Manifesto of the Communist Party

The book titled "Manifesto of the communist party" was written by Karl Marx and edited by Frederick Engels. It was first published in 1848, later it was edited. The present English edition of the communist party is a production of the translation made by Samuel Moore in 1888 from the original German text of 1848 and edited by Fredrick Engels. Included in the present text are Engels annotation for the English edition of 1888 and the German edition of 1890 as well as all the author preferences to the various editions.

This book "The manifesto of the communist party is talking about the principles or policies of the communist party. For instance, manifesto is a usually printed statement of principles and policies made by a leader or a group especially a political party, before an election. That is pledge made in the party's election manifesto.

A communist is someone that supports or a supporter of communism, that is a member of the communist party or movement. These set of people (communists) are totally in support of communism which is a social and economic system in which the state owns and control the means of production on behave of the people. It aim is to create a society in which everyone is paid and work according to their needs and ability.

According to the writers, there are two classes of people in the society and that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. So the class is divided into the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. By bourgeoisie it means the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour. By proletariat it means the class of modern wage -labourers who, having no means of production of their own, and reduced to selling their labour-power in other to live. The modern bourgeoisie society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonism. It has but established new classes new conditions of oppressions new forms of struggles in place of the old ones.

The epoch of the bourgeoisies, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: It has simplified the class antagonism. Society as whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes that are directly facing each other: bourgeois and proletariate.

From the serfs of the middle ages sprang the chartered burghens of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first element of the bourgeoisie were developed. The discovery of America, the rounding of the cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The east-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonization of America trade with the colonies, the increase in means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production was monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing want of the new market. The manufacturing system took it place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class, division of labour between the two different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.

Meantime, the market kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacture no longer sufficed. There upon, steam and machinery revolutionized industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by giant, modern industry, the place of industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commence, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn reacted on the extension of industry, and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, rail ways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the middle ages.

According to the authors, based on what is invoke we can see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisies is itself the product of a long course of development of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange. Each step in the development of the bourgeoisies was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part. The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest.

In the aspect of the proletariat and the communist, the communist, do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties.