“Communists have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. Their theoretical conclusions are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer. They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes.” Why is all recorded history “the history of class struggles”? Why is the capitalist state “but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie”? Why does capital’s need of a constantly expanding market “chase the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe”? Why is “the proletarian movement the self-conscious movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority”? Why does the fight “for the proletariat organized as the ruling class” open the only way forward for humanity? These questions—addressed by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in the historic program of the first modern communist workers organization—remain as vital today as they were more than a century and a half ago.
