|
1872
German Edition | 1882 Russian Edition | 1883 German Edition | 1888 English
Edition | 1890 German Edition | 1892 Polish Edition | 1893 Italian Edition
The
1872 German Edition
The
Communist League, an international association of workers, which could
of course be only a secret one, under conditions obtaining at the time,
commissioned us, the undersigned, at the Congress held in London in November
1847, to write for publication a detailed theoretical and practical programme
for the Party.
Such was the origin of the following Manifesto, the manuscript of which
travelled to London to be printed a few weeks before the February [French]
Revolution [in 1848]. First published in German, it has been republished
in that language in at least twelve different editions in Germany, England,
and America. It was published in English for the first time in 1850 in
the Red Republican, London, translated by Miss Helen Macfarlane, and in
1871 in at least three different translations in America. The french version
first appeared in Paris shortly before the June insurrection of 1848,
and recently in Le Socialiste of New York. A new translation is in the
course of preparation. A Polish version appeared in London shortly after
it was first published in Germany. A Russian translation was published
in Geneva in the sixties [A]. Into Danish, too, it was translated shortly
after its appearance.
However much that state of things may have altered during the last twenty-five
years, the general principles laid down in the Manifesto are, on the whole,
as correct today as ever. Here and there, some detail might be improved.
The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto
itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions
for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is
laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II.
That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today.
In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of
the accompanying improved and extended organization of the working class,
in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolution,
and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for
the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme
has in some details been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by
the Commune, viz., that "the working class cannot simply lay hold
of ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes."
(See The Civil War in France: Address of the General Council of the International
Working Men's Assocation, 1871, where this point is further developed.)
Further, it is self-evident that the criticism of socialist literature
is deficient in relation to the present time, because it comes down only
to 1847; also that the remarks on the relation of the Communists to the
various opposition parties (Section IV), although, in principle still
correct, yet in practice are antiquated, because the political situation
has been entirely changed, and the progress of history has swept from
off the earth the greater portion of the political parties there enumerated.
But then, the Manifesto has become a historical document which we have
no longer any right to alter. A subsequent edition may perhaps appear
with an introduction bridging the gap from 1847 to the present day; but
this reprint was too unexpected to leave us time for that.
Karl Marx
& Fredrick Engels
June 24, 1872, London
The
1882 Russian Edition
The
first Russian edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, translated
by Bakunin, was published early in the 'sixties by the printing office
of the Kolokol [reference to the Free Russian Printing House]. Then the
West could see in it (the Russian edition of the Manifesto) only a literary
curiosity. Such a view would be impossible today.
What a limited field the proletarian movement occupied at that time (December
1847) is most clearly shown by the last section: the position of the Communists
in relation to the various opposition parties in various countries. Precisely
Russia and the United States are missing here. It was the time when Russia
constituted the last great reserve of all European reaction, when the
United States absorbed the surplus proletarian forces of Europe through
immigration. Both countries provided Europe with raw materials and were
at the same time markets for the sale of its industrial products. Both
were, therefore, in one way of another, pillars of the existing European
system.
How very different today. Precisely European immigration fitted North
American for a gigantic agricultural production, whose competition is
shaking the very foundations of European landed property - large and small.
At the same time, it enabled the United States to exploit its tremendous
industrial resources with an energy and on a scale that must shortly break
the industrial monopoly of Western Europe, and especially of England,
existing up to now. Both circumstances react in a revolutionary manner
upon America itself. Step by step, the small and middle land ownership
of the farmers, the basis of the whole political constitution, is succumbing
to the competition of giant farms; at the same time, a mass industrial
proletariat and a fabulous concentration of capital funds are developing
for the first time in the industrial regions.
And now Russia! During the Revolution of 1848-9, not only the European
princes, but the European bourgeois as well, found their only salvation
from the proletariat just beginning to awaken in Russian intervention.
The Tsar was proclaimed the chief of European reaction. Today, he is a
prisoner of war of the revolution in Gatchina, and Russia forms the vanguard
of revolutionary action in Europe.
The Communist Manifesto had, as its object, the proclamation of the inevitable
impending dissolution of modern bourgeois property. But in Russia we find,
face-to-face with the rapidly flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois
property, just beginning to develop, more than half the land owned in
common by the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina,
though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of
land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership?
Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution
such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West?
The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution
becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both
complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may
serve as the starting point for a communist development.
Karl Marx
& Fredrick Engels
January 21, 1882, London
The
1883 German Edition
The
preface to the present edition I must, alas, sign alone. Marx, the man
to whom the whole working class class of Europe and America owes more
than to any one else - rests at Highgate Cemetary and over his grave the
first grass is already growing. Since his death [March 13, 1883],
there can be even less thought of revising or supplementing the Manifesto.
But
I consider it all the more necessary again to state the following expressly:
The basic thought running through the Manifesto - that economic production,
and the structure of society of every historical epoch necessarily arising
therefrom, constitute the foundation for the political and intellectual
history of that epoch; that consequently (ever since the dissolution of
the primaeval communal ownership of land) all history has been a history
of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between
dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social evolution;
that this struggle, however, has now reached a stage where the exploited
and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself
from the class which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie), without
at the same time forever freeing the whole of society from exploitation,
oppression, class struggles - this basic thought belongs soley and exclusively
to Marx.
I have already stated this many times; but precisely now is it necessary
that it also stand in front of the Manifesto itself.
Fredrick
Engels
June 28, 1883, London
The
1888 English Edition
The
Manifesto was published as the platform of the Communist League, a working
men's association, first exclusively German, later on international, and
under the political conditions of the Continent before 1848, unavoidably
a secret society. At a Congress of the League, held in November 1847,
Marx and Engels were commissioned to prepare a complete theoretical and
practical party programme.
Drawn up in German, in January 1848, the manuscript was sent to the printer
in London a few weeks before the French Revolution of February 24. A French
translation was brought out in Paris shortly before the insurrection of
June 1848. The first English translation, by Miss Helen Macfarlane, appeared
in George Julian Harney's Red Republican, London, 1850. A Danish and a
Polish edition had also been published.
The defeat of the Parisian insurrection of June 1848 - the first great
battle between proletariat and bourgeoisie - drove again into the background,
for a time, the social and political aspirations of the European working
class. Thenceforth, the struggle for supremacy was, again, as it had been
before the Revolution of February, solely between different sections of
the propertied class; the working class was reduced to a fight for political
elbow-room, and to the position of extreme wing of the middle-class Radicals.
Wherever independent proletarian movements continued to show signs of
life, they were ruthlessly hunted down. Thus the Prussian police hunted
out the Central Board of the Communist League, then located in Cologne.
The members were arrested and, after eighteen months' imprisonment, they
were tried in October 1852. This selebrated "Cologne Communist Trial"
lasted from October 4 till November 12; seven of the prisoners were sentenced
to terms of imprisonment in a fortress, varying from three to six years.
Immediately after the sentence, the League was formally dissolved by the
remaining members. As to the Manifesto, it seemed henceforth doomed to
oblivion.
When the European workers had recovered sufficient strength for another
attack on the ruling classes, the International Working Men's Association
sprang up. But this association, formed with the express aim of welding
into one body the whole militant proletariat of Europe and America, could
not at once proclaim the principles laid down in the Manifesto. The International
was bound to have a programme broad enough to be acceptable to the English
trade unions, to the followers of Proudhon in France, Belgium, Italy,
and Spain, and to the Lassalleans in Germany.
Marx, who drew up this programme to the satisfaction of all parties, entirely
trusted to the intellectual development of the working class, which was
sure to result from combined action and mutual discussion. The very events
and vicissitudes in the struggle against capital, the defeats even more
than the victories, could not help bringing home to men's minds the insufficiency
of their various favorite nostrums, and preparing the way for a more complete
insight into the true conditions for working-class emancipation. And Marx
was right. The International, on its breaking in 1874, left the workers
quite different men from what it found them in 1864. Proudhonism in France,
Lassalleanism in Germany, were dying out, and even the conservative English
trade unions, though most of them had long since severed their connection
with the International, were gradually advancing towards that point at
which, last year at Swansea, their president [W. Bevan] could say in their
name: "Continental socialism has lost its terror for us." In
fact, the principles of the Manifesto had made considerable headway among
the working men of all countries.
The Manifesto itself came thus to the front again. Since 1850, the German
text had been reprinted several times in Switzerland, England, and America.
In 1872, it was translated into English in New York, where the translation
was published in Woorhull and Claflin's Weekly. From this English version,
a French one was made in Le Socialiste of New York. Since then, at least
two more English translations, more or less mutilated, have been brought
out in America, and one of them has been reprinted in England. The first
Russian translation, made by Bakunin, was published at Herzen's Kolokol
office in Geneva, about 1863; a second one, by the heroic Vera Zasulich,
also in Geneva, in 1882. A new Danish edition is to be found in Socialdemokratisk
Bibliothek, Copenhagen, 1885; a fresh French translation in Le Socialiste,
Paris, 1886. From this latter, a Spanish version was prepared and published
in Madrid, 1886. The German reprints are not to be counted; there have
been twelve altogether at the least. An Armenian translation, which was
to be published in Constantinople some months ago, did not see the light,
I am told, because the publisher was afraid of bringing out a book with
the name of Marx on it, while the translator declined to call it his own
production. Of further translations into other languages I have heard
but had not seen. Thus the history of the Manifesto reflects the history
of the modern working-class movement; at present, it is doubtless the
most wide spread, the most international production of all socialist literature,
the common platform acknowledged by millions of working men from Siberia
to California.
Yet, when it was written, we could not have called it a socialist manifesto.
By Socialists, in 1847, were understood, on the one hand the adherents
of the various Utopian systems: Owenites in England, Fourierists in France,
both of them already reduced to the position of mere sects, and gradually
dying out; on the other hand, the most multifarious social quacks who,
by all manner of tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to
capital and profit, all sorts of social grievances, in both cases men
outside the working-class movement, and looking rather to the "educated"
classes for support. Whatever portion of the working class had become
convinced of the insufficiency of mere political revolutions, and had
proclaimed the necessity of total social change, called itself Communist.
It was a crude, rough-hewn, purely instinctive sort of communism; still,
it touched the cardinal point and was powerful enough amongst the working
class to produce the Utopian communism of Cabet in France, and of Weitling
in Germany. Thus, in 1847, socialism was a middle-class movement, communism
a working-class movement. Socialism was, on the Continent at least, "respectable";
communism was the very opposite. And as our notion, from the very beginning,
was that "the emancipation of the workers must be the act of the
working class itself," there could be no doubt as to which of the
two names we must take. Moreover, we have, ever since, been far from repudiating
it.
The Manifesto being our joint production, I consider myself bound to state
that the fundamental proposition which forms the nucleus belongs to Marx.
That proposition is: That in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode
of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily
following from it, form the basis upon which it is built up, and from
that which alone can be explained the political and intellectual history
of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the
dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership)
has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and
exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; That the history of these class
struggles forms a series of evolutions in which, nowadays, a stage has
been reached where the exploited and oppressed class - the proletariat
- cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling
class - the bourgeoisie - without, at the same time, and once and for
all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression,
class distinction, and class struggles.
This proposition, which, in my opinion, is destined to do for history
what Darwin's theory has done for biology, we both of us, had been gradually
approaching for some years before 1845. How far I had independently progressed
towards it is best shown by my Conditions of the Working Class in England.
But when I again met Marx at Brussels, in spring 1845, he had it already
worked out and put it before me in terms almost as clear as those in which
I have stated it here.
From our joint preface to the German edition of 1872, I quote the following:
"However much that state of things may have altered during the last
twenty-five years, the general principles laid down in the Manifesto are,
on the whole, as correct today as ever. Here and there, some detail might
be improved. The practical application of the principles will depend,
as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical
conditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special
stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section
II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today.
In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of
the accompanying improved and extended organization of the working class,
in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolution,
and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for
the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme
has in some details been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by
the Commune, viz., that "the working class cannot simply lay hold
of ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes."
(See The Civil War in France: Address of the General Council of the International
Working Men's Assocation 1871, where this point is further developed.)
Further, it is self-evident that the criticism of socialist literature
is deficient in relation to the present time, because it comes down only
to 1847; also that the remarks on the relation of the Communists to the
various opposition parties (Section IV), although, in principle still
correct, yet in practice are antiquated, because the political situation
has been entirely changed, and the progress of history has swept from
off the Earth the greater portion of the political parties there enumerated.
"But then, the Manifesto has become a historical document which we
have no longer any right to alter."
The present translation is by Mr Samuel Moore, the translator of the greater
portion of Marx's Capital. We have revised it in common, and I have added
a few notes explanatory of historical allusions.
Fredrick
Engels
January 30, 1888, London
The
1890 German Edition
Since
[the first German preface (1883)] was written, a new German edition of
the Manifesto has again become necessary, and much has also happened to
the Manifesto which should be recorded here.
A second Russian translation - by Vera Zasulich - appeared in Geneva in
1882; the preface to that edition was written by Marx and myself. Unfortunately,
the original German manuscript has gone astray; I must therefore retranslate
from the Russian which will in no way improve the text.
At
about the same date, a new Polish version appeared in Geneva: Manifest
Kommunistyczny. Furthermore, a new Danish translation has appeared in
the Socialdemokratisk Bibliothek, Copenhagen, 1885. Unfortunately, it
is not quite complete; certain essential passages, which seem to have
presented difficulties to the translator, have been omitted, and, in addition,
there are signs of carelessness here and there, which are all the more
unpleasantly conspicuous since the translation indicates that had the
translator taken a little more pains, he would have done an excellent
piece of work.
A new French version appeared in 1886, in Le Socialiste of Paris; it is
the best published to date. From this latter, a Spanish version was published
the same year in El Socialista of Madrid, and then reissued in pamphlet
form: Manifesto del Partido Communista por Carlos Marx y F. Engels, Madrid,
Administracion de El Socialista, Hernan Cortes 8.
As a matter of curiosity, I may mention that in 1887 the manuscript of
an Armenian translation was offered to a publisher in Constantinople.
But the good man did not have the courage to publish something bearing
the name of Marx and suggested that the translator set down his own name
as author, which the latter however declined.
After one, and then another, of the more or less inaccurate American translations
had been repeatedly reprinted in England, an authentic version at last
appeared in 1888. This was my friend Samuel Moore, and we went through
it together once more before it went to press. It is entitled: Manifesto
of the Communist Party, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Authorized
English translation, edited and annotated by Frederick Engels, 1888, London,
William Reeves, 185 Fleet Street, E.C. I have added some of the notes
of that edition to the present one.
The Manifesto has had a history of its own. Greeted with enthusiasm, at
the time of its appearance, by the not at all numerous vanguard of scientific
socialism (as is proved by the translations mentioned in the first place),
it was soon forced into the background by the reaction that began with
the defeat of the Paris workers in June 1848, and was finally excommunicated
"by law" in the conviction of the Cologne Communists in November
1852. With the disappearance from the public scene of the workers' movement
that had begun with the February Revolution, the Manifesto too passed
into the background.
When the European workers had again gathered sufficient strength for a
new onslaught upon the power of the ruling classes, the International
Working Men's Association came into being. Its aim was to weld together
into one huge army the whole militant working class of Europe and America.
Therefore it could not set out from the principles laid down in the Manifesto.
It was bound to have a programme which would not shut the door on the
English trade unions, the French, Belgian, Italian, and Spanish Proudhonists,
and the German Lassalleans. This programme - the considerations underlying
the Statutes of the International - was drawn up by Marx with a master
hand acknowledged even by the Bakunin and the anarchists. For the ultimate
final triumph of the ideas set forth in the Manifesto, Marx relied solely
upon the intellectual development of the working class, as it necessarily
has to ensue from united action and discussion. The events and vicissitudes
in the struggle against capital, the defeats even more than the successes,
could not but demonstrate to the fighters the inadequacy of their former
universal panaceas, and make their minds more receptive to a thorough
understanding of the true conditions for working-class emancipation. And
Marx was right. The working class of 1874, at the dissolution of the International,
was altogether different from that of 1864, at its foundation. Proudhonism
in the Latin countries, and the specific Lassalleanism in Germany, were
dying out; and even the ten arch-conservative English trade unions were
gradually approaching the point where, in 1887, the chairman of their
Swansea Congress could say in their name: "Continental socialism
has lost its terror for us." Yet by 1887 continental socialism was
almost exclusively the theory heralded in the Manifesto. Thus, to a certain
extent, the history of the Manifesto reflects the history of the modern
working-class movement since 1848. At present, it is doubtless the most
widely circulated, the most international product of all socialist literature,
the common programme of many millions of workers of all countries from
Siberia to California.
Nevertheless, when it appeared, we could not have called it a socialist
manifesto. In 1847, two kinds of people were considered socialists. On
the one hand were the adherents of the various utopian systems, notably
the Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France, both of whom, at
that date, had already dwindled to mere sects gradually dying out. On
the other, the manifold types of social quacks who wanted to eliminate
social abuses through their various universal panaceas and all kinds of
patch-work, without hurting capital and profit in the least. In both cases,
people who stood outside the labor movement and who looked for support
rather to the "educated" classes. The section of the working
class, however, which demanded a radical reconstruction of society, convinced
that mere political revolutions were not enough, then called itself Communist.
It was still a rough-hewn, only instinctive and frequently somewhat crude
communism. Yet, it was powerful enough to bring into being two systems
of utopian communism - in France, the "Icarian" communists of
Cabet, and in Germany that of Weitling. Socialism in 1847 signified a
bourgeois movement, communism a working-class movement. Socialism was,
on the Continent at least, quite respectable, whereas communism was the
very opposite. And since we were very decidely of the opinion as early
as then that "the emancipation of the workers must be the task of
the working class itself," [from the General Rules of the International]
we could have no hesitation as to which of the two names we should choose.
Nor has it ever occured to us to repudiate it.
"Working men of all countries, unite!" But few voices responded
when we proclaimed these words to the world 42 years ago, on the eve of
the first Paris Revolution in which the proletariat came out with the
demands of its own. On September 28, 1864, however, the proletarians of
most of the Western European countries joined hands in the International
Working Men's Association of glorious memory. True, the International
itself lived only nine years. But that the eternal union of the proletarians
of all countries created by it is still alive and lives stronger than
ever, there is no better witness than this day. Because today[C], as I
write these lines, the European and American proletariat is reviewing
its fighting forces, mobilized for the first time, mobilized as one army,
under one flag, for one immediate aim: the standard eight-hour working
day to be established by legal enactment, as proclaimed by the Geneva
Congress of the International in 1866, and again by the Paris Workers'
Congress of 1889. And today's spectacle will open the eyes of the capitalists
and landlords of all countries to the fact that today the proletarians
of all countries are united indeed.
If only Marx were still by my side to see this with his own eyes!
Fredrick
Engels
May 1, 1890, London
The
1892 Polish Edition
The
fact that a new Polish edition of the Communist Manifesto has become necessary
gives rise to various thoughts.
First of all, it is noteworthy that of late the Manifesto has become an
index, as it were, of the development of large-scale industry on the European
continent. In proportion as large-scale industry expands in a given country,
the demand grows among the workers of that country for enlightenment regarding
their position as the working class in relation to the possessing classes,
the socialist movement spreads among them and the demand for the Manifesto
increases. Thus, not only the state of the labour movement but also the
degree of development of large-scale industry can be measured with fair
accuracy in every country by the number of copies of the Manifesto circulated
in the language of that country.
Accordingly, the new Polish edition indicates a decided progress of Polish
industry. And there can be no doubt whatever that this progress since
the previous edition published ten years ago has actually taken place.
Russian Poland, Congress Poland, has become the big industrial region
of the Russian Empire. Whereas Russian large-scale industry is scattered
sporadically - a part round the Gulf of Finland, another in the center
(Moscow and Vladimir), a third along the coasts of the Black and Azov
seas, and still others elsewhere - Polish industry has been packed into
a relatively small area and enjoys both the advantages and disadvantages
arising from such concentration. The competing Russian manufacturers acknowledged
the advantages when they demanded protective tariffs against Poland, in
spit of their ardent desire to transform the Poles into Russians. The
disadvantages - for the Polish manufacturers and the Russian government
- are manifest in the rapid spread of socialist ideas among the Polish
workers and in the growing demand for the Manifesto.
But the rapid development of Polish industry, outstripping that of Russia,
is in its turn a new proof of the inexhaustible vitality of the Polish
people and a new guarantee of its impending national restoration. And
the restoration of an independent and strong Poland is a matter which
concerns not only the Poles but all of us. A sincere international collaboration
of the European nations is possible only if each of these nations is fully
autonomous in its own house. The Revolution of 1848, which under the banner
of the proletariat, after all, merely let the proletarian fighters do
the work of the bourgeoisie, also secured the independence of Italy, Germany
and Hungary through its testamentary executors, Louis Bonaparte and Bismarck;
but Poland, which since 1792 had done more for the Revolution than all
these three together, was left to its own resources when it succumbed
in 1863 to a tenfold greater Russian force. The nobility could neither
maintain nor regain Polish independence; today, to the bourgeoisie, this
independence is, to say the last, immaterial. Nevertheless, it is a necessity
for the harmonious collaboration of the European nations.
It can be gained only by the young Polish proletariat, and in its hands
it is secure. For the workers of all the rest of Europe need the independence
of Poland just as much as the Polish workers themselves.
F.
Engels
London, February 10, 1892
The
1893 Italian Edition
Publication
of the Manifesto of the Communist Party coincided, one may say, with March
18, 1848, the day of the revolution in Milan and Berlin, which were armed
uprisings of the two nations situated in the center, the one, of the continent
of Europe, the other, of the Mediterranean; two nations until then enfeebled
by division and internal strife, and thus fallen under foreign domination.
While Italy was subject to the Emperor of Austria, Germany underwent the
yoke, not less effective though more indirect, of the Tsar of all the
Russias. The consequences of March 18, 1848, freed both Italy and Germany
from this disgrace; if from 1848 to 1871 these two great nations were
reconstituted and somehow again put on their own, it was as Karl Marx
used to say, because the men who suppressed the Revolution of 1848 were,
nevertheless, its testamentary executors in spite of themselves.
Everywhere that revolution was the work of the working class; it was the
latter that built the barricades and paid with its lifeblood. Only the
Paris workers, in overthrowing the government, had the very definite intention
of overthrowing the bourgeois regime. But conscious though they were of
the fatal antagonism existing between their own class and the bourgeoisie,
still, neither the economic progress of the country nor the intellectual
development of the mass of French workers had as yet reached the stage
which would have made a social reconstruction possible. In the final analysis,
therefore, the fruits of the revolution were reaped by the capitalist
class. In the other countries, in Italy, in Germany, in Austria, the workers,
from the very outset, did nothing but raise the bourgeoisie to power.
But in any country the rule of the bourgeoisie is impossible without national
independence Therefore, the Revolution of 1848 had to bring in its train
the unity and autonomy of the nations that had lacked them up to then:
Italy, Germany, Hungary. Poland will follow in turn.
Thus,
if the Revolution of 1848 was not a socialist revolution, it paved the
way, prepared the ground for the latter. Through the impetus given to
large-scaled industry in all countries, the bourgeois regime during the
last forty-five years has everywhere created a numerous, concentrated
and powerful proletariat. It has thus raised, to use the language of the
Manifesto, its own grave-diggers. Without restoring autonomy and unity
to each nation, it will be impossible to achieve the international union
of the proletariat, or the peaceful and intelligent co-operation of these
nations toward common aims. Just imagine joint international action by
the Italian, Hungarian, German, Polish and Russian workers under the political
conditions preceding 1848!
The battles fought in 1848 were thus not fought in vain. Nor have the
forty-five years separating us from that revolutionary epoch passed to
no purpose. The fruits are ripening, and all I wish is that the publication
of this Italian translation may augur as well for the victory of the Italian
proletariat as the publication of the original did for the international
revolution. |
