Communist Manifesto (Preface) (2024)

The 1872 German Edition

The Communist League, an international associationof workers, which could of course be only a secret one, under conditionsobtaining at the time, commissioned us, the undersigned, at the Congressheld in London in November 1847, to write for publication a detailed theoreticaland practical programme for the Party. Such was the origin of the followingManifesto, the manuscript of which travelled to London to be printed afew weeks before the February [French] Revolution [in 1848]. First published in German, ithas been republished in that language in at least twelve different editionsin Germany, England, and America. It was published in English for the firsttime in 1850 in the Red Republican, London, translated by Miss HelenMacfarlane, and in 1871 in at least three different translations in America.The french version first appeared in Paris shortly before the June insurrectionof 1848, and recently in Le Socialiste of New York. A new translationis in the course of preparation. A Polish version appeared in London shortlyafter it was first published in Germany. A Russian translation was publishedin Geneva in the sixties ^[A]. Into Danish, too, it was translated shortlyafter its appearance.

However much that state of things may have altered during the last twenty-fiveyears, 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 Manifestoitself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditionsfor the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress islaid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. Thatpassage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today. In viewof the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanyingimproved and extended organization of the working class, in view of thepractical experience gained, first in the February Revolution, and then,still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first timeheld political power for two whole months, this programme has in some detailsbeen 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: Addressof the General Council of the International Working Men’ s Association,1871, where this point is further developed.) Further, it is self-evidentthat the criticism of socialist literature is deficient in relation tothe present time, because it comes down only to 1847; also that the remarkson the relation of the Communists to the various opposition parties (SectionIV), although, in principle still correct, yet in practice are antiquated,because the political situation has been entirely changed, and the progressof history has swept from off the earth the greater portion of the politicalparties there enumerated.

But then, the Manifesto has become a historical document which we haveno longer any right to alter. A subsequent edition may perhaps appear withan introduction bridging the gap from 1847 to the present day; but thisreprint was too unexpected to leave us time for that.

Karl Marx & Frederick Engels
June 24, 1872, London

The 1882 Russian Edition

The first Russian edition of the Manifesto of theCommunist Party, translated by Bakunin ^[A], was published early in the ’sixties by the printing office of the Kolokol [reference to the Free Russian Printing House]. Then the West could see in it (theRussian edition of the Manifesto) only a literary curiosity. Such a viewwould 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 positionof the Communists in relation to the various opposition parties in variouscountries. Precisely Russia and the United States are missing here. Itwas the time when Russia constituted the last great reserve of all Europeanreaction, when the United States absorbed the surplus proletarian forcesof Europe through immigration. Both countries provided Europe with rawmaterials and were at the same time markets for the sale of its industrialproducts. Both were, therefore, in one way of another, pillars of theexisting European system.

How very different today. Precisely European immigration fitted NorthAmerican for a gigantic agricultural production, whose competition is shakingthe very foundations of European landed property — large and small. Atthe same time, it enabled the United States to exploit its tremendous industrialresources with an energy and on a scale that must shortly break the industrialmonopoly of Western Europe, and especially of England, existing up to now.Both circ*mstances react in a revolutionary manner upon America itself.Step by step, the small and middle land ownership of the farmers, the basisof the whole political constitution, is succumbing to the competition ofgiant farms; at the same time, a mass industrial proletariat and a fabulousconcentration of capital funds are developing for the first time in theindustrial regions.

And now Russia! During the Revolution of 1848-9, not only the Europeanprinces, but the European bourgeois as well, found their only salvationfrom the proletariat just beginning to awaken in Russian intervention.The Tsar was proclaimed the chief of European reaction. Today, he is aprisoner of war of the revolution in Gatchina ^[B], and Russia forms the vanguardof revolutionary action in Europe.

The Communist Manifesto had, as its object, the proclamation of theinevitable impending dissolution of modern bourgeois property. But in Russiawe find, face-to-face with the rapidly flowering capitalist swindle andbourgeois property, just beginning to develop, more than half the landowned in common by the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina,though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership ofland, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership? Or,on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolutionsuch as constitutes the historical evolution of the West?

The only answer to that possible today is this: If the RussianRevolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West,so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownershipof land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.

Karl Marx & Frederick Engels
January 21, 1882, London

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 Europeand America owes more than to any one else — rests at Highgate Cemeteryand over his grave the first grass is already growing. Since hisdeath [March 14, 1883], there can be even less thought of revising or supplementingthe Manifesto. But I consider it all the more necessary again to statethe following expressly:

The basic thought running through the Manifesto — that economicproduction, and the structure of society of every historical epoch necessarilyarising therefrom, constitute the foundation for the political and intellectualhistory of that epoch; that consequently (ever since the dissolution ofthe primaeval communal ownership of land) all history has been a historyof class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, betweendominated and dominating classes at various stages of social evolution;that this struggle, however, has now reached a stage where the exploitedand oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself fromthe class which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie), without atthe same time forever freeing the whole of society from exploitation, oppression,class struggles — this basic thought belongs solely and exclusively toMarx. ⁽¹⁾

I have already stated this many times; but precisely now is it necessarythat it also stand in front of the Manifesto itself.

The 1888 English Edition

The Manifesto was published as the platform ofthe Communist League, a working men’ s association, first exclusively German,later on international, and under the political conditions of the Continentbefore 1848, unavoidably a secret society. At a Congress of the League,held in November 1847, Marx and Engels were commissioned to prepare a completetheoretical and practical party programme. Drawn up in German, in January1848, the manuscript was sent to the printer in London a few weeks beforethe French Revolution of February 24. A French translation was broughtout in Paris shortly before the insurrection of June 1848. The first Englishtranslation, by Miss Helen Macfarlane, appeared in George Julian Harney’ sRed Republican, London, 1850. A Danish and a Polish edition hadalso been published.

The defeat of the Parisian insurrection of June 1848 — the first greatbattle between proletariat and bourgeoisie — drove again into the background,for a time, the social and political aspirations of the European workingclass. Thenceforth, the struggle for supremacy was, again, as it had beenbefore the Revolution of February, solely between different sections ofthe propertied class; the working class was reduced to a fight for politicalelbow-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 theCentral Board of the Communist League, then located in Cologne. The memberswere arrested and, after eighteen months’ imprisonment, they were triedin October 1852. This celebrated “Cologne Communist Trial” lasted fromOctober 4 till November 12; seven of the prisoners were sentenced to termsof imprisonment in a fortress, varying from three to six years. Immediatelyafter the sentence, the League was formally dissolved by the remaining members.As to the Manifesto, it seemed henceforth doomed to oblivion.

When the European workers had recovered sufficient strength for anotherattack on the ruling classes, the International Working Men’ s Associationsprang up. But this association, formed with the express aim of weldinginto one body the whole militant proletariat of Europe and America, couldnot at once proclaim the principles laid down in the Manifesto. The Internationalwas bound to have a programme broad enough to be acceptable to the Englishtrade unions, to the followers of Proudhon in France, Belgium, Italy, andSpain, and to the Lassalleans in Germany. ⁽²⁾

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. Thevery events and vicissitudes in the struggle against capital, the defeatseven more than the victories, could not help bringing home to men’ s mindsthe insufficiency of their various favorite nostrums, and preparing theway for a more complete insight into the true conditions for working-classemancipation. And Marx was right. The International, on its breaking in1874, left the workers quite different men from what it found them in 1864.Proudhonism in France, Lassalleanism in Germany, were dying out, and eventhe conservative English trade unions, though most of them had long sincesevered their connection with the International, were gradually advancingtowards that point at which, last year at Swansea, their president [W. Bevan] couldsay in their name: “Continental socialism has lost its terror for us.”In fact, the principles of the Manifesto had made considerable headwayamong the working men of all countries.

The Manifesto itself came thus to the front again. Since 1850, the Germantext had been reprinted several times in Switzerland, England, and America.In 1872, it was translated into English in New York, where the translationwas published in Woodhull and Claflin’ s Weekly. From this Englishversion, a French one was made in Le Socialiste of New York. Sincethen, at least two more English translations, more or less mutilated, havebeen brought out in America, and one of them has been reprinted in England.The first Russian translation, made by Bakunin, was published at Herzen’ sKolokol office in Geneva, about 1863; a second one, by the heroic VeraZasulich, also in Geneva, in 1882. A new Danish edition is to be foundin Socialdemokratisk Bibliothek, Copenhagen, 1885; a fresh Frenchtranslation in Le Socialiste, Paris, 1886. From this latter, a Spanishversion was prepared and published in Madrid, 1886. The German reprintsare not to be counted; there have been twelve altogether at the least.An Armenian translation, which was to be published in Constantinople somemonths ago, did not see the light, I am told, because the publisher wasafraid of bringing out a book with the name of Marx on it, while the translatordeclined to call it his own production. Of further translations into otherlanguages I have heard but had not seen. Thus the history of the Manifestoreflects the history of the modern working-class movement; at present,it is doubtless the most wide spread, the most international productionof all socialist literature, the common platform acknowledged by millionsof working men from Siberia to California.

Yet, when it was written, we could not have called it a socialistmanifesto. By Socialists, in 1847, were understood, on the one hand theadherents of the various Utopian systems: Owenites in England, Fourieristsin France, [See Robert Owen and François Fourier] both of them already reduced to the position of mere sects,and gradually dying out; on the other hand, the most multifarious socialquacks who, by all manner of tinkering, professed to redress, without anydanger to capital and profit, all sorts of social grievances, in both casesmen outside the working-class movement, and looking rather to the “educated"classes for support. Whatever portion of the working class had become convincedof the insufficiency of mere political revolutions, and had proclaimedthe necessity of total social change, called itself Communist. It was acrude, rough-hewn, purely instinctive sort of communism; still, it touchedthe cardinal point and was powerful enough amongst the working class toproduce the Utopian communism of Cabet in France, and of Weitling in Germany.Thus, in 1847, socialism was a middle-class movement, communism a working-classmovement. Socialism was, on the Continent at least, “respectable”; communismwas the very opposite. And as our notion, from the very beginning, wasthat “the emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working classitself,” 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 tostate that the fundamental proposition which forms the nucleus belongsto Marx. That proposition is: That in every historical epoch, the prevailingmode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarilyfollowing from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained the political and intellectual history ofthat epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolutionof primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has beena history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited,ruling and oppressed classes; That the history of these class strugglesforms a series of evolutions in which, nowadays, a stage has been reachedwhere the exploited and oppressed class — the proletariat — cannot attainits emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class — thebourgeoisie — without, at the same time, and once and for all, emancipatingsociety at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinction,and class struggles.

This proposition, which, in my opinion, is destined to do for historywhat Darwin’ s theory has done for biology, we both of us, had been graduallyapproaching for some years before 1845. How far I had independently progressedtowards 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 alreadyworked out and put it before me in terms almost as clear as those in whichI 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 duringthe last twenty-five years, the general principles laid down in the Manifestoare, on the whole, as correct today as ever. Here and there, some detailmight be improved. The practical application of the principles will depend,as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historicalconditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no specialstress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of SectionII. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today.In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of theaccompanying improved and extended organization of the working class, inview of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolution,and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for thefirst time held political power for two whole months, this programme hasin some details been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by theCommune, viz., that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of ready-madestate machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” (See The CivilWar in France: Address of the General Council of the International WorkingMen’ s Assocation 1871, where this point is further developed.) Further,it is self-evident that the criticism of socialist literature is deficientin relation to the present time, because it comes down only to 1847; alsothat the remarks on the relation of the Communists to the various oppositionparties (Section IV), although, in principle still correct, yet in practiceare antiquated, because the political situation has been entirely changed,and the progress of history has swept from off the Earth the greater portionof the political parties there enumerated.

"But then, the Manifesto has become a historical document which we haveno longer any right to alter."

The present translation is by Mr Samuel Moore, the translator of the greaterportion 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

The 1890 German Edition

Since [the first German preface (1883)] was written,a new German edition of the Manifesto has again become necessary, and muchhas also happened to the Manifesto which should be recorded here.

A second Russian translation — by Vera Zasulich — appeared in Genevain 1882; the preface to that edition was written by Marx and myself. Unfortunately, the original German manuscript has gone astray; I must therefore retranslatefrom 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: ManifestKommunistyczny.

Furthermore, a new Danish translation has appeared in the SocialdemokratiskBibliothek, Copenhagen, 1885. Unfortunately, it is not quite complete;certain essential passages, which seem to have presented difficulties tothe translator, have been omitted, and, in addition, there are signs ofcarelessness here and there, which are all the more unpleasantly conspicuoussince the translation indicates that had the translator taken a littlemore 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 ElSocialista of Madrid, and then reissued in pamphlet form: Manifestodel Partido Communista por Carlos Marx y F. Engels, Madrid, Administracionde El Socialista, Hernan Cortes 8.

As a matter of curiosity, I may mention that in 1887 the manuscriptof an Armenian translation was offered to a publisher in Constantinople.But the good man did not have the courage to publish something bearingthe name of Marx and suggested that the translator set down his own nameas author, which the latter however declined.

After one, and then another, of the more or less inaccurate Americantranslations had been repeatedly reprinted in England, an authentic versionat last appeared in 1888. This was my friend Samuel Moore, and we wentthrough 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 someof 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 scientificsocialism (as is proved by the translations mentioned in the first place),it was soon forced into the background by the reaction that began withthe 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 thathad begun with the February Revolution, the Manifesto too passed into thebackground.

When the European workers had again gathered sufficient strength fora new onslaught upon the power of the ruling classes, the InternationalWorking Men’ s Association came into being. Its aim was to weld togetherinto one huge army the whole militant working class of Europe andAmerica. Therefore it could not set out from the principles laiddown in the Manifesto. It was bound to have a programme which would notshut 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 — wasdrawn up by Marx with a master hand acknowledged even by the Bakunin andthe anarchists. For the ultimate final triumph of the ideas set forth inthe Manifesto, Marx relied solely upon the intellectual development ofthe working class, as it necessarily has to ensue from united action anddiscussion. The events and vicissitudes in the struggle against capital,the defeats even more than the successes, could not but demonstrate tothe fighters the inadequacy of their former universal panaceas, and maketheir minds more receptive to a thorough understanding of the true conditionsfor working-class emancipation. And Marx was right. The working class of1874, at the dissolution of the International, was altogether differentfrom that of 1864, at its foundation. Proudhonism in the Latin countries,and the specific Lassalleanism in Germany, were dying out; and even theten arch-conservative English trade unions were gradually approaching thepoint where, in 1887, the chairman of their Swansea Congress could sayin their name: “Continental socialism has lost its terror for us.” Yetby 1887 continental socialism was almost exclusively the theory heraldedin the Manifesto. Thus, to a certain extent, the history of the Manifestoreflects the history of the modern working-class movement since 1848. Atpresent, it is doubtless the most widely circulated, the most internationalproduct of all socialist literature, the common programme of many millionsof workers of all countries from Siberia to California.

Nevertheless, when it appeared, we could not have called it a socialistmanifesto. In 1847, two kinds of people were considered socialists. Onthe one hand were the adherents of the various utopian systems, notablythe Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France, both of whom, atthat date, had already dwindled to mere sects gradually dying out. On theother, the manifold types of social quacks who wanted to eliminate socialabuses through their various universal panaceas and all kinds of patch-work,without hurting capital and profit in the least. In both cases, peoplewho stood outside the labor movement and who looked for support ratherto the “educated” classes. The section of the working class, however, whichdemanded a radical reconstruction of society, convinced that mere politicalrevolutions were not enough, then called itself Communist. It wasstill a rough-hewn, only instinctive and frequently somewhat crude communism.Yet, it was powerful enough to bring into being two systems of utopiancommunism — in France, the “Icarian” communists of Cabet, and in Germanythat of Weitling. Socialism in 1847 signified a bourgeois movement, communisma working-class movement. Socialism was, on the Continent at least, quiterespectable, whereas communism was the very opposite. And since we werevery decidedly of the opinion as early as then that “the emancipation ofthe workers must be the task of the working class itself,” [from the General Rules of the International] we could haveno hesitation as to which of the two names we should choose. Nor has itever occurred to us to repudiate it.

“Working men of all countries, unite!” But few voices responded whenwe proclaimed these words to the world 42 years ago, on the eve of thefirst Paris Revolution in which the proletariat came out with the demandsof its own. On September 28, 1864, however, the proletarians of most ofthe Western European countries joined hands in the International WorkingMen’ s Association of glorious memory. True, the International itself livedonly nine years. But that the eternal union of the proletarians of allcountries created by it is still alive and lives stronger than ever, thereis no better witness than this day. Because today^[C], 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 oneflag, for one immediate aim: the standard eight-hour working dayto be established by legal enactment, as proclaimed by the Geneva Congressof the International in 1866, and again by the Paris Workers’ Congressof 1889. And today’ s spectacle will open the eyes of the capitalists andlandlords of all countries to the fact that today the proletarians of allcountries are united indeed.

If only Marx were still by my side to see this with his own eyes!

Frederick Engels
May 1, 1890, London

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 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 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

The 1893 Italian Edition

Publication of the Manifesto of the Communist Party coincided, one may say, with March 18, 1848, the day of the revolution in Milan and Berlin, which were armed uprisings of the two nations situated in the centre, the one, of the continent of Europe, the other, of the Mediterranean; two nations until then enfeebled by division and internal strife, and thus fallen under foreign domination. While Italy was subject to the Emperor of Austria, Germany underwent the yoke, not less effective though more indirect, of the Tsar of all the Russias. The consequences of March 18, 1848, freed both Italy and Germany from this disgrace; if from 1848 to 1871 these two great nations were reconstituted and somehow again put on their own, it was as Karl Marx used to say, because the men who suppressed the Revolution of 1848 were, nevertheless, its testamentary executors in spite of themselves.

Everywhere that revolution was the work of the working class; it was the latter that built the barricades and paid with its lifeblood. Only the Paris workers, in overthrowing the government, had the very definite intention of overthrowing the bourgeois regime. But conscious though they were of the fatal antagonism existing between their own class and the bourgeoisie, still, neither the economic progress of the country nor the intellectual development of the mass of French workers had as yet reached the stage which would have made a social reconstruction possible. In the final analysis, therefore, the fruits of the revolution were reaped by the capitalist class. In the other countries, in Italy, in Germany, in Austria, the workers, from the very outset, did nothing but raise the bourgeoisie to power. But in any country the rule of the bourgeoisie is impossible without national independence Therefore, the Revolution of 1848 had to bring in its train the unity and autonomy of the nations that had lacked them up to then: Italy, Germany, Hungary. Poland will follow in turn.

Thus, if the Revolution of 1848 was not a socialist revolution, it paved the way, prepared the ground for the latter. Through the impetus given to large-scaled industry in all countries, the bourgeois regime during the last forty-five years has everywhere created a numerous, concentrated and powerful proletariat. It has thus raised, to use the language of the Manifesto, its own grave-diggers. Without restoring autonomy and unity to each nation, it will be impossible to achieve the international union of the proletariat, or the peaceful and intelligent co-operation of these nations toward common aims. Just imagine joint international action by the Italian, Hungarian, German, Polish and Russian workers under the political conditions preceding 1848!

The battles fought in 1848 were thus not fought in vain. Nor have the forty-five years separating us from that revolutionary epoch passed to no purpose. The fruits are ripening, and all I wish is that the publication of this Italian translation may augur as well for the victory of the Italian proletariat as the publication of the original did for the international revolution.

The Manifesto does full justice to the revolutionary part played by capitalism in the past. The first capitalist nation was Italy. The close of the feudal Middle Ages, and the opening of the modern capitalist era are marked by a colossal figured: an Italian, Dante, both the last poet of the Middle Ages and the first poet of modern times. Today, as in 1300, a new historical era is approaching. Will Italy give us the new Dante, who will mark the hour of birth of this new, proletarian era?

Frederick Engels
London, February 1, 1893

Chapter 1: Bourgeois and Proletarians

1.“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 ofus, had been gradually approaching for some years before 1845. How farI had independently progressed towards it is best shown by my Conditionsof 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 termsalmost as clear as those in which I have stated it here.” [Note by Engels to the German edition of 1890]

2.Lassalle personally, to us, always acknowledged himselfto 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 demandingco-operative workshops supported by state credit.

A.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.

B.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.

C.The issue of 30 December 1871 of Woodhulls & Claiflin's weekly contained an exact copy of Helen Macfarlane's translation for the Red Republican but neither the Red Republican nor Helen Macfarlane were acknowledged.

Table of Contents: Manifesto of the Communist Party