Fluent Essays

The first Resource is a link  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7370/ Download free eBooks of classic literature, books and novels at Planet eBook. Subscribe to our free eBooks blog and email newsletter. The Prince By Nicolo Machiavelli (1532) http://www.planetebook.com/ The Prince� Nicolo Machiavelli, born at Florence on 3rd May 1469. From 1494 to 1512 held an official post at Florence which included diplomatic missions to various European courts. Imprisoned in Florence, 1512; later exiled and returned to San Casciano. Died at Florence on 22nd June 1527. �Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com INTRODUCTION Nicolo Machiavelli was born at Florence on 3rd May 1469. He was the second son of Bernardo di Nicolo Machiavelli, a lawyer of some repute, and of Bartolommea di Stefano Nelli, his wife. Both parents were members of the old Florentine nobility. His life falls naturally into three periods, each of which singularly enough constitutes a distinct and important era in the history of Florence. His youth was concurrent with the greatness of Florence as an Italian power under the guidance of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Il Magnifico. The downfall of the Medici in Florence occurred in 1494, in which year Machiavelli entered the public service. During his official career Florence was free under the government of a Re- public, which lasted until 1512, when the Medici returned to power, and Machiavelli lost his office. The Medici again ruled Florence from 1512 until 1527, when they were once more driven out. This was the period of Machiavelli’s liter- ary activity and increasing influence; but he died, within a few weeks of the expulsion of the Medici, on 22nd June 1527, in his fifty-eighth year, without having regained office. YOUTH Aet. 1-25—1469-94 Although there is little recorded of the youth of Ma- chiavelli, the Florence of those days is so well known that the early environment of this representative citizen may be http://www.planetebook.com/ The Prince� easily imagined. Florence has been described as a city with two opposite currents of life, one directed by the fervent and austere Savonarola, the other by the splendourloving Lorenzo. Savonarola’s influence upon the young Machiavel- li must have been slight, for although at one time he wielded immense power over the fortunes of Florence, he only fur- nished Machiavelli with a subject of a gibe in ‘The Prince,’ where he is cited as an example of an unarmed prophet who came to a bad end. Whereas the magnificence of the Medicean rule during the life of Lorenzo appeared to have impressed Machiavelli strongly, for he frequently recurs to it in his writings, and it is to Lorenzo’s grandson that he dedicates ‘The Prince.’ Machiavelli, in his ‘History of Florence,’ gives us a pic- ture of the young men among whom his youth was passed. He writes: ‘They were freer than their forefathers in dress and living, and spent more in other kinds of excesses, con- suming their time and money in idleness, gaming, and women; their chief aim was to appear well dressed and to speak with wit and acuteness, whilst he who could wound others the most cleverly was thought the wisest.’ In a letter to his son Guido, Machiavelli shows why youth should avail itself of its opportunities for study, and leads us to infer that his own youth had been so occupied. He writes: ‘I have received your letter, which has given me the greatest plea- sure, especially because you tell me you are quite restored in health, than which I could have no better news; for if God grant life to you, and to me, I hope to make a good man of you if you are willing to do your share.’ Then, writing of a �Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com new patron, he continues: ‘This will turn out well for you, but it is necessary for you to study; since, then, you have no longer the excuse of illness, take pains to study letters and music, for you see what honour is done to me for the little skill I have. Therefore, my son, if you wish to please me, and to bring success and honour to yourself, do right and study, because others will help you if you help yourself.’ OFFICE Aet. 25-43—1494-1512 The second period of Machiavelli’s life was spent in the service of the free Republic of Florence, which flourished, as stated above, from the expulsion of the Medici in 1494 until their return in 1512. After serving four years in one of the public offices he was appointed Chancellor and Secretary to the Second Chancery, the Ten of Liberty and Peace. Here we are on firm ground when dealing with the events of Machi- avelli’s life, for during this time he took a leading part in the affairs of the Republic, and we have its decrees, records, and dispatches to guide us, as well as his own writings. A mere recapitulation of a few of his transactions with the states- men and soldiers of his time gives a fair indication of his activities, and supplies the sources from which he drew the experiences and characters which illustrate ‘The Prince.’ His first mission was in 1499 to Catherina Sforza, ‘my lady of Forli’ of ‘The Prince,’ from whose conduct and fate he drew the moral that it is far better to earn the confidence of the people than to rely on fortresses. This is a very notice- able principle in Machiavelli, and is urged by him in many ways as a matter of vital importance to princes. In 1500 he was sent to France to obtain terms from Lou- http://www.planetebook.com/ The Prince� is XII for continuing the war against Pisa: this king it was who, in his conduct of affairs in Italy, committed the five capital errors in statecraft summarized in ‘The Prince,’ and was consequently driven out. He, also, it was who made the dissolution of his marriage a condition of support to Pope Alexander VI; which leads Machiavelli to refer those who urge that such promises should be kept to what he has writ- ten concerning the faith of princes. Machiavelli’s public life was largely occupied with events arising out of the ambitions of Pope Alexander VI and his son, Cesare Borgia, the Duke Valentino, and these char- acters fill a large space of ‘The Prince.’ Machiavelli never hesitates to cite the actions of the duke for the benefit of usurpers who wish to keep the states they have seized; he can, indeed, find no precepts to offer so good as the pat- tern of Cesare Borgia’s conduct, insomuch that Cesare is acclaimed by some critics as the ‘hero’ of ‘The Prince.’ Yet in ‘The Prince’ the duke is in point of fact cited as a type of the man who rises on the fortune of others, and falls with them; who takes every course that might be expected from a prudent man but the course which will save him; who is prepared for all eventualities but the one which happens; and who, when all his abilities fail to carry him through, exclaims that it was not his fault, but an extraordinary and unforeseen fatality. On the death of Pius III, in 1503, Machiavelli was sent to Rome to watch the election of his successor, and there he saw Cesare Borgia cheated into allowing the choice of the College to fall on Giuliano delle Rovere (Julius II), who was �Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com one of the cardinals that had most reason to fear the duke. Machiavelli, when commenting on this election, says that he who thinks new favours will cause great personages to forget old injuries deceives himself. Julius did not rest until he had ruined Cesare. It was to Julius II that Machiavelli was sent in 1506, when that pontiff was commencing his enterprise against Bolo- gna; which he brought to a successful issue, as he did many of his other adventures, owing chiefly to his impetuous character. It is in reference to Pope Julius that Machiavelli moralizes on the resemblance between Fortune and wom- en, and concludes that it is the bold rather than the cautious man that will win and hold them both. It is impossible to follow here the varying fortunes of the Italian states, which in 1507 were controlled by France, Spain, and Germany, with results that have lasted to our day; we are concerned with those events, and with the three great actors in them, so far only as they impinge on the per- sonality of Machiavelli. He had several meetings with Louis XII of France, and his estimate of that monarch’s character has already been alluded to. Machiavelli has painted Ferdi- nand of Aragon as the man who accomplished great things under the cloak of religion, but who in reality had no mer- cy, faith, humanity, or integrity; and who, had he allowed himself to be influenced by such motives, would have been ruined. The Emperor Maximilian was one of the most in- teresting men of the age, and his character has been drawn by many hands; but Machiavelli, who was an envoy at his court in 1507-8, reveals the secret of his many failures when http://www.planetebook.com/ The Prince� he describes him as a secretive man, without force of char- acter—ignoring the human agencies necessary to carry his schemes into effect, and never insisting on the fulfilment of his wishes. The remaining years of Machiavelli’s official career were filled with events arising out of the League of Cambrai, made in 1508 between the three great European powers al- ready mentioned and the pope, with the object of crushing the Venetian Republic. This result was attained in the battle of Vaila, when Venice lost in one day all that she had won in eight hundred years. Florence had a difficult part to play during these events, complicated as they were by the feud which broke out between the pope and the French, because friendship with France had dictated the entire policy of the Republic. When, in 1511, Julius II finally formed the Holy League against France, and with the assistance of the Swiss drove the French out of Italy, Florence lay at the mercy of the Pope, and had to submit to his terms, one of which was that the Medici should be restored. The return of the Medici to Florence on 1st September 1512, and the consequent fall of the Republic, was the signal for the dismissal of Machiavelli and his friends, and thus put an end to his public career, for, as we have seen, he died without regaining office. LITERATURE AND DEATH Aet. 43-58—1512-27 On the return of the Medici, Machiavelli, who for a few weeks had vainly hoped to retain his office under the new masters of Florence, was dismissed by decree dated 7th No- vember 1512. Shortly after this he was accused of complicity in an abortive conspiracy against the Medici, imprisoned, �Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com and put to the question by torture. The new Medicean peo- ple, Leo X, procured his release, and he retired to his small property at San Casciano, near Florence, where he devoted himself to literature. In a letter to Francesco Vettori, dated 13th December 1513, he has left a very interesting descrip- tion of his life at this period, which elucidates his methods and his motives in writing ‘The Prince.’ After describing his daily occupations with his family and neighbours, he writes: ‘The evening being come, I return home and go to my study; at the entrance I pull off my peasantclothes, covered with dust and dirt, and put on my noble court dress, and thus becomingly re-clothed I pass into the ancient courts of the men of old, where, being lovingly received by them, I am fed with that food which is mine alone; where I do not hesitate to speak with them, and to ask for the reason of their ac- tions, and they in their benignity answer me; and for four hours I feel no weariness, I forget every trouble, poverty does not dismay, death does not terrify me; I am possessed entirely by those great men. And because Dante says: Knowledge doth come of learning well retained, Unfruitful else, I have noted down what I have gained from their conver- sation, and have composed a small work on ‘Principalities,’ where I pour myself out as fully as I can in meditation on the subject, discussing what a principality is, what kinds there are, how they can be acquired, how they can be kept, why they are lost: and if any of my fancies ever pleased you, http://www.planetebook.com/ The Prince10 this ought not to displease you: and to a prince, especially to a new one, it should be welcome: therefore I dedicate it to his Magnificence Giuliano. Filippo Casavecchio has seen it; he will be able to tell you what is in it, and of the discourses I have had with him; nevertheless, I am still enriching and polishing it.’ The ‘little book’ suffered many vicissitudes before at- taining the form in which it has reached us. Various mental influences were at work during its composition; its title and patron were changed; and for some unknown reason it was finally dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici. Although Machia- velli discussed with Casavecchio whether it should be sent or presented in person to the patron, there is no evidence that Lorenzo ever received or even read it: he certainly never gave Machiavelli any employment. Although it was plagiarized during Machiavelli’s lifetime, ‘The Prince’ was never published by him, and its text is still disputable. Machiavelli concludes his letter to Vettori thus: ‘And as to this little thing [his book], when it has been read it will be seen that during the fifteen years I have given to the study of statecraft I have neither slept nor idled; and men ought ever to desire to be served by one who has reaped experience at the expense of others. And of my loyalty none could doubt, because having always kept faith I could not now learn how to break it; for he who has been faithful and honest, as I have, cannot change his nature; and my poverty is a witness to my honesty.’ Before Machiavelli had got ‘The Prince’ off his hands he commenced his ‘Discourse on the First Decade of Titus Liv- 11Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com ius,’ which should be read concurrently with ‘The Prince.’ These and several minor works occupied him until the year 1518, when he accepted a small commission to look after the affairs of some Florentine merchants at Genoa. In 1519 the Medicean rulers of Florence granted a few political con- cessions to her citizens, and Machiavelli with others was consulted upon a new constitution under which the Great Council was to be restored; but on one pretext or another it was not promulgated. In 1520 the Florentine merchants again had recourse to Machiavelli to settle their difficulties with Lucca, but this year was chiefly remarkable for his re-entry into Florentine literary society, where he was much sought after, and also for the production of his ‘Art of War.’ It was in the same year that he received a commission at the instance of Cardinal de’ Medici to write the ‘History of Florence,’ a task which occupied him until 1525. His return to popular favour may have determined the Medici to give him this employment, for an old writer observes that ‘an able statesman out of work, like a huge whale, will endeavour to overturn the ship unless he has an empty cask to play with.’ When the ‘History of Florence’ was finished, Machiavel- li took it to Rome for presentation to his patron, Giuliano de’ Medici, who had in the meanwhile become pope un- der the title of Clement VII. It is somewhat remarkable that, as, in 1513, Machiavelli had written ‘The Prince’ for the in- struction of the Medici after they had just regained power in Florence, so, in 1525, he dedicated the ‘History of Flor- ence’ to the head of the family when its ruin was now at http://www.planetebook.com/ The Prince1� hand. In that year the battle of Pavia destroyed the French rule in Italy, and left Francis I a prisoner in the hands of his great rival, Charles V. This was followed by the sack of Rome, upon the news of which the popular party at Flor- ence threw off the yoke of the Medici, who were once more banished. Machiavelli was absent from Florence at this time, but hastened his return, hoping to secure his former office of secretary to the ‘Ten of Liberty and Peace.’ Unhappily he was taken ill soon after he reached Florence, where he died on 22nd June 1527. THE MAN AND HIS WORKS No one can say where the bones of Machiavelli rest, but modern Florence has decreed him a stately cenotaph in San- ta Croce, by the side of her most famous sons; recognizing that, whatever other nations may have found in his works, Italy found in them the idea of her unity and the germs of her renaissance among the nations of Europe. Whilst it is idle to protest against the world-wide and evil signification of his name, it may be pointed out that the harsh construc- tion of his doctrine which this sinister reputation implies was unknown to his own day, and that the researches of recent times have enabled us to interpret him more reason- ably. It is due to these inquiries that the shape of an ‘unholy necromancer,’ which so long haunted men’s vision, has be- gun to fade. Machiavelli was undoubtedly a man of great observa- tion, acuteness, and industry; noting with appreciative eye whatever passed before him, and with his supreme literary 1�Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com gift turning it to account in his enforced retirement from af- fairs. He does not present himself, nor is he depicted by his contemporaries, as a type of that rare combination, the suc- cessful statesman and author, for he appears to have been only moderately prosperous in his several embassies and political employments. He was misled by Catherina Sforza, ignored by Louis XII, overawed by Cesare Borgia; several of his embassies were quite barren of results; his attempts to fortify Florence failed, and the soldiery that he raised as- tonished everybody by their cowardice. In the conduct of his own affairs he was timid and time-serving; he dared not appear by the side of Soderini, to whom he owed so much, for fear of compromising himself; his connection with the Medici was open to suspicion, and Giuliano appears to have recognized his real forte when he set him to write the ‘His- tory of Florence,’ rather than employ him in the state. And it is on the literary side of his character, and there alone, that we find no weakness and no failure. Although the light of almost four centuries has been fo- cused on ‘The Prince,’ its problems are still debatable and interesting, because they are the eternal problems between the ruled and their rulers. Such as they are, its ethics are those of Machiavelli’s contemporaries; yet they cannot be said to be out of date so long as the governments of Europe rely on material rather than on moral forces. Its historical incidents and personages become interesting by reason of the uses which Machiavelli makes of them to illustrate his theories of government and conduct. Leaving out of consideration those maxims of state http://www.planetebook.com/ The Prince1� which still furnish some European and eastern statesmen with principles of action, ‘The Prince’ is bestrewn with truths that can be proved at every turn. Men are still the dupes of their simplicity and greed, as they were in the days of Alexander VI. The cloak of religion still conceals the vic- es which Machiavelli laid bare in the character of Ferdinand of Aragon. Men will not look at things as they really are, but as they wish them to be—and are ruined. In politics there are no perfectly safe courses; prudence consists in choosing the least dangerous ones. Then —to pass to a higher plane— Machiavelli reiterates that, although crimes may win an empire, they do not win glory. Necessary wars are just wars, and the arms of a nation are hallowed when it has no other resource but to fight. It is the cry of a far later day than Machiavelli’s that government should be elevated into a living moral force, capable of inspiring the people with a just recognition of the fundamental principles of society; to this ‘high argu- ment’ ‘The Prince’ contributes but little. Machiavelli always refused to write either of men or of governments otherwise than as he found them, and he writes with such skill and in- sight that his work is of abiding value. But what invests ‘The Prince’ with more than a merely artistic or historical inter- est is the incontrovertible truth that it deals with the great principles which still guide nations and rulers in their rela- tionship with each other and their neighbours. In translating ‘The Prince’ my aim has been to achieve at all costs an exact literal rendering of the original, rath- er than a fluent paraphrase adapted to the modern notions 1�Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com of style and expression. Machiavelli was no facile phrase- monger; the conditions under which he wrote obliged him to weigh every word; his themes were lofty, his substance grave, his manner nobly plain and serious. ‘Quis eo fuit un- quam in partiundis rebus, in definiendis, in explanandis pressior?’ In ‘The Prince,’ it may be truly said, there is rea- son assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word. To an Englishman of Shakespeare’s time the translation of such a treatise was in some ways a compara- tively easy task, for in those times the genius of the English more nearly resembled that of the Italian language; to the Englishman of to-day it is not so simple. To take a single example: the word ‘intrattenere,’ employed by Machiavelli to indicate the policy adopted by the Roman Senate to- wards the weaker states of Greece, would by an Elizabethan be correctly rendered ‘entertain,’ and every contemporary reader would understand what was meant by saying that ‘Rome entertained the Aetolians and the Achaeans without augmenting their power.’ But to-day such a phrase would seem obsolete and ambiguous, if not unmeaning: we are compelled to say that ‘Rome maintained friendly relations with the Aetolians,’ etc., using four words to do the work of one. I have tried to preserve the pithy brevity of the Ital- ian so far as was consistent with an absolute fidelity to the sense. If the result be an occasional asperity I can only hope that the reader, in his eagerness to reach the author’s mean- ing, may overlook the roughness of the road that leads him to it. The following is a list of the works of Machiavelli: http://www.planetebook.com/ The Prince1� Principal works. Discorso sopra le cose di Pisa, 1499; Del modo di trattare i popoli della Valdichiana ribellati, 1502; Del modo tenuto dal duca Valentino nell’ ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, etc., 1502; Discor- so sopra la provisione del danaro, 1502; Decennale primo (poem in terza rima), 1506; Ritratti delle cose dell’ Alemag- na, 1508-12; Decennale secondo, 1509; Ritratti delle cose di Francia, 1510; Discorsi sopra la prima deca di T. Livio, 3 vols., 1512-17; Il Principe, 1513; Andria, comedy translated from Terence, 1513 (?); Mandragola, prose comedy in five acts, with prologue in verse, 1513; Della lingua (dialogue), 1514; Clizia, comedy in prose, 1515 (?); Belfagor arcidiavolo (novel), 1515; Asino d’oro (poem in terza rima), 1517; Dell’ arte della guerra, 1519-20; Discorso sopra il riformare lo stato di Firenze, 1520; Sommario delle cose della citta di Lucca, 1520; Vita di Castruccio Castracani da Lucca, 1520; Istorie fiorentine, 8 books, 1521-5; Frammenti storici, 1525. Other poems include Sonetti, Canzoni, Ottave, and Can- ti carnascialeschi. Editions. Aldo, Venice, 1546; della Tertina, 1550; Cam- biagi, Florence, 6 vols., 1782-5; dei Classici, Milan, 10 1813; Silvestri, 9 vols., 1820-2; Passerini, Fanfani, Milanesi, 6 vols. only published, 1873-7. Minor works. Ed. F. L. Polidori, 1852; Lettere familiari, ed. E. Alvisi, 1883, 2 editions, one with excisions; Credited Writings, ed. G. Canestrini, 1857; Letters to F. Vettori, see A. Ridolfi, Pensieri intorno allo scopo di N. Machiavelli nel libro Il Principe, etc.; D. Ferrara, The Private Correspon- dence of Nicolo Machiavelli, 1929. 1�Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com DEDICATION To the Magnificent Lorenzo Di Piero De’ Medici: Those who strive to obtain the good graces of a prince are accustomed to come before him with such things as they hold most precious, or in which they see him take most delight; whence one often sees horses, arms, cloth of gold, precious stones, and similar ornaments presented to princ- es, worthy of their greatness. Desiring therefore to present myself to your Magnifi- cence with some testimony of my devotion towards you, I have not found among my possessions anything which I hold more dear than, or value so much as, the knowledge of the actions of great men, acquired by long experience in contemporary affairs, and a continual study of antiquity; which, having reflected upon it with great and prolonged diligence, I now send, digested into a little volume, to your Magnificence. And although I may consider this work unworthy of your countenance, nevertheless I trust much to your benignity that it may be acceptable, seeing that it is not possible for me to make a better gift than to offer you the opportunity of understanding in the shortest time all that I have learnt in so many years, and with so many troubles and dangers; which work I have not embellished with swelling or magnif- icent words, nor stuffed with rounded periods, nor with any extrinsic allurements or adornments whatever, with which so many are accustomed to embellish their works; for I have wished either that no honour should be given it, or else that the truth of the matter and the weightiness of the theme http://www.planetebook.com/ The Prince1� shall make it acceptable. Nor do I hold with those who regard it as a presump- tion if a man of low and humble condition dare to discuss and settle the concerns of princes; because, just as those who draw landscapes place themselves below in the plain to contemplate the nature of the mountains and of lofty plac- es, and in order to contemplate the plains place themselves upon high mountains, even so to understand the nature of the people it needs to be a prince, and to understand that if princes it needs to be of the people. Take then, your Magnificence, this little gift in the spirit in which I send it; wherein, if it be diligently read and con- sidered by you, you will learn my extreme desire that you should attain that greatness which fortune and your oth- er attributes promise. And if your Magnificence from the summit of your greatness will sometimes turn your eyes to these lower regions, you will see how unmeritedly I suffer a great and continued malignity of fortune. 1�Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com CHAPTER I. HOW MANY KINDS OF PRINCIPALITIES THERE ARE, AND BY WHAT MEANS THEY ARE ACQUIRED All states, all powers, that have held and hold rule over men have been and are either republics or principali- ties. Principalities are either hereditary, in which the family has been long established; or they are new. The new are either entirely new, as was Milan to Fran- cesco Sforza, or they are, as it were, members annexed to the hereditary state of the prince who has acquired them, as was the kingdom of Naples to that of the King of Spain. Such dominions thus acquired are either accustomed to live under a prince, or to live in freedom; and are acquired either by the arms of the prince himself, or of others, or else by fortune or by ability. http://www.planetebook.com/ The Prince�0 CHAPTER II. CONCERNING HEREDITARY PRINCIPALITIES I will leave out all discussion on republics, inasmuch as in another place I have written of them at length, and will address myself only to principalities. In doing so I will keep to the order indicated above, and discuss how such princi- palities are to be ruled and preserved. I say at once there are fewer difficulties in holding he- reditary states, and those long accustomed to the family of their prince, than new ones; for it is sufficient only not to transgress the customs of his ancestors, and to deal pru- dently with circumstances as they arise, for a prince of average powers to maintain himself in his state, unless he be deprived of it by some extraordinary and excessive force; and if he should be so deprived of it, whenever anything sinister happens to the usurper, he will regain it. We have in Italy, for example, the Duke of Ferrara, who could not have withstood the attacks of the Venetians in ‘84, nor those of Pope Julius in ‘10, unless he had been long established in his dominions. For the hereditary prince has less cause and less necessity to offend; hence it happens that he will be more loved; and unless extraordinary vices cause �1Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com him to be hated, it is reasonable to expect that his subjects will be naturally well disposed towards him; and … Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels February 1848 Written: Late 1847; First Published: February 1848; Source: Marx/Engels Selected Works, Vol. One, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp. 98-137; Translated: Samuel Moore in cooperation with Frederick Engels, 1888; Transcribed: by Zodiac and Brian Baggins; Proofed: and corrected against 1888 English Edition by Andy Blunden 2004; Copyleft: Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 1987, 2000, 2010. Permission is granted to distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License. Table of Contents Editorial Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 2 Preface to The 1872 German Edition .............................................................................................. 4 Preface to The 1882 Russian Edition .............................................................................................. 5 Preface to The 1883 German Edition .............................................................................................. 6 Preface to The 1888 English Edition............................................................................................... 7 Preface to The 1890 German Edition ............................................................................................ 10 Preface to The 1892 Polish Edition ............................................................................................... 12 Preface to The 1893 Italian Edition............................................................................................... 13 Manifesto of the Communist Party................................................................................................ 14 I. Bourgeois and Proletarians ........................................................................................................ 14 II. Proletarians and Communists ................................................................................................... 22 III. Socialist and Communist Literature ........................................................................................ 28 1. Reactionary Socialism ....................................................................................................... 28 A. Feudal Socialism ...................................................................................................... 28 B. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism ....................................................................................... 29 C. German or “True” Socialism .................................................................................... 29 2. Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism ............................................................................... 31 3. Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism.................................................................... 32 IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties ............. 34 Letter from Engels to Marx, 24 November 1847 .......................................................................... 35 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith ................................................................................... 36 The Principles of Communism ...................................................................................................... 41 Demands of the Communist Party in Germany............................................................................. 55 The Paris Commune. Address to the International Workingmen’s Association, May 1871......... 58 Endnotes ........................................................................................................................................ 67 2 Introduction Editorial Introduction The “Manifesto of the Communist Party” was written by Marx and Engels as the Communist League’s programme on the instruction of its Second Congress (London, November 29-December 8, 1847), which signified a victory for the followers of a new proletarian line during the discussion of the programme questions. When Congress was still in preparation, Marx and Engels arrived at the conclusion that the final programme document should be in the form of a Party manifesto (see Engels’ letter to Marx of November 23-24, 1847). The catechism form usual for the secret societies of the time and retained in the “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith” and “Principles of Communism,” was not suitable for a full and substantial exposition of the new revolutionary world outlook, for a comprehensive formulation of the proletarian movement’s aims and tasks. See also “Demands of the Communist Party in Germany,” issued by Marx soon after publication of the Manifesto, which addressed the immediate demands of the movement. Marx and Engels began working together on the Manifesto while they were still in London immediately after the congress, and continued until about December 13 when Marx returned to Brussels; they resumed their work four days later (December 17) when Engels arrived there. After Engels’ departure for Paris at the end of December and up to his return on January 31, Marx worked on the Manifesto alone. Hurried by the Central Authority of the Communist League which provided him with certain documents (e.g., addresses of the People’s Chamber (Halle) of the League of the Just of November 1846 and February 1847, and, apparently, documents of the First Congress of the Communist League pertaining to the discussion of the Party programme), Marx worked intensively on the Manifesto through almost the whole of January 1848. At the end of January the manuscript was sent on to London to be printed in the German Workers’ Educational Society’s print shop owned by a German emigrant J. E. Burghard, a member of the Communist League. The manuscript of the Manifesto has not survived. The only extant materials written in Marx’s hand are a draft plan for Section III, showing his efforts to improve the structure of the Manifesto, and a page of a rough copy. The Manifesto came off the press at the end of February 1848. On February 29, the Educational Society decided to cover all the printing expenses. The first edition of the Manifesto was a 23-page pamphlet in a dark green cover. In April-May 1848 another edition was put out. The text took up 30 pages, some misprints of the first edition were corrected, and the punctuation improved. Subsequently this text was used by Marx and Engels as a basis for later authorised editions. Between March and July 1848 the Manifesto was printed in the Deutsche Londoner Zeitung, a democratic newspaper of the German emigrants. Already that same year numerous efforts were made to publish the Manifesto in other European languages. A Danish, a Polish (in Paris) and a Swedish (under a different title: “The Voice of Communism. Declaration of the Communist Party”) editions appeared in 1848. The translations into French, Italian and Spanish made at that time remained unpublished. In April 1848, Engels, then in Barmen, was translating the Manifesto into English, but he managed to translate only half of it, and the first English translation, made by Helen Macfarlane, was not published until two years later, between June and November 1850, in the Chartist journal The Red Republican. Its editor, Julian Harney, named the authors for the first time in the introduction to this publication. All earlier and many subsequent editions of the Manifesto were anonymous. The growing emancipation struggle of the proletariat in the ’60s and ’70s of the 19th century led to new editions of the Manifesto. The year 1872 saw a new German edition with minor corrections and a preface by Marx and Engels where they drew some conclusions from the experience of the Paris 3 Introduction Commune of 1871. This and subsequent German editions (1883 and 1890) were entitled the Communist Manifesto. In 1872 the Manifesto was first published in America in Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly. The first Russian edition of the Manifesto, translated by Mikhail Bakunin with some distortions, appeared in Geneva in 1869. The faults of this edition were removed in the 1882 edition (translation by Georgi Plekhanov), for which Marx and Engels, who attributed great significance to the dissemination of Marxism in Russia, had written a special preface. After Marx’s death, the Manifesto ran into several editions. Engels read through them all, wrote prefaces for the 1883 German edition and for the 1888 English edition in Samuel Moore’s translation, which he also edited and supplied with notes. This edition served as a basis for many subsequent editions of the Manifesto in English – in Britain, the United States and the USSR. In 1890, Engels prepared a further German edition, wrote a new preface to it, and added a number of notes. In 1885, the newspaper Le Socialiste published the French translation of the Manifesto made by Marx’s daughter Laura Lafargue and read by Engels. He also wrote prefaces to the 1892 Polish and 1893 Italian editions. This edition includes the two earlier versions of the Manifesto, namely the draft “Communist Confession of Faith” and “The Principles of Communism,” both authored by Engels, as well as the letter from Engels to Marx which poses the idea of publishing a “manifesto,” rather than a catechism. The Manifesto addressed itself to a mass movement with historical significance, not a political sect. On the other hand, the “Demands of the Communist Party in Germany” is included to place the publication of the Manifesto in the context of the mass movement in Germany at the time, whose immediate demands are reflected by Marx in this pamphlet. Clearly the aims of the Manifesto were more far-reaching the movement in Germany at the time, and unlike the “Demands,” was intended to outlive the immediate conditions. The “Third Address to the International Workingmen’s Association” is included because in this speech Marx examines the movement of the working class manifested in the Paris Commune, and his observations here mark the only revisions to his social and historical vision made during his lifetime as a result of the development of the working class movement itself, clarifying some points and making others more concrete. Preface to 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 sixties1. 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 the 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 Association, 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 & Frederick Engels June 24, 1872, London Preface to 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 [a 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 2 , 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 & Frederick Engels January 21, 1882, London Preface to The 1883 German Edition The preface to the present edition I must, alas, sign alone. Marx, the man to whom the whole working class of Europe and America owes more than to any one else – rests at Highgate Cemetery and over his grave the first grass is already growing. Since his death [March 14, 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 solely 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. Frederick Engels June 28, 1883, London * “This proposition,” I wrote in the preface to the English translation, “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.” [Note by Engels to the German edition of 1890] Preface to 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 celebrated “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. * Lassalle personally, to us, always acknowledged himself to be a disciple of Marx, and, as such, stood on the ground of the Manifesto. But in his first public agitation, 1862-1864, he did not go beyond demanding co-operative workshops supported by state credit. 8 Preface to the 1888 English Edition 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 9 Preface to the 1888 English Edition 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 …