Atnti Duhring-theoretical

Anti Duhring THEORETICAL

The materialist conception of history starts from the principle that production and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of every social order; that in every society that has appeared in history, the distribution of wealth and with it the division of society into classes or estates are dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. Accordingly, the ultimate causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in their growing insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch. The growing recognition that existing social institutions are irrational and unjust, that reason has become unreason, and kindness a scourge, is only a sign that changes in the modes of production and exchange have silently been taking place with which the social order adapted to earlier economic conditions is no longer in keeping. From this it also follows that the means of eliminating the abuses that have been brought to light must also be present, in a more or less developed condition, within the changed relations of production themselves. These means are not to be invented out of one's brain, but discovered by the brain in the existing material facts of production.

Where, then, does modern socialism stand?

It is now pretty generally conceded that the existing social order is the creation of the ruling class of today, of the bourgeoisie. The mode of production peculiar to the bourgeoisie, which since Marx has been called the capitalist mode of production, was incompatible with the local privileges and the privileges of estate as well as with the reciprocal personal ties of the feudal system. The bourgeoisie shattered the feudal system and on its ruins built the bourgeois social order, the realm of free competition, of freedom of movement, of equal rights for commodity owners and all the glories of capitalism. The capitalist mode of production could now develop freely. Since steam and the new tool making machinery transformed the older manufacture into large-scale industry, the productive forces evolved under the guidance of the bourgeoisie developed with a rapidity and on a scale unheard of before. But just as manufacture and the handicraft industries, which had experienced a further growth under its influence, had come into conflict with the feudal trammels of the guilds in their time, so large-scale industry, in its more complete development, now comes into conflict with the barriers within which the capitalistic mode of production holds it confined. The new productive forces have already outgrown the bourgeois form of using them; and this conflict between productive forces and mode of production is not a conflict engendered in men's heads, like that between original sin and divine justice, but it exists in the facts, objectively, outside us, independently of the will

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and even actions of the men who have brought it on. Modern socialism is nothing but the reflex in thought of this actual conflict, its ideal reflection in the minds of above all the class directly suffering under it, the working class.

Now, in what does this conflict consist?

Prior to capitalist production, i.e., in the Middle Ages, small-scale production generally prevailed, based upon the workers' private ownership of their means of production: the agriculture of the small peasant, freeman or serf, and the handicrafts in the towns. The instruments of labour -- land, agricultural implements, the workshop, the hand tool -- were the instruments of labour of single individuals, adapted for individual use, and, therefore, of necessity puny, dwarfish, circumscribed. But for this very reason they normally belonged to the producer himself. To concentrate these scattered, limited means of production, to enlarge them, to turn them into the powerful levers of production of the present day was precisely the historic role of the capitalist mode of production and of its upholder, the bourgeoisie. In Part IV of Capital Marx gives a detailed account of how the bourgeoisie has historically accomplished this since the fifteenth century through the three phases of simple co-operation, manufacture and large-scale industry. But as is also shown there, the bourgeoisie could not transform these limited means of production into mighty productive forces without at the same time transforming them from individual means of production into social means of production only workable by a collectivity of men. The spinning wheel, the hand-loom and the blacksmith's hammer were replaced by the spinning machine, the power loom and the steam hammer, and the individual workshop by the factory commanding the co-operation of hundreds

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and thousands of workmen. Like the means of production, production itself changed from a series of individual operations into a series of social acts, and the products from individual into social products. The yarn, the cloth and the metal goods that now came out of the factory were the common product of many workers, through whose hands they had successively to pass before they were ready. No one person could say of them: "I made that, this is my product."

But where the spontaneous division of labour within society [a division of labour which arose gradually and planlessly] is the fundamental form of production, it imprints on the products the form of commodities, the mutual exchange, purchase and sale of which enable the individual producers to satisfy their manifold wants. This was the case in the Middle Ages. The peasant, for example, sold the artisan agricultural products and bought from him the products of his craft. The new mode of production infiltrated this society of individual producers, of commodity producers. It set up the planned division of labour, as it was organized in the individual factory, in the midst of the spontaneous, planless division of labour such as then prevailed throughout society; side by side with individual production, social production made its appearance. The products of both were sold in the same market, and, consequently, at the same prices, at least approximately. But planned organization was stronger than the spontaneous division of labour; the factories working socially produced their commodities more cheaply than the isolated small producers. Individual production succumbed in one field after another. Social production totally revolutionized the old mode of production. But this, its revolutionary, character was so little recognized that it was, on the contrary,

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introduced as a means of increasing and promoting commodity production. In its origin, it was directly tied up with certain already existing levers of commodity production and exchange: merchant's capital, handicrafts, wage-labour. Since social production itself appeared as a new form of commodity production, the old forms of appropriation characteristic of commodity production remained in full force for it too.

In commodity production as it had developed in the Middle Ages, any question concerning the identity of the owner of the product of labour just couldn't arise. The individual producer had generally produced it from his own raw material, which was often his own handiwork, with his own instruments of labour, and by his own or his family's manual labour. There was no need whatever for him to appropriate the product to begin with, it belonged to him wholly as a matter of course. His ownership of the product was therefore based upon his own labour. Even where outside help was used, it was generally of little importance, and often received other compensation in addition to wages; the guild apprentice and journeyman worked less for board and wages than for training to become master craftsmen themselves.

Then came the concentration of the means of production in large workshops and manufactories, their transformation into actual social means of production. But the social means of production and products were treated as if they were still the means of production and the products of individuals they had been before. Hitherto, the owner of the instruments of labour had appropriated the product, because it was normally his own product and the auxiliary labour of others was the exception. Now the owner of the instruments

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of labour continued to appropriate the product, although it was no longer his product, but exclusively the product of the labour of others. Thus, the products which were now turned out socially were not appropriated by those who had actually set the means of production in motion and actually turned out the products, but by the capitalists. The means of production and production itself have become social in essence. But they are subjected to a form of appropriation which presupposes private production by individuals, and under which, therefore, everyone owns his own product and brings it to market. The mode of production is subjected to this form of appropriation, although it removes the presupposition on which the latter rests.* The whole conflict of today is already present in embryo in this contradiction which gives the new mode of production its capitalist character. The more the new mode of production became dominant in all decisive fields of production and in all economically decisive countries, and the more it reduced individual production to an insignificant residue, the more glaring did the incompatibility of social production with capitalist appropriation necessarily become.

* There is no need to explain here that, even if the form of appropriation remains the same, the character of the appropriation is just as much revolutionized as production by the process described above. Of course two very different kinds of appropriation are involved in whether I appropriate my own product or that of another person. It may be noted in passing that wage-labour, in which the whole capitalist mode of production is to be already found in embryo, is very ancient; in a sporadic, scattered form it existed for centuries alongside slave-labour. But the embryo could develop into the capitalist mode of production only when the necessary historical preconditions had been established. [Note by Engels.]

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As we have said, the first capitalists found the form of wage-labour already in existence. But wage-labour as the exception, as a side-occupation, as an auxiliary, as a transitory phase. The agricultural labourer who occasionally went to work as a day labourer had a few acres of his own land, from which alone he could get his living in a pinch. The regulations of the guilds ensured that the journeyman of today became the master-craftsman of tomorrow. But this changed as soon as the means of production became social and were concentrated in the hands of capitalists. Both the means of production and the products of the small individual producer increasingly depreciated in value; there was nothing left for him to do but to go to the capitalist and work for wages. From being an exception and an auxiliary, wage-labour became the rule and the basic form of all production; from being a side-occupation, it now became the worker's exclusive activity. The occasional wage-worker was transformed into the wage-worker for life. Furthermore, the number of lifelong wage-workers was enormously increased by the simultaneous collapse of the feudal system, the disbanding of the feudal lords' retainers, the eviction of peasants from their homesteads, etc. The separation of the means of production concentrated in the hands of the capitalists, on the one side, from the producers now possessing nothing but their labour-power, on the other, was accomplished. The contradiction between social production and capitalist appropriation became manifest as the antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie.

We have seen that the capitalist mode of production infiltrated a society of commodity producers, individual producers, whose social nexus was mediated through the exchange of their products. But every society based on commodity

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production has the peculiarity that the producers in it have lost command over their own social relations. Each produces for himself with the means of production which happen to be at his disposal and in order to satisfy his individual needs through exchange. No one knows how much of the article he produces is coming onto the market or how much will be wanted, no one knows whether his individual product will meet a real need, whether he will cover his costs or even be able to sell it at all. Anarchy of social production prevails. But like all other forms of production commodity production has its own peculiar laws, which are inherent in and inseparable from it; and these laws assert themselves despite anarchy, in and through anarchy. They are manifested in the only persistent form of the social nexus, in exchange, and impose themselves on the individual producers as compulsory laws of competition. At first, therefore, they are unknown to these producers themselves and have to be discovered by them gradually, only through long experience. Thus they assert themselves without the producers and against the producers, as the natural laws of their form of production, working blindly. The product dominates the producers.

In mediaeval society, especially in the earlier centuries, production was essentially for the producer's own use. In the main it only satisfied the wants of the producer and his family. Where personal relations of dependence existed as in the countryside, it also contributed towards satisfying the wants of the feudal lord. No exchange was involved here, and consequently the products did not assume the character of commodities. The peasant family produced almost everything it required -- utensils and clothing as well as food. It was only when it succeeded in producing a surplus beyond its

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own wants and the payments in kind due to the feudal lord -- it was only at this stage that it also produced commodities; this surplus thrown into social exchange and offered for sale became a commodity. The town artisans, it is true, had to produce for exchange from the very beginning. But they too covered the greatest part of their own wants themselves; they had gardens and small fields; they sent their cattle out into the communal woodland, which also provided them with timber and firewood; the women spun flax, wool, etc. Production for the purpose of exchange, the production of commodities, was only just coming into being. Hence, restricted exchange, restricted<"p351"> market, stable mode of production, local isolation from the outside world, and local unity within: the Mark[118] in the countryside, the guild in the town.

But with the extension of commodity production and especially with the emergence of the capitalist mode of production, the previously dormant laws of commodity production began to operate more openly and more potently. The old bonds were loosened, the old dividing barriers were broken through, the producers were more and more transformed into independent, isolated producers of commodities. The anarchy of social production became obvious and was carried to further and further extremes. But the chief means by which the capitalist mode of production accentuated this anarchy in social production was the exact opposite of anarchy -- the increasing organization of production as social production in each individual productive establishment. With this lever it put an end to the old peaceful stability. In whatever branch of industry it was introduced, it suffered no older method of operation alongside it; wherever it laid hold of a handicraft, it wiped the old handicraft out. The field of labour became a field of battle. The great geographical discoveries and the

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colonization which followed on them multiplied markets and hastened the transformation of handicraft into manufacture. The struggle broke out not only between the individual local producers;<"p352"> in turn the local struggles grew into national struggles, the commercial wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.[119] Finally, large-scale industry and the creation of the world market have made the struggle universal and at the same time given it an unparalleled virulence. Between individual capitalists, as between whole industries and whole countries, advantages in natural or artificial conditions of production decide life or death. The vanquished are relentlessly cast aside. It is the Darwinian struggle for individual existence, transferred from nature to society with a fury raised to the nth power. The brutish state of nature appears as the peak of human development. The contradiction between social production and capitalist appropriation reproduces itself as the antagonism between the organization of production in the individual factory and the anarchy of production in society as a whole.

The capitalist mode of production moves in these two phenomenal forms of the contradiction immanent in it by its very origin, it relentlessly describes that "vicious circle" which Fourier had already discovered. But what Fourier in his day was as yet unable to see is that this circle is gradually narrowing, that the motion is rather in the form of a spiral and must come to an end, like the motion of the planets, by collision with the centre. It is the motive force of the social anarchy of production which increasingly transforms the great majority of men into proletarians, and it is the proletarian masses in their turn who will ultimately put an end to the anarchy of production. It is the motive force of the social anarchy of production which transforms the infinite perfecti-

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bility of the machine in large-scale industry into a compulsory commandment for each individual industrial capitalist to make his machinery more and more perfect, under penalty of ruin.

But the perfecting of machinery means rendering human labour superfluous. If the introduction and increase of machinery meant the displacement of millions of hand workers by a few machine workers, the improvement of machinery means the displacement of larger and larger numbers of machine workers themselves, and ultimately the creation of a mass of available wage-workers exceeding the average employment needs of capital, a complete industrial reserve army, as I called it as long ago as 1845,* an army available at times when industry is working at high pressure, to be thrown out onto the streets by the inevitable ensuing crash, a constant dead weight on the feet of the working class in its struggle for existence with capital, a regulator to keep wages down to the low level which suits the needs of capital. Thus it comes about that machinery, to use Marx's phrase, becomes the most powerful weapon in the war of capital against the working class, that the instruments of labour constantly knock the means of subsistence out of the worker's hands, that the very product of the worker is turned into an instrument for his enslavement. Thus it comes about that from the very beginning economy in the instruments of labour becomes at once the most reckless squandering of labour-power and robbery committed against the normal conditions requisite for the labour function; that machinery, the most powerful

* The Condition of the Working Class in England, p. 109. [Note by Engels, referring to the German edition]; Marx and Engels, On Britain, Moscow, 1953, p. 119. --Ed.

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means for shortening labour-time, is converted into the most unfailing means for transforming the entire span of life of the worker and his family into disposable labour-time for the purpose of expanding the value of capital.[*] Thus it comes about that the overwork of some becomes the precondition for the unemployment of others and that large-scale industry, which hunts the whole world over for new consumers, confines the consumption of the masses at home to a starvation minimum and thus undermines its own internal market. "The law that always equilibrates the relative surplus population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets the labourer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It involves an accumulation of misery corresponding to the accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, bestialization, moral degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital. " (Marx, Capital, p. 671)** To expect any other distribution of the products from the capitalist mode of production is like expecting the electrodes of a battery not to decompose water, not to develop oxygen at the positive pole and hydrogen at the negative, so long as they are connected with the battery.

We have seen how the capacity for improvement of modern machinery, which is pushed to a maximum, is transformed by the anarchy of social production into a compulsory command- <"fnp354">

* See Marx, Capital, Vol. I, pp. 435-36 and 487, and pp. 408 and 462. --Ed.
** Ibid., p. 645, translation revised, Engels' italics; see p. 166 above, first footnote. --Ed.

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ment for the individual industrial capitalist constantly to improve his machinery, constantly to increase its productive power. The bare factual possibility of extending his field of production is transformed into a similar compulsory commandment for him. The enormous expansive force of large-scale industry, compared to which that of gases is mere child's play, now appears to us as a need for qualitative and quantitative expansion that laughs at all counteracting pressure. Such counteracting pressure is formed by consumption, by sales, by markets for the products of large-scale industry. But the capacity of the market to expand, both extensively and intensively, is primarily governed by quite different laws which operate far less energetically. The expansion of the market cannot keep pace with the expansion of production. The collision becomes inevitable, and since it can yield no solution so long as it does not burst the capitalist mode of production itself, it becomes periodic. Capitalist production generates a new "vicious circle".

In fact, since 1825, when the first general crisis erupted, the whole industrial and commercial world, production and exchange among all civilized peoples and their more or less barbarian appendages, have broken down about once every ten years. Trade comes to a standstill, markets are glutted, products lie around in piles as massive as they are unsaleable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories are idle, the working masses lack the means of subsistence because they have produced too much of them, bankruptcy follows upon bankruptcy, forced sale upon forced sale. The stagnation lasts for years and both productive forces and products are squandered and destroyed wholesale, until the accumulated masses of commodities are finally run down at a more or less considerable depreciation and until production and exchange

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gradually begin to move again. By degrees the pace quickens, it becomes a trot, the industrial trot passes into a gallop, and the gallop in turn passes into the unbridled onrush of a complete industrial, commercial, credit and speculative steeple chase, only to end up again, after the most breakneck jumps -- in the ditch of a crash. And so on over and over again. We have now experienced it fully five times since 1825, and at this moment (1877) we are experiencing it for the sixth time. The character of these crises is so clearly marked that Fourier hit them all off when he described the first as a crise pléthorique, a crisis of superabundance.

In these crises, the contradiction between social production and capitalist appropriation ends in a violent explosion. The circulation of commodities is for the moment reduced to nothing; money, the means of circulation, becomes an obstacle to circulation; all the laws of commodity production and commodity circulation are turned upside down. The economic collision has reached its culminating point: the mode of production rebels against the mode of exchange, the productive forces rebel against the mode of production, which they have outgrown.

The fact that the social organization of production within the factory has developed to the point at which it has become incompatible with the anarchy of production in society which exists side by side with and above it -- this fact is made palpable to the capitalists themselves by the forcible concentration of capitals which takes place during crises through the ruin of many big and even more small capitalists. The whole mechanism of the capitalist mode of production breaks down under the pressure of the productive forces which it itself has created. It is no longer able to transform the whole of

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this mass of means of production into capital; they lie idle, and for this very reason the industrial reserve army must also lie idle. Means of production, means of subsistence, available workers, all the elements of production and of general wealth are there in abundance. But "abundance becomes the source of distress and want" (Fourier), because it is precisely abundance that prevents the conversion of the means of production and subsistence into capital. For in capitalist society the means of production cannot begin to function unless they have first been converted into capital, into means for the exploitation of human labour-power. The necessity for the means of production and subsistence to take the character of capital stands like a ghost between them and the workers. It alone prevents the coming together of the material and personal levers of production; it alone forbids the means of production to function and the workers to work and to live. Thus on the one hand the capitalist mode of production stands convicted of its own incapacity to continue the administration of these productive forces. On the other hand, these productive forces themselves press forward with increasing power towards the abolition of the contradiction, to their deliverance from their character as capital, towards the actual recognition of their character as social productive forces.

It is this counterpressure of the productive forces, in their mighty upgrowth, against their character as capital, this increasingly compulsive drive for the recognition of their social nature, which forces the capitalist class itself to treat them more and more as social productive forces, as far as this is at all possible within the framework of capitalist relations. The period of industrial boom with its unlimited credit inflation no less than the crash itself operating through the

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collapse of large capitalist establishments, drives towards that form of the socialization of larger masses of means of production which we find in the various kinds of joint-stock companies. Many of these means of production and communication are so colossal from the outset that, like the railways, they exclude all other forms of capitalist exploitation. At a certain stage of development this form, too, no longer suffices; [the large-scale producers in one and the same branch of industry in a country unite in a "trust", an association for the purpose of regulating production. They determine the total amount to be produced, parcel it out among themselves and thus enforce the selling price fixed beforehand. Since such trusts usually go to pieces as soon as business becomes bad, for this very reason they push towards a still more concentrated socialization. The whole branch of industry is converted into one big joint-stock company, and internal competition gives place to the internal monopoly of this one company; this happened as early as 1890 with English alkali production, which, after the fusion of all the forty-eight large works, is now carried on by a single company, under centralized direction, with a capital of £6 million.

In the trusts, free competition changes into monopoly and the planless production of capitalist society capitulates before the planned production of the invading socialist society. Of course, this is initially still to the benefit of the capitalists. But the exploitation becomes so palpable here that it must break down. No nation would put up with production directed by trusts, with such a barefaced exploitation of the community by a small band of coupon-clippers.

In one way or another, with trusts or without,] the state, the official representative of capitalist society, is [finally] con-

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strained to take over the direction of production.* This necessity for conversion into state property first appears in the big communication organizations: the postal service, telegraphs and railways.

If the crises revealed the bourgeoisie's incapacity to continue to administer the modern productive forces, the conversion of the large production and communication establishments into joint-stock companies [,trusts] and state property shows that the bourgeoisie can be dispensed with for this purpose. All the social functions of the capitalist are now conducted by salaried employees. The capitalist no longer has any social activity save the pocketing of revenues, the <"fnp">

* I say is constrained to. For it is only when the means of production or communication have actually outgrown direction by joint-stock companies and therefore their nationalization has become economically inevitable -- it is only then that this nationalization, even when carried out by the state of today, represents an economic advance, the attainment of another preliminary step towards the seizure of all the productive forces by society itself. But since Bismarck became keen on nationalizing, a certain spurious socialism has recently made its appearance -- here and there even degenerating into a kind of Qunkeyism -- which without more ado declares all nationalization, even the Bismarckian kind, to be socialistic. To be sure, if the nationalization of the tobacco trade were socialistic, Napoleon and Metternich would rank among the founders of socialism. If the Belgian state, for quite ordinary political and financial reasons, constructed its own main railway lines, if Bismarck, without any economic compulsion, nationalized the main Prussian railway lines simply in order to be better able to organize and use them in face of war, in order to train the railway officials as the government's voting cattle, and especially in order to secure a new source of revenue independent of parliamentary votes, such actions were in no sense socialistic measures, whether direct or indirect, conscious or unconscious. Otherwise, the Royal Maritime Company, the Royal Porcelain Manufacture, and even the regimental tailors in the army would be socialist institutions [or even, as was seriously proposed by a sly dog in the thirties during the reign of Frederick William III, the nationalization of the -- brothels]. [Note by Engels.]

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clipping of coupons and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists fleece each other of their capital. Just as at first the capitalist mode of production displaced the workers, so now it is displacing the capitalists, relegating them, just as it did the workers, to the superfluous population, although not immediately to the industrial reserve army.

But neither conversion into joint-stock companies [and trusts] nor conversion into state property deprives the productive forces of their character as capital. This is obvious in the case of joint-stock companies [and trusts]. But the modern state, too, is only the organization with which bourgeois society provides itself in order to maintain the general external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against encroachments either by the workers or by individual capitalists. The modern state, whatever its form, is an essentially capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal aggregate capitalist. The more productive forces it takes over into its possession, the more it becomes a real aggregate capitalist, the more citizens it exploits. The workers remain wage-workers, proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not abolished, rather it is pushed to the limit. But at this limit it changes into its opposite. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but it contains within itself the formal means, the handle to the solution.

This solution can only consist in actually recognizing the social nature of the modern productive forces and in therefore bringing the mode of production, appropriation and exchange into harmony with the social character of the means of production. This can only be brought about by society's openly and straightforwardly taking possession of the pro-

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ductive forces, which have outgrown all guidance other than that of society itself. Thus the social character of the means of production and of the products, which today reacts against the producers themselves, periodically ruptures the mode of production and exchange, and enforces itself only as a law of nature working blindly, violently and destructively, will be quite consciously asserted by the producers, and instead of being a source of disorder and periodic collapse will change into the most powerful lever of production itself.

The forces operating in society work exactly like the forces of nature -- blindly, violently and destructively, so long as we fail to understand them and take them into account. But once we have recognized them and understood their action, their trend and their effects, it depends solely on ourselves to increasingly subject them to our will and to attain our ends through them. This is especially true of the mighty productive forces of the present day. As long as we obstinately refuse to understand their nature and their character -- and the capitalist mode of production and its defenders resist such understanding with might and main -- these forces operate in spite of us and against us, dominate us, as we have shown in detail. But once their nature is grasped, they can be transformed from demoniacal masters into willing servants in the hands of the producers working in association. It is the difference between the destructive force of electricity in the lightning of a thunderstorm and the tamed electricity of the telegraph and the arc light, the difference between a conflagration and fire working in the service of man. With this treatment of the present-day productive forces according to their nature, which is now at last understood, a socially planned regulation of production in accordance with the needs of the community and of each individual takes

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the place of the anarchy of social production. The capitalist mode of appropriation, in which the product enslaves first the producer and then the appropriator as well, will thus be replaced by the mode of appropriation of the product based on the nature of the modern means of production themselves: on the one hand, direct social appropriation as a means of maintaining and extending production, and on the other direct individual appropriation as a means of existence and enjoyment.

By increasingly transforming the great majority of the population into proletarians, the capitalist mode of production creates the force which, under penalty of its own destruction, is compelled to accomplish this revolution. By increasingly driving towards the transformation of the vast socialized means of production into state property, it itself points the way to the accomplishment of this revolution. The proletariat seizes state power and to begin with transforms the means of production into state property. But it thus puts an end to itself as proletariat, it thus puts an end to all class differences and class antagonisms, and thus also to the state as state. Moving in class antagonisms, society up to now had need of the state, that is, an organization of the exploiting class at each period for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, that is, particularly for the forcible holding down of the exploited class in the conditions of oppression (slavery, villeinage or serfdom, wage-labour) given by the existing mode of production. The state was the official representative of the whole of society, its concentration in a visible body, but it was so only in so far as it was the state of that class which in its time represented the whole of society: in antiquity, the state of the slave-owning citizens, in the Middle Ages of the feudal nobility, in our time, of the

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bourgeoisie. When ultimately it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself superfluous. As soon as there is no social class to be held in subjection any longer, as soon as class domination and the struggle for individual existence based on the anarchy of production existing up to now are eliminated together with the collisions and excesses arising from them, there is nothing more to repress, nothing necessitating a special repressive force, a state. The first act in which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society -- the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society -- is at the same time its last independent act as a state. The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then dies away of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not "abolished", it withers away. It is by this that one must evaluate the phrase "a free people's state" with respect both to its temporary agitational justification and to its ultimate scientific inadequacy, and it is by this that we must also evaluate<"p363"> the demand of the so called anarchists that the state should be abolished overnight.[120]

Since the historical emergence of the capitalist mode of production, the seizure of all the means of production by society has often been dreamed of, by individuals as well as by whole sects, more or less vaguely as an ideal of the future. But it could only become possible, it could only become a historical necessity, when the material conditions* for its

* Socialism: Utopian and Scientific has "actual conditions" instead of "material conditions". --Ed.

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realization were present. Like every other social advance, it is becoming realizable not through the acquisition of the understanding that the existence of classes is in contradiction with justice, equality, etc., not through the mere will to abolish these classes, but through certain new economic conditions. The cleavage of society into an exploiting and an exploited class, a ruling and an oppressed class, was the necessary outcome of the previous low development of production. Society is necessarily divided into classes as long as the total social labour only yields a product but slightly exceeding what is necessary for the bare existence of all, as long as labour therefore claims all or almost all the time of the great majority of the members of society. Side by side with this great majority exclusively enthralled in toil, a class freed from direct productive labour is formed which manages the general business of society: the direction of labour, affairs of state, justice, science, art, and so forth. It is therefore the law of the division of labour which lies at the root of the division into classes. However, this does not mean that this division into classes was not established by violence and robbery, by deception and fraud, or that the ruling class, once in the saddle, has ever failed to strengthen its domination at the cost of the working class and to convert its direction of society into [increased] exploitation of the masses.

But if, upon this showing, division into classes has a certain historical justification, it does so only for a given period of time, for given social conditions. It was based on the insufficiency of production; it will be swept away by the full development of the modern productive forces. In fact the abolition of social classes presupposes a level of historical development at which the existence not merely of this or that particular ruling class but of any ruling class at all, and

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therefore of class distinction itself, has become an anachronism, is obsolete. It therefore presupposes that the development of production has reached a level at which the appropriation of the means of production and of the products, and consequently of political supremacy and of the monopoly of education and intellectual leadership by a special social class, has become not only superfluous but also a hindrance to development economically, politically and intellectually.

This point has now been reached. Its political and intellectual bankruptcy is hardly a secret any longer to the bourgeoisie itself, and its economic bankruptcy recurs regularly every ten years. In each crisis society is suffocated beneath the weight of its own productive forces and products of which it can make no use, and stands helpless in face of the absurd contradiction that the producers have nothing to consume because consumers are lacking. The expansive force of the means of production bursts asunder the bonds imposed upon them by the capitalist mode of production. Their release from these bonds is the sole prerequisite for an unbroken, ever more rapidly advancing development of the productive forces, and thus of a practically unlimited growth of production itself. Nor is this all. The social appropriation of the means of production puts an end not only to the current artificial restrictions on production, but also to the positive waste and devastation of productive forces and products which are now the inevitable concomitants of production and which reach their zenith in crises. Further, it sets free for the community at large a mass of means of production and products by putting an end to the senseless luxury and extravagance of the present ruling classes and their political representatives. The possibility of securing for every member of society, through social production, an existence

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which is not only perfectly adequate materially and which becomes daily richer, but also guarantees him the completely free development and exercise of his physical and mental faculties -- this possibility is now present for the first time, but it is present.[*]

The seizure of the means of production by society eliminates commodity production and with it the domination of the product over the producer. The anarchy within social production is replaced by consciously planned organization. The struggle for individual existence comes to an end. It is only at this point that man finally separates in a certain sense from the animal kingdom and that he passes from animal conditions of existence to really human ones. The conditions of existence environing and hitherto dominating humanity now pass under the dominion and control of humanity, which now for the first time becomes the real conscious master of nature, because and in so far as it becomes master of its own social organization. The laws of man's own social activity, which have hitherto confronted him as extraneous laws of nature dominating him, will then be applied by man with full knowledge and hence be dominated <"fnp366">

* A few figures may give an approximate idea of the enormous expansive force of the modern means of production even under the weight of capitalism. According to Giffen's latest estimates,[121] the total wealth of Great Britain and Ireland was, in round figures:

1814 £2,200,000,000
1865 £6,100,000,000
1875 £8,500,000,000

As for the squandering of means of production and products resulting from crises, the total loss to the German iron industry alone in the last crash was estimated at 455,000,000 marks [£22,750,000] at the Second German Industrial Congress (Berlin, February 21, 1878). [Note by Engels.]

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by him. Man's own social organization, which has hitherto confronted him as a process dictated by nature and history, now becomes a process resulting from his own voluntary action. The objective extraneous forces which have hitherto dominated history now pass under the control of man himself. It is only from this point that man will himself make his own history fully consciously, it is only from this point that the social causes he sets in motion will preponderantly and ever increasingly have the effects he wills. It is humanity's leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom.

[In conclusion, let us briefly sum up the course of our development:

I. Mediaeval Society : Small-scale individual production. Means of production adapted to individual use, hence primitive, clumsy, petty, puny in effect. Production for immediate consumption, by the producer himself or by his feudal lord. Only where a surplus of production over this consumption occurs does this surplus get offered for sale and enter into exchange: production of commodities, therefore, only in its nascent state; but it already contains within itself, in embryo, the anarchy in social production.

II. Capitalist Revolution : Transformation of industry, at first by means of simple co-operation and manufacture. Concentration of the previously scattered means of production into large workshops, and consequently their transformation from individual into social means of production, a transformation which by and large does not affect the form of exchange. The old forms of appropriation remain in force. The capitalist appears: in his character as owner of the means of production he also appropriates the products and turns

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them into commodities. Production has become a social act; exchange and with it appropriation remain individual acts, the acts of individuals: the social product is appropriated by the individual capitalist. Fundamental contradiction, from which there arise all the contradictions in which present-day society moves and which large-scale industry brings to light.

Antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie.

Contradiction between social organization in the individual factory and social anarchy in production as a whole.

industrial reserve army.

here

superabundance of means of production and products -- there

superabundance of workers

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has grown into an absurdity: the mode of production rebels against the form of exchange. The bourgeoisie is convicted of incapacity to manage its own social productive forces any further.
D) Partial recognition of the social character of the productive forces imposed on the capitalists themselves. Appropriation of the large production and communication organizations, first by joint-stock companies, later by trusts, then by the state. The bourgeoisie proves itself a superfluous class; all its social functions are now performed by salaried employees.

III. Proletarian Revolution, solution of the contradictions: the proletariat seizes the public power and by virtue of this power transforms the social means of production, which are slipping from the hands of the bourgeoisie, into public property. By this act, the proletariat frees the means of production from their previous character as capital, and gives their social character complete freedom to assert itself. Social production according to a predetermined plan now becomes possible. The development of production makes the further existence of different social classes an anachronism. In proportion as the anarchy of social production vanishes, the political authority of the state dies away. Men, at last masters of their own mode of social organization, consequently become at the same time masters of nature, masters of themselves -- free.]

To accomplish this world-emancipating act is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To grasp the historical conditions of this act and therefore its very nature, and thus to bring the conditions and character of its own action to the consciousness of the class that is destined to act, the

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class that is now oppressed -- this is the task of scientific socialism, the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement.