years. Immediately after the sentence, the League was formally 
dissolved by the remaining members.* As to the “Manifesto,” it 
seemed thenceforth to be doomed to oblivion. 

When the European working-class had recovered sufficient 
strength for another attack on the ruling classes, the International 
Working Men’s Association sprang up. But this association, 
formed with the express aim of welding into one body the whole 
militant proletariat of Europe and America, could not at once 
proclaim the principles laid down in the “Manifesto.” The 
International was bound to have a programme broad enough to 
be acceptable to the English Trades’ Unions, to the followers of 
Proudhon in France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain, and to the 
Lassalleans* in Germany. Marx, who drew up this programme to 
the satisfaction of all parties, entirely trusted to the intellectual 
development of the working-class, which was sure to result from 
combined action and mutual discussion. The very events and 
vicissitudes of the struggle against Capital, the defeats even more 
than the victories, could not help bringing home to men’s minds 
the insufficiency of their various favourite nostrums, and prepar- 
ing the way for a more complete insight into the true conditions of 
working-class emancipation. And Marx was right. The Internation- 
al, on its breaking up in 1874, left the workers quite different men 
from what it had found them in 1864. Proudhonism in France, 
Lassalleanism in Germany were dying out, and even the Conserva- 
tive English Trades’ Unions, though most of them had long since 
severed their connexion with the International, were gradually 
advancing towards that point at which, last year at Swansea, their 
President” could say in their name “Continental Socialism has lost 
its terrors for us.” ‘ In fact: the principles of the “Manifesto” had 
made considerable headway among the working men of all 
countries. 

The Manifesto itself thus came to the front again. The German 
text had been, since 1850, reprinted several times in Switzerland, 

* Lassalle personally, to us, always acknowledged himself to be a disciple of 
Marx, and, as such, stood on the ground of the “Manifesto”. But in his public 
agitation, 1862-64, he did not go beyond demanding co-operative workshops 
supported by State credit. 

The Commonweal, No. 88, September 17, 1887.— Ed. 

England and America. In 1872, it was translated into English in 
New York, where the translation was published in Woodhull and 
Claflin’s Weekly.° From this English version, a French one was 
made in “Le Socialiste” of New York. Since then at least two more 
English translations, more or less mutilated, have been brought 
out in America, and one of them has been reprinted in England. 
The first Russian translation, made by Bakounine, was published 
at Herzen’s “Kolokol” office in Geneva, about 1863 *'; a second 
one, by the heroic Vera Zasulitch, also in Geneva, 1882.477 A new 
Danish edition is to be found in “Socialdemokratisk Bibliothek,” 
Copenhagen, 1885; a fresh French translation in “Le Socialiste,” 
Paris, 1886. From this latter a Spanish version was prepared and 
published in Madrid, 1886.*° The German reprints are not to be 
counted, there have been twelve altogether at the least. An 
Armenian translation, which was to be published in Constan- 
tinople some months ago, did not see the light, I am told, because 
the publisher was afraid of bringing out a book with the name of 
Marx on it, while the translator declined to call it his own 
production. Of further translations into other languages I have 
heard, but have not seen them. Thus the history of the Manifesto 
reflects, to a great extent, the history of the modern working-class 
movement; at present it is undoubtedly the most wide-spread, the 
most international production of all Socialist Literature, the 
common platform acknowledged by millions of working men from 
Siberia to California. 

Yet, when it was written, we could not have called it a Socialist 
Manifesto. By Socialists, in 1847, were understood, on the one 
hand, the adherents of the various Utopian systems: Owenites in 
England, Fourierists in France,*** both of them already reduced to 
the position of mere sects, and gradually dying out; on the other 
hand, the most multifarious social quacks, who, by all manners of 
tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to capital and 
profit, all sorts of social grievances in both cases men outside the 
working class movement, and looking rather to the “educated” 
classes for support. Whatever portion of the working class had 
become convinced of the insufficiency of mere political revolu- 
tions, and had proclaimed the necessity of a total social change, 
that portion, then, called itself Communist. It was a crude, 
rough-hewn, purely instinctive sort of Communism; still, it 
touched the cardinal point and was powerful enough amongst the 
working class to produce the Utopian Communism, in France, of 
Cabet, and in Germany, of Weitling. Thus, Socialism was, in 1847, 
a middle-class movement, Communism a working class movement. 

Socialism was, on the Continent at least, “respectable”; Commun- 
ism was the very opposite. And as our notion, from the very 
beginning, was that “the emancipation of the working class must 
be the act of the working class itself,”* there could be no doubt as 
to which of the two names we must take. Moreover, we have, ever 
since, been far from repudiating it. 

The “Manifesto” being our joint production, I consider myself 
bound to state that the fundamental proposition which forms its 
nucleus, belongs to Marx. That proposition is: that in every 
historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and 
exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it, 
form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can 
be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; 
that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the 
dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common 
ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between 
exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; that the 
history of these class struggles form a series of evolution in which, 
nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and 
oppressed class—the proletariat—cannot attain its emancipation 
from the sway of the exploiting and _ ruling class—the 
bourgeoisie—without, at the same time, and once and for all 
emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, 
class-distinctions and class-struggles. 

This proposition which, in my opinion, is destined to do for 
history what Darwin’s theory has done for biology, we, both of us, 
had been gradually approaching for some years before 1845. How 
far I had independently progressed towards it, is best shown by 
my “Condition of the Working Class in England.” * But when I 
again met Marx at Brussels, in spring, 1845, he had it ready 
worked out, and put it before me, in terms almost as clear as those 
in which I have stated it here. 

From our joint preface to the German edition of 1872, I quote 
the following: — 

‘“‘However much the state of things may have altered during the 
last 25 years, the general principles laid down in this Manifesto 
are, on the whole, as correct to-day as ever. Here and there some 

* The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. By Frederick Engels. 
Translated by Florence K. Wischnewetzky, New York, Lovell—London. W. Reeves. 
1888. 

detail might be improved. The practical application of the 
principles will depend, as the manifesto itself states, everywhere 
and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being 
existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the 
revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. That 
passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded 
to-day. In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 
1848,*, and of the accompanying improved and extended” 
organisation of the working-class, in view of the practical 
experience gained, first in the February revolution, and then, still 
more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first 
time held political power for two whole months, this programme 
has in some details become antiquated. One thing especially was 
proved by the Commune, viz., that ‘the working-class cannot 
simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it 
for its own purposes.’ (See “The Civil War in France; Address of 
the General Council of the International Working-men’s Associa- 
tion,” London, Truelove, 1871, p. 15, where this point is further 
developed.)* Further, it is self-evident, that the criticism of socialist 
literature is deficient in relation to the present time, because it 
comes down only to 1847; also, that the remarks on the relation of 
the Communists to the various opposition-parties (Section IV.), 
although in principle still correct, yet in practice are antiquated, 
because the political situation has been entirely changed, and the 
progress of history has swept from off the earth the greater 
portion of the political parties there enumerated. 

“But then, the Manifesto has become a historical document 
which we have no longer any right to alter.” 4 

The present translation is by Mr. Samuel Moore, the 
translator of the greater portion of Marx’s Capital. We have 
revised it in common, and I have added a few notes explanatory | 
of historical allusions. 

London, 30th January, 1888 Frederick Engels