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convinced of the insufficiency of a mere political revolution, and had proclaimed the necessity of a total social change, that portion, then, called itself 'communist.' … Socialism was, in 1847, 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 beginning, was that 'the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself,' there could be no doubt as to which of the two names we must take."
In this preface, Engels restates the materialist conception of history, the fundamental proposition which forms the nucleus of the Manifesto. The essence of the theory is that the prevailing mode of production and exchange determines the prevailing type of social organisation. The political and intellectual history of any epoch is built up upon an economic foundation, and can only be understood in reference to that foundation. So long as production and distribution were communist, there were no classes, and consequently there was no class struggle. Since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, when land was held in common ownership, the methods of production and distribution—successively based upon slave-owning, feudalism, guildism, and capitalism—have always involved the separation of society into exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed, classes. Thus from the days of primitive communism to our own, the whole history of mankind has been a history of class struggles. To-day a stage of social evolution has been reached wherein the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) cannot achieve 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 distinctions, and class struggles. Such will be the result of the return to communism upon a higher plane.
In the joint preface to the German edition of 1872, Marx and Engels had written (influenced by the recent defeat of the Paris Commune, by the conflict with Bakunin and the other anarchists, by the impending collapse of the International, and by the "constitutional" trend of the organised labour movement): "However much the 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 to-day as ever. … The practical application of the principles will depend … 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 to-day. In view of the gigantic strides of modern industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and extended organisation of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February revolution [Paris, 1848], and then, still more, in the Paris Commune [1871], where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some details become antiquated. One thing especially was
