The Scientific Application of Historical Materialism in *The Communist Manifesto*

*The Communist Manifesto* is a programmatic document written by Marx and Engels for the Communist League, the world’s first proletarian political party. Its publication marked the birth of Marxism and the rise of the international communist movement. Although the historical materialism founded by Marx and Engels had already taken basic shape in *The German Ideology*, the laws of human social development it revealed were at that time still only a hypothesis in theoretical form, not yet scientifically applied through a comprehensive analysis of any specific social formation. *The Communist Manifesto* was Marx and Engels’ first public attempt to partially fulfill this historic task.

《共产党宣言》是马克思和恩格斯为世界上第一个无产阶级政党——共产主义者同盟所撰写的纲领，其问世标志着马克思主义的诞生和国际共产主义运动的兴起。尽管马克思和恩格斯所创立的唯物史观在《德意志意识形态》中已经基本形成，但当时它所揭示的人类社会发展规律在理论形态上还只是一个假设，并未经过对特定社会形态的全面分析而得到科学的运用，《共产党宣言》是马克思和恩格斯第一次公开尝试并部分地完成这一历史重任。

The Scientific Understanding of Capitalism

对资本主义的科学认知

In *The Communist Manifesto*, Marx and Engels scientifically analyzed the emergence of the bourgeoisie and the formation of capitalist society. They pointed out: “From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.” In the late feudal period of Europe, some serfs who possessed free status in the countryside entered the towns to engage in handicraft and commercial production, becoming early urban burghers. Among these early burghers, some guild masters and merchants, by exploiting journeymen and apprentices, completed their primitive accumulation of capital and became capitalists, while the exploited journeymen and apprentices became the first wage laborers. Thus the most basic relations of production of capitalism were established. With the development of productive forces and the expansion of markets, machine-based large-scale industry replaced the handicraft guilds and manufacture. More peasants, small manufacturers, and small landowners gradually lost their means of production in market competition and became wage laborers. The “intermediate classes” of industrial production tended to disappear, and social wealth became increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few big bourgeois. At this point, social relations were also gradually simplified into two opposing classes: the bourgeoisie, which owned the means of production, and the proletariat, which owned nothing. Thus capitalist society—that is, the society in which the bourgeoisie held the dominant position—was formed. In the view of Marx and Engels, the emergence of the bourgeoisie and the formation of capitalist society were both inevitable results of the development of human society. Although their appearance carried an inherently exploitative nature, “the bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.”

马克思和恩格斯在《共产党宣言》中科学分析了资产阶级的产生和资本主义社会的形成，他们指出：“从中世纪的农奴中产生了初期城市的城关市民；从这个市民等级中发展出最初的资产阶级分子。”在欧洲的封建社会晚期，部分在农村中拥有自由身份的农奴进入城市从事手工业和商业生产，成为早期的城市市民，这些早期市民中的部分行会师傅和商人依靠剥削帮工和学徒完成了早期的资本积累成为资本家，而被剥削的帮工和学徒则成为最初的雇佣工人，资本主义最基本的生产关系得以建立。随着生产力的发展和市场的扩大，机器大工业取代了手工业行会和工场手工业，更多的农民、小工场主和小地主在市场竞争中逐渐失去生产资料成为雇佣工人，工业生产的“中间阶级”趋于消亡，社会财富日益集中到少数大资产阶级手中。此时的社会关系也逐渐简化为两大对立阶级，即占有生产资料的资产阶级和一无所有的无产阶级，而资本主义社会——也就是资产阶级占统治地位的社会——便形成了。在马克思和恩格斯看来，资产阶级的产生和资本主义社会的形成都是人类社会发展的必然结果，尽管它们的出现带有天然的剥削性质，但“资产阶级在历史上曾经起过非常革命的作用”。

*The Communist Manifesto* states: “The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together.” The emergence of capitalism and its mode of production significantly raised the level of development of social productive forces. The prosperity of the capitalist market economy greatly propelled the modernization of human civilization. Capitalist social relations and modes of intercourse continuously destroyed all feudal separatist traditions, forming a completely new world pattern, from which the economic, political, and cultural waves of globalization vigorously flourished. According to the viewpoint of historical materialism, the replacement of feudal relations of ownership by capitalism fully conformed to the laws of social and historical development. However, as capitalism developed to a certain extent, the capitalist mode of production and social system would in turn become fetters on a new, higher social formation. Because the degree of socialization of the capitalist mode of production greatly increased, yet the socialized means of production and the products of labor could not be owned in common by the laborers but were instead controlled by a minority of capitalists, the contradiction between private ownership of the means of production and the socialization of production could never be overcome. This determined that capitalist relations of production would inevitably be replaced by socialist relations of production. As Marx and Engels said, the bourgeois relations of production and exchange, the bourgeois relations of ownership—this modern bourgeois society, which had seemingly conjured up such gigantic means of production and exchange by magic—now resembles the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the underworld he has called up by his spells. That is to say, both the emergence of capitalism and its demise follow the same laws of historical development.

《共产党宣言》中写道：“资产阶级在它的不到一百年的阶级统治中所创造的生产力，比过去一切世代创造的全部生产力还要多，还要大。”资本主义及其生产方式的出现显著提升了社会生产力的发展水平，资本主义市场经济的繁荣极大地推动了人类文明的现代化进程，资本主义的社会关系和交往方式不断摧毁着一切封建割据的传统，形成了全新的世界格局，经济的、政治的、文化的全球化浪潮由此蓬勃兴盛起来。按照唯物史观的观点，封建的所有制关系被资本主义所取代完全符合社会历史的发展规律，但是随着资本主义发展到一定程度，资本主义的生产方式和社会制度也终会成为新的、更高级的社会形态的桎梏。由于资本主义生产方式的社会化程度大大提高，但社会化的生产资料和劳动产品却不能归属劳动者公有，而是被少数资本家把持，导致生产资料私有制和生产社会化之间的矛盾始终无法克服，这决定了资本主义生产关系必然被社会主义生产关系所取代。正如马克思和恩格斯所说，资产阶级的生产关系和交换关系，资产阶级的所有制关系，这个曾经仿佛用法术创造了如此庞大的生产资料和交换手段的现代资产阶级社会，现在像一个个魔法师一样不能再支配自己用法术召唤出来的魔鬼了。也就是说，资本主义的产生和它的灭亡一样，都遵循着相同的历史发展规律。

The Scientific Elucidation of Socialism

对社会主义的科学阐释

The establishment of historical materialism laid an important theoretical foundation for the theory of scientific socialism. *The Communist Manifesto* clearly points out: “The bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.” On the one hand, under the capitalist system of wage labor, the vast social wealth created by the proletariat through labor is, due to private ownership of the means of production, appropriated without compensation by the bourgeoisie. The rate of increase in workers’ wages lags far behind the rate of growth of total social capital, making the impoverishment of the proletariat an unavoidable result. On the other hand, both private ownership of the means of production and the wage-labor system are based on competition among workers. But the technological progress brought by the capitalist mode of production increasingly unites the working class through socialized large-scale production, and the foundation of class rule in capitalist society is thereby destroyed by the capitalist mode of production itself. From this, *The Communist Manifesto* draws the important conclusion that “the fall of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.” This is the basic viewpoint Marx and Engels obtained after applying historical materialism to examine the general laws of human social development and to analyze the specific laws of capitalist social development. As Engels said in the “Preface to the 1883 German Edition of *The Communist Manifesto*”: “The economic production and the structure of society of every historical epoch necessarily resulting therefrom constitute the foundation for the political and intellectual history of that epoch; consequently (ever since the dissolution of the primitive communal ownership of land) all history has been a history of class struggles.”

唯物史观的创立为科学社会主义理论奠定了重要的理论基础，《共产党宣言》明确指出：“资产阶级不仅锻造了置自身于死地的武器；它还产生了将要运用这种武器的人——现代的工人，即无产者。”一方面，在资本主义的雇佣劳动制度下，由无产阶级通过劳动创造出的大量社会财富却由于生产资料私有制而被资产阶级无偿占有，工人劳动报酬的提升速度远远落后于社会总资本的增长速度，无产阶级贫困化成为不可避免的结果；另一方面，生产资料私有制和雇佣劳动制度都是以工人之间的相互竞争作为基础的，但资本主义生产方式带来的工艺进步使工人阶级通过社会化大生产日渐联合起来，资本主义社会阶级统治的根基被资本主义生产方式自行摧毁。由此，《共产党宣言》得出了“资产阶级的灭亡和无产阶级的胜利是同样不可避免的”重要结论，这是马克思和恩格斯运用唯物史观考察人类社会发展的一般规律并剖析资本主义社会发展的特殊规律之后得到的基本观点。如同恩格斯在《〈共产党宣言〉1883年序言》中所说：“每一个时代的经济生产以及必然由此产生的社会结构，是该时代政治的和精神的历史的基础，因此（从原始土地公有制解体以来）全部历史都是阶级斗争的历史。”

*The Communist Manifesto* directly states: “The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” “The first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.” In their view, the sign of the demise of capitalism and the victory of the socialist revolution is the proletariat’s seizure of political power and the complete abolition of private property in the economic sphere, implementing public ownership of the means of production. To this end, *The Communist Manifesto* puts forward the idea of “two radical ruptures”: “The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.” That is to say, only by thoroughly abolishing private property can socialist public ownership be truly established, and only by thoroughly changing the various social consciousnesses—religion, morality, philosophy, political and legal ideas—previously based on private property can new socialist ideological and cultural concepts be truly established. The fundamental social contradiction between productive forces and relations of production, and between the economic base and the superstructure, not only determines the fate of capitalism but also fundamentally constrains the development of socialism. They said: “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” In the future new society, the proletariat will use its political rule to step by step wrest all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., the proletariat organized as the ruling class, and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible. The development of social productive forces will be used to meet the material and cultural needs of all members of society, and the free and comprehensive development of the individual will truly become the value goal of social development.

《共产党宣言》直截了当地指出：“共产党人可以把自己的理论概括为一句话：消灭私有制”，“工人阶级革命的第一步就是使无产阶级上升为统治阶级，争得民主”。在他们看来，资本主义灭亡和社会主义革命胜利的标志是无产阶级在政治上取得政权，并在经济上彻底消灭私有制，实行生产资料公有制。为此，《共产党宣言》提出了“两个决裂”的思想：“共产主义革命就是同传统所有制关系实行最彻底的决裂；毫不奇怪，它在自己的发展进程中要同传统的观念实行最彻底的决裂。”也就是说，只有彻底消灭私有制才能真正建立社会主义公有制，也只有彻底改变以往建立在私有制基础上的宗教、道德、哲学、政治法律观念等各种社会意识，才能真正建立社会主义的新的思想文化观念，生产力与生产关系、经济基础与上层建筑之间的社会基本矛盾不但决定了资本主义的命运，也同样在根本上制约着社会主义的发展。他们说：“代替那存在着阶级和阶级对立的资产阶级旧社会的，将是这样一个联合体，在那里，每个人的自由发展是一切人的自由发展的条件。”在未来的新社会中，无产阶级将利用自己的政治统治，一步一步地夺取资产阶级的全部资本，把一切生产工具集中在国家即组织为统治阶级的无产阶级手里，并且尽可能快地增加生产力的总量，社会生产力的发展将用于满足全体社会成员的物质和文化生活需要，人的自由全面发展真正成为社会发展的价值目标。

The Scientific Prediction of Future Society

对未来社会的科学预测

The reason historical materialism is scientific is precisely that it bases itself on the objective facts and general laws of social history, studies human society as an objective material organism, obtains theoretically verified results, and on this foundation makes scientific predictions about the future development of human society. In Marx and Engels’s view, capital’s self-valorization constitutes the core logic of the capitalist social system; the fundamental characteristic of capitalist society is the boundless expansion of capital; and the universal establishment of the capitalist mode of production and the capital market on a world scale increasingly turns production and consumption activities into global ones. That is to say, the establishment and expansion of the world market in fact becomes the economic base for the continuous development of capitalism, and the trend toward globalization is the inevitable result of the development of capitalist society. The globalization movement centered on the capitalist system destroyed the feudal foundations of traditional society, broke down the barriers to intercourse between regional histories and national histories, inaugurated modern civilization marked by large-scale machine production, and promoted tremendous progress in social productive forces. This positive role will inevitably be absorbed by the future socialist and communist society, and the formation of world history will inevitably become the developmental trend of future society. Although they once emphasized that the relationship between capitalism and socialism/communism is mainly a temporal “succession relationship” of one following the other, rather than a spatial “coexistence relationship” of advancing side by side, and even envisioned that socialism or communism would need to be realized on a world scale, or at least simultaneously in several advanced capitalist countries—which already differs greatly from the globalization process today—the *Communist Manifesto*’s scientific prediction of the global integration of future society still contains correct principles of historical perspective.

唯物史观之所以是科学的，正因为它以社会历史的客观事实和一般规律为依据，把人类社会作为客观的物质有机体加以研究，得到了经过科学验证的理论结果并在此基础上对人类社会的未来发展作出了科学预测。在马克思和恩格斯看来，资本的自我增殖构成了资本主义社会制度的核心逻辑，资本主义社会的根本特征就是资本的无止境扩张，资本主义生产方式和资本市场在世界范围内的普遍建立把生产和消费活动日益变成了全球性的。也就是说，世界市场的建立和扩张事实上成为资本主义不断发展的经济基础，全球化的趋势是资本主义社会发展的必然结果。而以资本主义制度为核心的全球化运动摧毁了传统社会的封建根基，打破了区域史、民族史的交往壁垒，开创了以机器化大生产为标志的现代文明，促进了社会生产力的极大进步，这一积极作用必然会由未来的社会主义和共产主义社会所吸收，世界历史的形成必然成为未来社会的发展趋势。虽然他们曾经一度强调资本主义与社会主义、共产主义的关系主要是一种时间上先行后续的“替代关系”，而非空间上齐头并进的“共存关系”，甚至设想社会主义或共产主义需要在世界范围内共同实现，至少要在多个发达资本主义国家同时实现，这与当今的全球化进程已经有了很大的不同，但《共产党宣言》对未来社会全球一体化的科学预测依然包含着正确的历史观原则。

First, Marx and Engels regarded science and technology as a revolutionary force driving social progress, emphasizing that after the victory of the socialist revolution, productive forces must be vigorously developed, and that the tremendous growth and high development of productive forces is an absolutely necessary practical prerequisite for establishing a new socialist society, because under conditions of extreme poverty, the struggle for necessities must begin anew. Second, Marx and Engels consistently held that the future society would implement public ownership of the means of production and carry out planned organization of production, i.e., “deprive private capitalists of their control over all productive forces and means of exchange, as well as their control over the exchange and distribution of products,” and “manage all this according to a plan drawn up based on actual resources and the needs of the whole society.” Third, Marx and Engels clearly pointed out that socialism must surpass capitalism not only economically but also politically; the future society will realize genuine democratic politics, eliminate the major social differences between town and country, agriculture and industry, mental and manual labor, and achieve common prosperity. Fourth, the “Ten-Point Program” [1]1 The “Ten-Point Program” refers to the ten measures for the transition to communism listed in Section II of the *Communist Manifesto*, including the abolition of landed property, a heavy progressive or graduated income tax, and the centralization of credit and communication in the hands of the state. proposed by Marx and Engels in the *Communist Manifesto* implies the continuous change and development of the future society in stages, emphasizing that transforming the old capitalist relations of production and establishing new communist relations of production is a process that must pass through many different stages of development. Finally, the idea of “two radical breaks” [2]2 The “two radical breaks” refers to the *Communist Manifesto*’s statement that “the Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.” in the *Communist Manifesto* contains a path for cultural-ethical progress in cultivating a new culture in the new society. The formulation of this series of basic principles for scientifically predicting future society using historical materialism makes the *Communist Manifesto*, as Marx and Engels said in the 1872 German edition preface, “the general principles set forth in this Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever.”

首先，马克思和恩格斯把科学技术视为推动社会进步的革命力量，强调社会主义革命胜利后必须大力发展生产力，认为生产力的巨大增长和高度发展是建立社会主义新社会的绝对必需的实际前提，因为在极端贫困的情况下，必须重新开始争取必需品的斗争。其次，马克思和恩格斯一贯认为未来社会将实行生产资料公有制，并进行有计划的组织生产，即“剥夺私人资本家对一切生产力和交换手段的支配权以及他们对产品的交换和分配权”，“按照实有资源和整个社会需要而制定的计划来管理这一切”。再次，马克思和恩格斯明确指出社会主义不仅要在经济上还要在政治上超越资本主义，未来社会将实现真正的民主政治，并消灭城乡、农工、脑力、体力之间的重大社会差别，实现共同富裕。复次，马克思和恩格斯在《共产党宣言》中提出的“十大纲领”蕴含着未来社会阶段性的不断变化和发展，强调改造旧的资本主义生产关系、建立新的共产主义生产关系是一个过程，要经历诸多不同的发展阶段。最后，《共产党宣言》中的“两个决裂”思想包含着未来新社会培育新文化的思想文化建设路径。这一系列运用唯物史观科学预测未来社会的基本原则的提出，使得《共产党宣言》就像马克思和恩格斯在1872年德文版序言中所说：“这个《宣言》中所阐述的一般原理整个说来直到现在还是完全正确的。”

The Scientific Revelation of Historical Laws

对历史规律的科学揭示

Although when writing the *Communist Manifesto* the critique of Marxist political economy had not yet been completed, and the depth of Marx and Engels’s summary and application of the basic principles of historical materialism could not yet reach the completeness found in *Capital* and *The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State*, the basic content of historical materialism had already been established. Among this, the paradigm of combining the basic principles of historical materialism with class struggle to conduct historical analysis of human society possesses distinct theoretical features and historical value. The *Communist Manifesto* is mainly based on the perspective of class struggle, revealing the direct forms of expression of the basic contradictions between productive forces and relations of production, and between economic base and superstructure, in class society. Through the contradictory relationship between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, it scientifically expounds and demonstrates the general laws of the development of human society, and lays a solid and reliable historical foundation for the highly condensed formulation of the basic principles of historical materialism. Precisely on the basis of the successful attempt of the *Communist Manifesto* to scientifically verify historical materialism, Marx arrived at the classic exposition of the basic principles of historical materialism in the “Preface to *A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy*”: “In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.”

虽然在写作《共产党宣言》时，马克思主义政治经济学批判尚未完成，马克思和恩格斯对唯物史观基本原理进行概括和运用的深度也还无法达到《资本论》和《家庭、私有制和国家的起源》中的完整程度，但此时唯物史观的基本内容已经确立，其中将唯物史观基本原理与阶级斗争相结合对人类社会进行历史分析的范式亦具有鲜明的理论特征和历史价值。《共产党宣言》主要立足于阶级斗争的视角，揭示了生产力与生产关系、经济基础与上层建筑之间的基本矛盾在阶级社会中的直接表现形式，通过无产阶级与资产阶级之间的矛盾关系科学阐述并论证了人类社会发展的一般规律，并为唯物史观基本原理的高度凝练奠定了扎实可靠的史学基础。正是基于《共产党宣言》对唯物史观进行科学验证的成功尝试，马克思才在《〈政治经济学批判〉序言》中得出了对唯物史观基本原理的经典论述：“人们在自己生活的社会生产中发生一定的、必然的、不以他们的意志为转移的关系，即同他们的物质生产力的一定发展阶段相适合的生产关系。这些生产关系的总和构成社会的经济结构，即有法律的和政治的上层建筑竖立其上并有一定的社会意识形式与之相适应的现实基础。物质生活的生产方式制约着整个社会生活、政治生活和精神生活的过程。不是人们的意识决定人们的存在，相反，是人们的社会存在决定人们的意识。社会的物质生产力发展到一定阶段，便同它们一直在其中运动的现存生产关系或财产关系（这只是生产关系的法律用语）发生矛盾。于是这些生产关系便由生产力的发展形式变成生产力的桎梏。那时社会革命的时代就到来了。随着经济基础的变革，全部庞大的上层建筑也或慢或快地发生变革。”

Online Editor: Paul

网络编辑：保罗