Selected Works of Karl Marx

which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the ‘propertyless’ mass(universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, andfinally has put world-historical, empirically universal individuals in place of local ones. Withoutthis, (1) communism could only exist as a local event; (2) the forces of intercourse themselvescould not have developed as universal, hence intolerable powers: they would have remainedhome-bred conditions surrounded by superstition; and (3) each extension of intercourse wouldabolish local communism. Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominantpeoples ‘all at once’ and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development ofproductive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism. Moreover, the mass ofpropertyless workers - the utterly precarious position of labour - power on a mass scale cut offfrom capital or from even a limited satisfaction and, therefore, no longer merely temporarilydeprived of work itself as a secure source of life - presupposes the world market throughcompetition. The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, itsactivity, can only have a ‘world-historical’ existence. World-historical existence of individualsmeans existence of individuals which is directly linked up with world history.Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality[will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the presentstate of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.In the main we have so far considered only one aspect of human activity, the reshaping ofnature by men. The other aspect, the reshaping of men by men ... [Intercourse and productivepower]Origin of the state and the relation of the state to civil society. ...B. The Illusion of the EpochCivil Society and the Conception of HistoryThe form of intercourse determined by the existing productive forces at all previous historicalstages, and in its turn determining these, is civil society. The latter, as is clear from what wehave said above, has as its premises and basis the simple family and the multiple, the so-calledtribe, the more precise determinants of this society are enumerated in our remarks above.Already here we see how this civil society is the true source and theatre of all history, and howabsurd is the conception of history held hitherto, which neglects the real relationships andconfines itself to high-sounding dramas of princes and states.Civil society embraces the whole material intercourse of individuals within a definite stage ofthe development of productive forces. It embraces the whole commercial and industrial life of agiven stage and, insofar, transcends the State and the nation, though, on the other hand again, itmust assert itself in its foreign relations as nationality, and inwardly must organise itself asState. The word ‘civil society’ [bürgerliche Gesellschaft] emerged in the eighteenth century,when property relationships had already extricated themselves from the ancient and medievalcommunal society. Civil society as such only develops with the bourgeoisie; the socialorganisation evolving directly out of production and commerce, which in all ages forms thebasis of the State and of the rest of the idealistic superstructure, has, however, always beendesignated by the same name.Conclusions from the Materialist Conception of HistoryHistory is nothing but the succession of the separate generations, each of which exploits thematerials, the capital funds, the productive forces handed down to it by all precedinggenerations, and thus, on the one hand, continues the traditional activity in completely changedcircumstances and, on the other, modifies the old circumstances with a completely changedactivity. This can be speculatively distorted so that later history is made the goal of earlierhistory, e.g. the goal ascribed to the discovery of America is to further the eruption of theFrench Revolution. Thereby history receives its own special aims and becomes ‘a person ratingwith other persons’ (to wit: ‘Self-Consciousness, Criticism, the Unique,’ etc.), while what isdesignated with the words ‘destiny,’ ‘goal,’ ‘germ,’ or ‘idea’ of earlier history is nothing more