All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to
fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large
to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become
masters of the productive forces of society except by abolishing their
own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other
previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to
secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous
securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

  All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or
in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the
self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the
interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest
stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up,
without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being
sprung into the air.

  Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the
proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle.
The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle
matters with its own bourgeoisie.

  In depicting the most general phases of the development of the
proletariat we traced the more or less veiled civil war raging
within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out
into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the
bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.

  Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already
seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in
order to oppress a class certain conditions must be assured to it
under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The
serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the
commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal
absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern
labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of
industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of
his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more
rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident that
the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in
society and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an
overriding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to
assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot
help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed him,
instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this
bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible
with society.

  The essential condition for the existence and sway of the
bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the
condition for capital is wage labour. Wage labour rests exclusively on
competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose
involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the
labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due
to association. The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts
from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie
produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore,
produces above all are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory
of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

  CHAPTER II. PROLETARIANS AND COMMUNISTS.

  In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a
whole?

  The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working
class parties.

  They have no interests separate and apart from those of the
proletariat as a whole.

  They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own by which to
shape and mould the proletarian movement.

  The Communists are distinguished from the other working class
parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians
of the different countries they point out and bring to the front the
common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all
nationality; 2. In the various stages of development which the
struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass
through they always and everywhere represent the interests of the
movement as a whole.

  The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the
most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of
every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the
other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the
proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of
march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the
proletarian movement.

  The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the
other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a
class, overthrow of bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power
by the proletariat.

  The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on
ideas or principles that have been invented or discovered by this or
that would-be universal reformer.