Question 1: Are you a Communist? 

Answer: Yes. 

Question 2: What is the aim of the Communists? 

Answer: To organise society in such a way that every member of it 
can develop and use all his capabilities and powers in complete 
freedom and without thereby infringing the basic conditions 
of this society. 

Question 3: How do you wish to achieve this aim? 

Answer: By the elimination of private property and its replacement 
by community of property. 

Question 4: On what do you base your community of property? 

Answer: Firstly, on the mass of productive forces and means of 
subsistence resulting from the development of industry, 
agriculture, trade and colonisation, and on the possibility 
inherent in machinery, chemical and other resources of their 
infinite extension. 

Secondly, on the fact that in the consciousness or feeling 
of every individual there exist certain irrefutable basic 
principles which, being the result of the whole of historical 
development, require no proof. 

Question 5: What are such principles? 

Answer: For example, every individual strives to be happy. The 
happiness of the individual is inseparable from the happiness 
of all, etc. 

Question 6: How do you wish to prepare the way for your community of 
property? 

Answer: By enlightening and uniting the proletariat. 

Question 7: What is the proletariat? 

Answer: The proletariat is that class of society which lives exclusively 
by its labour and not on the profit from any kind of capital; 
that class whose weal and woe, whose life and death, 
therefore, depend on the alternation of times of good and bad 
business; in a word, on the fluctuations of competition. 

Question 8: Then there have not always been proletarians? 

Answer: No. There have always been poor and working classes; and 
those who worked were almost always the poor. But there 
have not always been proletarians, just as competition has not 
always been free. 

Question 9: How did the proletariat arise? 

Answer: The proletariat came into being as a result of the 
introduction of the machines which have been invented since 
the middle of the last century and the most important of 
which are: the steam-engine, the spinning machine and the 
power loom. These machines, which were very expensive and 
could therefore only be purchased by rich people, supplanted 
the workers of the time, because by the use of machinery it 
was possible to produce commodities more quickly and 
cheaply than could the workers with their imperfect spinning 
wheels and hand-looms. The machines thus delivered indus- 
try entirely into the hands of the big capitalists and rendered 
the workers’ scanty property which consisted mainly of their 
tools, looms, etc., quite worthless, so that the capitalist was left 
with everything, the worker with nothing. In this way the 
factory system was introduced. Once the capitalists saw how 
advantageous this was for them, they sought to extend it to 
more and more branches of labour. They divided work more 
and more between the workers so that workers who formerly 
had made a whole article now produced only a part of it. 
Labour simplified in this way produced goods more quickly 
and therefore more cheaply and only now was it found in 
almost every branch of labour that here also machines could 
be used. As soon as any branch of labour went over to factory 
production it ended up, just as in the case of spinning and 
weaving, in the hands of the big capitalists, and the workers 
were deprived of the last remnants of their independence. We 
have gradually arrived at the position where almost all 
branches of labour are run on a factory basis. This has 
increasingly brought about the ruin of the previously existing 
middle class, especially of the small master craftsmen, 
completely transformed the previous position of the workers, 

and two new classes which are gradually swallowing up all 
other classes have come into being, namely: 

I. The class of the big capitalists, who in all advanced 
countries are in almost exclusive possession of the 
means of subsistence and those means (machines, facto- 
ries, workshops, etc.) by which these means of subsis- 
tence are produced. This is the bourgeois class, or the 
bourgeoisie. . 

II. The class of the completely propertyless, who are 
compelled to sell their labour” to the first class, the 
bourgeois, simply to obtain from them in return their 
means of subsistence. Since the parties to this trading in 
labour are not equal, but the bourgeois have the 
advantage, the propertyless must submit to the bad 
conditions laid down by the bourgeois. This class, 
dependent on the bourgeois, is called the class of the 
proletarians or the proletariat. 

Question 10: In what way does the proletarian differ from the slave? 

Answer: The slave is sold once and for all, the proletarian has to sell 
himself by the day and by the hour. The slave is the property 
of one master and for that very reason has a guaranteed 
subsistence, however wretched it may be. The proletarian is, 
so to speak, the slave of the entire bourgeois class, not of one 
master, and therefore has no guaranteed subsistence, since 
nobody buys his labour if he does not need it. The slave is 
accounted a thing and not a member of civil society. The 
proletarian is recognised as a person, as a member of civil 
society. The slave may, therefore, have a better subsistence 
than the proletarian but the latter stands at a higher stage of 
development. The slave frees himself by becoming a proletarian, 
abolishing from the totality of property relationships only the 
relationship of slavery. The proletarian can free himself only 
by abolishing property in general. 

Question 11: In what way does the proletarian differ from the serf? 

Answer: The serf has the use of a piece of land, that is, of an 
instrument of production, in return for handing over a 
greater or lesser portion of the yield. The proletarian works 
with instruments of production which belong to someone else 
who, in return for his labour, hands over to him a portion, 
determined by competition, of the products. In the case of the 
serf, the share of the labourer is determined by his own 
labour, that is, by himself. In the case of the proletarian it is 
determined by competition, therefore in the first place by the 

bourgeois. The serf has guaranteed subsistence, the pro- 
letarian has not. The serf frees himself by driving out his 
feudal lord and becoming a property owner himself, thus 
entering into competition and joining for the time being the 
possessing class, the privileged class. The proletarian frees 
himself by doing away with property, competition, and all 
class differences. 

Question 12: In what way does the proletarian differ from the 
handicraftsman? 

Answer: As opposed to the proletarian, the so-called handi- 
craftsman, who still existed nearly everywhere during the last 
century and still exists here and there, is at most a temporary 
proletarian. His aim is to acquire capital himself and so to 
exploit other workers. He can often achieve this aim where 
the craft guilds still exist or where freedom to follow a trade 
has not yet led to the organisation of handwork on a factory 
basis and to intense competition. But as soon as the factory 
system is introduced into handwork and competition is in full 
swing, this prospect is eliminated and the handicraftsman 
becomes more and more a proletarian. The handicraftsman 
therefore frees himself either by becoming a bourgeois or in 
general passing over into the middle class, or, by becoming a 
proletarian as a result of competition (as now happens in most 
cases) and joining the movement of the proletariat—i. e., the 
more or less conscious communist movement. 

Question 13: Then you do not believe that community of property has been 
possible at any time? 

Answer: No. Communism has only arisen since machinery and 
other inventions made it possible to hold out the prospect of 
an all-sided development, a happy existence, for all members 
of society. Communism is the theory of a liberation which was 
not possible for the slaves, the serfs, or the handicraftsmen, 
but only for the proletarians and hence it belongs of necessity 
to the 19th century and was not possible in any earlier 
period. 

Question 14: Let us go back to the sixth question. As you wish to prepare for 
community of property by the enlightening and uniting of the 
proletariat, then you reject revolution? 

Answer: We are convinced not only of the uselessness but even of 
the harmfulness of all conspiracies. We are also aware that 
revolutions are not made deliberately and arbitrarily but that 
everywhere and at all times they are the necessary conse- 
quence of circumstances which are not in any way whatever 

dependent either on the will or on the leadership of individual 
parties or of whole classes. But we also see that the 
development of the proletariat in almost all countries of the 
world is forcibly repressed by the possessing classes and that 
thus a revolution is being forcibly worked for by the 
opponents of communism. If, in the end, the oppressed 
proletariat is thus driven into a revolution, then we will 
defend the cause of the proletariat just as well by our deeds as 
now by our words. 

Question 15: Do you intend to replace the existing social order by 
community of property at one stroke? 

Answer: We have no such intention. The development of the masses 
cannot be ordered by decree. It is determined by the 
development of the conditions in which these masses live, and 
therefore proceeds gradually. 

Question 16: How do you think the transition from the present situation to 
community of property is to be effected? 

Answer: The first, fundamental condition for the introduction of 
community of property is the political liberation of the 
proletariat through a democratic constitution. 

Question 17: What will be your first measure once you have established 
democracy? 

Answer: Guaranteeing the subsistence of the proletariat. 

Question 18: How will you do this? 

Answer. I. By limiting private property in such a way that it 
gradually prepares the way for its transformation into social 
property, e. g., by progressive taxation, limitation of the right 
of inheritance in favour of the state, etc., etc. 

II. By employing workers in national workshops and fac- 
tories and on national estates. 
III. By educating all children at the expense of the state. 

Question 19: How will you arrange this kind of education during the 
period of transition? 

Answer: All children will be educated in state establishments from 
the time when they can do without the first maternal care. 

Question 20: Will not the introduction of community of property be 
accompanied by the proclamation of the community of women? 

Answer: By no means. We will only interfere in the personal 
relationship between men and women or with the family in 
general to the extent that the maintenance of the existing 
institution would disturb the new social order. Besides, we are 
well aware that the family relationship has been modified in 
the course of history by the property relationships and by pe- 

riods of development, and that consequently the ending of pri- 
vate property will also have a most important influence on it. 

Question 21: Will nationalities continue to exist under communism? 

Answer: The nationalities of the peoples who join together accord- 
ing to the principle of community will be just as much 
compelled by this union to merge with one another and 
thereby supersede themselves as the various differences 
between estates and classes disappear through the supersed- 
ing of their basis—private property. 

Question 22: Do Communists reject the existing religions? 

Answer: All religions which have existed hitherto were expressions 
of historical stages of development of individual peoples or 
groups of peoples. But communism is that stage of historical 
development which makes all existing religions superfluous 
and supersedes them.” 

In the name and on the mandate of the Congress. 
Secretary: President: 
Heide> Karl Schill 

London, June 9, 1847