Part 2 — Proletarians and Communists

Part 2 opens with a clarifying question: what is the relation of communists to the proletariat as a whole? They form no separate party; they have no interests separate from those of the proletariat at large. What distinguishes them is only this: in the national struggles of the proletarians of different countries, communists bring to the front the common interests of the whole proletariat. And theoretically, they have the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement. Their immediate aim is the same as that of all working-class parties: the conquest of political power by the proletariat.

The theoretical conclusions of the communists are, however, distinctive. All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change. The distinguishing feature of communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property — that kind of property which exploits wage-labour and cannot increase except by begetting fresh wage-labour. In this sense, the theory of the communists may be summed up in the single sentence: abolition of private property. The objections follow — would abolish individuality, the family, the fatherland, eternal truths. Each is reversed: bourgeois society has already abolished the individuality of nine-tenths of its members; bourgeois marriage is a system of wives in common; the workingmen have no country; eternal truths are products of historical conditions. The rhetoric is relentless and cumulative.

The ten-point programme follows: abolition of property in land and application of rents to public purposes; a heavy progressive income tax; abolition of inheritance; centralisation of credit in a national bank; centralisation of communication and transport in the hands of the state; free public education for all children; abolition of child factory labour. These are transitional measures — means of wresting capital from the bourgeoisie, step by step. When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared and all production is concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms: an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.