bourgeois property. But
modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete
expression of the system of producing and appropriating products,
that is based on class antagonism, on the exploitation of the many
by the few.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the
single sentence: Abolition of private property.

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing
the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man's
own labor, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all
personal freedom, activity and independence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the
property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of
property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to
abolish that; the development of industry has, to a great extent,
already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.

Or do you mean modern bourgeois private property?

But does wage-labor create any property for the laborer? Not a bit.
It creates capital, i. e., that kind of property which exploits
wage-labor, and which cannot increase except upon condition of
getting a new supply of wage-labor for fresh exploitation.
Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of
capital and wage-labor. Let us examine both sides of this
antagonism.

To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a
social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and
only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort,
only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set
in motion.

Capital is therefore not a personal, it is a social power.

When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into
the property of all members of society, personal property is not
thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social
character of the property that is changed. It loses its
class-character.

Let us now take wage-labor:

The average price of wage-labor is the minimum wage, i. e., that
quantum of the means of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite
to keep the laborer in bare existence, as his labor merely suffices
to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to