t the social consciousness of past ages, despite all
the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common
forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the
total disappearance of class antagonisms.

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.

But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.

We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working
class is to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class;
to win the battle of democracy.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees,
all capital from the bourgeoisie; to centralize all instruments of
production in the hands of the State, _i.e._, of the proletariat
organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive
forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning this cannot be effected except by means of
despotic inroads on the rights of property and on the conditions of
bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear
economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of
the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the
old social order and are unavoidable as a means of entirely
revolutionizing the mode of production.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless in the most advanced countries the following will be
pretty generally applicable:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land
to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a
national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the
hands of the State.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the
State; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the
improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial
armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries: gradual
abolition of the distinctio