Preamble

Considering,

That the emancipation of the productive class is that of all human beings without
distinction of sex or race;

That the producers can be free only when they are in possession of the means of
production [NB];

That there are only two forms under which the means of production can belong to
them

1. The individual form which has never existed in a general state and which is
   increasingly eliminated by industrial progress;

2. The collective form the material and intellectual elements of which are
   constituted by the very development of capitalist society;

Considering,

That this collective appropriation can arise only from the revolutionary action of
the productive class – or proletariat - organized in a distinct political party;

That a such an organization must be pursued by all the means the proletariat has
at its disposal including universal suffrage which will thus be transformed from
the instrument of deception that it has been until now into an instrument of
emancipation;

The French socialist workers, in adopting as the aim of their efforts the
political and economic expropriation of the capitalist class and the return to
community of all the means of production, have decided, as a means of organization
and struggle, to enter the elections with the following immediate demands:

A. Political Section [NB2]

1. Abolition of all laws over the press, meetings and associations and above all
   the law against the International Working Men's Association. Removal of the
   livret, [6] that administrative control over the working class, and of all the
   articles of the Code [7] establishing the inferiority of the worker in relation
   to the boss, and of woman in relation to man;

2. Removal of the budget of the religious orders and the return to the nation of
   the 'goods said to be mortmain, movable and immovable' (decree by the Commune
   of 2 April 1871), including all the industrial and commercial annexes of these
   corporations;

3. Suppression of the public debt;

4. Abolition of standing armies and the general arming of the people;

5. The Commune to be master of its administration and its police.

B. Economic Section

1. One rest day each week or legal ban on employers imposing work more than six
   days out of seven. - Legal reduction of the working day to eight hours for
   adults. - A ban on children under fourteen years working in private workshops;
   and, between fourteen and sixteen years, reduction of the working day from
   eight to six hours;

2. Protective supervision of apprentices by the workers' organizations;

3. Legal minimum wage, determined each year according to the local price of food,
   by a workers' statistical commission;

4. Legal prohibition of bosses employing foreign workers at a wage less than that
   of French workers;

5. Equal pay for equal work, for workers of both sexes;

6. Scientific and professional instruction of all children, with their maintenance
   the responsibility of society, represented by the state and the Commune;

7. Responsibility of society for the old and the disabled;

8. Prohibition of all interference by employers in the administration of workers'
   friendly societies, provident societies, etc., which are returned to the
   exclusive control of the workers;

9. Responsibility of the bosses in the matter of accidents, guaranteed by a
   security paid by the employer into the workers' funds, and in proportion to the
   number of workers employed and the danger that the industry presents;

10. Intervention by the workers in the special regulations of the various
    workshops; an end to the right usurped by the bosses to impose any penalty on
    their workers in the form of fines or withholding of wages (decree by the
    Commune of 27 April 1871);

11. Annulment of all the contracts that have alienated public property (banks,
    railways, mines, etc.), and the exploitation of all state-owned workshops to
    be entrusted to the workers who work there;

12. Abolition of all indirect taxes and transformation of all direct taxes into a
    progressive tax on incomes over 3,000 francs. Suppression of all inheritance
    on a collateral line [8] and of all direct inheritance over 20,000 francs.

Editorial Notes

1. Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, 1975, p.312.

2. Ibid., p.324.

3. Engels, 'A Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Programme of 1891", in Marx
and Engels, Selected Works, 1983, Vol.3, p.438.

4. Bernard H. Moss, The Origins of the French Labour Movement, 1830-1914, 1976,
p.107.

5. Ibid., p.11. Marx's famous remark, quoted by Engels in a letter to Eduard
Bernstein, can be found in Marx and Engels, Werke, Vol. 35. p.388.

6. The 'livret' was a certificate which a worker was legally obliged to present
when taking up a new job, confirming that his debts and obligations to his
previous employer had been discharged. The practice was finally abolished in 1890.

7. The Code Napoleon, the French law.

8. i.e. not by direct descendants.

NB: Our thanks to Graham Taylor for pointing out that the words “(land, factories,
ships, banks, credit)” which were added here in the text supplied, but were not
included in Marx's original wording, and have been deleted, as according to the
text printed in L’Égalité.

NB2: The text from here is not authored exclusively by Marx, though he worked on
it with Guesde.