Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

#PUBLICATION NOTE

This edition of Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith has been prepared and revised for digital publication by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Switzerland on the basis of the following edition: Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith, in the Collected Works of Marx and Engels, First English Edition, Vol. 6, Lawrence & Wishart, London.

#INTRODUCTION NOTE

This is the first draft of a programme for the Communist League, written by Comrade Friedrich Engels in London, England, United Kingdom on the 9th of June, 1847. It was first published in the book Founding Documents of the Communist League in Hamburg, 1969.

The document was discussed at the First Congress of the Communist League, held in London between the 2nd and 9th of June, 1847. The Congress was a final stage in the reorganization of the League of the Just — an organization of German workers and handicraftspeople, which was founded in Paris in 1836-37 and soon acquired an international character, having communities in Germany, France, Switzerland, Britain, and Sweden. The activity of Comrades Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels directed toward the ideological and organizational unity of the Socialists and progressive workers prompted the leaders of the League (Karl Schapper, Joseph Moll, and Heinrich Bauer), who resided in London from November 1846, to ask for their help in reorganizing the League and drafting its new programme. When Marx and Engels were convinced that the leaders of the League of the Just were ready to accept the principles of Scientific Communism as its programme, they accepted the offer to join the League made to them late in January 1847.

Comrade Engels's active participation in the work of the Congress (Comrade Marx was unable to go to London) affected the course and the results of its proceedings. The League was renamed the Communist League, and the old motto of the League of the Just, «All people are equal», was replaced by a new, Marxist one: «Workers of the world, unite!» The Draft Programme and Draft Rules of the League were approved at the last session on the 9th of June, 1847.

The document testifies to Comrade Engels's great influence on the discussion of the Programme at the Congress — the formulation of the answers to most of the questions is a Marxist one. Besides, while drafting the Programme, Engels had to take into account that the members of the League had not yet freed themselves from the influence of Utopian ideas, and this was reflected in the formulation of the first six questions and answers. The form of a «revolutionary catechism» was also commonly used in the League of the Just and other organizations of workers and handicraftspeople at the time. It may be assumed that Engels intended to give greater precision to some of the formulations of the Programme in the course of further discussion and revision.

After the First Congress of the Communist League, the Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith was sent, together with the Draft Rules, to the communities for discussion, the results of which were to be taken into account at the time of the final approval of the Programme and Rules at the Second Congress. When working on another, improved Draft Programme, The Principles of Communism, in late October 1847, Engels made direct use of the Confession of Faith, as can be seen from the coincidences of the texts, and also from references in the Principles to the earlier document, when Engels had apparently decided to leave formulations of some of the answers as they were.

#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

#DRAFT OF A COMMUNIST CONFESSION OF FAITH

#Friedrich Engels

#9th of June, 1847

#★

QUESTION: Are you a Communist?

ANSWER: Yes.

QUESTION: What is the aim of the Communists?

ANSWER: To organize society in such a way that every member of it can develop and use all their capabilities and powers in complete freedom and without thereby infringing the fundamental conditions of this society.

QUESTION: How do you wish to achieve this aim?

ANSWER: By the elimination of private property and its replacement by public property.

QUESTION: On what do you base your public property?

ANSWER: First, on the mass of productive forces and means of subsistence resulting from the development of industry, agriculture, trade, and colonization, and on the possibility inherent in machinery, chemical, and other resources of their infinite extension.

Second, on the fact that, in the consciousness or feeling of every individual, there exist certain irrefutable fundamental principles, which, being the result of the whole of historical development, require no proof.

QUESTION: What are such principles?

ANSWER: For example, every individual strives to be happy. The happiness of the individual is inseparable from the happiness of all, and so on.

QUESTION: How do you wish to prepare the way for your public property?

ANSWER: By enlightening and uniting the proletariat.

QUESTION: What is the proletariat?

ANSWER: The proletariat is that social class which lives exclusively by its labour and not on the profit from any kind of capital; that class whose weal and woe, whose life and death, therefore, depend on the alternation of times of good and bad business; in a word, on the fluctuations of competition.

QUESTION: Then there have not always been proletarians?

ANSWER: No. There have always been poor and working classes; and those who worked were almost always the poor. But there have not always been proletarians, just as competition has not always been free.

QUESTION: How did the proletariat arise?

ANSWER: The proletariat came into being as a result of the introduction of the machines which have been invented since the middle of the last century, and the most important of which are the steam engine, the spinning machine, and the power loom. These machines, which were very expensive and could therefore only be purchased by rich people, supplanted the workers of the time, because, by the use of machinery, it was possible to produce commodities more quickly and cheaply than could the workers with their imperfect spinning wheels and hand looms. The machines thus delivered industry entirely into the hands of the big capitalists and rendered the workers' scanty property, which consisted mainly of their tools, looms, and so on, quite worthless, so that the capitalist was left with everything, the worker with nothing. In this way, the factory system was introduced. Once the capitalists saw how advantageous this was for them, they sought to extend it to more and more branches of labour. They divided work more and more between the workers, so that workers who formerly had made a whole article now produced only a part of it. Labour simplified in this way produced goods more quickly and therefore more cheaply, and only now was it found in almost every branch of labour that here also machines could be used. As soon as any branch of labour went over to factory production, it ended up, just as in the case of spinning and weaving, in the hands of the big capitalists, and the workers were deprived of the last remnants of their independence. We have gradually arrived at the position where almost all branches of labour are run on a factory basis. This has increasingly brought about the ruin of the previously existing middle class, especially of the small master handicraftspeople, completely transformed the previous position of the workers, and two new classes, which are gradually swallowing up all other classes, have come into being, namely:

• First, the class of the big capitalists, who, in all developed countries, are in almost exclusive possession of the means of subsistence and those means (machines, factories, workshops, and so on) by which these means of subsistence are produced. This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie.
• Second, the class of the completely propertyless, who are compelled to sell their labour¹ to the first class, the bourgeois, simply to obtain from them in return their means of subsistence. Since the parties to this trading in labour are not equal, but the bourgeois have the advantage, the propertyless must submit to the bad conditions laid down by the bourgeois. This class, dependent on the bourgeois, is called the class of the proletarians, or the proletariat.

QUESTION: In what way does the proletarian differ from the slave?

ANSWER: The slave is sold once and for all, the proletarian has to sell themself by the day and by the hour. The slave is the property of one master and for that very reason has a guaranteed subsistence, however wretched it may be. The proletarian is, so to speak, the slave of the entire bourgeois class, not of one master, and therefore has no guaranteed subsistence, since nobody buys their labour if they do not need it. The slave is accounted a thing and not a member of civil society. The proletarian is recognized as a person, as a member of civil society. The slave may, therefore, have a better subsistence than the proletarian, but the latter stands at a higher stage of development. The slave frees themself by becoming a proletarian, abolishing, from the totality of property relations, only the relation of slavery. The proletarian can free themself only by abolishing property in general.

QUESTION: In what way does the proletarian differ from the serf?

ANSWER: The serf has the use of a piece of land, that is, of an instrument of production, in return for handing over a greater or lesser portion of the yield. The proletarian works with instruments of production which belong to someone else who, in return for their labour, hands over to them a portion, determined by competition, of the products. In the case of the serf, the share of the labourer is determined by their own labour, that is, by themself. In the case of the proletarian, it is determined by competition, therefore, in the first place, by the bourgeois. The serf has a guaranteed subsistence, the proletarian has not. The serf frees themself by driving out their feudal lord and becoming a proprietor themself, thus entering into competition and joining, for the time being, the possessing class, the privileged class. The proletarian frees themself by doing away with property, competition, and all class differences.

QUESTION: In what way does the proletarian differ from the handicraftsperson?

ANSWER: As opposed to the proletarian, the so-called handicraftsperson, who still existed nearly everywhere during the last century and still exists here and there, is at most a temporary proletarian. Their aim is to acquire capital themself and so to exploit other workers. They can often achieve this aim where the craft guilds still exist or where freedom to follow a trade has not yet led to the organization of handicrafts on a factory basis and to intense competition. But, as soon as the factory system is introduced into handicrafts and competition is in full swing, this prospect is eliminated and the handicraftsperson therefore frees themself either by becoming a bourgeois, or in general passing over into the middle class, or by becoming a proletarian as a result of competition (as now happens in most cases) and joining the movement of the proletariat — that is, the more or less conscious Communist movement.

QUESTION: Then you do not believe that public property has been possible at any time?

ANSWER: No. Communism has only arisen since machinery and other inventions made it possible to hold out the prospect of an all-sided development, a happy existence, for all members of society. Communism is the theory of a liberation which was not possible for the slaves, the serfs, or the handicraftspeople, but only for the proletarians, and, hence, it belongs of necessity to the 19th century and was not possible in any earlier period.

QUESTION: Let us go back to the sixth question. As you wish to prepare for public property by enlightening and uniting the proletariat, then you reject revolution?

ANSWER: We are convinced, not only of the uselessness, but even of the harmfulness of all conspiracies. We are also aware that revolutions are not made deliberately and arbitrarily, but that, everywhere and at all times, they are the necessary consequence of circumstances which are not in any way whatsoever dependent either on the will or on the leadership of individual political parties or of whole classes. But we also see that the development of the proletariat in almost all countries of the world is violently repressed by the possessing classes, and that thus a revolution is being violently worked for by the opponents of Communism. If, in the end, the oppressed proletariat is thus driven into a revolution, then we will defend the cause of the proletariat just as well by our deeds as now by our words.

QUESTION: Do you intend to replace the existing social order by public property at one stroke?

ANSWER: We have no such intention. The development of the masses cannot be ordered by decree. It is determined by the development of the conditions in which these masses live, and therefore proceeds gradually.

QUESTION: How do you think the transition from the present situation to public property is to be effected?

ANSWER: The first, fundamental condition for the introduction of public property is the political liberation of the proletariat through a democratic constitution.

QUESTION: What will be your first measure once you have established democracy?

ANSWER: Guaranteeing the subsistence of the proletariat.

QUESTION: How will you do this?

ANSWER: First, by limiting private property in such a way that it gradually prepares the way for its transformation into social property, for example, by progressive taxation, limitation of the right of inheritance in favour of the State, and so on, and so forth.

Second, by employing workers in national workshops and factories and on national farms.

Third, by educating all children at the expense of the State.

QUESTION: How will you arrange this kind of education during the transitional period?

ANSWER: All children will be educated in State establishments from the time when they can do without the first parental care.

QUESTION: Will not the introduction of public property be accompanied by the proclamation of public ownership of women?

ANSWER: By no means. We will only interfere in the personal romantic relationship or with the family in general to the extent that the maintenance of the existing institution would disturb the new social order. Besides, we are well aware that the family relationship has been modified in the course of history by the property relations and by periods of development, and that, consequently, the ending of private property will also have a most important influence on it.

QUESTION: Will nationalities continue to exist under communism?

ANSWER: The nationalities of the peoples who join together according to the principle of community will be just as much compelled by this union to merge with one another and thereby supersede themselves as the various differences between estates and classes disappear through the superseding of their basis — private property.

QUESTION: Do Communists reject the existing religions?

ANSWER: All religions which have existed until now were expressions of historical stages of development of individual peoples or groups of peoples. But communism is that stage of historical development which makes all existing religions superfluous and supersedes them.

In the name and on the mandate of the Congress.

#Secretary Heide [Wilhelm Wolff]

#President Karl Schill [Karl Schapper]

#London

#9th of June, 1847