Manifesto of the Communist Party

The Principles of Communism

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What is Communism?

Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.

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What is the proletariat?

The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not

draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole

existence depends on the demand for labor - hence, on the changing state of business, on the

vagaries of unbridled competition. The proletariat, or the class of proletarians, is, in a word, the

working class of the 19th century.6

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Proletarians, then, have not always existed?

No. There have always been poor and working classes; and the working class have mostly been

poor. But there have not always been workers and poor people living under conditions as they are

today; in other words, there have not always been proletarians, any more than there has always

been free unbridled competitions.

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How did the proletariat originate?

The Proletariat originated in the industrial revolution, which took place in England in the last half

of the last (18th) century, and which has since then been repeated in all the civilized countries of

the world.

This industrial revolution was precipitated by the discovery of the steam engine, various spinning

machines, the mechanical loom, and a whole series of other mechanical devices. These machines,

which were very expensive and hence could be bought only by big capitalists, altered the whole

mode of production and displaced the former workers, because the machines turned out cheaper

and better commodities than the workers could produce with their inefficient spinning wheels and

handlooms. The machines delivered industry wholly into the hands of the big capitalists and

rendered entirely worthless the meagre property of the workers (tools, looms, etc.). The result was

that the capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers. This

marked the introduction of the factory system into the textile industry.

Once the impulse to the introduction of machinery and the factory system had been given, this

system spread quickly to all other branches of industry, especially cloth- and book-printing,

pottery, and the metal industries.

Labor was more and more divided among the individual workers so that the worker who

previously had done a complete piece of work now did only a part of that piece. This division of

labor made it possible to produce things faster and cheaper. It reduced the activity of the