一個幽靈，主義的幽靈，在歐洲遊蕩。為了對這個幽靈進行神聖的圍剿，舊歐洲的一切勢力，教皇和沙皇、梅特涅和基佐、法國的激進派和德國的，都聯合起來了。
有哪一個反對黨不被它的當政的敵人駡為呢？又有哪一個反對黨不拿主義這個罪名去回敬更進步的反對黨人和自己的反動敵人呢？
從這一事實中可以得出兩個結論：
主義已經被歐洲的一切勢力公認為一種勢力；
現在是人嚮全世界公開說明自己的觀點、自己的目的、自己的意圖並且拿黨自己的宣言來反駁關於主義幽靈的神話的時候了。
為了這個目的，各國人集會於倫敦，擬定了如下的宣言，用英文、法文、德文、意大利文、弗拉芒文和丹麥文公佈於世。
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power? Where the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
Two things result from this fact.
I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powers to be itself a Power.
II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.
To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London, and sketched the following Manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.
有哪一個反對黨不被它的當政的敵人駡為呢？又有哪一個反對黨不拿主義這個罪名去回敬更進步的反對黨人和自己的反動敵人呢？
從這一事實中可以得出兩個結論：
主義已經被歐洲的一切勢力公認為一種勢力；
現在是人嚮全世界公開說明自己的觀點、自己的目的、自己的意圖並且拿黨自己的宣言來反駁關於主義幽靈的神話的時候了。
為了這個目的，各國人集會於倫敦，擬定了如下的宣言，用英文、法文、德文、意大利文、弗拉芒文和丹麥文公佈於世。
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power? Where the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
Two things result from this fact.
I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powers to be itself a Power.
II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.
To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London, and sketched the following Manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.
至今一切社會的歷史都是階級鬥爭的歷史。
自由民和奴隸、貴族和平民、領主和農奴、行會師傅和幫工，一句話，壓迫者和被壓迫者，始終處於相互對立的地位，進行不斷的、有時隱蔽有時公開的鬥爭，而每一次鬥爭的結局是整個社會受到改造或者鬥爭的各階級同歸於盡。
在過去的各個歷史時代，我們幾乎到處都可以看到社會完全劃分為各個不同的等級，看到社會地位分成的多種多樣的層次。在古羅馬，有貴族、騎士、平民、奴隸，在中世紀，有封建主、臣僕、行會師傅、幫工、農奴，而且幾乎在每一個階級內部又有一些特殊的階層。
從封建社會的滅亡中産生出來的現代資産階級社會並沒有消滅階級對立。它衹是用新的階級、新的壓迫條件、新的鬥爭形式代替了舊的。
但是，我們的時代，資産階級時代，卻有一個特點：它使階級對立簡單化了。整個社會日益分裂為兩大敵對的陣營，分裂為兩大相互直接對立的階級：資産階級和無産階級。
從中世紀的農奴中産生了初期城市的城關市民；從這個市民等級中發展出最初的資産階級分子。
美洲的發現、繞過非洲的航行，給新興的資産階級開闢了新天地。東印度和中國的市場、美洲的殖民化、對殖民地的貿易、交換手段和一般的商品的增加，使商業、航海業和工業空前高漲，因而使正在崩潰的封建社會內部的因素迅速發展。
以前那種封建的或行會的工業經營方式已經不能滿足隨着新市場的出現而增加的需求了。工場手工業代替了這種經營方式。行會師傅被工業的中間等級排擠掉了；各種行業組織之間的分工隨着各個作坊內部的分工的出現而消失了。
但是，市場總是在擴大，需求總是在增加。甚至工場手工業也不再能滿足需要了。於是，蒸汽和機器引起了工業生産的。現代大工業化替了工場手工業；工業中的百萬富翁，一支一支産業大軍的首領，現代資産者，代替了工業的中間等級。
大工業建立了由美洲的發現所準備好的世界市場。世界市場使商業、航海業和陸路交通得到了巨大的發展。這種發展又反過來促進了工業的擴展，同時，隨着工業、商業、航海業和鐵路的擴展，資産階級也在同一程度上得到發展，增加自己的資本，把中世紀遺留下來的一切階級都排擠到後面去。
由此可見，現代資産階級本身是一個長期發展過程的産物，是生産方式和交換方式的一係列變革的産物。
資産階級的這種發展的每一個階段，都伴隨着相應的上進展。它在封建主統治下是被壓迫的等級，在公社裏是武裝的和自治的團體，在一些地方組成獨立的城市共和國，在另一些地方組成君主國中的納稅的第三等級；後來，在工場手工業時期，它是等級製君主國或君主國中同貴族抗衡的勢力，而且是大君主國的主要基礎；最後，從大工業和世界市場建立的時候起，它在現代的代議製國傢裏奪得了獨占的統治。現代的國傢政權不過是管理整個資産階級的共同事務的委員會罷了。
資産階級在歷史上曾經起過非常的作用。
資産階級在它已經取得了統治的地方把一切封建的、宗法的和田園詩般的關係都破壞了。它無情地斬斷了把人們束縛於天然尊長的形形色色的封建羈絆，它使人和人之間除了赤裸裸的利害關係，除了冷酷無情的“現金交易”，就再也沒有任何別的聯繫了。它把宗教虔誠、騎士熱忱、小市民傷感這些情感的神聖發作，淹沒在利己主義打算的冰水之中。它把人的尊嚴變成了交換價值，用一種沒有良心的貿易自由代替了無數特許的和自力掙得的自由。總而言之，它用公開的、無恥的、直接的、露骨的剝削代替了由宗教幻想和幻想掩蓋着的剝削。
資産階級抹去了一切嚮來受人尊崇和令人敬畏的職業的神聖光環。它把醫生、律師、教士、詩人和學者變成了它出錢招雇的雇傭勞動者。
資産階級撕下了罩在家庭關係上的溫情脈脈的面紗，把這種關係變成了純粹的金錢關係。
資産階級揭示了，在中世紀深受反動派稱許的那種人力的野蠻使用，是以極端怠惰作為相應補充的。它第一個證明了，人的活動能夠取得什麽樣的成就。它創造了完全不同於埃及金字塔、羅馬水道和哥特式教堂的奇跡；它完成了完全不同於民族大遷徙和十字軍東徵的遠征。
資産階級除非對生産工具，從而對生産關係，從而對全部社會關係不斷地進行，否則就不能生存下去。反之，原封不動地保持舊的生産方式，卻是過去的一切工業階級生存的首要條件。生産的不斷變革，一切社會狀況不停的動蕩，永遠的不安定和變動，這就是資産階級時代不同於過去一切時代的地方。一切固定的僵化的關係以及與之相適應的素被尊崇的觀念和見解都被消除了，一切新形成的關係等不到固定下來就陳舊了。一切等級的和固定的東西都煙消雲散了，一切神聖的東西都被褻瀆了。人們終於不得不用冷靜的眼光來看他們的生活地位、他們的相互關係。
不斷擴大産品銷路的需要，驅使資産階級奔走於全球各地。它必須到處落戶，到處開發，到處建立聯繫。
資産階級，由於開拓了世界市場，使一切國傢的生産和消費都成為世界性的了。使反動派大為惋惜的是，資産階級挖掉了工業腳下的民族基礎。古老的民族工業被消滅了，並且每天都還在被消滅。它們被新的工業排擠掉了，新的工業的建立已經成為一切文明民族的生命攸關的問題；這些工業所加工的，已經不是本地的原料，而是來自極其遙遠的地區的原料；它們的産品不僅供本國消費，而且同時供世界各地消費。舊的、靠國産品來滿足的需要，被新的、要靠極其遙遠的國傢和地帶的産品來滿足的需要所代替了。過去那種地方的和民族的自給自足和閉關自守狀態，被各民族的各方面的互相往來和各方面的互相依賴所代替了。物質的生産是如此，精神的生産也是如此。各民族的精神産品成了公共的財産。民族的片面性和局限性日益成為不可能，於是由許多種民族的和地方的文學形成了一種世界的文學。
資産階級，由於一切生産工具的迅速改進，由於交通的極其便利，把一切民族甚至最野蠻的民族都捲到文明中來了。它的商品的低廉價格，是它用來摧毀一切萬裏長城、徵服野蠻人最頑強的仇外心理的重炮。它迫使一切民族----如果它們不想滅亡的話----采用資産階級的生産方式；它迫使它們在自己那裏推行所謂文明，即變成資産者。一句話，它按照自己的面貌為自己創造出一個世界。
資産階級使農村屈服於城市的統治。它創立了巨大的城市，使城市人口比農村人口大大增加起來，因而使很大一部分居民脫離了農村生活的愚昧狀態。正象它使農村從屬於城市一樣，它使未開化和半開化的國傢從屬於文明的國傢，使農民的民族從屬於資産階級的民族，使東方從屬於西方。
資産階級日甚一日地消滅生産資料、財産和人口的分散狀態。它使人口密集起來，使生産資料集中起來，使財産聚集在少數人的手裏。由此必然産生的結果就是的集中。各自獨立的、幾乎衹有同盟關係的、各有不同利益、不同法律、不同政府、不同關稅的各個地區，現在已經結合為一個擁有統一的政府、統一的法律、統一的民族階級利益和統一的關稅的統一的民族。
資産階級在它的不到一百年的階級統治中所創造的生産力，比過去一切世代創造的全部生産力還要多，還要大。自然力的徵服，機器的采用，化學在工業和農業中的應用，輪船的行駛，鐵路的通行，電報的使用，整個整個大陸的開墾，河川的通航，仿佛用法術從地下呼喚出來的大量人口，----過去哪一個世紀料想到在社會勞動裏藴藏有這樣的生産力呢？
由此可見，資産階級賴以形成的生産資料和交換手段，是在封建社會裏造成的。在這些生産資料和交換手段發展的一定階段上，封建社會的生産和交換在其中進行的關係，封建的農業和工場手工業組織，一句話，封建的所有製關係，就不再適應已經發展的生産力了。這種關係已經在阻礙生産而不是促進生産了。它變成了束縛生産的桎梏。它必須被炸毀，而且已經被炸毀了。
起而代之的是自由競爭以及與自由競爭相適應的社會制度和制度、資産階級的經濟統治和統治。
現在，我們眼前又進行着類似的運動。資産階級的生産關係和交換關係，資産階級的所有製關係，這個曾經仿佛用法術創造了如此龐大的生産資料和交換手段的現代資産階級社會，現在像一個魔法師一樣不能再支配自己用法術呼喚出來的魔鬼了。幾十年來的工業和商業的歷史，衹不過是現代生産力反抗現代生産關係、反抗作為資産階級及其統治的存在條件的所有製關係的歷史。衹要指出在周期性的重複中越來越危及整個資産階級社會生存的商業危機就夠了。在商業危機期間，總是不僅有很大一部分製成的産品被毀滅掉，而且有很大一部分已經造成的生産力被毀滅掉。在危機期間，發生一種在過去一切時代看來都好像是荒唐現象的社會瘟疫，即生産過剩的瘟疫。社會突然發現自己回到了一時的野蠻狀態；仿佛是一次饑荒、一場普遍的毀滅性戰爭，使社會失去了全部生活資料；仿佛是工業和商業全被毀滅了，----這是什麽緣故呢？因為社會上文明過度，生活資料太多，工業和商業太發達。社會所擁有的生産力已經不能再促進資産階級文明和資産階級所有製關係的發展；相反，生産力已經強大到這種關係所不能適應的地步，它已經受到這種關係的阻礙；而它一着手剋服這種障礙，就使整個資産階級社會陷入混亂，就使資産階級所有製的存在受到威脅。資産階級的關係已經太狹窄了，再容納不了它本身所造成的財富了。----資産階級用什麽辦法來剋服這種危機呢？一方面不得不消滅大量生産力，另一方面奪取新的市場，更加徹底地利用舊的市場。這究竟是怎樣的一種辦法呢？這不過是資産階級準備更全面更猛烈的危機的辦法，不過是使防止危機的手段越來越少的辦法。
資産階級用來推翻封建制度的武器，現在卻對準資産階級自己了。
但是，資産階級不僅鍛造了置自身於死地的武器；它還産生了將要運用這種武器的人----現代的工人，即無産者。
隨着資産階級即資本的發展，無産階級即現代工人階級也在同一程度上得到發展；現代的工人衹有當他們找到工作的時候才能生存，而且衹有當他們的勞動增殖資本的時候才能找到工作。這些不得不把自己零星出賣的工人，像其他任何貨物一樣，也是一種商品，所以他們同樣地受到競爭的一切變化、市場的一切波動的影響。
由於機器的推廣和分工，無産者的勞動已經失去了任何獨立的性質，因而對工人也失去了任何吸引力。工人變成了機器的單純的附屬品，要求他做的衹是極其簡單、極其單調和極容易學會的操作。因此，花在工人身上的費用，幾乎衹限於維持工人生活和延續工人後代所必需的生活資料。但是，商品的價格，從而勞動的價格，是同它的生産費用相等的。因此，勞動越使人感到厭惡，工資也就越減少。不僅如此，機器越推廣，分工越細緻，勞動量也就越增加，這或者是由於工作時間的延長，或者是由於在一定時間內所要求的勞動的增加，機器運轉的加速，等等。
現代工業已經把傢長式的師傅的小作坊變成了工業資本傢的大工廠。擠在工廠裏的工人群衆就象士兵一樣被組織起來。他們是産業軍的普通士兵，受着各級軍士和軍官的層層監視。他們不僅是資産階級的、資産階級國傢的奴隸，並且每日每時都受機器、受監工、首先是受各個經營工廠的資産者本人的奴役。這種制度越是公開地把營利宣佈為自己的最終目的，它就越是可鄙、可恨和可惡。
手的操作所要求的技巧和氣力越少，換句話說，現代工業越發達，男工也就越受到女工和童工的排擠。對工人階級來說，性別和年齡的差別再沒有什麽社會意義了。他們都衹是勞動工具，不過因為年齡和性別的不同而需要不同的費用罷了。
當廠主對工人的剝削告一段落，工人領到了用現錢支付的工資的時候，馬上就有資産階級中的另一部分人----房東、小店主、當鋪老闆等等嚮他們撲來。
以前的中間等級的下層，即小工業傢、小商人和小食利者，手工業者和農民----所有這些階級都降落到無産階級的隊伍裏來了，有的是因為他們的小資本不足以經營大工業，經不起較大資本傢的競爭；有的是因為他們的手藝已經被新的生産方法弄得不值錢了。無産階級的隊伍就是這樣從居民的所有階級中得到補充的。
無産階級經歷了各個不同的發展階段。它反對資産階級的鬥爭是和它的存在同時開始的。
最初是單個的工人，然後是某一工廠的工人，然後是某一地方的某一勞動部門的工人，同直接剝削他們的單個資産者作鬥爭。他們不僅僅攻擊資産階級的生産關係，而且攻擊生産工具本身；他們毀壞那些來競爭的外國商品，搗毀機器，燒毀工廠，力圖恢復已經失去的中世紀工人的地位。
在這個階段上，工人們還是分散在全國各地並為競爭所分裂的群衆。工人的大規模集結，還不是他們自己聯合的結果，而是資産階級聯合的結果，當時資産階級為了達到自己的目的必須而且暫時還能夠把整個無産階級發動起來。因此，在這個階段上，無産者不是同自己的敵人作鬥爭，而是同自己的敵人的敵人作鬥爭，即同君主製的殘餘、地主、非工業資産階級和小資産者作鬥爭。因此，整個歷史運動都集中在資産階級手裏；在這種條件下取得的每一個勝利都是資産階級的勝利。
但是，隨着工業的發展，無産階級不僅人數增加了，而且它結合成更大的集體，它的力量日益增長，它越來越感覺到自己的力量。機器使勞動的差別越來越小，使工資幾乎到處都降到同樣低的水平，因而無産階級內部的利益和生活狀況也越來越趨於一致。資産者彼此間日益加劇的競爭以及由此引起的商業危機，使工人的工資越來越不穩定；機器的日益迅速的和繼續不斷的改良，使工人的整個生活地位越來越沒有保障；單個工人和單個資産者之間的衝突越來越具有兩個階級的衝突的性質。工人開始成立反對資産者的同盟；他們聯合起來保衛自己的工資。他們甚至建立了經常性的團體，以便為可能發生的反抗準備食品。有些地方，鬥爭爆發為起義。
工人有時也得到勝利，但這種勝利衹是暫時的。他們鬥爭的真正成果並不是直接取得的成功，而是工人的越來越擴大的聯合。這種聯合由於大工業所造成的日益發達的交通工具而得到發展，這種交通工具把各地的工人彼此聯繫起來。衹要有了這種聯繫，就能把許多性質相同的地方性的鬥爭匯合成全國性的鬥爭，匯合成階級鬥爭。而一切階級鬥爭都是鬥爭。中世紀的市民靠鄉間小道需要幾百年才能達到的聯合，現代的無産者利用鐵路衹要幾年就可以達到了。
無産者組織成為階級，從而組織成為政黨這件事，不斷地由於工人的自相競爭而受到破壞。但是，這種組織總是重新産生，並且一次比一次更強大，更堅固，更有力。它利用資産階級內部的分裂，迫使他們用法律形式承認工人的個別利益。英國的十小時工作日法案就是一個例子。
舊社會內部的所有衝突在許多方面都促進了無産階級的發展。資産階級處於不斷的鬥爭中：最初反對貴族：後來反對同工業進步有利害衝突的那部分資産階級；經常反對一切外國的資産階級。在這一切鬥爭中，資産階級都不得不嚮無産階級呼籲，要求無産階級援助，這樣就把無産階級捲進了運動。於是，資産階級自己就把自己的教育因素即反對自身的武器給予了無産階級。
其次，我們已經看到，工業的進步把統治階級的整批成員拋到無産階級隊伍裏去，或者至少也使他們的生活條件受到威脅。他們也給無産階級帶來了大量的教育因素。
最後，在階級鬥爭接近决戰的時期，統治階級內部的、整個舊社會內部的瓦解過程，就達到非常強烈、非常尖銳的程度，甚至使得統治階級中的一小部分人脫離統治階級而歸附於的階級，即掌握着未來的階級。所以，正像過去貴族中有一部分人轉到資産階級方面一樣，現在資産階級中也有一部分人，特別是已經提高到從理論上認識整個歷史運動這一水平的一部分資産階級思想傢，轉到無産階級方面來了。
在當前同資産階級對立的一切階級中，衹有無産階級是真正的階級。其餘的階級都隨着大工業的發展而日趨沒落和滅亡，無産階級卻是大工業本身的産物。
中間等級，即小工業傢、小商人、手工業者、農民，他們同資産階級作鬥爭，都是為了維護他們這種中間等級的生存，以免於滅亡。所以，他們不是的，而是保守的。不僅如此，他們甚至是反動的，因為他們力圖使歷史的車輪倒轉。如果說他們是的，那是鑒於他們行將轉入無産階級的隊伍，這樣，他們就不是維護他們目前的利益，而是維護他們將來的利益，他們就離開自己原來的立場，而站到無産階級的立場上來。
流氓無産階級是舊社會最下層中消極的腐化的部分，他們在一些地方也被無産階級捲到運動裏來，但是，由於他們的整個生活狀況，他們更甘心於被人收買，去幹反動的勾當。
在無産階級的生活條件中，舊社會的生活條件已經被消滅了。無産者是沒有財産的；他們和妻子兒女的關係同資産階級的家庭關係再沒有任何共同之處了；現代的工業勞動，現代的資本壓迫，無論在英國或法國，無論在美國或德國，都是一樣的，都使無産者失去了任何民族性。法律、道德、宗教，在他們看來全都是資産階級偏見，隱藏在這些偏見後面的全都是資産階級利益。
過去一切階級在爭得統治之後，總是使整個社會服從於它們發財致富的條件，企圖以此來鞏固它們已經獲得的生活地位。無産者衹有廢除自己的現存的占有方式，從而廢除全部現存的占有方式，才能取得社會生産力。無産者沒有什麽自己的東西必須加以保護，他們必須摧毀至今保護和保障私有財産的一切。
過去的一切運動都是少數人的或者為少數人謀利益的運動。無産階級的運動是絶大多數人的、為絶大多數人謀利益的獨立的運動。無産階級，現今社會的最下層，如果不炸毀構成官方社會的整個上層，就不能擡起頭來，挺起胸來。
如果不就內容而就形式來說，無産階級反對資産階級的鬥爭首先是一國範圍內的鬥爭。每一個國傢的無産階級當然首先應該本國的資産階級。
在敘述無産階級發展的最一般的階段的時候，我們循序探討了現存社會內部或多或少隱蔽着的國內戰爭，直到這個戰爭爆發為公開的，無産階級用暴力推翻資産階級而建立自己的統治。
我們已經看到，至今的一切社會都是建立在壓迫階級和被壓迫階級的對立之上的。但是，為了有可能壓迫一個階級，就必須保證這個階級至少有能夠勉強維持它的奴隸般的生存的條件。農奴曾經在農奴制度下掙紮到公社社員的地位，小資産者曾經在封建制度的束縛下掙紮到資産者的地位。現代的工人卻相反，他們並不是隨着工業的進步而上升，而是越來越降到本階級的生存條件以下。工人變成赤貧者，貧睏比人口和財富增長得還要快。由此可以明顯地看出，資産階級再不能做社會的統治階級了，再不能把自己階級的生存條件當做支配一切的規律強加於社會了。資産階級不能統治下去了，因為它甚至不能保證自己的奴隸維持奴隸的生活，因為它不得不讓自己的奴隸落到不能養活它反而要它來養活的地步。社會再不能在它統治下生活下去了，就是說，它的存在不再同社會相容了。
資産階級生存和統治的根本條件，是財富在私人手裏的積纍，是資本的形成和增殖；資本的條件是雇傭勞動。雇傭勞動完全是建立在工人的自相競爭之上的。資産階級無意中造成而又無力抵抗的工業進步，使工人通過結社而達到的聯合代替了他們由於競爭而造成的分散狀態。於是，隨着大工業的發展，資産階級賴以生産和占有産品的基礎本身也就從它的腳下被挖掉了。它首先生産的是它自身的掘墓人。資産階級的滅亡和無産階級的勝利是同樣不可避免的。
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 re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold 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. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms: Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.
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, under 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 vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place of the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
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 time, 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 mediaeval 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 manufacture proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, corner-stone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world-market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole 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 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 and feasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, 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 Reactionists so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted 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 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 whole 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 productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common 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 its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i. e. , to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
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 the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated 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 adapted to it, and by the economical and political sway of the bourgeois class.
A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called 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 bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society. In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In 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 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 inforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.
The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons -- the modern working class -- the proletarians.
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 piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.
Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an 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 his 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 increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of the machinery, etc.
Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, 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 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, 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 specialized skill is rendered worthless by the 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 operatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.
At this stage the labourers still form an 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 bourgeoisie. 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 fluctuating. The unceasing 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.
自由民和奴隸、貴族和平民、領主和農奴、行會師傅和幫工，一句話，壓迫者和被壓迫者，始終處於相互對立的地位，進行不斷的、有時隱蔽有時公開的鬥爭，而每一次鬥爭的結局是整個社會受到改造或者鬥爭的各階級同歸於盡。
在過去的各個歷史時代，我們幾乎到處都可以看到社會完全劃分為各個不同的等級，看到社會地位分成的多種多樣的層次。在古羅馬，有貴族、騎士、平民、奴隸，在中世紀，有封建主、臣僕、行會師傅、幫工、農奴，而且幾乎在每一個階級內部又有一些特殊的階層。
從封建社會的滅亡中産生出來的現代資産階級社會並沒有消滅階級對立。它衹是用新的階級、新的壓迫條件、新的鬥爭形式代替了舊的。
但是，我們的時代，資産階級時代，卻有一個特點：它使階級對立簡單化了。整個社會日益分裂為兩大敵對的陣營，分裂為兩大相互直接對立的階級：資産階級和無産階級。
從中世紀的農奴中産生了初期城市的城關市民；從這個市民等級中發展出最初的資産階級分子。
美洲的發現、繞過非洲的航行，給新興的資産階級開闢了新天地。東印度和中國的市場、美洲的殖民化、對殖民地的貿易、交換手段和一般的商品的增加，使商業、航海業和工業空前高漲，因而使正在崩潰的封建社會內部的因素迅速發展。
以前那種封建的或行會的工業經營方式已經不能滿足隨着新市場的出現而增加的需求了。工場手工業代替了這種經營方式。行會師傅被工業的中間等級排擠掉了；各種行業組織之間的分工隨着各個作坊內部的分工的出現而消失了。
但是，市場總是在擴大，需求總是在增加。甚至工場手工業也不再能滿足需要了。於是，蒸汽和機器引起了工業生産的。現代大工業化替了工場手工業；工業中的百萬富翁，一支一支産業大軍的首領，現代資産者，代替了工業的中間等級。
大工業建立了由美洲的發現所準備好的世界市場。世界市場使商業、航海業和陸路交通得到了巨大的發展。這種發展又反過來促進了工業的擴展，同時，隨着工業、商業、航海業和鐵路的擴展，資産階級也在同一程度上得到發展，增加自己的資本，把中世紀遺留下來的一切階級都排擠到後面去。
由此可見，現代資産階級本身是一個長期發展過程的産物，是生産方式和交換方式的一係列變革的産物。
資産階級的這種發展的每一個階段，都伴隨着相應的上進展。它在封建主統治下是被壓迫的等級，在公社裏是武裝的和自治的團體，在一些地方組成獨立的城市共和國，在另一些地方組成君主國中的納稅的第三等級；後來，在工場手工業時期，它是等級製君主國或君主國中同貴族抗衡的勢力，而且是大君主國的主要基礎；最後，從大工業和世界市場建立的時候起，它在現代的代議製國傢裏奪得了獨占的統治。現代的國傢政權不過是管理整個資産階級的共同事務的委員會罷了。
資産階級在歷史上曾經起過非常的作用。
資産階級在它已經取得了統治的地方把一切封建的、宗法的和田園詩般的關係都破壞了。它無情地斬斷了把人們束縛於天然尊長的形形色色的封建羈絆，它使人和人之間除了赤裸裸的利害關係，除了冷酷無情的“現金交易”，就再也沒有任何別的聯繫了。它把宗教虔誠、騎士熱忱、小市民傷感這些情感的神聖發作，淹沒在利己主義打算的冰水之中。它把人的尊嚴變成了交換價值，用一種沒有良心的貿易自由代替了無數特許的和自力掙得的自由。總而言之，它用公開的、無恥的、直接的、露骨的剝削代替了由宗教幻想和幻想掩蓋着的剝削。
資産階級抹去了一切嚮來受人尊崇和令人敬畏的職業的神聖光環。它把醫生、律師、教士、詩人和學者變成了它出錢招雇的雇傭勞動者。
資産階級撕下了罩在家庭關係上的溫情脈脈的面紗，把這種關係變成了純粹的金錢關係。
資産階級揭示了，在中世紀深受反動派稱許的那種人力的野蠻使用，是以極端怠惰作為相應補充的。它第一個證明了，人的活動能夠取得什麽樣的成就。它創造了完全不同於埃及金字塔、羅馬水道和哥特式教堂的奇跡；它完成了完全不同於民族大遷徙和十字軍東徵的遠征。
資産階級除非對生産工具，從而對生産關係，從而對全部社會關係不斷地進行，否則就不能生存下去。反之，原封不動地保持舊的生産方式，卻是過去的一切工業階級生存的首要條件。生産的不斷變革，一切社會狀況不停的動蕩，永遠的不安定和變動，這就是資産階級時代不同於過去一切時代的地方。一切固定的僵化的關係以及與之相適應的素被尊崇的觀念和見解都被消除了，一切新形成的關係等不到固定下來就陳舊了。一切等級的和固定的東西都煙消雲散了，一切神聖的東西都被褻瀆了。人們終於不得不用冷靜的眼光來看他們的生活地位、他們的相互關係。
不斷擴大産品銷路的需要，驅使資産階級奔走於全球各地。它必須到處落戶，到處開發，到處建立聯繫。
資産階級，由於開拓了世界市場，使一切國傢的生産和消費都成為世界性的了。使反動派大為惋惜的是，資産階級挖掉了工業腳下的民族基礎。古老的民族工業被消滅了，並且每天都還在被消滅。它們被新的工業排擠掉了，新的工業的建立已經成為一切文明民族的生命攸關的問題；這些工業所加工的，已經不是本地的原料，而是來自極其遙遠的地區的原料；它們的産品不僅供本國消費，而且同時供世界各地消費。舊的、靠國産品來滿足的需要，被新的、要靠極其遙遠的國傢和地帶的産品來滿足的需要所代替了。過去那種地方的和民族的自給自足和閉關自守狀態，被各民族的各方面的互相往來和各方面的互相依賴所代替了。物質的生産是如此，精神的生産也是如此。各民族的精神産品成了公共的財産。民族的片面性和局限性日益成為不可能，於是由許多種民族的和地方的文學形成了一種世界的文學。
資産階級，由於一切生産工具的迅速改進，由於交通的極其便利，把一切民族甚至最野蠻的民族都捲到文明中來了。它的商品的低廉價格，是它用來摧毀一切萬裏長城、徵服野蠻人最頑強的仇外心理的重炮。它迫使一切民族----如果它們不想滅亡的話----采用資産階級的生産方式；它迫使它們在自己那裏推行所謂文明，即變成資産者。一句話，它按照自己的面貌為自己創造出一個世界。
資産階級使農村屈服於城市的統治。它創立了巨大的城市，使城市人口比農村人口大大增加起來，因而使很大一部分居民脫離了農村生活的愚昧狀態。正象它使農村從屬於城市一樣，它使未開化和半開化的國傢從屬於文明的國傢，使農民的民族從屬於資産階級的民族，使東方從屬於西方。
資産階級日甚一日地消滅生産資料、財産和人口的分散狀態。它使人口密集起來，使生産資料集中起來，使財産聚集在少數人的手裏。由此必然産生的結果就是的集中。各自獨立的、幾乎衹有同盟關係的、各有不同利益、不同法律、不同政府、不同關稅的各個地區，現在已經結合為一個擁有統一的政府、統一的法律、統一的民族階級利益和統一的關稅的統一的民族。
資産階級在它的不到一百年的階級統治中所創造的生産力，比過去一切世代創造的全部生産力還要多，還要大。自然力的徵服，機器的采用，化學在工業和農業中的應用，輪船的行駛，鐵路的通行，電報的使用，整個整個大陸的開墾，河川的通航，仿佛用法術從地下呼喚出來的大量人口，----過去哪一個世紀料想到在社會勞動裏藴藏有這樣的生産力呢？
由此可見，資産階級賴以形成的生産資料和交換手段，是在封建社會裏造成的。在這些生産資料和交換手段發展的一定階段上，封建社會的生産和交換在其中進行的關係，封建的農業和工場手工業組織，一句話，封建的所有製關係，就不再適應已經發展的生産力了。這種關係已經在阻礙生産而不是促進生産了。它變成了束縛生産的桎梏。它必須被炸毀，而且已經被炸毀了。
起而代之的是自由競爭以及與自由競爭相適應的社會制度和制度、資産階級的經濟統治和統治。
現在，我們眼前又進行着類似的運動。資産階級的生産關係和交換關係，資産階級的所有製關係，這個曾經仿佛用法術創造了如此龐大的生産資料和交換手段的現代資産階級社會，現在像一個魔法師一樣不能再支配自己用法術呼喚出來的魔鬼了。幾十年來的工業和商業的歷史，衹不過是現代生産力反抗現代生産關係、反抗作為資産階級及其統治的存在條件的所有製關係的歷史。衹要指出在周期性的重複中越來越危及整個資産階級社會生存的商業危機就夠了。在商業危機期間，總是不僅有很大一部分製成的産品被毀滅掉，而且有很大一部分已經造成的生産力被毀滅掉。在危機期間，發生一種在過去一切時代看來都好像是荒唐現象的社會瘟疫，即生産過剩的瘟疫。社會突然發現自己回到了一時的野蠻狀態；仿佛是一次饑荒、一場普遍的毀滅性戰爭，使社會失去了全部生活資料；仿佛是工業和商業全被毀滅了，----這是什麽緣故呢？因為社會上文明過度，生活資料太多，工業和商業太發達。社會所擁有的生産力已經不能再促進資産階級文明和資産階級所有製關係的發展；相反，生産力已經強大到這種關係所不能適應的地步，它已經受到這種關係的阻礙；而它一着手剋服這種障礙，就使整個資産階級社會陷入混亂，就使資産階級所有製的存在受到威脅。資産階級的關係已經太狹窄了，再容納不了它本身所造成的財富了。----資産階級用什麽辦法來剋服這種危機呢？一方面不得不消滅大量生産力，另一方面奪取新的市場，更加徹底地利用舊的市場。這究竟是怎樣的一種辦法呢？這不過是資産階級準備更全面更猛烈的危機的辦法，不過是使防止危機的手段越來越少的辦法。
資産階級用來推翻封建制度的武器，現在卻對準資産階級自己了。
但是，資産階級不僅鍛造了置自身於死地的武器；它還産生了將要運用這種武器的人----現代的工人，即無産者。
隨着資産階級即資本的發展，無産階級即現代工人階級也在同一程度上得到發展；現代的工人衹有當他們找到工作的時候才能生存，而且衹有當他們的勞動增殖資本的時候才能找到工作。這些不得不把自己零星出賣的工人，像其他任何貨物一樣，也是一種商品，所以他們同樣地受到競爭的一切變化、市場的一切波動的影響。
由於機器的推廣和分工，無産者的勞動已經失去了任何獨立的性質，因而對工人也失去了任何吸引力。工人變成了機器的單純的附屬品，要求他做的衹是極其簡單、極其單調和極容易學會的操作。因此，花在工人身上的費用，幾乎衹限於維持工人生活和延續工人後代所必需的生活資料。但是，商品的價格，從而勞動的價格，是同它的生産費用相等的。因此，勞動越使人感到厭惡，工資也就越減少。不僅如此，機器越推廣，分工越細緻，勞動量也就越增加，這或者是由於工作時間的延長，或者是由於在一定時間內所要求的勞動的增加，機器運轉的加速，等等。
現代工業已經把傢長式的師傅的小作坊變成了工業資本傢的大工廠。擠在工廠裏的工人群衆就象士兵一樣被組織起來。他們是産業軍的普通士兵，受着各級軍士和軍官的層層監視。他們不僅是資産階級的、資産階級國傢的奴隸，並且每日每時都受機器、受監工、首先是受各個經營工廠的資産者本人的奴役。這種制度越是公開地把營利宣佈為自己的最終目的，它就越是可鄙、可恨和可惡。
手的操作所要求的技巧和氣力越少，換句話說，現代工業越發達，男工也就越受到女工和童工的排擠。對工人階級來說，性別和年齡的差別再沒有什麽社會意義了。他們都衹是勞動工具，不過因為年齡和性別的不同而需要不同的費用罷了。
當廠主對工人的剝削告一段落，工人領到了用現錢支付的工資的時候，馬上就有資産階級中的另一部分人----房東、小店主、當鋪老闆等等嚮他們撲來。
以前的中間等級的下層，即小工業傢、小商人和小食利者，手工業者和農民----所有這些階級都降落到無産階級的隊伍裏來了，有的是因為他們的小資本不足以經營大工業，經不起較大資本傢的競爭；有的是因為他們的手藝已經被新的生産方法弄得不值錢了。無産階級的隊伍就是這樣從居民的所有階級中得到補充的。
無産階級經歷了各個不同的發展階段。它反對資産階級的鬥爭是和它的存在同時開始的。
最初是單個的工人，然後是某一工廠的工人，然後是某一地方的某一勞動部門的工人，同直接剝削他們的單個資産者作鬥爭。他們不僅僅攻擊資産階級的生産關係，而且攻擊生産工具本身；他們毀壞那些來競爭的外國商品，搗毀機器，燒毀工廠，力圖恢復已經失去的中世紀工人的地位。
在這個階段上，工人們還是分散在全國各地並為競爭所分裂的群衆。工人的大規模集結，還不是他們自己聯合的結果，而是資産階級聯合的結果，當時資産階級為了達到自己的目的必須而且暫時還能夠把整個無産階級發動起來。因此，在這個階段上，無産者不是同自己的敵人作鬥爭，而是同自己的敵人的敵人作鬥爭，即同君主製的殘餘、地主、非工業資産階級和小資産者作鬥爭。因此，整個歷史運動都集中在資産階級手裏；在這種條件下取得的每一個勝利都是資産階級的勝利。
但是，隨着工業的發展，無産階級不僅人數增加了，而且它結合成更大的集體，它的力量日益增長，它越來越感覺到自己的力量。機器使勞動的差別越來越小，使工資幾乎到處都降到同樣低的水平，因而無産階級內部的利益和生活狀況也越來越趨於一致。資産者彼此間日益加劇的競爭以及由此引起的商業危機，使工人的工資越來越不穩定；機器的日益迅速的和繼續不斷的改良，使工人的整個生活地位越來越沒有保障；單個工人和單個資産者之間的衝突越來越具有兩個階級的衝突的性質。工人開始成立反對資産者的同盟；他們聯合起來保衛自己的工資。他們甚至建立了經常性的團體，以便為可能發生的反抗準備食品。有些地方，鬥爭爆發為起義。
工人有時也得到勝利，但這種勝利衹是暫時的。他們鬥爭的真正成果並不是直接取得的成功，而是工人的越來越擴大的聯合。這種聯合由於大工業所造成的日益發達的交通工具而得到發展，這種交通工具把各地的工人彼此聯繫起來。衹要有了這種聯繫，就能把許多性質相同的地方性的鬥爭匯合成全國性的鬥爭，匯合成階級鬥爭。而一切階級鬥爭都是鬥爭。中世紀的市民靠鄉間小道需要幾百年才能達到的聯合，現代的無産者利用鐵路衹要幾年就可以達到了。
無産者組織成為階級，從而組織成為政黨這件事，不斷地由於工人的自相競爭而受到破壞。但是，這種組織總是重新産生，並且一次比一次更強大，更堅固，更有力。它利用資産階級內部的分裂，迫使他們用法律形式承認工人的個別利益。英國的十小時工作日法案就是一個例子。
舊社會內部的所有衝突在許多方面都促進了無産階級的發展。資産階級處於不斷的鬥爭中：最初反對貴族：後來反對同工業進步有利害衝突的那部分資産階級；經常反對一切外國的資産階級。在這一切鬥爭中，資産階級都不得不嚮無産階級呼籲，要求無産階級援助，這樣就把無産階級捲進了運動。於是，資産階級自己就把自己的教育因素即反對自身的武器給予了無産階級。
其次，我們已經看到，工業的進步把統治階級的整批成員拋到無産階級隊伍裏去，或者至少也使他們的生活條件受到威脅。他們也給無産階級帶來了大量的教育因素。
最後，在階級鬥爭接近决戰的時期，統治階級內部的、整個舊社會內部的瓦解過程，就達到非常強烈、非常尖銳的程度，甚至使得統治階級中的一小部分人脫離統治階級而歸附於的階級，即掌握着未來的階級。所以，正像過去貴族中有一部分人轉到資産階級方面一樣，現在資産階級中也有一部分人，特別是已經提高到從理論上認識整個歷史運動這一水平的一部分資産階級思想傢，轉到無産階級方面來了。
在當前同資産階級對立的一切階級中，衹有無産階級是真正的階級。其餘的階級都隨着大工業的發展而日趨沒落和滅亡，無産階級卻是大工業本身的産物。
中間等級，即小工業傢、小商人、手工業者、農民，他們同資産階級作鬥爭，都是為了維護他們這種中間等級的生存，以免於滅亡。所以，他們不是的，而是保守的。不僅如此，他們甚至是反動的，因為他們力圖使歷史的車輪倒轉。如果說他們是的，那是鑒於他們行將轉入無産階級的隊伍，這樣，他們就不是維護他們目前的利益，而是維護他們將來的利益，他們就離開自己原來的立場，而站到無産階級的立場上來。
流氓無産階級是舊社會最下層中消極的腐化的部分，他們在一些地方也被無産階級捲到運動裏來，但是，由於他們的整個生活狀況，他們更甘心於被人收買，去幹反動的勾當。
在無産階級的生活條件中，舊社會的生活條件已經被消滅了。無産者是沒有財産的；他們和妻子兒女的關係同資産階級的家庭關係再沒有任何共同之處了；現代的工業勞動，現代的資本壓迫，無論在英國或法國，無論在美國或德國，都是一樣的，都使無産者失去了任何民族性。法律、道德、宗教，在他們看來全都是資産階級偏見，隱藏在這些偏見後面的全都是資産階級利益。
過去一切階級在爭得統治之後，總是使整個社會服從於它們發財致富的條件，企圖以此來鞏固它們已經獲得的生活地位。無産者衹有廢除自己的現存的占有方式，從而廢除全部現存的占有方式，才能取得社會生産力。無産者沒有什麽自己的東西必須加以保護，他們必須摧毀至今保護和保障私有財産的一切。
過去的一切運動都是少數人的或者為少數人謀利益的運動。無産階級的運動是絶大多數人的、為絶大多數人謀利益的獨立的運動。無産階級，現今社會的最下層，如果不炸毀構成官方社會的整個上層，就不能擡起頭來，挺起胸來。
如果不就內容而就形式來說，無産階級反對資産階級的鬥爭首先是一國範圍內的鬥爭。每一個國傢的無産階級當然首先應該本國的資産階級。
在敘述無産階級發展的最一般的階段的時候，我們循序探討了現存社會內部或多或少隱蔽着的國內戰爭，直到這個戰爭爆發為公開的，無産階級用暴力推翻資産階級而建立自己的統治。
我們已經看到，至今的一切社會都是建立在壓迫階級和被壓迫階級的對立之上的。但是，為了有可能壓迫一個階級，就必須保證這個階級至少有能夠勉強維持它的奴隸般的生存的條件。農奴曾經在農奴制度下掙紮到公社社員的地位，小資産者曾經在封建制度的束縛下掙紮到資産者的地位。現代的工人卻相反，他們並不是隨着工業的進步而上升，而是越來越降到本階級的生存條件以下。工人變成赤貧者，貧睏比人口和財富增長得還要快。由此可以明顯地看出，資産階級再不能做社會的統治階級了，再不能把自己階級的生存條件當做支配一切的規律強加於社會了。資産階級不能統治下去了，因為它甚至不能保證自己的奴隸維持奴隸的生活，因為它不得不讓自己的奴隸落到不能養活它反而要它來養活的地步。社會再不能在它統治下生活下去了，就是說，它的存在不再同社會相容了。
資産階級生存和統治的根本條件，是財富在私人手裏的積纍，是資本的形成和增殖；資本的條件是雇傭勞動。雇傭勞動完全是建立在工人的自相競爭之上的。資産階級無意中造成而又無力抵抗的工業進步，使工人通過結社而達到的聯合代替了他們由於競爭而造成的分散狀態。於是，隨着大工業的發展，資産階級賴以生産和占有産品的基礎本身也就從它的腳下被挖掉了。它首先生産的是它自身的掘墓人。資産階級的滅亡和無産階級的勝利是同樣不可避免的。
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 re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold 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. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms: Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.
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, under 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 vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place of the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
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 time, 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 mediaeval 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 manufacture proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, corner-stone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world-market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole 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 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 and feasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, 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 Reactionists so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted 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 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 whole 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 productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common 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 its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i. e. , to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
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 the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated 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 adapted to it, and by the economical and political sway of the bourgeois class.
A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called 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 bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society. In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In 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 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 inforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.
The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons -- the modern working class -- the proletarians.
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 piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.
Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an 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 his 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 increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of the machinery, etc.
Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, 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 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, 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 specialized skill is rendered worthless by the 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 operatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.
At this stage the labourers still form an 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 bourgeoisie. 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 fluctuating. The unceasing 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.