But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the whole bourgeoisie in chorus.
The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.
He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.
For the rest nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.
Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prost.i.tutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other"s wives.
Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common, and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with, is that they desire to introduce, in subst.i.tution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalized community of women. For the rest it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, _i.e._, of prost.i.tution both public and private.
The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.
The workingmen have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading cla.s.s of the nation, must const.i.tute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.
National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing; owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world"s market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.
The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilized countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emanc.i.p.ation of the proletariat.
In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between cla.s.ses within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.
The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical, and, generally, from an ideological standpoint are not deserving of serious examination.
Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man"s ideas, views, and conceptions, in one word, man"s consciousness changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?
What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling cla.s.s.
When people speak of ideas that revolutionize society they do but express the fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.
When the ancient world was in its last throes the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succ.u.mbed in the eighteenth century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free compet.i.tion within the domain of knowledge.
"Undoubtedly," it will be said, "religious, moral, philosophical and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.
"There are besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion and all morality, instead of const.i.tuting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience."
What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of cla.s.s antagonisms, antagonisms that a.s.sumed different forms at different epochs.
But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., they exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of cla.s.s antagonisms.
The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.
But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.
We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working cla.s.s is to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling cla.s.s; to win the battle of democracy.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie; to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, _i.e._, of the proletariat organized as the ruling cla.s.s; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.
These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
Nevertheless in the most advanced countries the following will be pretty generally applicable:
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries: gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children"s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc., etc.
When, in the course of development, cla.s.s distinctions have disappeared and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast a.s.sociation of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one cla.s.s for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circ.u.mstances, to organize itself as a cla.s.s, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling cla.s.s, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of cla.s.s antagonisms, and of cla.s.ses generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a cla.s.s.
In place of the old bourgeois society with its cla.s.ses and cla.s.s antagonisms we shall have an a.s.sociation in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
III.
SOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST LITERATURE.
I. REACTIONARY SOCIALISM.
(_a_) _Feudal Socialism_.
Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of the aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against modern bourgeois society. In the French revolution of July, 1830, and in the English reform agitation, these aristocracies again succ.u.mbed to the hateful upstart. Thenceforth, a serious political contest was altogether out of question. A literary battle alone remained possible.
But even in the domain of literature the old cries of the restoration period(a) had become impossible.
In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy were obliged to lose sight, apparently, of their own interests, and to formulate their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working cla.s.s alone. Thus the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new master, and whispering in his ears sinister prophecies of coming catastrophe.
In this way arose feudal Socialism; half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future, at times by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart"s core, but always ludicrous in its effects, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history.
The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.
One section of the French Legitimists, and "Young England," exhibited this spectacle.