Section II has made clear the relations of the Communists to the 
existing working-class parties, such as the Chartists in England and 
the Agrarian Reformers in America.?™ 

The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, 
for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; 
but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take 
care of* the future of that movement. In France the Communists ally 
themselves with the Social-Democrats,* against the conservative and 
radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical 
position in regard to phrases and illusions traditionally handed down 
from the great Revolution. 

In Switzerland they support the Radicals, without losing sight of 
the fact that this party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of 
Democratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly of radical 
bourgeois. 

In Poland they support the party that insists on an agrarian 
revolution as the prime condition for national emancipation, that 
party which fomented the insurrection of Cracow in 1846.%% 


* The party then represented in Parliament by Ledru-Rollin, in literature by Louis 
Blanc, in the daily press by the Réforme. The name of Social-Democracy signified, with 
these its inventors, a section of the Democratic or Republican party more or less tinged 
with Socialism. [Note by Engels to the English edition of 1888.) 

The party in France which at that time called itself Socialist-Democratic was 
represented in political life by Ledru-Rollin and in literature by Louis Blanc; thus it 
differed immeasurably from present-day German Social-Democracy. [ Note by Engels to 
the German edition of 1890.] 


* The words “and take care of” were added in the English edition of 1888.— Ed. 


Manifesto of the Communist Party 519 


In Germany they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a 
revolutionary wav, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal 
squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie.” 

But they never cease, for a single instant, to instil into the working 
class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism 
between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the German 
workers may straightway use, as so many weapons against the 
bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions that the bourgeoisie 
must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy, and in order 
that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight 
against the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin. 

The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because 
that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to 
be carried out under more advanced conditions of European 
civilisation, and with a much more developed proletariat, than that 
of England was in the seventeenth, and of France in the eighteenth 
century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be 
but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution. 

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary 
movement against the existing social and political order of things. 

In all these movements they bring to the front, as the leadin 

uestion in each, the property question, no matter what its degree o 
development at the time. 

Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of 
the democratic parties of all countries. 

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They 
openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible 
overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes 
tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing 
to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.