German policemen.

Where is the opposition party that its opponents in power would not slander as communist? Where is the opposition party which, in its turn, does not throw the stigmatizing accusation of communism both at the more advanced representatives of the opposition and at its reactionary opponents?

Two conclusions follow from this fact.

Communism is already recognized as a force by all European forces.

It is time for the communists to openly state their views, their goals, their aspirations before the whole world, and to oppose the tales of the specter of communism with the manifesto of the party itself.

To this end, Communists of various nationalities gathered in London and drew up the following "Manifesto", which is published in English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish.

I. Bourgeois and proletarians

The history of all hitherto existing societies has been the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, landowner and serf, master and journeyman, in short, oppressor and oppressed, were in eternal antagonism to each other, waged a continuous, now hidden, now open struggle, which always ended in a revolutionary reorganization of everything. public building or the general destruction of the contending classes.

In previous historical epochs we find almost everywhere the complete dismemberment of society into different classes, a whole ladder of different social positions. AT Ancient Rome we meet patricians, horsemen, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages - feudal lords, vassals, guild masters, apprentices, serfs, and besides, in almost each of these classes - there are still special gradations.

Coming out of the bowels of the lost feudal society, modern bourgeois society has not eliminated class contradictions. It only put new classes, new conditions of oppression and new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, differs, however, in that it has simplified class contradictions: society is more and more splitting into two large hostile camps, into two large classes facing each other—the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages came the free population of the first cities; from this class of townspeople developed the first elements of the bourgeoisie.

The discovery of America and the sea route around Africa created a new field of activity for the rising bourgeoisie. The East Indian and Chinese markets, the colonization of America, exchange with the colonies, the increase in the number of means of exchange and goods in general, gave an impetus hitherto unheard of to trade, navigation, industry, and thus caused the rapid development of the revolutionary element in the disintegrating feudal society.

The former feudal or guild organization of industry could no longer satisfy the demand that grew with the new markets. Manufactory took its place. The guild masters were supplanted by the industrial middle class; the division of labor between the various corporations disappeared, giving way to a division of labor within the individual workshop.

But the markets were growing, the demand was increasing. Manufactory could no longer satisfy him. Then steam and the machine revolutionized the industry. The place of manufacture has been taken by modern large-scale industry, the place of the industrial middle class has been taken by millionaire industrialists, the leaders of entire industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

Large-scale industry has created a world market, prepared by the discovery of America. The world market has caused a colossal development of trade, navigation and means of overland communication. This, in turn, had an effect on the expansion of industry, and in the same measure that industry, trade, navigation, railways grew, the bourgeoisie developed, it increased its capitals and pushed into the background all the classes inherited from the Middle Ages.

We see, therefore, that the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long process of development, of a series of revolutions in the mode of production and exchange.

Each of these stages in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political success. An oppressed estate under the rule of feudal lords, an armed and self-governing association in a commune, here an independent city republic, there a third, taxable estate of a monarchy, then, during the period of manufacture, a counterweight to the nobility in a estate or absolute monarchy and the main foundation of large monarchies in general, finally , since the establishment of large-scale industry and the world market, it has won for itself an exclusive political dominance in the modern representative state. Modern state power is only a committee that manages common affairs the entire bourgeois class.

The bourgeoisie has played an extremely revolutionary role in history.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has achieved dominance, has destroyed all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. She ruthlessly tore apart the motley feudal fetters that tied a person to his "natural masters", and left no other connection between people, except for bare interest, a heartless "chistogan". In the icy water of selfish calculation, she drowned the sacred awe of religious ecstasy, chivalrous enthusiasm, petty-bourgeois sentimentality. It has transformed the personal dignity of man into an exchangeable value, and has replaced innumerable freedoms granted and acquired with one unscrupulous freedom of trade. In a word, it has replaced exploitation covered by religious and political illusions with open, shameless, direct, callous exploitation.

The bourgeoisie deprived of the sacred halo all kinds of activity, which until then were considered honorable and which were looked at with reverent awe. She turned a doctor, a lawyer, a priest, a poet, a man of science into her paid employees.

The bourgeoisie tore off their touchingly sentimental veil from family relations and reduced them to purely monetary relations.

The bourgeoisie has shown that the crude display of strength in the Middle Ages, which is so admired by the reactionaries, found its natural complement in laziness and immobility. She showed for the first time what human activity can achieve. She created marvels of art, but of a very different kind than Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; she made completely different campaigns than the migration of peoples and the crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly causing upheavals in the instruments of production, without revolutionizing, consequently, the relations of production, and, consequently, the whole public relations. On the contrary, the first condition for the existence of all former industrial classes was the preservation of the old mode of production unchanged. Incessant upheavals in production, the constant upheaval of all social relations, eternal uncertainty and movement distinguish the bourgeois era from all others. All frozen, rusted relationships, together with their accompanying, centuries-honored ideas and views, are destroyed, all newly emerging ones turn out to be outdated before they have time to harden. Everything classy and stagnant disappears, everything sacred is defiled, and people finally come to the need to look with sober eyes at their life situation and their mutual relations.

The need for ever-increasing sales of products is driving the bourgeoisie all over the globe. Everywhere it must infiltrate, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.

The bourgeoisie, by exploiting the world market, has made the production and consumption of all countries cosmopolitan. To the great chagrin of the reactionaries, it tore the national soil from under the feet of industry. The original national industries have been destroyed and continue to be destroyed every day. They are supplanted by new branches of industry, the introduction of which is becoming a matter of life for all civilized nations - branches that no longer process local raw materials, but raw materials brought from the most remote regions of the globe, and produce factory products that are consumed not only within a given country, but also in all parts of the world. Instead of the old needs, which were satisfied by domestic products, new ones arise, for the satisfaction of which the products of the most remote countries and the most diverse climates are required. The old local and national isolation and existence at the expense of the products of one's own production are being replaced by all-round communication and all-round dependence of nations on each other. This applies equally to both material and spiritual production. The fruits of the spiritual activity of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and out of the multitude of national and local literatures one world literature is formed.

The bourgeoisie, by its rapid improvement of all the instruments of production and the endless facilitation of the means of communication, draws into civilization all, even the most barbarous, nations. The cheap prices of her goods are the heavy artillery with which she destroys all the Chinese walls and forces the barbarians' most stubborn hatred of foreigners to capitulate. Under pain of death, it forces all nations to adopt the bourgeois mode of production, forces them to introduce so-called civilization, i.e., to become bourgeois. In a word, she creates the world for herself in her own image and likeness.

The bourgeoisie subordinated the countryside to the rule of the city. It created huge cities, increased the urban population to a high degree in comparison with the rural population, and in this way wrested a significant part of the population from the idiocy of village life. Just as she made the countryside dependent on the city, so she made the barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized countries, the peasant peoples on the bourgeois peoples, the East on the West.

The bourgeoisie is more and more destroying the fragmentation of the means of production, property and population. It condensed the population, centralized the means of production, concentrated property in the hands of a few. A necessary consequence of this was political centralization. Independent, almost exclusively allied regions with different interests, laws, governments and customs duties, turned out to be united into one nation, with one government, with one legislation, with one national class interest, with one customs border.

The bourgeoisie, in less than a hundred years of its class rule, has created more numerous and more grandiose productive forces than all previous generations put together. The conquest of the forces of nature, machine production, the use of chemistry in industry and agriculture, shipping, railways, the electric telegraph, the development of entire parts of the world for agriculture, the adaptation of rivers for navigation, whole masses of the population, as if summoned from underground, - what of the former centuries could have suspected that such productive forces lay dormant in the depths of social labor!

So we have seen that the means of production and exchange, on the basis of which the bourgeoisie was formed, were created in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and exchange, the relations in which the production and exchange of feudal society, the feudal organization of agriculture and industry, in a word, the feudal property relations, took place no longer corresponded to the developed forces of production. They slowed down production instead of developing it. They have become his shackles. They had to be broken, and they were broken.

Their place was taken by free competition, with a corresponding social and political system, with the economic and political domination of the bourgeois class.

A similar movement is taking place before our very eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its bourgeois relations of production and exchange, bourgeois property relations, which has created, as if by magic, such powerful means of production and exchange, is like a magician who is no longer able to cope with the underground forces caused by his spells. For several decades now the history of industry and commerce has been nothing but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern production relations, against those property relations which are the condition for the existence of the bourgeoisie and its domination. It suffices to point out the commercial crises which, recurring from time to time, more and more menacingly call into question the existence of the entire bourgeois society. During commercial crises, each time a significant part of not only manufactured products is destroyed, but even the productive forces that have already been created. During crises, a social epidemic breaks out, which would have seemed absurd to all previous eras - an epidemic of overproduction. Society is suddenly thrown back to a state of sudden barbarism, as if famine, a general devastating war, have deprived

1. Formally, the document, which became the "holy scripture" of the communists of the whole world, was created Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels not on their own initiative, but on behalf of the radical left "Union of the Just", of which both politicians became members in 1847. Interestingly, after the entry of Marx and Engels, the "Union of the Just" was renamed the "Union of Communists".

2. The Congress of the "Union of the Just" instructed its new member, Friedrich Engels, to write the text of a policy document called the "Project of the Communist Creed." But, apparently, the atheistic convictions of Marx and Engels made it necessary to change the name of the final document to the "Manifesto of the Communist Party."

Painting "Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels". Artist G. Gordon. Canvas, oil. Reproduction. Photo: RIA Novosti

3. Officially, the authorship of the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" belongs to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but in fact it was written in Brussels, in January 1848, only by Marx. Engels made only a few remarks, but Marx insisted that two names of the authors be indicated on the publication.

4. The researchers note that, unlike many other programmatic political documents, the Communist Manifesto is as easy to read as a work of art. Karl Marx possessed remarkable journalistic talent, which also manifested itself when writing this document - the “Manifesto”, which determined the history of human development for a whole century, fit in just 12,000 words.

5. The Communist Manifesto was first published in German in London in 1848. There are discrepancies with the date of its publication - different sources indicate February 15, February 21, February 26, and July 4. It is possible that the confusion is due to the fact that the "Manifesto" was published in different languages ​​- except for German, in Swedish, and somewhat later in English.

6. The "Manifesto of the Communist Party" was written in 1848, when a number of revolutions took place in the countries of Europe. However, almost no one paid attention to the ideas of Marx and Engels - the number of their supporters did not exceed a few dozen people. The ideas set forth in the Manifesto would not gain true popularity until a few decades later.

7. The first edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party in Russian was published in 1869 in Geneva. The authorship of the translation is attributed to a prominent anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. The second edition appeared in 1882 in a translation George Plekhanov. It is curious that the political views of both Bakunin and Plekhanov were sharply criticized by the main successor of the Manifesto ideas in Russia - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

8. There is no exact information about the number of editions of the "Manifesto of the Communist Party". In the USSR alone, as of January 1, 1973, 447 editions of the Manifesto were published with a total circulation of 24,341,000 copies in 74 languages. The total number of publications in the world exceeds 1000 in more than 100 languages ​​of the world.

Title page of the Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto, 1885. Reproduction. The original is kept in the Museum of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Photo: RIA Novosti

9. After 100 years, in 1948, another "Manifesto of the Communist Party" was published in the USSR - this was the name of a poem by the famous Soviet poet Sergei Narovchatov. In particular, it contained the following lines:

For a hundred years in a row you have been talking about him,

And, old, he again rises as news

Wherever you can't find it in the daytime with fire

Lost conscience in the dark...

And powerless before him White House,

That White House that ceased to be white

Ever since the tenants in it

Our white light is stained with black deeds.

The fear of the hundreds before the angry might of the masses

Legislated the twentieth century

I wish I could see old Marx

How we are now raging on the planet!

10. The creator of The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx, as already noted, was a talented journalist who knew how to attract the attention of readers with bright and juicy phrases at the beginning and end of the work. That is why even those who have never read the Manifesto heard them at least once in their lives - "A ghost haunts Europe, the ghost of communism" and "Proletarians of all countries, unite!".

Rejection of the catechism

In 1847, Karl Mark and Friedrich Engels joined the "Union of the Just" - an offshoot of the secret revolutionary organization "Union of Outcasts". The "Manifesto" they wrote was a piece of software created to order. Interestingly, the manifesto was originally supposed to be called "Draft Communist Creed." Engels wrote to Marx: "Think about the Symbol of Faith." I think the best thing to do would be to drop the catechism form and call this thing the "Communist Manifesto". After all, it will have to shed some light on the history of the question, for which the present form is completely unsuitable. "It must be said that the change in name is one of the few merits of Engels.

Women's question

One of the most interesting and witty passages in the Manifesto is Marx's discourse about the fears of the bourgeoisie about the socialization of wives with the advent of communism. According to Marx, such fears can only be explained by the fact that women are recognized by the bourgeois as tools of production, while communism, on the contrary, wants to free women from such perception. Marx writes: "Our bourgeoisie, not content with the fact that they have at their disposal the wives and daughters of their workers, not to mention official prostitution, see a special pleasure in seducing each other's wives." It is noteworthy that Marx himself will have an illegitimate daughter from a maid, whom Engels will have to marry in order to conceal his friend's connection.

Proletarians, unite!

The maxim "Proletarians of all countries, unite!" turned out to be incredibly durable. Under this slogan the revolution took place in Russia. Interesting, however, is the very concept of the proletariat. It is quite ambiguous. On the one hand, in ancient Rome, this was the name given to poor citizens, declassed elements, useful to society only by their offspring. In Dahl's dictionary, "proletarian" means a bean, that is, on the contrary, a childless person. In this sense, "workers of all countries, unite!" sounds strange to say the least.

The ghost of communism

The original version of the Communist Manifesto did not include Karl Marx's ghostly introduction. It appeared only after the final editing by Marx in the autumn of 1847. Spectacular opening "A ghost haunts Europe - the ghost of communism" was an invention of Karl Marx. Obviously, this formulation was a consequence of Marx's fascination with mysticism. Charles was born in Trier, a city where ancient ruins alternate with Gothic cathedrals. It is not surprising, therefore, that in his youth he experienced a fascination with romanticism. At that time, Edgar Poe was incredibly popular in Europe, so the visible and frightening image of the “ghost of communism” affected people in the most direct way.

Translations

The Communist Manifesto is still one of the most popular and translated works. Before October revolution many translations have been published. Of the most exotic - three Japanese translation and one Chinese. Most of the publications were in Russian (70) and languages Russian Empire(35): 11 in Polish, 7 in Yiddish, 6 in Finnish, 5 in Ukrainian, 4 in Georgian, 2 in Armenian. 55 editions of the Manifesto were published in Germany, and in the Habsburg Empire - 9 in Hungarian and 8 in Czech (of which 3 in Croatia and one each in Slovenia and Slovakia), 34 in English (including in the USA, where the first a translation appeared in 1871), 26 in French and 11 in Italian. In addition, 7 editions were published in Bulgarian, 4 in Serbian, 4 in Romanian and one printed in Thessaloniki in Sephardic. Northern Europe was moderately represented, with 6 publications in Danish, 5 in Swedish and 2 in Norwegian.

Unexpected glory

For almost 25 years, the manifesto did not receive wide publicity. Nothing foreshadowed his success and future influence on world history. The situation was radically changed by the trial of the leaders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, accused of high treason - Wilhelm Liebknecht, August Bebel and Adolf Hepner. In March 1872, the prosecution read out the text of the manifesto in the courtroom, which gave the Social Democrats the opportunity to publish it legally, in large numbers, as part of the proceedings. It was the 1872 edition (until that time changes were made to the document during publication) that became the basis for all subsequent versions of the manifesto.

religious question

Marx deliberately avoids religious questions in The Communist Manifesto, giving them the most insignificant place. Marx, a convinced atheist and theomachist, could cross the emotional line in religious discussions. His relationship with God was not just "strained", he was a hardened atheist and wrote blasphemous poetry. In the party manifesto, these "passions" would be excessive. Here is one of his poems in which he compares himself to Lucifer himself.

"Spells of the Desperate"

I'm left with nothing but revenge
I will raise my throne high
Cold and terrible will be its peak,
Its basis is superstitious trembling.
Master of Ceremonies! Blackest agony!
Who will look with a sane eye -
Turns away, deathly pale and numb,
Caught in a blind and cold death.

Price Realized: $127,115

MARX, Karl (1818-1893) & ENGELS, Friedrich (1820-1895). Manifest der kommunistischen Partei. Veröffentlicht im Februar 1848. Londres: imprimé par la "Bildungs=Gesellschaft für Arbeiter" de J.E. Burghard, 1848. PMM 326.

Care: €97,000. Auction Christie "s. Collection Jean Lignel Dessins et manuscrits, Livres anciens et livres d" artists. December 11, 2008. Paris. Lot number 12.

French description of the lot: Plaquette in-8 (214x137 mm.). 23 pages (titre inclus dans la pagination). Couverture originale, imprimée sur papier vert, titre dans un encadrement typographique formé de 26 (sens vertical) et 13 (sens horizontal) éléments (demi-cercles avec une couronne radiale), aux angles trois demi-cercles composés de 3 pièces typographiques avec une couronne radiale (agrafes enlevées et remplacées par une couture, insérés dans une couverture protectrice de papier japon et papier peigne), étui moderne en cartonnage vert.

Provenance : The copy has already been sold 2 times at auctions - bibliothèque Schocken - Hauswedell & Nolte (vendu en 1976) - Vente à Paris en 1979.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto (German: Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei) is a legendary work in which they declare and justify the goals, objectives and methods of struggle of the emerging communist organizations and parties. The authors proclaim the inevitability of the death of capitalism at the hands of the proletariat. The manifesto begins with the words: "A ghost haunts Europe - the ghost of communism", and ends with the famous historical slogan: "Proletarians of all countries, unite!" First published February 21, 1848 in London. By the way, there were a decent number of copies of the first "Manifesto" in the Soviet Union. One got the impression that it was a deliberate policy of the country's party leadership to buy them at international auctions. Perhaps they were brought by workers of the Comintern, or receipts as a gift during the visit of officials. In short, left behind the scenes.

I.Bourgeois and proletarians

II.Proletarians and Communists

III.Socialist and communist literature

1. reactionary socialism

a.Feudal socialism

b.Petty-bourgeois socialism

c.German or "true" socialism

2. Conservative or bourgeois socialism

3. Critically utopian socialism and communism

IV.Attitude of communists towards various opposition parties

A ghost haunts Europe - the ghost of communism. All the forces of old Europe have united for the sacred persecution of this ghost: the pope and the tsar, Metternich and Guizot, the French radicals and the German policemen. Where is the opposition party that its opponents in power would not slander as communist? Where is the opposition party which, in its turn, does not throw the stigmatizing accusation of communism both at the more advanced representatives of the opposition and at its reactionary opponents? Two conclusions follow from this fact. Communism is already recognized as a force by all European forces. It is time for the communists to openly state their views, their goals, their aspirations before the whole world, and to oppose the tales of the specter of communism with the manifesto of the party itself. To this end, communists of various nationalities gathered in London and drew up the following "Manifesto", which is published in English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish. The history of all hitherto existing societies has been the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, landowner and serf, master and apprentice, in short, oppressor and oppressed, were in eternal antagonism to each other, waged an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open struggle, which always ended in a revolutionary reorganization of the entire public edifice or in the common death of those fighting. classes.

The second congress of the "Union of Communists" was held from November 29 to December 8, 1847 in London. K. Marx and F. Engels were instructed to write the program document of the Union. The basis was the developments made earlier by F. Engels (Project of the communist creed and the principles of communism). In mid-December, F. Engels was forced to leave London for Paris, and K. Marx continued his work. And F. Schapper urged on. The text of the Manifesto of the Communist Party was sent to the leaders of the "Union of Communists" in early February from Brussels (i.e. K. Marx), the Association of German Workers had to borrow 25 pounds, buy a Gothic type and a circulation of 1,000 copies of the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" was printed February 21, 1848. The printer (member of the "Union of Communists") J. Burchardt printed a green brochure (with typographical errors) with a volume of 23 pages and dimensions of 21.5 by 13.4 cm in his own bookstore. After the beginning of the revolution in France in February 1848, the "Manifesto ..." began to be secretly sent to other countries and the community of the "Union of Communists" in Amsterdam received 100 copies - and during the dispersal of one of the workers' demonstrations, arrests were made and a copy of the "Manifesto .. On March 24, 1848, he fell into the hands of the police. In the same year, there were reprints of the "Manifesto ..." in France, Italy, Denmark with prefaces in the respective languages, and in December 1848 the first translation of the "Manifesto ..." itself into Swedish was made. The first translation of the "Manifesto ..." into Russian was made by M. Bakunin. Since then, the number of translations and editions of this document is incalculable. In Germany, an edition was made in Braille - for the blind.

Workers of the world, unite!!! This fatal paradigm completely captured many minds in Russia for almost 100 years! “This little book is worth whole volumes: the entire organized and fighting proletariat of the civilized world still lives and moves in its spirit,” wrote V.I. Lenin on the Manifesto. This is the first policy document of scientific communism, which outlines the main ideas of Marxism; written by K. Marx and F. Engels on behalf of the 2nd Congress (1847) of the League of Communists as a program of this union. “In this work, with brilliant clarity and brightness, a new worldview is outlined, consistent materialism, covering the area of ​​social life, dialectics, as the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of development, the theory of the class struggle and the world-historical revolutionary role of the proletariat, the creator of a new, communist society” . In "M. K. p. " Marx and Engels, for the first time in social science, determined the place of the capitalist formation in the history of mankind, showed its progressiveness in comparison with previous formations and the inevitability of its death. The founders of scientific communism showed that the entire history of society, with the exception of the primitive communal system (as Engels added in the preface to it, the edition of the Manifesto, 1883), was the history of class struggle. In bourgeois society, an irreconcilable struggle is waged between two main classes hostile to each other - the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Having become the economically dominant class, the bourgeoisie has seized state power and is using it as a weapon to defend its selfish class interests and to suppress the working people. Marx and Engels revealed in M. K. p. " irreconcilable internal contradictions of bourgeois society. Under the capitalist mode of production, the relations that contributed to the enormous growth of the productive forces turn at a certain stage into an obstacle to the further development of production.

The contradiction between the social character of production and the private form of appropriation - the main contradiction of capitalism - gives rise to economic crises, during which part of the finished products and productive forces are constantly destroyed. In "M. K. p. " the world-historical role of the proletariat as the grave-digger of capitalist society and the builder of communism, the only completely consistent revolutionary class acting in the interests of all working people, is openly and comprehensively substantiated. It is the working class and its trade unions that will deliver society from the yoke of capitalism by destroying the capitalist form of property and replacing it with public property. But to complete this task, the authors of “M. Communist Party,” the working class can only by using revolutionary violence against the bourgeoisie, by proletarian socialist revolution. Marx and Engels substantiated the need to create a political party of the proletariat, revealed its historical role, defined its tasks, and explained the relationship between the party and the working class. In practice, the communists, - wrote the authors of "M. K. p. ",- "... they are the most resolute part of the workers' parties of all countries, always impelling to move forward, and theoretically they have an advantage over the rest of the mass of the proletariat in understanding the conditions, course and general results of the proletarian movement."

Although Marx and Engels in M. K. p. " have not yet used the term "dictatorship of the proletariat", but the idea of ​​the proletarian dictatorship in this work has already been expressed and substantiated by them. “... The first step in the workers' revolution,” wrote Marx and Engels, “is the transformation of the proletariat into the ruling class, the conquest of democracy. The proletariat uses its political dominance to wrest all capital from the bourgeoisie step by step, to centralize all the instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., the proletariat organized as the ruling class, and to increase the sum of the productive forces as quickly as possible.” In "M. K. p. " it is emphasized that the destruction of the capitalist system, the elimination of the exploitation of man by man will put an end to national oppression and interethnic hostility. Marx and Engels noted that one of the main principles of the revolutionary activity of communists in various countries is their mutual assistance and support in the struggle against social oppression and exploitation, conditioned by common goals. The substantiation of this principle - the principle of proletarian internationalism - permeates the entire content of "M. K. p. Explaining the great and humane goals of the communists, Marx and Engels showed in M. K. p. " the complete groundlessness of the attacks on the communists by bourgeois ideologists, revealed the class limitations and self-serving nature of the bourgeoisie's ideas about marriage, morality, property, fatherland, etc. In M. K. p. " Marx and Engels subjected the socialist and communist literature of those years to scientific criticism; they revealed the class essence of the concepts underlying feudal socialism, petty-bourgeois socialism, the so-called. German or "true" socialism, as well as conservative or bourgeois socialism. The founders of scientific communism also expressed their attitude towards the systems of critical utopian socialism, showed the unreality of these systems and at the same time revealed rational elements in the views of the utopian socialists - A. K. Saint-Simon, C. Fourier, R. Owen. Marx and Engels put forward important propositions in M. K. p. " on the tactics of the proletarian party. Communists, the Manifesto explained, are members of a consistently revolutionary party. They "...fight in the name of the immediate goals and interests of the working class, but at the same time, in the movement of today, they also defend the future of the movement." "M. K. p. " opened the way to a new era in the history of mankind, laid the foundation for a great revolutionary movement for the socialist transformation of the world. In 1869 the first Russian edition of M. K. p. " translated by M.A. Bakunin, in which the most important provisions of this work were distorted. It was printed in the former printing house of A.I. Herzen (in 1866 it passed to the Polish revolutionary émigré, Herzen's collaborator L. Chernetsky) without indicating the names of the authors and the translator. The translation is attributed to M.A. Bakunin, however last years this version has been called into question: many consider the translator N.N. Lubavin. From a letter from L. Chernetsky to N.P. Ogarev dated September 27, 1869 knows that Ogarev handed over the manuscript of the translation to the printing house and asked to print 1000 copies. Already on November 8, 1869, copies of the "Manifesto" were discovered by Russian postal censors. In 1882 a new Russian, so-called Marxist edition, M. K. p. " translated by G.V. Plekhanov, with a special preface by Marx and Engels. In his preface, G.V. Plekhanov, in particular, says that M.A. Bakunin, the first Russian translation of the "Manifesto" contains a number of distortions, which he corrects.