the old revolutionary tactic, and
in these last years a new tactic has arisen. Therein lies all the
change.[14]

The Manifesto was designed for nothing else than the first guiding
thread to a science and a practice which nothing but experience and time
could develop. It gives only the scheme and the rhythm of the general
march of the proletarian movement.

It is perfectly evident that the communists were influenced by the
experience of the two movements which they had before their eyes, that
of France, and especially the Chartist movement which the manifestation
of April 10th was soon to strike with paralysis. But this scheme does
not fix in any invariable fashion a tactic of war, which indeed had
already been made frequently. The revolutionists had often indeed
explained in the form of catechism what ought to be a simple consequence
of the development of events.

This scheme became more vast and complex with the development and
extension of the bourgeois system. The rhythm of the movement has become
more varied and slower because the laboring mass has entered on the
scene as a distinct, political party, which fact changes the manner and
the measure of their action and consequently their movement.

Just as in view of the improvement of modern weapons the tactic of
street riots has become inopportune, and just as the complexity of the
modern state shows the insufficiency of a sudden capture of a municipal
government to impose upon a whole people the will and the ideas of a
minority, no matter how courageous and progressive, even so, on its
side, the mass of the proletarians no longer holds to the word of
command of a few leaders, nor does it regulate its movements by the
instructions of captains who might upon the ruins of one government
raise up another. The laboring mass where it has developed politically
has made and is making its own democratic education. It is choosing its
representatives and submitting their action to its criticism. It
examines and makes its own the ideas and the propositions which these
representatives submit to it. It already knows, or it begins to
understand according to the situation in the various countries, that the
conquest of the political power cannot and should not be made by others
in its name, and especially that it cannot be the consequence of a
single blow. In a word it knows, or it is beginning to understand that
the dictatorship of the proletariat which shall have for its tas