As you have just heard and as, moreover, I may assume it to be 
generally known, we live in a world of free competition. Let us 
then look a little closer at this free competition and at the world 
order to which it has given rise. In our present-day society, each 
man works on his own, each strives for his own enrichment and is 
not in the least concerned with what the rest are doing; rational 
organisation, or distribution of jobs, is out of the question; on the 
contrary, each seeks to get the better of the other, seeks to exploit 
any favourable opportunity for his own private advantage and has 
neither time nor inclination to think about the fact that, at bottom, 
his own interests coincide with those of all other people. The 
individual capitalist is involved in struggle with all the other 
capitalists; the individual worker with all the other workers; all 
capitalists fight against the workers just as the mass of workers in 
their turn have, of necessity, to fight against the mass of capitalists. 
In this war of all against all, in this general confusion and mutual 
exploitation, the essence of present-day bourgeois society is to be 
found. But, gentlemen, such an unregulated economic system 
must, in the long run, lead to the most disastrous results for 
society; the disorder which lies at its basis, the disregard for the 
real, general well-being. must sooner or later make itself felt in the 
most striking fashion. The ruin of the small middle class, that 
estate which constituted the main foundation of states during the 
last century, is the first result of this struggle. Daily we see how 
this class in society is crushed by the power of capital, how, for 
example, the individual master tailors and cabinet-makers lose 
their best customers to shops selling ready-made clothes and 

furniture and from being small capitalists, members of the 
propertied class, are transformed into dependent proletarians work- 
ing for others, into members of the propertyless class. The ruin of 
the middle class is a much deplored consequence of our much 
lauded freedom of occupation, it is a necessary result of the 
advantages which the big capitalist has over his less affluent 
competitors; it is the most vigorous living expression of capital’s 
tendency to become concentrated in a few hands. This tendency is 
likewise widely recognised; there is general lamentation about the 
fact that property is being accumulated daily in fewer hands and 
that on the contrary the great majority of the nation is becoming 
more and more impoverished. Thus there arises the glaring 
contradiction between a few rich people on the one hand, and 
many poor on the other; a contradiction which has already risen 
to a menacing point in England and France and is daily growing 
sharper in our country too. And as long as the present basis of 
society is retained, so long will it be impossible to halt the 
progressing enrichment of a few individuals and the impoverish- 
ment of the great majority: the contradiction will develop more 
and more sharply until finally necessity compels society to reor- 
ganise itself on more rational principles. 

But these, gentlemen, are far from being all the consequences of 
free competition. Since each man produces and consumes on his 
own without concerning himself much about what others are 
producing and consuming, a crying disproportion between pro- 
duction and consumption must, of necessity, quickly develop. 
Since present-day society entrusts the distribution of the goods 
produced to merchants, speculators and shopkeepers, each one of 
whom has only his own advantage in mind, similarly in the 
distribution — even apart from the fact that it is impossible for the 
propertyless man to secure for himself a sufficient share — similar- 
ly in the distribution of the products the same disproportion will 
arise. How is the manufacturer to discover how much of his 
products are needed in this or that market, and even if he could 
discover this, how could he get to know how much his competitors 
are sending to each of these markets? How can he— who in most 
cases does not even know where the goods he is just producing 
will go— possibly know how much his foreign competitors will 
send to each of the markets in question? He knows nothing about 
all this; like his competitors, he manufactures at haphazard and 
consoles himself with the thought that the others must do likewise. 
He has no other guide than the constantly fluctuating level of 
prices which, in the case of distant markets, is quite different at 

Speeches in Elberfeld 245 

the moment when he dispatches his goods from what it was when 
the letter informing him about it was written, and which again is 
different at the time the goods arrive from what it was when they 
were despatched. Where you have such irregularity of production 
it is also quite natural that at every moment there are interrup- 
tions to trade, which naturally must be all the more serious the 
more advanced the industry and trade of a given country is. In 
this regard England—the country with the most developed 
industry — provides us with the most striking examples. Due to the 
expansion of trade, to the many speculators and commission 
agents who have forced themselves in between the producing 
manufacturer and the actual consumers, it is becoming much 
more difficult for the English than for the German manufacturer 
to obtain even the remotest idea of the relationship between the 
stocks available and production on the one hand and consumption 
on the other; in addition he has to supply nearly all the markets in 
the world, but in hardly a single case does he know where his 
goods go and thus, with the gigantic productive power of British 
industry, it very frequently happens that all the markets are 
suddenly glutted. Trade comes to a standstill, factories work 
half-time or stop altogether; a series of bankruptcies begins, stocks 
must be sold off at ridiculously low prices and a great part of the 
capital, accumulated with great effort, is lost again as a result of 
this kind of trade crisis. We have had a whole series of such trade 
crises in England since the beginning of this century, and one 
every five or six years in the last twenty years.°? The last two, 
gentlemen, those of 1837 and 1842, will still be vividly remem- 
bered by most of you. And if our industry were as big, our sales as 
extensive as the industry and trade of England, then we would 
experience the same results, whereas at present the effect of 
competition in industry and in trade is making itself felt here in a 
eneral, continuous depression in all branches of business, in a 
miserable half-way position between a definite boom and complete 
decline, in a situation of mild stagnation, 1.e., of stability. 
Gentlemen, what is the real reason of this deplorable state of 
affairs? What gives rise to the ruin of the middle class, to the 
glaring contradiction between rich and poor, to stagnation in trade 
and the waste of capital resulting therefrom? Nothing else than 
the divergence of interests. All of us work each for his own 
advantage, unconcerned about the welfare of others and, after all, 
it is an obvious, self-evident truth that the interest, the well-being, 
the happiness of every individual is inseparably bound up with 
that of his fellow-men. We must all acknowledge that we cannot 

do without our fellow-men, that our interests, if nothing else, bind 
us all to one another, and yet by our actions we fly in the face of 
this truth: and yet we arrange our society as if our interests were 
not identical but completely and utterly opposed. We have seen 
what the results of this fundamental mistake were; if we want to 
eliminate these unpleasant consequences then we must correct this 
fundamental mistake, and that is precisely the aim of communism. 

In communist society, where the interests of individuals are not 
opposed to one another but, on the contrary, are united, competi- 
tion is eliminated. As is self-evident, there can no longer be any 
question of the ruin of particular classes, nor of the very existence 
of classes such as the rich and the poor nowadays. As soon as 
private gain, the aim of the individual to enrich himself on his 
own, disappears from the production and distribution of the 
goods necessary to life, trade crises will also disappear of them- 
selves. In communist society it will be easy to be informed about 
both production and consumption. Since we know how much, on 
the average, a person needs, it is easy to calculate how much is 
needed by a given number of individuals, and since production is 
no longer in the hands of private producers but in those of the 
community and its administrative bodies, it is a trifling matter to 
regulate production according to needs. 

Thus we see how the main evils of the present social situation 
disappear under communist organisation. If, however, we go into 
a little more detail, we will find that the advantages of such a 
social organisation are not limited to this but also include the 
elimination of a host of other defects. I shall only touch today on a 
few of the economic drawbacks. From the economic point of view 
the present arrangement of society is surely the most irrational 
and unpractical we can possibly conceive. The opposition of 
interests results in a great amount of labour power being utilised 
in a way from which society gains nothing, and in a substantial 
amount of capital being unnecessarily lost without reproducing 
itself. We already see this in the commercial crises; we see how 
masses of goods, all of which men have produced with great 
effort, are thrown away at prices which cause loss to the sellers; we 
see how masses of capital, accumulated with great effort, disap- 
pear before the very eyes of their owners as a result of bankrupt- 
cies. Let us, however, discuss present-day trade in a little more 
detail. Consider through how many hands every product must go 
before it reaches the actual consumer. Consider, gentlemen, how 
many speculating, swindling superfluous middlemen have now 
forced themselves in between the producer and the consumer! Let 

Speeches in Elberfeld 247 

us take, for example, a bale of cotton produced in North America. 
The bale passes from the hands of the planter into those of the 
agent on some station or other on the Mississippi and travels down 
the river to New Orleans. Here it is sold —for a second time, for 
the agent has already bought it from the planter— sold, it might 
well be, to the speculator, who sells it once again, to the exporter. 
The bale now travels to Liverpool where, once again, a greedy 
speculator stretches out his hands towards it and grabs it. This 
man then trades it to a commission agent who, let us assume, is a 
buyer for a German house. So the bale travels to Rotterdam, up 
the Rhine, through another dozen hands of forwarding agents, 
being unloaded and loaded a dozen times, and only then does it 
arrive in the hands, not of the consumer, but of the manufacturer, 
who first makes it into an article of consumption, and who 
perhaps sells his yarn to a weaver, who disposes of what he has 
woven to the textile printer, who then does business with the 
wholesaler, who then deals with the retailer, who finally sells the 
commodity to the consumer. And all these millions of inter- 
mediary swindlers, speculators, agents, exporters, commission 
agents, forwarding agents, wholesalers and retailers, who actually 
contribute nothing to the commodity itself—they all want to live 
and make a profit—and they do make it too, on the average, 
otherwise they could not subsist. Gentlemen, is there no simpler, 
cheaper way of bringing a bale of cotton from America to 
Germany and of getting the product manufactured from it into 
the hands of the real consumer than this complicated business of 
ten times selling and a hundred times loading, unloading and 
transporting it from one warehouse to another? Is this not a 
striking example of the manifold waste of labour power brought 
about by the divergence of interests? Such a complicated way of 
transport is out of the question in a rationally organised society. 
To keep to our example, just as one can easily know how much 
cotton or manufactured cotton goods an individual colony needs, 
it will be equally easy for the central authority to determine how 
much all the villages and townships in the country need. Once 
such statistics have been worked out— which can easily be done in 
a year or two—average annual consumption will only change in 
proportion to the increasing population; it is therefore easy at the 
appropriate time to determine in advance what amount of each 
particular article the people will need—the entire great amount 
will be ordered direct from the source of supply; it will then be 
possible to procure it directly, without middlemen, without more 
delay and unloading than is really required by the nature of the 

journey, that is, with a great saving of labour power; it will not be 
necessary to pay the speculators, the dealers large and small, their 
rake-off. But this is still not all—in this way these middlemen are 
not only made harmless to society, they are, in fact, made useful to 
it. Whereas they now perform to the disadvantage of everyone else 
a kind of work which is, at best, superfluous but which, neverthe- 
less, provides them with a living, indeed, in many cases even with 
great riches, whereas they are thus at present directly prejudicial 
to the general good, they will then become free to engage in 
useful labour and to take up an occupation in which they can 
prove themselves as actual members, not merely apparent, sham 
members, of human society, and as participants in its activity as a 
whole. 

Present-day society, which breeds. hostility between the individu-. 
al man and everyone else, thus produces a social war of all against 
all which inevitably in individual cases, notably among uneducated 
people, assumes a brutal, barbarously violent form — that of crime. 
In order to protect itself against crime, against direct acts of 
violence, society requires an extensive, complicated system of 
administrative and judicial bodies which requires an immense 
labour force. In communist society this would likewise be vastly 
simplified, and precisely because—strange though it may 
sound — precisely because the administrative body in this society 
would have to manage not merely individual aspects of social life, 
but the whole of social life, in all its various activities, in all its 
aspects. We eliminate the contradiction between the individual 
man and all others, we counterpose social peace to social war, we 
put the axe to the root of crime—and thereby render the greatest, 
by far the greatest, part of the present activity of the administra- 
tive and judicial bodies superfluous. Even now crimes of passion 
are becoming fewer and fewer in comparison with calculated 
crimes, crimes of interest—crimes against persons are declining, 
crimes against property are on the increase. Advancing civilisation 
moderates violent outbreaks of passion even in our present-day 
society, which is on a war footing; how much more will this be the 
case in communist, peaceful society! Crimes against property cease 
of their own accord where everyone receives what he needs to 
satisfy his natural and his spiritual urges, where social gradations 
and distinctions cease to exist. Justice concerned with criminal 
cases ceases of itself, that dealing with civil cases, which are almost 
all rooted in the property relations or at least in such relations as 
arise from the situation of social war, likewise disappears; conflicts 
can then be only rare exceptions, whereas they are now the 

Spéeches in Elberfeld 249 

natural result of general hostility, and will be easily settled by 
arbitrators. The activities of the administrative bodies at present 
have likewise their source in the continual social war—the police 
and the entire administration do nothing else but see to it that the 
war remains concealed and indirect and does not erupt into open 
violence, into crimes. But if it is infinitely easier to maintain peace 
than to keep war within certain limits, so it is vastly more easy to 
administer a communist community rather than a competitive one. 
And if civilisation has already taught men to seek their interest in 
the maintenance of public order, public security, and the public 
interest, and therefore to make the police, administration and 
justice as superfluous as possible, how much more will this be the 
case in a society in which community of interests has become the 
basic principle, and in which the public. interest is no longer 
distinct from that of each individual! What already exists now, in 
spite of the social organisation, how much more will it exist when it 
is no longer hindered, but supported by the social institutions! We 
may thus also in this regard count on a considerable increase in 
the labour force through that part of the labour force of which 
society is deprived by the present social condition. 

One of the most expensive institutions which present-day 
society cannot dispense with are the standing armies, by which the 
nation is deprived of the most vigorous and useful section of the 
population and compelled to feed it since it thereby becomes 
unproductive. We know from our own budget what the standing 
army costs—twenty-four million a year and the withdrawal from 
production of twice one hundred thousand of the most muscular 
arms. In communist society it would not occur to anyone to have a 
standing army. What for, anyhow? To maintain peace in the 
country? As we saw above, it will not occur to anyone to disturb 
internal peace. Fear of revolutions is, of course, the consequence 
only of the opposition of interests; where the interests of all 
coincide, such fears are out of the question.— For aggressive wars? 
But how could a communist society conceive the idea of undertak- 
ing an aggressive war?—this society which is perfectly well aware 
that in war it will only lose men and capital while the most it could 
gain would be a couple of recalcitrant provinces, which would as a 
consequence be disruptive of social order.— For a war of defence? 
For that there is no need of a standing army, as it will be easy to 
train every fit member of society, in addition to his other 
occupations, in real, not barrack-square handling of arms to the 
degree necessary for the defence of the country. And, gentlemen, 
consider this, that in the event of a war, which anyway could only 

be waged against anti-communist nations, the member of such a 
society has a real Fatherland, a real hearth and home to defend, so 
that he will fight with an enthusiasm, endurance and bravery 
before which the mechanically trained soldiers of a modern army 
must be scattered like chaff. Consider what wonders were worked 
by the enthusiasm of the revolutionary armies from 1792 to 1799, 
which only fought for an illusion, for the semblance of a Fatherland, 
and you will be bound to realise how powerful an army must be 
which fights, not for an illusion, but for a tangible reality. Thus 
these immense masses of labour power of which the civilised 
nations are now deprived by the armies, would be returned to 
labour in a communist society; they would not only produce as 
much as they consume, but would be able to supply to the public 
storehouses a great many more products than those necessary for 
their own sustenance. 

An even worse wastage of labour power is to be seen in our 
existing society in the way the rich exploit their social position. | 
will say nothing of all the useless and quite ridiculous luxury 
which arises only from the passion for display and occupies a great 
deal of labour power. But, gentlemen, just go into the house, the 
inmost sanctuary, of a rich man and tell me if it is not the most 
senseless waste of labour power when you have a number of 
people waiting on one single individual, spending their time in 
idleness or, at best, in work which results from the isolation of a 
single man inside his own four walls? This crowd of maids, cooks, 
lackeys, coachmen, domestic servants, gardeners and whatever 
they are called, what do they really do? For how few moments 
during the day they are occupied in making the lives of their 
masters really pleasant, in facilitating the free development and 
exercise of their human nature and inborn capacities—and how 
many hours during the day they are occupied in tasks which arise 
only from the bad arrangement of our social relations— standing 
at the back of the carriage, serving their employers’ every whim, 
carrying lap-dogs, and other absurdities. In a rationally organised 
society, where everyone will be in a position to live without 
pandering to the whims of the rich and without lapsing into any 
such whims himself — in such a society, the labour power now thus 
wasted on the provision of luxury can naturally be used to the 
advantage of all and to its own. 

A further waste of labour power occurs in our present society 
quite directly as a result of competition, for this creates a large 
number of destitute workers who would gladly work, but cannot get 
any work. Since society is not by any means arranged so as to be 

Speeches in Elberfeld 251 

able to pay attention to the real utilisation of the labour force, 
since it is left to every individual to look for a source of gain, it is 
quite natural that when really or apparently useful work is being 
distributed, a number of workers are left without any. This is all 
the more the case as the competitive struggle compels everyone to 
strain his power to the utmost, to utilise all available advantages, 
to replace dearer labour by cheaper for which advancing 
civilisation provides more and more means or, in other words, 
everyone has to work at making others destitute, at displacing 
other people’s labour by one means or another. Thus in every 
civilised society there are large numbers of unemployed people 
who would gladly work but cannot find work and their number 
is larger than is commonly believed. And so we find these people 
prostituting themselves in one way or another, begging, sweeping 
the streets, standing on corners, only barely keeping body 
and soul together by occasional small jobs, hawking and _ ped- 
dling all manner of petty wares or, as we saw a couple of poor 
girls doing this evening, going from place to place with a guitar, 
playing and singing for money, compelled to put up with all kinds 
of shameless talk, every insulting suggestion in order to earn a 
couple of groschen. How many finally fall victims to real prostitu- 
tion! Gentlemen, the number of these destitute people who have 
no other course open but to prostitute themselves in one way or 
another is very large—our Poor Relief authorities can tell you all 
about this—and don’t forget that society nevertheless feeds these 
people in one way or another despite their uselessness. If, then, 
society has to bear the cost of their maintenance, it should also 
make it possible for these unemployed to earn their keep honour- 
ably. But the present competitive society cannot do this. 

If you think about all this, gentlemen—and I could have given 
you many other examples of how our present society wastes its 
labour force—if you think about this, you will find that human 
society has an abundance of productive forces at its disposal which 
only await a rational organisation, regulated distribution, in order 
to go into operation to the greatest benefit for all. After this you 
will be able to judge how totally unfounded is the fear that, given 
a just distribution of social activity, individuals would have to bear 
such a load of labour as would make it impossible for them to 
engage in anything else. On the contrary, we can assume that 

iven this kind of organisation, the present customary labour time 
of the individual will be reduced by half simply by making use of 
the labour which is either not used at all or used disadvanta- 
geously. 

However, the benefits which communist organisation offers 
through the utilisation of wasted labour power are not yet the most 
significant. The greatest saving of labour power lies in the fusing of 
the individual powers into social collective power and in the kind of 
organisation which is based on this concentration of powers 
hitherto opposed to one another. Here I should like to subscribe 
to the proposals of Robert Owen, the English Socialist, since these 
are the most practical and most fully worked out. Owen proposes 
that instead of the present towns and villages with their separate 
individual houses standing in each other’s way, we should con- 
struct large palaces which, built in the form of a square some 1,650 
feet in length and breadth, would enclose a large garden and com- 
fortably accommodate from two to three thousand people. It is 
obvious that such a building, while providing its occupants with 
the amenities of the best contemporary housing, is far cheaper 
and easier to erect than the generally worse individual dwellings 
required under the present system for the same number of 
people. The many rooms which now remain empty in almost every 
decent house, or are only used once or twice a year, disappear 
without any inconvenience; the saving in space for store-rooms, 
cellars, etc., is also very great— But it is only when we go into 
domestic economy in detail that we will really grasp the advantages 
of community housing. What an amount of labour and material is 
squandered under the present system of separate housing—in 
heating for example! Every room needs to have a separate stove, 
every stove has to be specially heated, kept alight, supervised, the 
fuel for heating has to be brought to all the different places, the 
ashes removed; how much simpler and cheaper it would be to 
install, instead of the present separate heating, large-scale central 
heating with, for example, steam pipes and a single, central 
heating unit, as is already done in big public buildings, factories, 
churches, etc. Gaslighting, again, is expensive at present because 
even the thinner pipes have to be laid underground and owing to 
the large areas to be illuminated in our towns the pipes have to be 
disproportionately long, whereas under the proposed arrangement 
everything would be concentrated in an area of a 1,650 foot 
square and the number of gas burners would nevertheless be as 
great, so that the result would be at least as beneficial as in a 
moderately-sized town. And then the preparation of meals — what 
a waste of space, ingredients, labour, is involved in the present, 
separate households, where every family cooks its little bit of food 
on its own, has its own supply of crockery, employs its own cook, 
must fetch its own supplies separately from the market, from the 

Speeches in Elberfeld 253 

garden, from the butcher and the baker! One can safely assume 
that under a communal system of preparing and serving meals, 
two-thirds of the labour force now engaged in this work will be 
saved, and the remaining third will nevertheless be able to 
perform it better and more attentively than is the case at present. 
And finally, the housework itself! Will not such a building be 
infinitely easier to keep clean and in good condition when, as 
is possible, this kind of work also is organised and regularly 
shared out, than the two to three hundred separate houses 
which would be the equivalent under the present housing 
system? 

These, gentlemen, are a few of the innumerable economic 
advantages which are bound to result from the communist 
organisation of human society. It is not possible for us in a couple 
of hours and in a few words to elucidate our principle and duly 
substantiate it from all points of view. Nor is this by any means 
our intention. All we can and want to do is to shed light on a few 
points and to induce those to whom the matter is still strange to 
study it. And we hope at least that we have made it clear this 
evening that communism is not contrary to human nature, reason, 
or the human heart, and that it is not a theory which, taking no 
account whatever of reality, is rooted in pure fantasy. 

People ask how this theory is to be translated into reality, what 
measures we propose to prepare its introduction. There are 
various ways to this end; the English will probably begin by setting 
up a number of colonies and leaving it to every individual whether 
to join or not; the French, on the other hand, will be likely to 
prepare and implement communism on a national basis. Not much 
can be said about how the Germans will start since the social 
movement in Germany is new. Meanwhile, among the many 
possible ways of preparing, I would like to mention only one 
which has recently been much discussed—the carrying through 
of three measures which are bound to result in practical com- 
munism. 

The first would be the general education of all children without 
exception at the expense of the state—an education which is equal 
for all and continues until the individual is capable of emerging as 
an independent member of society. This measure would be only 
an act of justice to our destitute fellow creatures, for clearly, every 
man has the right to the full development of his abilities and 
society wrongs individuals twice over when it makes ignorance a 
necessary consequence of poverty. It is obvious that society gains 
more from educated than from ignorant, uncultured members, 

and while, as may be well expected, an educated proletariat will 
not be disposed to remain in the oppressed condition in which our 
present proletariat finds itself, the calm and composure necessary 
for the peaceful transformation of society can also be expected 
only from an educated working class. But that the uneducated 
proletariat likewise has no wish to remain in its present condition 
is proved also for Germany— not to speak of other peoples—by the 
disorders in Silesia and Bohemia.” 

The second measure would be a complete reorganisation of the 
Poor Relief System, so that all destitute citizens would be housed in 
colonies where they would be employed in agriculture and 
industry and their work organised for the benefit of the whole 
colony. Poor Relief capital has, up to now, been lent out at interest, 
thus providing the rich with new means for exploiting the 
propertyless. Let this capital at last work for the benefit of the 
poor, let the whole yield of this capital, not simply its 3 per cent 
interest, be used for the poor, and thus give a splendid example of 
the association of capital and labour! In this way, the labour power 
of all destitute people would be utilised for the benefit of society 
and the destitute themselves transformed from demoralised, op- 
pressed paupers into moral, independent, active people whose 
condition would very soon come to be regarded as enviable by 
isolated workers and would prepare a thoroughgoing reorganisa- 
tion of society. 

Both these measures require money. In order to raise it and at 
the same time replace all the present, unjustly distributed taxes, 
the present reform plan proposes a general, progressive tax on 
capital, at a rate increasing with the size of the capital. In this way, 
the burden of public administration would be shared by everyone 
according to his ability and would no longer fall mainly on the 
shoulders of those least able to bear it, as has hitherto been the 
case in all countries. For the principle of taxation is, after all, a 
purely communist one, since the right to levy taxes is derived in all 
countries from so-called national property. For either private 
property is sacrosanct, in which case there is no such thing as 
national property and the state has no right to levy taxes, or the 
state has this right, in which case private property is not sac- 
rosanct, national property stands above private property, and the 
state is the true owner. This latter principle is the one generally 
accepted — well then, gentlemen; for the present we demand only 
that this principle be taken seriously, that the state proclaim itself 
the common owner and, as such, administer public property for 
the public good, and that as the first step, it introduce a system of 

Speeches in Elberfeld 255 

taxation based solely on each individual’s ability to pay taxes and 
on the real public good. 

So you see, gentlemen, that it is not intended to introduce 
common ownership [Gütergemeinschaft] overnight and against the 
will of the nation, but that it is only a matter of establishing the aim 
and the ways and means of advancing towards it. But that the 
communist principle will be that of the future is attested by the 
course of development of all civilised nations, it is attested by the 
swiftly advancing dissolution of all hitherto existing social institu- 
tions; it is attested by common sense and, above all, by the human 
heart. 

FEBRUARY 15, 1845 

Gentlemen! 

At our last meeting I was accused of taking my examples and 
illustrations almost exclusively from foreign countries, namely 
from England. It was said that England and France were of no 
concern to us, we lived in Germany and it was our business to 
prove the necessity and advantages of communism for Germany. 
We were likewise accused of not having sufficiently demonstrated 
the historical necessity of communism in general. This is quite 
correct and it was not possible to do otherwise. A_ historical 
necessity cannot be demonstrated in as short a time as the 
congruence of two triangles. It can only be done by study and 
inquiry into all kinds of far-reaching presuppositions. I will, 
however, today do my best to answer these two accusations. I will 
try to show that communism is, if not a historical, at any rate an 
economic necessity for Germany. 

Let us, first of all, consider the present social situation in 
Germany. It is known that a great deal of poverty exists among us. 
Silesia and Bohemia have spoken for “themselves. The Rheinische 
Zeitung had much to tell us about the poverty existing in the Mosel 
and Eifel areas.* Large-scale and continuous poverty has prevailed 
in the Erzgebirge from time immemorial. It is no better in the 
Senne and in the Westphalian linen districts. There are complaints 
from all parts of Germany and nothing else is to be expected. Our 
proletariat is numerous and must be so, as we must realise from 
the most superficial examination of our social situation. It is in the 

* Karl Marx, “Justification of the Correspondent from the Mosel” (see present 
edition, Vol. 1, pp. 332-58).— Ed. 

Speeches in Elberfeld 257 

nature of things that there should be a numerous proletariat in 
the industrial districts. Industry cannot exist without a large 
number of workers who are wholly at its disposal, work exclusively 
for it and renounce every other way of making a living. Under 
conditions of competition, industrial employment makes any other 
employment impossible. For this reason we find in all industrial 
districts a proletariat too numerous and too obvious for its 
_ existence to be denied.— But in the agricultural districts, on the 
other hand, many people assert, no proletariat exists. But how is 
this possible? In areas where big landownership prevails such a 
proletariat is necessary; the big farms need farm-hands and 
servant girls and cannot exist without proletarians. In areas where 
the land has been parcelled out the rise of a propertyless class 
cannot be avoided either; the estates are divided up to a certain 
point, then the division comes to an end; and as then only one 
member of the family can take over the farm the others must, of 
course, become proletarians, propertyless workers. This dividing 
up usually proceeds until the farm becomes too small to feed a 
family and so a class of people comes into existence which, like the 
small middle class in the towns, is in transition from the possessing 
to the non-possessing class, and which is prevented by its property 
from taking up any other occupation, and yet cannot live on it. In 
this class, too, great poverty prevails. 

That this proletariat is bound steadily to increase in numbers is 
guaranteed by the increasing impoverishment of the middle classes 
of which I spoke in detail last week, and by the tendency of capital 
to become concentrated in a few hands. I do not need to return to 
these points today, and will only remark that these causes which 
continually produce and multiply the proletariat will remain the 
same and will have the same consequences as long as there is 
competition. The proletariat must under all circumstances not only 
continue to exist but also enlarge itself continually, become an ever 
more threatening power in our society as long as we continue to 
produce each on his own and in opposition to everyone else. But 
one day the proletariat will attain a level of power and of insight 
at which it will no longer tolerate the pressure of the entire social 
structure always bearing down on its shoulders, when it will 
demand a more even distribution of social burdens and rights; 
and then—iunless human nature has changed by that time—a 
social revolution will be inevitable. 

This is a question which our economists have not as yet gone 
into at all. They do not concern themselves with the distribution 
but only with the production of the national wealth. However, let 

us leave aside for the moment the fact that, as we have just 
demonstrated, a social revolution is the consequence of competi- 
tion; let us consider the individual forms in which competition 
appears, the different economic possibilities for Germany, and see 
what the consequences of each must be. 

Germany—or the German Customs Union,” to be more pre- 
cise—has a juste-milieu customs tariff at the moment. Our duties 
are too low to constitute a real protective tariff and too high for 
free trade. So three things are possible. Either we go over to free 
trade completely, or we protect our industry by adequate tariffs, 
or we retain the existing system. Let us examine each of these 
possibilities. 

If we proclaim free trade and do away with our tariffs, then our 
whole industry with the exception of a few branches will be 
ruined. There can then be no question whatsoever of cotton 
spinning, of mechanised weaving, of most branches of the cotton 
and woollen industry, of important branches of the silk industry, 
of almost all production and processing of iron. The workers 
suddenly made destitute in‘all these branches would be hurled in 
masses into agriculture and the debris of industry, pauperism 
would grow out of the very ground everywhere, the centralisation 
of property in the hands of a few would be speeded up by such a 
crisis and, judging by the events in Silesia, the result of this crisis 
would of necessity be a social revolution. 

Or we provide ourselves with protective tariffs. These have lately 
become the darlings of most of our industrialists and therefore 
deserve closer examination. Herr List has brought the wishes of 
our Capitalists into a system? and I should like to deal for a little 
while with this system, now almost generally adopted by them as a 
credo. Herr List proposes gradually increasing protective tariffs 
which are finally to become high enough to guarantee the home 
market for the manufacturers; they should then remain at that 
level for a time and then be gradually reduced again so that 
finally, after a number of years, all tariffs are abolished. Let us 
assume for a moment that this plan is adopted and increasing 
protective tariffs are decreed. Industry will expand, idle capital 
will rush into industrial undertakings, the demand for workers will 
increase and so will wages along with it, the poor-houses will 
empty, and to all appearances everything will be in a most 
flourishing state. This will continue until our industry has suffi- 

* Friedrich List, Das nationale System der politischen Oekonomie (for a detailed analy- 
sis of this work see Marx’s article on pp. 265-93 of this volume).— Ed. 

Speeches in Elberfeld 259 

cierttly expanded to supply the home market. It cannot expand 
any further, for since it cannot maintain its hold on the home 
market without protection it will be even less able to do anything 
against foreign competition in neutral markets. But, says Herr 
List, by then home industry will be strong enough to require less 
protection and the reduction of tariffs can commence. Let us 
agree with this for a moment. The tariffs are reduced. Protection 
is decreased to such an extent—if not by the first reduction then 
certainly by the second or third—that foreign, let us say right 
away, English, industry can compete with our own in the German 
market. Herr List himself wishes this. But what will be the result 
of all this? From then on, German industry will have to endure, 
along with the English, all the fluctuations, all the crises, of the 
latter. As soon as the overseas markets are glutted with English 
goods, the English will throw the whole of their surplus stocks on 
the German market, the nearest one available, just as they are 
doing now, and as Herr List reports with great emotion, and so 
transform the German Customs Union into their “second-hand 
shop” once more. Then English industry will soon rise again 
because it has the whole world for its market, because the whole 
world cannot do without it, while German industry is not indis- 
pensable even for its own market and has to fear English 
competition in its own house and is labouring under a profusion 
of English goods thrown to its customers during the crisis. Then 
our industry will have to taste to the dregs all the bad times 
experienced by the English industry while being able to have only 
a modest share in the latter’s boom periods — in short, we shall be 
in exactly the same position as we are now. And to come 
straightaway to the final result, there will then ensue the same 
depression in which our half-protected industries now find them- 
selves, then one establishment after another will go under without 
new ones arising, then our machines will become obsolete without 
our being able to replace them with new and better ones, then the 
standstill will be transformed into retrogression and, according to 
Herr List’s own assertion, one industry after another will decay 
and finally collapse altogether. But then we shall have a numerous 
proletariat which will have been created by industry and will now 
have no food, no work; and then, gentlemen, this proletariat will 
confront the propertied class with the demand to be given work 
and to be fed. 

This is what will happen if the protective tariffs are reduced. 
Let us now assume that they are not reduced but remain -in 
operation and that it is proposed to wait until competition between 

the home manufacturers makes them illusory and then to reduce 
them. The result of this will be that as soon as German industry is 
in a position to supply the German market completely it will stand 
still. New establishments will not be needed since the existing ones 
suffice for the market and, as has been said above, new markets 
are out of the question so long as protection is needed at all. But 
an industry which does not expand cannot improve itself. It remains 
stationary both internally and externally. For it there is no such 
thing as improving the machinery. The old machines cannot just 
be scrapped, and there are no new establishments which could 
make use of new ones. Meanwhile other nations go forward, and 
the standstill in our industry again becomes retrogression. The 
English, as a result of their advance, will soon be in a position to 
produce so cheaply that they can compete with our backward 
industry in our own market despite the protective tariffs, and since 
in competition as in every other kind of struggle victory always 
goes to the strongest, our ultimate defeat is certain. The same 
situation then arises about which I have just been speaking: the 
artificially created proletariat will demand from the property- 
owners something which, so long as they wish to remain exclusive 
owners, they are unable to provide, and social revolution begins. 

There is yet another possibility, namely, the very improbable 
one that we Germans will be able owing to protective tariffs to 
bring our industry to a point at which it can compete with the 
English without protection. Let us assume that this is so, what 
would be the result? As soon as we begin to compete with the 
English in foreign, neutral markets, a life-and-death struggle will 
arise between our industry and that of the English. They will 
muster all their strength to keep us out of the markets they have 
supplied hitherto; they will have to do so because now they will be 
attacked at their life’s source, at the most dangerous spot. And 
with all the means at their disposal, with all the advantages of a 
hundred-year-old industry, they will succeed in defeating us. They 
will keep our industry limited to our own market and thus make it 
stationary—and then the same situation will arise which has 
already been outlined; we shall remain stationary, the English will 
stride forward, and our industry, in view of its unavoidable decay, 
will not be in a position to feed the proletariat it will have 
artificially created —the social revolution begins. 

But assuming that we could beat the English even in neutral 
markets, that we were to win from them one trade outlet after 
another — what would we have gained in this well-nigh impossible 
case? At best we should repeat the industrial development which 

Speeches in Elberfeld 261 

England went through before us, and sooner or later we should 
arrive at the point which England has now reached — namely the 
eve of the social revolution. But in all probability it would not take 
as long as that. As a result of the continual victories of German 
industry that of the English would necessarily be ruined and this 
would only speed up the mass uprising of the proletariat against 
the propertied classes, which is imminent in England in any case. 
Rapidly spreading destitution would drive the English workers to 
revolution, and as things stand now, such a social revolution would 
have enormous repercussions in the continental countries, notably 
in France and Germany, which must be all the greater the more a 
proletariat is artificially produced by forcing the pace of industrial 
development in Germany. Such a revolution would immediately 
become a European one and would violently upset our manufac- 
turers’ dreams of a German industrial monopoly. And _ that 
German and English industry should exist peacefully side by side 
is made impossible if only by competition. I repeat, every industry 
must advance in order not to lag behind and go under; it must 
expand, conquer new markets, become enlarged by the addition of 
new establishments in order to be able to advance. But as no new 
markets are being won since the opening up of China,” and only 
better exploitation of the existing markets is possible, and as the 
expansion of industry will therefore proceed more slowly in future 
than it has done up to now, England can tolerate a competitor 
even less now than it could in the past. It must hold down the 
industry of all other countries in order to protect its own industry 
from ruin. For England the maintenance of industrial monopoly is 
no longer merely a question of a greater or lesser profit, it has 
become a question of life or death. The competitive struggle between 
nations is, in any case, much fiercer, much more decisive than that 
between individuals, because it is a more concentrated struggle, a 
struggle between masses, which can only be ended by the decisive 
victory of one side and the decisive defeat of the other. And for 
this reason, such a struggle between us and the English, no matter 
what the outcome, would be of no benefit either to our or to the 
English industrialists but, as I have shown, would only bring a 
social revolution in its train. 

We have thus seen, gentlemen, what Germany can expect in all 
possible cases both from free trade and from protection. We still 
have, however, one economic possibility open to us, namely, that 
we continue with the juste-milieu tariffs now in operation. But we 
have already seen what the results would be. One branch of our 
industry after another would collapse, the industrial workers 

would become destitute, and when the destitution reached a 
certain point they would explode into a revolution against the 
propertied classes. 

So you see, gentlemen, substantiated also in detail what in the 
beginning, proceeding: from competition in general, I set out in 
general terms—namely, that the unavoidable result of our exist- 
ing social relations, under all circumstances, and in all cases, will 
be a social revolution. With the same certainty with which we can 
develop from given mathematical principles a new mathematical 
proposition, with the same certainty we can deduce from the 
existing economic relations and the principles of political economy 
the imminence of social revolution. Let us, however, look at this 
upheaval a little closer; what form will it take, what will be its 
results, in what ways will it differ from the previous violent 
upheavals? A social revolution, gentlemen, is something quite 
different from the political revolutions which have taken place so 
far. It is not directed, as these have been, against the property of 
monopoly, but against the monopoly of property; a social revolu- 
tion, gentlemen, is the open war of the poor against the rich. And such 
a struggle, in which all the mainsprings and causes, which in 
previous historical conflicts lay dark and hidden at the bottom, 
operate openly and without concealment, such a struggle, to be 
sure, threatens to be far fiercer and bloodier than all those that 
preceded it. The result of this struggle can be twofold. Either the 
rebellious party only attacks the appearance, not the essence, only 
the form, not the thing itself, or it goes for the thing itself, grasps 
the evil itself by the root. In the first case private property will be 
allowed to continue and will only be distributed differently, so that 
the causes which have led to the present situation remain in 
operation and must sooner or later bring about a similar situation 
and another revolution. But, gentlemen, is this possible? Has there 
been a revolution which did not really carry out what it was out 
for? The English revolution realised both the religious and the 
political principles whose suppression by Charles I caused it to 
break out; the French bourgeoisie in its fight against the aristocra- 
cy and the old monarchy achieved everything that it aimed for, 
made an end to all the abuses which drove it to insurrection. And 
should the insurrection of the poor cease before poverty and its 
causes have been eliminated? It is not possible, gentlemen; it 
would be flying in the face of all historical experience to suppose 
such a thing. Furthermore, the level of education of the workers, 
especially in England and France, forbids us to consider this 
possible. There only remains, then, the other alternative, namely, 

Speeches in Elberfeld 263 

that the future social revolution will deal with the real causes of 
want and poverty, of ignorance and crime, that it will therefore 
carry through a real social reform. And this can only happen by 
the proclamation of the principles of communism. Just consider, 
gentlemen, the ideas which actuate the worker in those countries 
where the worker too thinks. Look at France, at the different 
sections of the labour movement, whether they are not all 
communistic; go to England and listen to the kind of proposals 
being made to the workers for the improvement of their posi- 
tion —are they not all based on the principle of common proper- 
ty; study the different systems of social reform and how many will 
you find that are not communistic? Of all the systems which are 
still of any importance today, the only one which is not communis- 
tic is that of Fourier, who devoted more attention to the social 
organisation of human activity than to the distribution of its 
products. All these facts justify the conclusion that a future social 
revolution will end with the implementation of the principles of 
communism and hardly permit any other possibility. 

If, gentlemen, these conclusions are correct, if the social revolu- 
tion and practical communism are the necessary result of our 
existing conditions— then we will have to concern ourselves above 
all with the measures by which we can avoid a violent and bloody 
overthrow of the social conditions. And there is only one means, 
namely, the peaceful introduction or at least preparation of 
communism. If we do not want the bloody solution of the social 
problem, if we do not want to permit the daily growing contradic- 
tion between the education and the condition of our proletarians 
to come to a head, which, according to all our experience of 
human nature, will mean that this contradiction will be solved by 
brute force, desperation and thirst for revenge, then, gentlemen, 
we must apply ourselves seriously and without prejudice to the 
social problem; then we must make it our business to contribute 
our share towards humanising the condition of the modern helots. 
And if it should perhaps appear to some of you that the raising of 
the hitherto abased classes will not be possible without an abase- 
ment of your own condition, then you ought to bear in mind that 
what is involved is to create for all people such a condition that 
everyone can freely develop his human nature and live in a 
human relationship with his neighbours, and has no need to fear 
any violent shattering of his condition; it must be borne in mind 
that what some individuals have to sacrifice is not their real 
human enjoyment of life, but only the semblance of this enjoy- 
ment produced by our bad conditions, something which conflicts 

10* 

with the reason and the heart of those who now enjoy these 
apparent advantages. Far from wishing to destroy real human life 
with all its requirements and needs, we wish on the contrary really 
to bring it into being. And if, even apart from this, you will only 
seriously consider for a moment what the consequences of our 
present situation are bound to be, into what labyrinths of con- 
tradictions and disorders it is leading us—then, gentlemen, you 
will certainly find it worth the trouble to study the social question 
seriously and thoroughly. And if I can induce you to do this, I 
shall have achieved the purpose of my talk. 

Published in Rheinische Jahrbticher zur time 
gesellschaftlichen Reform, 1845, Bd. I 

Karl Marx