They merely express in general terms actual relations springing from
an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on
under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is
not at all a distinctive feature of Communism.

  All property relations in the past have continually been subject
to historical change consequent upon the change in historical
conditions.

  The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in
favour of bourgeois property.

  The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of
property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But
modern bourgeois private property's the final and most complete
expression of the system of producing and appropriating products
that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by
the few.

  In this sense the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the
single sentence: abolition of private property.

  We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the
right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man's own
labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal
freedom, activity and independence.

  Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the
property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of
property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish
that; the development of industry has to a great extent already
destroyed it and is still destroying it daily.

  Or do you mean modern bourgeois private property?

  But does wage labour create any property for the labourer? Not a
bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits
wage labour and which cannot increase except upon condition of
begetting a new supply of wage labour for fresh exploitation. Property
in its present form is based on the antagonism of capital and wage
labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.

  To be a capitalist is to have not only a purely personal, but a
social, status in production. Capital is a collective product, and
only by the united action of many members- nay, in the last resort,
only by the united action of all members of society- can it be set
in motion.

  Capital is, therefore, not a personal, it is a social, power.

  When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the
property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby
transformed into social property. It is only the social character of
the property that is changed. It loses its class character.

  Let us now take wage labour.

  The average price of wage labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that
quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to
keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer. What, therefore,
the wage labourer appropriates by means of his labour merely
suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means
intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of
labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and
reproduction of human life and that leaves no surplus wherewith to
command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with is
the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the
labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only
insofar as the interest of the ruling class requires it.

  In bourgeois society living labour is but a means to increase
accumulated labour. In Communist society accumulated labour is but a
means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.

  In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present;
in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois
society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living
person is dependent and has no individuality.

  And the abolition of this state of things is called by the
bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The
abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and
bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.

  By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of
production, free trade, free selling and buying.

  But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying
disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all
the other "brave words" of our bourgeoisie about freedom in general,
have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and
buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no
meaning when opposed to the Communist abolition of buying and selling,
of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie
itself.

  You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property.
But in your existing society private property is already done away
with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is