The 1890 German Edition

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

A second Russian translation — by Vera Zasulich — appeared in Geneva
in 1882; the preface to that edition was written by Marx and myself. Unfortunately, the original German manuscript has gone astray; I must therefore retranslate
from the Russian which will in no way improve the text. It reads:

[ Reprint of the 1882 Russian Edition ]

At about the same date, a new Polish version appeared in Geneva: Manifest
Kommunistyczny.

Furthermore, a new Danish translation has appeared in the Socialdemokratisk
Bibliothek, Copenhagen, 1885. Unfortunately, it is not quite complete;
certain essential passages, which seem to have presented difficulties to
the translator, have been omitted, and, in addition, there are signs of
carelessness here and there, which are all the more unpleasantly conspicuous
since the translation indicates that had the translator taken a little
more pains, he would have done an excellent piece of work.

A new French version appeared in 1886, in Le Socialiste of Paris;
it is the best published to date.

From this latter, a Spanish version was published the same year in El
Socialista of Madrid, and then reissued in pamphlet form: Manifesto
del Partido Communista por Carlos Marx y F. Engels, Madrid, Administracion
de El Socialista, Hernan Cortes 8.

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

After one, and then another, of the more or less inaccurate American
translations had been repeatedly reprinted in England, an authentic version
at last appeared in 1888. This was my friend Samuel Moore, and we went
through it together once more before it went to press. It is entitled:
Manifesto of the Communist Party, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
Authorized English translation, edited and annotated by Frederick Engels,
1888, London, William Reeves, 185 Fleet Street, E.C. I have added some
of the notes of that edition to the present one.

The Manifesto has had a history of its own. Greeted with enthusiasm,
at the time of its appearance, by the not at all numerous vanguard of scientific
socialism (as is proved by the translations mentioned in the first place),
it was soon forced into the background by the reaction that began with
the defeat of the Paris workers in June 1848, and was finally excommunicated
“by law” in the conviction of the Cologne Communists in November 1852.
With the disappearance from the public scene of the workers’ movement that
had begun with the February Revolution, the Manifesto too passed into the
background.

When the European workers had again gathered sufficient strength for
a new onslaught upon the power of the ruling classes, the International
Working Men’ s Association came into being. Its aim was to weld together
into one huge army the whole militant working class of Europe and
America. Therefore it could not set out from the principles laid
down in the Manifesto. It was bound to have a programme which would not
shut the door on the English trade unions, the French, Belgian, Italian,
and Spanish Proudhonists, and the German Lassalleans. This programme —
the considerations underlying the Statutes of the International — was
drawn up by Marx with a master hand acknowledged even by the Bakunin and
the anarchists. For the ultimate final triumph of the ideas set forth in
the Manifesto, Marx relied solely upon the intellectual development of
the working class, as it necessarily has to ensue from united action and
discussion. The events and vicissitudes in the struggle against capital,
the defeats even more than the successes, could not but demonstrate to
the fighters the inadequacy of their former universal panaceas, and make
their minds more receptive to a thorough understanding of the true conditions
for working-class emancipation. And Marx was right. The working class of
1874, at the dissolution of the International, was altogether different
from that of 1864, at its foundation. Proudhonism in the Latin countries,
and the specific Lassalleanism in Germany, were dying out; and even the
ten arch-conservative English trade unions were gradually approaching the
point where, in 1887, the chairman of their Swansea Congress could say
in their name: “Continental socialism has lost its terror for us.” Yet
by 1887 continental socialism was almost exclusively the theory heralded
in the Manifesto. Thus, to a certain extent, the history of the Manifesto
reflects the history of the modern working-class movement since 1848. At
present, it is doubtless the most widely circulated, the most international
product of all socialist literature, the common programme of many millions
of workers of all countries from Siberia to California.

Nevertheless, when it appeared, we could not have called it a socialist
manifesto. In 1847, two kinds of people were considered socialists. On
the one hand were the adherents of the various utopian systems, notably
the Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France, both of whom, at
that date, had already dwindled to mere sects gradually dying out. On the
other, the manifold types of social quacks who wanted to eliminate social
abuses through their various universal panaceas and all kinds of patch-work,
without hurting capital and profit in the least. In both cases, people
who stood outside the labor movement and who looked for support rather
to the “educated” classes. The section of the working class, however, which
demanded a radical reconstruction of society, convinced that mere political
revolutions were not enough, then called itself Communist. It was
still a rough-hewn, only instinctive and frequently somewhat crude communism.
Yet, it was powerful enough to bring into being two systems of utopian
communism — in France, the “Icarian” communists of Cabet, and in Germany
that of Weitling. Socialism in 1847 signified a bourgeois movement, communism
a working-class movement. Socialism was, on the Continent at least, quite
respectable, whereas communism was the very opposite. And since we were
very decidedly of the opinion as early as then that “the emancipation of
the workers must be the task of the working class itself,” [from the General Rules of the International] we could have
no hesitation as to which of the two names we should choose. Nor has it
ever occurred to us to repudiate it.

“Working men of all countries, unite!” But few voices responded when
we proclaimed these words to the world 42 years ago, on the eve of the
first Paris Revolution in which the proletariat came out with the demands
of its own. On September 28, 1864, however, the proletarians of most of
the Western European countries joined hands in the International Working
Men’ s Association of glorious memory. True, the International itself lived
only nine years. But that the eternal union of the proletarians of all
countries created by it is still alive and lives stronger than ever, there
is no better witness than this day. Because today[C], as I write these lines,
the European and American proletariat is reviewing its fighting forces,
mobilized for the first time, mobilized as one army, under one
flag, for one immediate aim: the standard eight-hour working day
to be established by legal enactment, as proclaimed by the Geneva Congress
of the International in 1866, and again by the Paris Workers’ Congress
of 1889. And today’ s spectacle will open the eyes of the capitalists and
landlords of all countries to the fact that today the proletarians of all
countries are united indeed.

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

Frederick Engels

May 1, 1890, London