4-5 pages essay, include those books. 

VirginiaWoolf

A Room of One’s Own (1929)

ONE

But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction—what has that got to do
with a room of one’s own? I will try to explain. When you asked me to speak about women
and fiction I sat down on the banks of a river and began to wonder what the words meant.
They might mean simply a few remarks about Fanny Burney; a few more about Jane Austen;
a tribute to the Brontës and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow; some witticisms if
possible about Miss Mitford; a respectful allusion to George Eliot; a reference to Mrs Gaskell
and one would have done. But at second sight the words seemed not so simple. The title
women and fiction might mean, and you may have meant it to mean, women and what they
are like; or it might mean women and the fiction that they write; or it might mean women and
the fiction that is written about them; or it might mean that somehow all three are inextricably
mixed together and you want me to consider them in that light. But when I began to consider
the subject in this last way, which seemed the most interesting, I soon saw that it had one fatal
drawback. I should never be able to come to a conclusion. I should never be able to fulfil what
is, I understand, the first duty of a lecturer—to hand you after an hour’s discourse a nugget of
pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece for
ever. All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point—a woman must have
money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the
great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved. I have
shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon these two questions—women and fiction
remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems. But in order to make some amends I am
going to do what I can to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the
money. I am going to develop in your presence as fully and freely as I can the train of thought
which led me to think this. Perhaps if I lay bare the ideas, the prejudices, that lie behind this
statement you will find that they have some bearing upon women and some upon fiction. At
any rate, when a subject is highly controversial—and any question about sex is that—one
cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one
does hold. One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as
they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker. Fiction here is

likely to contain more truth than fact. Therefore I propose, making use of all the liberties and
licences of a novelist, to tell you the story of the two days that preceded my coming here—
how, bowed down by the weight of the subject which you have laid upon my shoulders, I
pondered it, and made it work in and out of my daily life. I need not say that what I am about
to describe has no existence; Oxbridge is an invention; so is Fernham; ‘I’ is only a convenient
term for somebody who has no real being. Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps
be some truth mixed up with them; it is for you to seek out this truth and to decide whether
any part of it is worth keeping. If not, you will of course throw the whole of it into the
wastepaper basket and forget all about it.

Here then was I (call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you
please—it is not a matter of any importance) sitting on the banks of a river a week or two ago
in fine October weather, lost in thought. That collar I have spoken of, women and fiction, the
need of coming to some conclusion on a subject that raises all sorts of prejudices and
passions, bowed my head to the ground. To the right and left bushes of some sort, golden and
crimson, glowed with the colour, even it seemed burnt with the heat, of fire. On the further
bank the willows wept in perpetual lamentation, their hair about their shoulders. The river
reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree, and when the undergraduate
had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, completely, as if he had never
been. There one might have sat the clock round lost in thought. Thought—to call it by a
prouder name than it deserved—had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after
minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and
sink it, until—you know the little tug—the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of
one’s line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on
the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good
fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking
and eating. I will not trouble you with that thought now, though if you look carefully you may
find it for yourselves in the course of what I am going to say.

But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind—put back
into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and important; and as it darted and sank, and
flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit
still. It was thus that I found myself walking with extreme rapidity across a grass plot.
Instantly a man’s figure rose to intercept me. Nor did I at first understand that the
gesticulations of a curious-looking object, in a cut-away coat and evening shirt, were aimed at
me. His face expressed horror and indignation. Instinct rather than reason came to my help; he
was a Beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and

Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me. Such thoughts were the work of a
moment. As I regained the path the arms of the Beadle sank, his face assumed its usual
repose, and though turf is better walking than gravel, no very great harm was done. The only
charge I could bring against the Fellows and Scholars of whatever the college might happen
to be was that in protection of their turf, which has been rolled for 300 years in succession,
they had sent my little fish into hiding.

What idea it had been that had sent me so audaciously trespassing I could not now remember.
The spirit of peace descended like a cloud from heaven, for if the spirit of peace dwells
anywhere, it is in the courts and quadrangles of Oxbridge on a fine October morning.
Strolling through those colleges past those ancient halls the roughness of the present seemed
smoothed away; the body seemed contained in a miraculous glass cabinet through which no
sound could penetrate, and the mind, freed from any contact with facts (unless one trespassed
on the turf again), was at liberty to settle down upon whatever meditation was in harmony
with the moment. As chance would have it, some stray memory of some old essay about
revisiting Oxbridge in the long vacation brought Charles Lamb to mind—Saint Charles, said
Thackeray, putting a letter of Lamb’s to his forehead. Indeed, among all the dead (I give you
my thoughts as they came to me), Lamb is one of the most congenial; one to whom one would
have liked to say, Tell me then how you wrote your essays? For his essays are superior even
to Max Beerbohm’s, I thought, with all their perfection, because of that wild flash of
imagination, that lightning crack of genius in the middle of them which leaves them flawed
and imperfect, but starred with poetry. Lamb then came to Oxbridge perhaps a hundred years
ago. Certainly he wrote an essay—the name escapes me—about the manuscript of one of
Milton’s poems which he saw here. It was Lycidas perhaps, and Lamb wrote how it shocked
him to think it possible that any word in Lycidas could have been different from what it is. To
think of Milton changing the words in that poem seemed to him a sort of sacrilege. This led
me to remember what I could of Lycidas and to amuse myself with guessing which word it
could have been that Milton had altered, and why. It then occurred to me that the very
manuscript itself which Lamb had looked at was only a few hundred yards away, so that one
could follow Lamb’s footsteps across the quadrangle to that famous library where the treasure
is kept. Moreover, I recollected, as I put this plan into execution, it is in this famous library
that the manuscript of Thackeray’s Esmond is also preserved. The critics often say that
Esmond is Thackeray’s most perfect novel. But the affectation of the style, with its imitation
of the eighteenth century, hampers one, so far as I can remember; unless indeed the
eighteenth-century style was natural to Thackeray—a fact that one might prove by looking at
the manuscript and seeing whether the alterations were for the benefit of the style or of the

sense. But then one would have to decide what is style and what is meaning, a question
which—but here I was actually at the door which leads into the library itself. I must have
opened it, for instantly there issued, like a guardian angel barring the way with a flutter of
black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in
a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied
by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction.

That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete indifference to a
famous library. Venerable and calm, with all its treasures safe locked within its breast, it
sleeps complacently and will, so far as I am concerned, so sleep for ever. Never will I wake
those echoes, never will I ask for that hospitality again, I vowed as I descended the steps in
anger. Still an hour remained before luncheon, and what was one to do? Stroll on the
meadows? sit by the river? Certainly it was a lovely autumn morning; the leaves were
fluttering red to the ground; there was no great hardship in doing either. But the sound of
music reached my ear. Some service or celebration was going forward. The organ complained
magnificently as I passed the chapel door. Even the sorrow of Christianity sounded in that
serene air more like the recollection of sorrow than sorrow itself; even the groanings of the
ancient organ seemed lapped in peace. I had no wish to enter had I the right, and this time the
verger might have stopped me, demanding perhaps my baptismal certificate, or a letter of
introduction from the Dean. But the outside of these magnificent buildings is often as
beautiful as the inside. Moreover, it was amusing enough to watch the congregation
assembling, coming in and going out again, busying themselves at the door of the chapel like
bees at the mouth of a hive. Many were in cap and gown; some had tufts of fur on their
shoulders; others were wheeled in bath-chairs; others, though not past middle age, seemed
creased and crushed into shapes so singular that one was reminded of those giant crabs and
crayfish who heave with difficulty across the sand of an aquarium. As I leant against the wall
the University indeed seemed a sanctuary in which are preserved rare types which would soon
be obsolete if left to fight for existence on the pavement of the Strand. Old stories of old
deans and old dons came back to mind, but before I had summoned up courage to whistle—it
used to be said that at the sound of a whistle old Professor —— instantly broke into a
gallop—the venerable congregation had gone inside. The outside of the chapel remained. As
you know, its high domes and pinnacles can be seen, like a sailing-ship always voyaging
never arriving, lit up at night and visible for miles, far away across the hills. Once,
presumably, this quadrangle with its smooth lawns, its massive buildings and the chapel itself
was marsh too, where the grasses waved and the swine rootled. Teams of horses and oxen, I
thought, must have hauled the stone in wagons from far countries, and then with infinite

labour the grey blocks in whose shade I was now standing were poised in order one on top of
another, and then the painters brought their glass for the windows, and the masons were busy
for centuries up on that roof with putty and cement, spade and trowel. Every Saturday
somebody must have poured gold and silver out of a leathern purse into their ancient fists, for
they had their beer and skittles presumably of an evening. An unending stream of gold and
silver, I thought, must have flowed into this court perpetually to keep the stones coming and
the masons working; to level, to ditch, to dig and to drain. But it was then the age of faith, and
money was poured liberally to set these stones on a deep foundation, and when the stones
were raised, still more money was poured in from the coffers of kings and queens and great
nobles to ensure that hymns should be sung here and scholars taught. Lands were granted;
tithes were paid. And when the age of faith was over and the age of reason had come, still the
same flow of gold and silver went on; fellowships were founded; lectureships endowed; only
the gold and silver flowed now, not from the coffers of the king, but from the chests of
merchants and manufacturers, from the purses of men who had made, say, a fortune from
industry, and returned, in their wills, a bounteous share of it to endow more chairs, more
lectureships, more fellowships in the university where they had learnt their craft. Hence the
libraries and laboratories; the observatories; the splendid equipment of costly and delicate
instruments which now stands on glass shelves, where centuries ago the grasses waved and
the swine rootled. Certainly, as I strolled round the court, the foundation of gold and silver
seemed deep enough; the pavement laid solidly over the wild grasses. Men with trays on their
heads went busily from staircase to staircase. Gaudy blossoms flowered in window-boxes.
The strains of the gramophone blared out from the rooms within. It was impossible not to
reflect—the reflection whatever it may have been was cut short. The clock struck. It was time
to find one’s way to luncheon.

It is a curious fact that novelists have a way of making us believe that luncheon parties are
invariably memorable for something very witty that was said, or for something very wise that
was done. But they seldom spare a word for what was eaten. It is part of the novelist’s
convention not to mention soup and salmon and ducklings, as if soup and salmon and
ducklings were of no importance whatsoever, as if nobody ever smoked a cigar or drank a
glass of wine. Here, however, I shall take the liberty to defy that convention and to tell you
that the lunch on this occasion began with soles, sunk in a deep dish, over which the college
cook had spread a counterpane of the whitest cream, save that it was branded here and there
with brown spots like the spots on the flanks of a doe. After that came the partridges, but if
this suggests a couple of bald, brown birds on a plate you are mistaken. The partridges, many
and various, came with all their retinue of sauces and salads, the sharp and the sweet, each in

its order; their potatoes, thin as coins but not so hard; their sprouts, foliated as rosebuds but
more succulent. And no sooner had the roast and its retinue been done with than the silent
serving-man, the Beadle himself perhaps in a milder manifestation, set before us, wreathed in
napkins, a confection which rose all sugar from the waves. To call it pudding and so relate it
to rice and tapioca would be an insult. Meanwhile the wineglasses had flushed yellow and
flushed crimson; had been emptied; had been filled. And thus by degrees was lit, halfway
down the spine, which is the seat of the soul, not that hard little electric light which we call
brilliance, as it pops in and out upon our lips, but the more profound, subtle and subterranean
glow, which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse. No need to hurry. No need to
sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. We are all going to heaven and Vandyck is of the
company—in other words, how good life seemed, how sweet its rewards, how trivial this
grudge or that grievance, how admirable friendship and the society of one’s kind, as, lighting
a good cigarette, one sunk among the cushions in the window-seat.

If by good luck there had been an ash-tray handy, if one had not knocked the ash out of the
window in default, if things had been a little different from what they were, one would not
have seen, presumably, a cat without a tail. The sight of that abrupt and truncated animal
padding softly across the quadrangle changed by some fluke of the subconscious intelligence
the emotional light for me. It was as if some one had let fall a shade. Perhaps the excellent
hock was relinquishing its hold. Certainly, as I watched the Manx cat pause in the middle of
the lawn as if it too questioned the universe, something seemed lacking, something seemed
different. But what was lacking, what was different, I asked myself, listening to the talk? And
to answer that question I had to think myself out of the room, back into the past, before the
war indeed, and to set before my eyes the model of another luncheon party held in rooms not
very far distant from these; but different. Everything was different. Meanwhile the talk went
on among the guests, who were many and young, some of this sex, some of that; it went on
swimmingly, it went on agreeably, freely, amusingly. And as it went on I set it against the
background of that other talk, and as I matched the two together I had no doubt that one was
the descendant, the legitimate heir of the other. Nothing was changed; nothing was different
save only—here I listened with all my ears not entirely to what was being said, but to the
murmur or current behind it. Yes, that was it—the change was there. Before the war at a
luncheon party like this people would have said precisely the same things but they would
have sounded different, because in those days they were accompanied by a sort of humming
noise, not articulate, but musical, exciting, which changed the value of the words themselves.
Could one set that humming noise to words? Perhaps with the help of the poets one could. A

book lay beside me and, opening it, I turned casually enough to Tennyson. And here I found
Tennyson was singing:

There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, ‘She is near, she is near’;
And the white rose weeps, ‘She is late’;
The larkspur listens, ‘I hear, I hear’;
And the lily whispers, ‘I wait.’

Was that what men hummed at luncheon parties before the war? And the women?

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;
My heart is like an apple tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit,
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.

Was that what women hummed at luncheon parties before the war?

There was something so ludicrous in thinking of people humming such things even under
their breath at luncheon parties before the war that I burst out laughing, and had to explain my
laughter by pointing at the Manx cat, who did look a little absurd, poor beast, without a tail, in
the middle of the lawn. Was he really born so, or had he lost his tail in an accident? The
tailless cat, though some are said to exist in the Isle of Man, is rarer than one thinks. It is a
queer animal, quaint rather than beautiful. It is strange what a difference a tail makes—you
know the sort of things one says as a lunch party breaks up and people are finding their coats
and hats.

This one, thanks to the hospitality of the host, had lasted far into the afternoon. The beautiful
October day was fading and the leaves were falling from the trees in the avenue as I walked
through it. Gate after gate seemed to close with gentle finality behind me. Innumerable
beadles were fitting innumerable keys into well-oiled locks; the treasure-house was being

made secure for another night. After the avenue one comes out upon a road—I forget its
name—which leads you, if you take the right turning, along to Fernham. But there was plenty
of time. Dinner was not till half-past seven. One could almost do without dinner after such a
luncheon. It is strange how a scrap of poetry works in the mind and makes the legs move in
time to it along the road. Those words——

There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear——

sang in my blood as I stepped quickly along towards Headingley. And then, switching off into
the other measure, I sang, where the waters are churned up by the weir:

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;
My heart is like an apple tree . . .

What poets, I cried aloud, as one does in the dusk, what poets they were!

In a sort of jealousy, I suppose, for our own age, silly and absurd though these comparisons
are, I went on to wonder if honestly one could name two living poets now as great as
Tennyson and Christina Rossetti were then. Obviously it is impossible, I thought, looking into
those foaming waters, to compare them. The very reason why that poetry excites one to such
abandonment, such rapture, is that it celebrates some feeling that one used to have (at
luncheon parties before the war perhaps), so that one responds easily, familiarly, without
troubling to check the feeling, or to compare it with any that one has now. But the living poets
express a feeling that is actually being made and torn out of us at the moment. One does not
recognize it in the first place; often for some reason one fears it; one watches it with keenness
and compares it jealously and suspiciously with the old feeling that one knew. Hence the
difficulty of modern poetry; and it is because of this difficulty that one cannot remember more
than two consecutive lines of any good modern poet. For this reason—that my memory failed
me—the argument flagged for want of material. But why, I continued, moving on towards
Headingley, have we stopped humming under our breath at luncheon parties? Why has Alfred
ceased to sing

She is coming, my dove, my dear?

Why has Christina ceased to respond

My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me?

Shall we lay the blame on the war? When the guns fired in August 1914, did the faces of men
and women show so plain in each other’s eyes that romance was killed? Certainly it was a
shock (to women in particular with their illusions about education, and so on) to see the faces
of our rulers in the light of the shell-fire. So ugly they looked—German, English, French—so
stupid. But lay the blame where one will, on whom one will, the illusion which inspired
Tennyson and Christina Rossetti to sing so passionately about the coming of their loves is far
rarer now than then. One has only to read, to look, to listen, to remember. But why say
‘blame’? Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed
illusion and put truth in its place? For truth . . . those dots mark the spot where, in search of
truth, I missed the turning up to Fernham. Yes indeed, which was truth and which was
illusion, I asked myself. What was the truth about these houses, for example, dim and festive
now with their red windows in the dusk, but raw and red and squalid, with their sweets and
their bootlaces, at nine o’clock in the morning? And the willows and the river and the gardens
that run down to the river, vague now with the mist stealing over them, but gold and red in the
sunlight—which was the truth, which was the illusion about them? I spare you the twists and
turns of my cogitations, for no conclusion was found on the road to Headingley, and I ask you
to suppose that I soon found out my mistake about the turning and retraced my steps to
Fernham.

As I have said already that it was an October day, I dare not forfeit your respect and imperil
the fair name of fiction by changing the season and describing lilacs hanging over garden
walls, crocuses, tulips and other flowers of spring. Fiction must stick to facts, and the truer the
facts the better the fiction—so we are told. Therefore it was still autumn and the leaves were
still yellow and falling, if anything, a little faster than before, because it was now evening
(seven twenty-three to be precise) and a breeze (from the southwest to be exact) had risen.
But for all that there was something odd at work:

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;
My heart is like an apple tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit—

perhaps the words of Christina Rossetti were partly responsible for the folly of the fancy—it
was nothing of course but a fancy—that the lilac was shaking its flowers over the garden

walls, and the brimstone butterflies were scudding hither and thither, and the dust of the
pollen was in the air. A wind blew, from what quarter I know not, but it lifted the half-grown
leaves so that there was a flash of silver grey in the air. It was the time between the lights
when colours undergo their intensification and purples and golds burn in window-panes like
the beat of an excitable heart; when for some reason the beauty of the world revealed and yet
soon to perish (here I pushed into the garden, for, unwisely, the door was left open and no
beadles seemed about), the beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one
of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. The gardens of Fernham lay before me
in the spring twilight, wild and open, and in the long grass, sprinkled and carelessly flung,
were daffodils and bluebells, not orderly perhaps at the best of times, and now wind-blown
and waving as they tugged at their roots. The windows of the building, curved like ships’
windows among generous waves of red brick, changed from lemon to silver under the flight
of the quick spring clouds. Somebody was in a hammock, somebody, but in this light they
were phantoms only, half guessed, half seen, raced across the grass—would no one stop
her?—and then on the terrace, as if popping out to breathe the air, to glance at the garden,
came a bent figure, formidable yet humble, with her great forehead and her shabby dress—
could it be the famous scholar, could it be J—— H—— herself? All was dim, yet intense too,
as if the scarf which the dusk had flung over the garden were torn asunder by star or sword—
the flash of some terrible reality leaping, as its way is, out of the heart of the spring. For
youth——

Here was my soup. Dinner was being served in the great dining-hall. Far from being spring it
was in fact an evening in October. Everybody was assembled in the big dining-room. Dinner
was ready. Here was the soup. It was a plain gravy soup. There was nothing to stir the fancy
in that. One could have seen through the transparent liquid any pattern that there might have
been on the plate itself. But there was no pattern. The plate was plain. Next came beef with its
attendant greens and potatoes—a homely trinity, suggesting the rumps of cattle in a muddy
market, and sprouts curled and yellowed at the edge, and bargaining and cheapening, and
women with string bags on Monday morning. There was no reason to complain of human
nature’s daily food, seeing that the supply was sufficient and coal-miners doubtless were
sitting down to less. Prunes and custard followed. And if any one complains that prunes, even
when mitigated by custard, are an uncharitable vegetable (fruit they are not), stringy as a
miser’s heart and exuding a fluid such as might run in misers’ veins who have denied
themselves wine and warmth for eighty years and yet not given to the poor, he should reflect
that there are people whose charity embraces even the prune. Biscuits and cheese came next,
and here the water-jug was liberally passed round, for it is the nature of biscuits to be dry, and

these were biscuits to the core. That was all. The meal was over. Everybody scraped their
chairs back; the swing-doors swung violently to and fro; soon the hall was emptied of every
sign of food and made ready no doubt for breakfast next morning. Down corridors and up
staircases the youth of England went banging and singing. And was it for a guest, a stranger
(for I had no more right here in Fernham than in Trinity or Somerville or Girton or Newnham
or Christchurch), to say, ‘The dinner was not good,’ or to say (we were now, Mary Seton and
I, in her sitting-room), ‘Could we not have dined up here alone?’ for if I had said anything of
the kind I should have been prying and searching into the secret economies of a house which
to the stranger wears so fine a front of gaiety and courage. No, one could say nothing of the
sort. Indeed, conversation for a moment flagged. The human frame being what it is, heart,
body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be
no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One
cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. The lamp in the spine does
not light on beef and prunes. We are all probably going to heaven, and Vandyck is, we hope,
to meet us round the next corner—that is the dubious and qualifying state of mind that beef
and prunes at the end of the day’s work breed between them. Happily my friend, who taught
science, had a cupboard where there was a squat bottle and little glasses—(but there should
have been sole and partridge to begin with)—so that we were able to draw up to the fire and
repair some of the damages of the day’s living. In a minute or so we were slipping freely in
and out among all those objects of curiosity and interest which form in the mind in the
absence of a particular person, and are naturally to be discussed on coming together again—
how somebody has married, another has not; one thinks this, another that; one has improved
out of all knowledge, the other most amazingly gone to the bad—with all those speculations
upon human nature and the character of the amazing world we live in which spring naturally
from such beginnings. While these things were being said, however, I became shamefacedly
aware of a current setting in of its own accord and carrying everything forward to an end of its
own. One might be talking of Spain or Portugal, of book or racehorse, but the real interest of
whatever was said was none of those things, but a scene of masons on a high roof some five
centuries ago. Kings and nobles brought treasure in huge sacks and poured it under the earth.
This scene was for ever coming alive in my mind and placing itself by another of lean cows
and a muddy market and withered greens and the stringy hearts of old men—these two
pictures, disjointed and disconnected and nonsensical as they were, were for ever coming
together and combating each other and had me entirely at their mercy. The best course, unless
the whole talk was to be distorted, was to expose what was in my mind to the air, when with
good luck it would fade and crumble like the head of the dead king when they opened the
coffin at Windsor. Briefly, then, I told Miss Seton about the masons who had been all those

years on the roof of the chapel, and about the kings and queens and nobles bearing sacks of
gold and silver on their shoulders, which they shovelled into the earth; and then how the great
financial magnates of our own time came and laid cheques and bonds, I suppose, where the
others had laid ingots and rough lumps of gold. All that lies beneath the colleges down there, I
said; but this college, where we are now sitting, what lies beneath its gallant red brick and the
wild unkempt grasses of the garden? What force is behind that plain china off which we
dined, and (here it popped out of my mouth before I could stop it) the beef, the custard and
the prunes?

Well, said Mary Seton, about the year 1860—Oh, but you know the story, she said, bored, I
suppose, by the recital. And she told me—rooms were hired. Committees met. Envelopes
were addressed. Circulars were drawn up. Meetings were held; letters were read out; so-and-
so has promised so much; on the contrary, Mr —— won’t give a penny. The Saturday Review
has been very rude. How can we raise a fund to pay for offices? Shall we hold a bazaar? Can’t
we find a pretty girl to sit in the front row? Let us look up what John Stuart Mill said on the
subject. Can anyone persuade the editor of the —— to print a letter? Can we get Lady —— to
sign it? Lady —— is out of town. That was the way it was done, presumably, sixty years ago,
and it was a prodigious effort, and a great deal of time was spent on it. And it was only after a
long struggle and with the utmost difficulty that they got thirty thousand pounds together.1 So
obviously we cannot have wine and partridges and servants carrying tin dishes on their heads,
she said. We cannot have sofas and separate rooms. ‘The amenities,’ she said, quoting from
some book or other, ‘will have to wait.’2

At the thought of all those women working year after year and finding it hard to get two
thousand pounds together, and as much as they could do to get thirty thousand pounds, we
burst out in scorn at the reprehensible poverty of our sex. What had our mothers been doing
then that they had no wealth to leave us? Powdering their noses? Looking in at shop
windows? Flaunting in the sun at Monte Carlo? There were some photographs on the mantel-
piece. Mary’s mother—if that was her picture—may have been a wastrel in her spare time
(she had thirteen children by a minister of the church), but if so her gay and dissipated life had
left too few traces of its pleasures on her face. She was a homely body; an old lady in a plaid
shawl which was fastened by a large cameo; and she sat in a basket-chair, encouraging a

1 ‘We are told that we ought to ask for £30,000 at least. . . . It is not a large sum, considering that there is to be
but one college of this sort for Great Britain, Ireland and the Colonies, and considering how easy it is to raise
immense sums for boys’ schools. But considering how few people really wish women to be educated, it is a
good deal.’— LADY STEPHEN, Life of Miss Emily Davies.
2 Every penny which could be scraped together was set aside for building, and the amenities had to be
postponed. — R. STRACHEY, The Cause.

spaniel to look at the camera, with the amused, yet strained expression of one who is sure that
the dog will move directly the bulb is pressed. Now if she had gone into business; had become
a manufacturer of artificial silk or a magnate on the Stock Exchange; if she had left two or
three hundred thousand pounds to Fernham, we could have been sitting at our ease tonight
and the subject of our talk might have been archaeology, botany, anthropology, physics, the
nature of the atom, mathematics, astronomy, relativity, geography. If only Mrs Seton and her
mother and her mother before her had learnt the great art of making money and had left their
money, like their fathers and their grandfathers before them, to found fellowships and
lectureships and prizes and scholarships appropriated to the use of their own sex, we might
have dined very tolerably up here alone off a bird and a bottle of wine; we might have looked
forward without undue confidence to a pleasant and honourable lifetime spent in the shelter of
one of the liberally endowed professions. We might have been exploring or writing; mooning
about the venerable places of the earth; sitting contemplative on the steps of the Parthenon, or
going at ten to an office and coming home comfortably at half-past four to write a little
poetry. Only, if Mrs Seton and her like had gone into business at the age of fifteen, there
would have been—that was the snag in the argument—no Mary. What, I asked, did Mary
think of that? There between the curtains was the October night, calm and lovely, with a star
or two caught in the yellowing trees. Was she ready to resign her share of it and her memories
(for they had been a happy family, though a large one) of games and quarrels up in Scotland,
which she is never tired of praising for the fineness of its air and the quality of its cakes, in
order that Fernham might have been endowed with fifty thousand pounds or so by a stroke of
the pen? For, to endow a college would necessitate the suppression of families altogether.
Making a fortune and bearing thirteen children—no human being could stand it. Consider the
facts, we said. First there are nine months before the baby is born. Then the baby is born.
Then there are three or four months spent in feeding the baby. After the baby is fed there are
certainly five years spent in playing with the baby. You cannot, it seems, let children run
about the streets. People who have seen them running wild in Russia say that the sight is not a
pleasant one. People say, too, that human nature takes its shape in the years between one and
five. If Mrs Seton, I said, had been making money, what sort of memories would you have
had of games and quarrels? What would you have known of Scotland, and its fine air and
cakes and all the rest of it? But it is useless to ask these questions, because you would never
have come into existence at all. Moreover, it is equally useless to ask what might have
happened if Mrs Seton and her mother and her mother before her had amassed great wealth
and laid it under the foundations of college and library, because, in the first place, to earn
money was impossible for them, and in the second, had it been possible, the law denied them
the right to possess what money they earned. It is only for the last forty-eight years that Mrs

Seton has had a penny of her own. For all the centuries before that it would have been her
husband’s property—a thought which, perhaps, may have had its share in keeping Mrs Seton
and her mothers off the Stock Exchange. Every penny I earn, they may have said, will be
taken from me and disposed of according to my husband’s wisdom—perhaps to found a
scholarship or to endow a fellowship in Balliol or Kings, so that to earn money, even if I
could earn money, is not a matter that interests me very greatly. I had better leave it to my
husband.

At any rate, whether or not the blame rested on the old lady who was looking at the spaniel,
there could be no doubt that for some reason or other our mothers had mismanaged their
affairs very gravely. Not a penny could be spared for ‘amenities’; for partridges and wine,
beadles and turf, books and cigars, libraries and leisure. To raise bare walls out of bare earth
was the utmost they could do.

So we talked standing at the window and looking, as so many thousands look every night,
down on the domes and towers of the famous city beneath us. It was very beautiful, very
mysterious in the autumn moonlight. The old stone looked very white and venerable. One
thought of all the books that were assembled down there; of the pictures of old prelates and
worthies hanging in the panelled rooms; of the painted windows that would be throwing
strange globes and crescents on the pavement; of the tablets and memorials and inscriptions;
of the fountains and the grass; of the quiet rooms looking across the quiet quadrangles. And
(pardon me the thought) I thought, too, of the admirable smoke and drink and the deep
armchairs and the pleasant carpets: of the urbanity, the geniality, the dignity which are the
offspring of luxury and privacy and space. Certainly our mothers had not provided us with
anything comparable to all this—our mothers who found it difficult to scrape together thirty
thousand pounds, our mothers who bore thirteen children to ministers of religion at St
Andrews.

So I went back to my inn, and as I walked through the dark streets I pondered this and that, as
one does at the end of the day’s work. I pondered why it was that Mrs Seton had no money to
leave us; and what effect poverty has on the mind; and what effect wealth has on the mind;
and I thought of the queer old gentlemen I had seen that morning with tufts of fur upon their
shoulders; and I remembered how if one whistled one of them ran; and I thought of the organ
booming in the chapel and of the shut doors of the library; and I thought how unpleasant it is
to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in; and, thinking of the
safety and prosperity of the one sex and of the poverty and insecurity of the other and of the
effect of tradition and of the lack of tradition upon the mind of a writer, I thought at last that it

was time to roll up the crumpled skin of the day, with its arguments and its impressions and
its anger and its laughter, and cast it into the hedge. A thousand stars were flashing across the
blue wastes of the sky. One seemed alone with an inscrutable society. All human beings were
laid asleep—prone, horizontal, dumb. Nobody seemed stirring in the streets of Oxbridge.
Even the door of the hotel sprang open at the touch of an invisible hand—not a boots was
sitting up to light me to bed, it was so late.

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“Letter from Birmingham Jail”
16 April 1963

My Dear Fellow Clergymen:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling
my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and
ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time
for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for
constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are
sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and
reasonable terms.

I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the
view which argues against “outsiders coming in.” I have the honor of serving as president of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with
headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South,
and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff,
educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in
Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were
deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I,
along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have
organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the
eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries
of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of
Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of
freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for
aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly
by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat
to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment
of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with
the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be
considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to
say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am
sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals
merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that
demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white
power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine
whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all
these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this
community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly
record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts.
There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any
other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions,
Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage
in good faith negotiation.

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Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham’s economic
community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants–for
example, to remove the stores’ humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend
Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a
moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the
victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained.

As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep
disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby
we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and
the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self
purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: “Are
you able to accept blows without retaliating?” “Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?” We decided
to schedule our direct action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is
the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal program would be
the by product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on
the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham’s mayoral election was coming up in March, and we
speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the
Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run off,
we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run off so that the demonstrations could
not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this
end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt
that our direct action program could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a
better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct
action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a
community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to
dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the
work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of
the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive,
nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a
tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the
unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent
gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of
prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will
inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too
long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than
dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have
taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: “Why didn’t you give the new city administration
time to act?” The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration
must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we
feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr.
Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to
maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the
futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees
of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without
determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups
seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up

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their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than
individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor;
it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that
was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation.
For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity.
This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished
jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The
nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but
we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is
easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have
seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim;
when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters;
when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage
of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your
speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public
amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when
she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning
to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an
unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old
son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a
cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your
automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by
nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle
name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and
mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night
by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to
expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a
degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There
comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into
the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a
legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954
outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us
consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying
others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first
to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws.
Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine
that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just
or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust
law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas:
An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts
human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes
are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator
a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the
terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I it” relationship for an “I thou”
relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only
politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said
that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful

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estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the
Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they
are morally wrong.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a
numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on
itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a
minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.

Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of
being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the
legislature of Alabama which set up that state’s segregation laws was democratically elected?
Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming
registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of
the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be
considered democratically structured?

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been
arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an
ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used
to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and
protest.

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate
evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who
breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I
submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly
accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its
injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced
sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on
the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who
were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to
certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because
Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive
act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything
the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in
Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and
comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to
the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious
laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must
confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have
almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward
freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is
more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension
to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal
you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can
set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who
constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from
people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

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I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the
purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously
structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would
understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an
obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive
and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually,
we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the
surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and
dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all
its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its
exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be
cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned
because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn’t this like condemning a robbed
man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning
Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the
act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning
Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God’s will precipitated
the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed,
it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the
quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to
the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: “All
Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you
are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish
what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.” Such an attitude stems from a tragic
misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of
time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or
constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively
than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful
words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human
progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to
be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social
stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.
Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into
a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial
injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that
fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the
fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of
complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained
of self respect and a sense of “somebodiness” that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a
few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because
in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The
other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is
expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest
and best known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro’s frustration
over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have
lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the
white man is an incorrigible “devil.”

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I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the “do
nothingism” of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the
more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of
the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle.

If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced,
be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as “rabble
rousers” and “outside agitators” those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to
support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and
security in black nationalist ideologies–a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening
racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually
manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has
reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be
gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black
brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the
United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial
justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily
understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent up resentments
and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages
to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides -and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed
emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a
threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: “Get rid of your discontent.” Rather, I have
tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of
nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist.

But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to
think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an
extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and
pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice:
“Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” Was not Paul an
extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin
Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will
stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln:
“This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to
be self evident, that all men are created equal . . .” So the question is not whether we will be
extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be
extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on
Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same
crime–the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their
environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose
above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative
extremists.

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic;
perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor
race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer
have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I
am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this
social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too few in quantity, but they are big
in quality. Some -such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden
and Sarah Patton Boyle–have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others
have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach
infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as “dirty nigger-lovers.”

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Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the
moment and sensed the need for powerful “action” antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.

Let me take note of my other major disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed with
the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful
of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend
Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service
on a nonsegregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill
College several years ago.

But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed
with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something
wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured
in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as
the cord of life shall lengthen.

When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery,
Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white
ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have
been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its
leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent
behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious
leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would
serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped
that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a
desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare:
“Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother.” In the
midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the
sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty
struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: “Those are
social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern.” And I have watched many churches commit
themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction
between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern
states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South’s beautiful
churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her
massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: “What kind of people
worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped
with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion
call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men
and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative
protest?”

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of
the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep
disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in
the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great grandson of preachers. Yes, I
see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through
social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful–in the time when the early Christians
rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not

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merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat
that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in
power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the
peace” and “outside agitators.”‘ But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a
colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in
commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and
example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with
an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the
presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s
silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not
recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of
millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.
Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright
disgust.

Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to
the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual
church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am
thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from
the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom. They
have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have
gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with
us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow
ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their
witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled
times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.

I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the
church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the
outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will
reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is
freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny. Before
the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words
of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two
centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the
homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation -and yet out of a
bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could
not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred
heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled
me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping “order” and
“preventing violence.” I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had
seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly
commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here
in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if
you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as
they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I
cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In
this sense they have conducted themselves rather “nonviolently” in public. But for what purpose? To

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I wish you had commended the Negro sit inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their
sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great
provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with
the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the
agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered
Negro women, symbolized in a seventy two year old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up
with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded
with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: “My feets is tired, but my
soul is at rest.” They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the
gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and
willingly going to jail for conscience’ sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited
children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the
American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our
nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their
formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

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preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that
nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to
make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is
just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr.
Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany,
Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial
injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: “The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for
the wrong reason.”

Never before have I written so long a letter. I’m afraid it is much too long to take your precious
time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable
desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters,
think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable
impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my
having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive
me.

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it
possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil-rights leader but as a fellow
clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon
pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities,
and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our
great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Published in:

King, Martin Luther Jr. “Letter from the Birmingham jail.” In Why We Can’t Wait, ed. Martin Luther King, Jr., 77-100,
1963.

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Manifesto of the Communist Party

by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

February 1848

Written: Late 1847;
First Published: February 1848;
Source: Marx/Engels Selected Works, Vol. One, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp. 98-137;
Translated: Samuel Moore in cooperation with Frederick Engels, 1888;
Transcribed: by Zodiac and Brian Baggins;
Proofed: and corrected against 1888 English Edition by Andy Blunden 2004;
Copyleft: Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 1987, 2000, 2010. Permission is granted to
distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License.

Table of Contents
Editorial Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 2
Preface to The 1872 German Edition …………………………………………………………………………………. 4
Preface to The 1882 Russian Edition …………………………………………………………………………………. 5
Preface to The 1883 German Edition …………………………………………………………………………………. 6
Preface to The 1888 English Edition………………………………………………………………………………….. 7
Preface to The 1890 German Edition ……………………………………………………………………………….. 10
Preface to The 1892 Polish Edition ………………………………………………………………………………….. 12
Preface to The 1893 Italian Edition………………………………………………………………………………….. 13
Manifesto of the Communist Party…………………………………………………………………………………… 14
I. Bourgeois and Proletarians ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 14
II. Proletarians and Communists ……………………………………………………………………………………… 22
III. Socialist and Communist Literature ……………………………………………………………………………. 28

1. Reactionary Socialism …………………………………………………………………………………………. 28
A. Feudal Socialism ………………………………………………………………………………………… 28
B. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism …………………………………………………………………………… 29
C. German or “True” Socialism ………………………………………………………………………… 29

2. Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism ……………………………………………………………………. 31
3. Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism………………………………………………………….. 32

IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties …………. 34
Letter from Engels to Marx, 24 November 1847 ……………………………………………………………….. 35
Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith ……………………………………………………………………….. 36
The Principles of Communism ………………………………………………………………………………………… 41
Demands of the Communist Party in Germany………………………………………………………………….. 55
The Paris Commune. Address to the International Workingmen’s Association, May 1871……… 58
Endnotes ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 67

2 Introduction

Editorial Introduction

The “Manifesto of the Communist Party” was written by Marx and Engels as the Communist
League’s programme on the instruction of its Second Congress (London, November 29-December 8,
1847), which signified a victory for the followers of a new proletarian line during the discussion of the
programme questions.
When Congress was still in preparation, Marx and Engels arrived at the conclusion that the final
programme document should be in the form of a Party manifesto (see Engels’ letter to Marx of
November 23-24, 1847). The catechism form usual for the secret societies of the time and retained in
the “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith” and “Principles of Communism,” was not suitable for
a full and substantial exposition of the new revolutionary world outlook, for a comprehensive
formulation of the proletarian movement’s aims and tasks. See also “Demands of the Communist
Party in Germany,” issued by Marx soon after publication of the Manifesto, which addressed the
immediate demands of the movement.
Marx and Engels began working together on the Manifesto while they were still in London
immediately after the congress, and continued until about December 13 when Marx returned to
Brussels; they resumed their work four days later (December 17) when Engels arrived there. After
Engels’ departure for Paris at the end of December and up to his return on January 31, Marx worked
on the Manifesto alone.
Hurried by the Central Authority of the Communist League which provided him with certain
documents (e.g., addresses of the People’s Chamber (Halle) of the League of the Just of November
1846 and February 1847, and, apparently, documents of the First Congress of the Communist League
pertaining to the discussion of the Party programme), Marx worked intensively on the Manifesto
through almost the whole of January 1848. At the end of January the manuscript was sent on to
London to be printed in the German Workers’ Educational Society’s print shop owned by a German
emigrant J. E. Burghard, a member of the Communist League.
The manuscript of the Manifesto has not survived. The only extant materials written in Marx’s hand
are a draft plan for Section III, showing his efforts to improve the structure of the Manifesto, and a
page of a rough copy.
The Manifesto came off the press at the end of February 1848. On February 29, the Educational
Society decided to cover all the printing expenses.
The first edition of the Manifesto was a 23-page pamphlet in a dark green cover. In April-May 1848
another edition was put out. The text took up 30 pages, some misprints of the first edition were
corrected, and the punctuation improved. Subsequently this text was used by Marx and Engels as a
basis for later authorised editions. Between March and July 1848 the Manifesto was printed in the
Deutsche Londoner Zeitung, a democratic newspaper of the German emigrants. Already that same
year numerous efforts were made to publish the Manifesto in other European languages. A Danish, a
Polish (in Paris) and a Swedish (under a different title: “The Voice of Communism. Declaration of the
Communist Party”) editions appeared in 1848. The translations into French, Italian and Spanish made
at that time remained unpublished. In April 1848, Engels, then in Barmen, was translating the
Manifesto into English, but he managed to translate only half of it, and the first English translation,
made by Helen Macfarlane, was not published until two years later, between June and November 1850,
in the Chartist journal The Red Republican. Its editor, Julian Harney, named the authors for the first
time in the introduction to this publication. All earlier and many subsequent editions of the Manifesto
were anonymous.
The growing emancipation struggle of the proletariat in the ’60s and ’70s of the 19th century led to
new editions of the Manifesto. The year 1872 saw a new German edition with minor corrections and a
preface by Marx and Engels where they drew some conclusions from the experience of the Paris

3 Introduction

Commune of 1871. This and subsequent German editions (1883 and 1890) were entitled the
Communist Manifesto. In 1872 the Manifesto was first published in America in Woodhull & Claflin’s
Weekly.
The first Russian edition of the Manifesto, translated by Mikhail Bakunin with some distortions,
appeared in Geneva in 1869. The faults of this edition were removed in the 1882 edition (translation
by Georgi Plekhanov), for which Marx and Engels, who attributed great significance to the
dissemination of Marxism in Russia, had written a special preface.
After Marx’s death, the Manifesto ran into several editions. Engels read through them all, wrote
prefaces for the 1883 German edition and for the 1888 English edition in Samuel Moore’s translation,
which he also edited and supplied with notes. This edition served as a basis for many subsequent
editions of the Manifesto in English – in Britain, the United States and the USSR. In 1890, Engels
prepared a further German edition, wrote a new preface to it, and added a number of notes. In 1885,
the newspaper Le Socialiste published the French translation of the Manifesto made by Marx’s
daughter Laura Lafargue and read by Engels. He also wrote prefaces to the 1892 Polish and 1893
Italian editions.
This edition includes the two earlier versions of the Manifesto, namely the draft “Communist
Confession of Faith” and “The Principles of Communism,” both authored by Engels, as well as the
letter from Engels to Marx which poses the idea of publishing a “manifesto,” rather than a catechism.
The Manifesto addressed itself to a mass movement with historical significance, not a political sect.
On the other hand, the “Demands of the Communist Party in Germany” is included to place the
publication of the Manifesto in the context of the mass movement in Germany at the time, whose
immediate demands are reflected by Marx in this pamphlet. Clearly the aims of the Manifesto were
more far-reaching the movement in Germany at the time, and unlike the “Demands,” was intended to
outlive the immediate conditions.
The “Third Address to the International Workingmen’s Association” is included because in this
speech Marx examines the movement of the working class manifested in the Paris Commune, and his
observations here mark the only revisions to his social and historical vision made during his lifetime
as a result of the development of the working class movement itself, clarifying some points and
making others more concrete.

Preface to The 1872 German Edition

The Communist League, an international association of workers, which could of course be only a
secret one, under conditions obtaining at the time, commissioned us, the undersigned, at the
Congress held in London in November 1847, to write for publication a detailed theoretical and
practical programme for the Party. Such was the origin of the following Manifesto, the
manuscript of which travelled to London to be printed a few weeks before the February [French]
Revolution [in 1848]. First published in German, it has been republished in that language in at
least twelve different editions in Germany, England, and America. It was published in English for
the first time in 1850 in the Red Republican, London, translated by Miss Helen Macfarlane, and
in 1871 in at least three different translations in America. The French version first appeared in
Paris shortly before the June insurrection of 1848, and recently in Le Socialiste of New York. A
new translation is in the course of preparation. A Polish version appeared in London shortly after
it was first published in Germany. A Russian translation was published in Geneva in the sixties1.
Into Danish, too, it was translated shortly after its appearance.
However much that state of things may have altered during the last twenty-five years, the general
principles laid down in the Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever. Here and there,
some detail might be improved. The practical application of the principles will depend, as the
Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being
existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at
the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today. In
view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved
and extended organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in
the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the
first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some details been
antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that “the working class
cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.”
(See The Civil War in France: Address of the General Council of the International Working
Men’s Association, 1871, where this point is further developed.) Further, it is self-evident that the
criticism of socialist literature is deficient in relation to the present time, because it comes down
only to 1847; also that the remarks on the relation of the Communists to the various opposition
parties (Section IV), although, in principle still correct, yet in practice are antiquated, because the
political situation has been entirely changed, and the progress of history has swept from off the
earth the greater portion of the political parties there enumerated.
But then, the Manifesto has become a historical document which we have no longer any right to
alter. A subsequent edition may perhaps appear with an introduction bridging the gap from 1847
to the present day; but this reprint was too unexpected to leave us time for that.

Karl Marx & Frederick Engels
June 24, 1872, London

Preface to The 1882 Russian Edition

The first Russian edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, translated by Bakunin, was
published early in the ‘sixties by the printing office of the Kolokol [a reference to the Free
Russian Printing House]. Then the West could see in it (the Russian edition of the Manifesto)
only a literary curiosity. Such a view would be impossible today.
What a limited field the proletarian movement occupied at that time (December 1847) is most
clearly shown by the last section: the position of the Communists in relation to the various
opposition parties in various countries. Precisely Russia and the United States are missing here. It
was the time when Russia constituted the last great reserve of all European reaction, when the
United States absorbed the surplus proletarian forces of Europe through immigration. Both
countries provided Europe with raw materials and were at the same time markets for the sale of
its industrial products. Both were, therefore, in one way of another, pillars of the existing
European system.
How very different today. Precisely European immigration fitted North American for a gigantic
agricultural production, whose competition is shaking the very foundations of European landed
property – large and small. At the same time, it enabled the United States to exploit its
tremendous industrial resources with an energy and on a scale that must shortly break the
industrial monopoly of Western Europe, and especially of England, existing up to now. Both
circumstances react in a revolutionary manner upon America itself. Step by step, the small and
middle land ownership of the farmers, the basis of the whole political constitution, is succumbing
to the competition of giant farms; at the same time, a mass industrial proletariat and a fabulous
concentration of capital funds are developing for the first time in the industrial regions.
And now Russia! During the Revolution of 1848-9, not only the European princes, but the
European bourgeois as well, found their only salvation from the proletariat just beginning to
awaken in Russian intervention. The Tsar was proclaimed the chief of European reaction. Today,
he is a prisoner of war of the revolution in Gatchina 2 , and Russia forms the vanguard of
revolutionary action in Europe.
The Communist Manifesto had, as its object, the proclamation of the inevitable impending
dissolution of modern bourgeois property. But in Russia we find, face-to-face with the rapidly
flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois property, just beginning to develop, more than half the
land owned in common by the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina, though
greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the
higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the
same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West?
The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a
proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian
common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.

Karl Marx & Frederick Engels
January 21, 1882, London

Preface to The 1883 German Edition

The preface to the present edition I must, alas, sign alone. Marx, the man to whom the whole
working class of Europe and America owes more than to any one else – rests at Highgate
Cemetery and over his grave the first grass is already growing. Since his death [March 14, 1883],
there can be even less thought of revising or supplementing the Manifesto. But I consider it all the
more necessary again to state the following expressly:
The basic thought running through the Manifesto – that economic production, and the structure of
society of every historical epoch necessarily arising therefrom, constitute the foundation for the
political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently (ever since the dissolution of the
primaeval communal ownership of land) all history has been a history of class struggles, of
struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at various
stages of social evolution; that this struggle, however, has now reached a stage where the
exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself from the class
which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie), without at the same time forever freeing the
whole of society from exploitation, oppression, class struggles – this basic thought belongs solely
and exclusively to Marx.*
I have already stated this many times; but precisely now is it necessary that it also stand in front
of the Manifesto itself.

Frederick Engels
June 28, 1883, London

* “This proposition,” I wrote in the preface to the English translation, “which, in my opinion, is destined to do for
history what Darwin’ s theory has done for biology, we both of us, had been gradually approaching for some years
before 1845. How far I had independently progressed towards it is best shown by my Conditions of the Working Class
in England. But when I again met Marx at Brussels, in spring 1845, he had it already worked out and put it before me
in terms almost as clear as those in which I have stated it here.” [Note by Engels to the German edition of 1890]

Preface to The 1888 English Edition

The Manifesto was published as the platform of the Communist League, a working men’ s
association, first exclusively German, later on international, and under the political conditions of
the Continent before 1848, unavoidably a secret society. At a Congress of the League, held in
November 1847, Marx and Engels were commissioned to prepare a complete theoretical and
practical party programme. Drawn up in German, in January 1848, the manuscript was sent to the
printer in London a few weeks before the French Revolution of February 24. A French translation
was brought out in Paris shortly before the insurrection of June 1848. The first English
translation, by Miss Helen Macfarlane, appeared in George Julian Harney’ s Red Republican,
London, 1850. A Danish and a Polish edition had also been published.
The defeat of the Parisian insurrection of June 1848 – the first great battle between proletariat and
bourgeoisie – drove again into the background, for a time, the social and political aspirations of
the European working class. Thenceforth, the struggle for supremacy was, again, as it had been
before the Revolution of February, solely between different sections of the propertied class; the
working class was reduced to a fight for political elbow-room, and to the position of extreme
wing of the middle-class Radicals. Wherever independent proletarian movements continued to
show signs of life, they were ruthlessly hunted down. Thus the Prussian police hunted out the
Central Board of the Communist League, then located in Cologne. The members were arrested
and, after eighteen months’ imprisonment, they were tried in October 1852. This celebrated
“Cologne Communist Trial” lasted from October 4 till November 12; seven of the prisoners were
sentenced to terms of imprisonment in a fortress, varying from three to six years. Immediately
after the sentence, the League was formally dissolved by the remaining members. As to the
Manifesto, it seemed henceforth doomed to oblivion.
When the European workers had recovered sufficient strength for another attack on the ruling
classes, the International Working Men’ s Association sprang up. But this association, formed
with the express aim of welding into one body the whole militant proletariat of Europe and
America, could not at once proclaim the principles laid down in the Manifesto. The International
was bound to have a programme broad enough to be acceptable to the English trade unions, to the
followers of Proudhon in France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain, and to the Lassalleans in Germany.*
Marx, who drew up this programme to the satisfaction of all parties, entirely trusted to the
intellectual development of the working class, which was sure to result from combined action and
mutual discussion. The very events and vicissitudes in the struggle against capital, the defeats
even more than the victories, could not help bringing home to men’ s minds the insufficiency of
their various favorite nostrums, and preparing the way for a more complete insight into the true
conditions for working-class emancipation. And Marx was right. The International, on its
breaking in 1874, left the workers quite different men from what it found them in 1864.
Proudhonism in France, Lassalleanism in Germany, were dying out, and even the conservative
English trade unions, though most of them had long since severed their connection with the
International, were gradually advancing towards that point at which, last year at Swansea, their
president [W. Bevan] could say in their name: “Continental socialism has lost its terror for us.” In
fact, the principles of the Manifesto had made considerable headway among the working men of
all countries.

* Lassalle personally, to us, always acknowledged himself to be a disciple of Marx, and, as such, stood on the ground of
the Manifesto. But in his first public agitation, 1862-1864, he did not go beyond demanding co-operative workshops
supported by state credit.

8 Preface to the 1888 English Edition

The Manifesto itself came thus to the front again. Since 1850, the German text had been reprinted
several times in Switzerland, England, and America. In 1872, it was translated into English in
New York, where the translation was published in Woorhull and Claflin’s Weekly. From this
English version, a French one was made in Le Socialiste of New York. Since then, at least two
more English translations, more or less mutilated, have been brought out in America, and one of
them has been reprinted in England. The first Russian translation, made by Bakunin, was
published at Herzen’ s Kolokol office in Geneva, about 1863; a second one, by the heroic Vera
Zasulich, also in Geneva, in 1882. A new Danish edition is to be found in Socialdemokratisk
Bibliothek, Copenhagen, 1885; a fresh French translation in Le Socialiste, Paris, 1886. From this
latter, a Spanish version was prepared and published in Madrid, 1886. The German reprints are
not to be counted; there have been twelve altogether at the least. An Armenian translation, which
was to be published in Constantinople some months ago, did not see the light, I am told, because
the publisher was afraid of bringing out a book with the name of Marx on it, while the translator
declined to call it his own production. Of further translations into other languages I have heard
but had not seen. Thus the history of the Manifesto reflects the history of the modern working-
class movement; at present, it is doubtless the most wide spread, the most international
production of all socialist literature, the common platform acknowledged by millions of working
men from Siberia to California.
Yet, when it was written, we could not have called it a socialist manifesto. By Socialists, in 1847,
were understood, on the one hand the adherents of the various Utopian systems: Owenites in
England, Fourierists in France, both of them already reduced to the position of mere sects, and
gradually dying out; on the other hand, the most multifarious social quacks who, by all manner of
tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to capital and profit, all sorts of social
grievances, in both cases men outside the working-class movement, and looking rather to the
“educated” classes for support. Whatever portion of the working class had become convinced of
the insufficiency of mere political revolutions, and had proclaimed the necessity of total social
change, called itself Communist. It was a crude, rough-hewn, purely instinctive sort of
communism; still, it touched the cardinal point and was powerful enough amongst the working
class to produce the Utopian communism of Cabet in France, and of Weitling in Germany. Thus,
in 1847, socialism was a middle-class movement, communism a working-class movement.
Socialism was, on the Continent at least, “respectable”; communism was the very opposite. And
as our notion, from the very beginning, was that “the emancipation of the workers must be the act
of the working class itself,” there could be no doubt as to which of the two names we must take.
Moreover, we have, ever since, been far from repudiating it.
The Manifesto being our joint production, I consider myself bound to state that the fundamental
proposition which forms the nucleus belongs to Marx. That proposition is: That in every
historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social
organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which it is built up, and from that
which alone can be explained the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently
the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in
common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and
exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; That the history of these class struggles forms a series of
evolutions in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class
– the proletariat – cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class
– the bourgeoisie – without, at the same time, and once and for all, emancipating society at large
from all exploitation, oppression, class distinction, and class struggles.
This proposition, which, in my opinion, is destined to do for history what Darwin’ s theory has
done for biology, we both of us, had been gradually approaching for some years before 1845.
How far I had independently progressed towards it is best shown by my “Conditions of the
Working Class in England.” But when I again met Marx at Brussels, in spring 1845, he had it

9 Preface to the 1888 English Edition

already worked out and put it before me in terms almost as clear as those in which I have stated it
here.
From our joint preface to the German edition of 1872, I quote the following:

“However much that state of things may have altered during the last twenty-five
years, the general principles laid down in the Manifesto are, on the whole, as
correct today as ever. Here and there, some detail might be improved. The
practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states,
everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being
existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary
measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects,
be very differently worded today. In view of the gigantic strides of Modern
Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and extended
organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first
in the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the
proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this
programme has in some details been antiquated. One thing especially was proved
by the Commune, viz., that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of ready-
made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” (See The Civil War in
France: Address of the General Council of the International Working Men’ s
Association 1871, where this point is further developed.) Further, it is self-evident
that the criticism of socialist literature is deficient in relation to the present time,
because it comes down only to 1847; also that the remarks on the relation of the
Communists to the various opposition parties (Section IV), although, in principle
still correct, yet in practice are antiquated, because the political situation has been
entirely changed, and the progress of history has swept from off the Earth the
greater portion of the political parties there enumerated.
“But then, the Manifesto has become a historical document which we have no
longer any right to alter.”

The present translation is by Mr Samuel Moore, the translator of the greater portion of Marx’ s
“Capital.” We have revised it in common, and I have added a few notes explanatory of historical
allusions.

Frederick Engels
January 30, 1888, London

Preface to The 1890 German Edition

Since [the first German preface of 1883] was written, a new German edition of the Manifesto has
again become necessary, and much has also happened to the Manifesto which should be recorded
here.
A second Russian translation – by Vera Zasulich – appeared in Geneva in 1882; the preface to
that edition was written by Marx and myself. Unfortunately, the original German manuscript has
gone astray; I must therefore retranslate from the Russian which will in no way improve the text.
It reads:

[Reprint of the 1882 Russian Edition ]
At about the same date, a new Polish version appeared in Geneva: Manifest Kommunistyczny.
Furthermore, a new Danish translation has appeared in the Socialdemokratisk Bibliothek,
Copenhagen, 1885. Unfortunately, it is not quite complete; certain essential passages, which seem
to have presented difficulties to the translator, have been omitted, and, in addition, there are signs
of carelessness here and there, which are all the more unpleasantly conspicuous since the
translation indicates that had the translator taken a little more pains, he would have done an
excellent piece of work.
A new French version appeared in 1886, in Le Socialiste of Paris; it is the best published to date.
From this latter, a Spanish version was published the same year in El Socialista of Madrid, and
then reissued in pamphlet form: Manifesto del Partido Communista por Carlos Marx y F. Engels,
Madrid, Administracion de El Socialista, Hernan Cortes 8.
As a matter of curiosity, I may mention that in 1887 the manuscript of an Armenian translation
was offered to a publisher in Constantinople. But the good man did not have the courage to
publish something bearing the name of Marx and suggested that the translator set down his own
name as author, which the latter however declined.
After one, and then another, of the more or less inaccurate American translations had been
repeatedly reprinted in England, an authentic version at last appeared in 1888. This was my friend
Samuel Moore, and we went through it together once more before it went to press. It is entitled:
Manifesto of the Communist Party, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Authorized English
translation, edited and annotated by Frederick Engels, 1888, London, William Reeves, 185 Fleet
Street, E.C. I have added some of the notes of that edition to the present one.
The Manifesto has had a history of its own. Greeted with enthusiasm, at the time of its
appearance, by the not at all numerous vanguard of scientific socialism (as is proved by the
translations mentioned in the first place), it was soon forced into the background by the reaction
that began with the defeat of the Paris workers in June 1848, and was finally excommunicated
“by law” in the conviction of the Cologne Communists in November 1852. With the
disappearance from the public scene of the workers’ movement that had begun with the February
Revolution, the Manifesto too passed into the background.
When the European workers had again gathered sufficient strength for a new onslaught upon the
power of the ruling classes, the International Working Men’ s Association came into being. Its
aim was to weld together into one huge army the whole militant working class of Europe and
America. Therefore it could not set out from the principles laid down in the Manifesto. It was
bound to have a programme which would not shut the door on the English trade unions, the
French, Belgian, Italian, and Spanish Proudhonists, and the German Lassalleans. This programme
– the considerations underlying the Statutes of the International – was drawn up by Marx with a
master hand acknowledged even by the Bakunin and the anarchists. For the ultimate final triumph

11 Preface to the 1890 German Edition

of the ideas set forth in the Manifesto, Marx relied solely upon the intellectual development of the
working class, as it necessarily has to ensue from united action and discussion. The events and
vicissitudes in the struggle against capital, the defeats even more than the successes, could not but
demonstrate to the fighters the inadequacy of their former universal panaceas, and make their
minds more receptive to a thorough understanding of the true conditions for working-class
emancipation. And Marx was right. The working class of 1874, at the dissolution of the
International, was altogether different from that of 1864, at its foundation. Proudhonism in the
Latin countries, and the specific Lassalleanism in Germany, were dying out; and even the ten
arch-conservative English trade unions were gradually approaching the point where, in 1887, the
chairman of their Swansea Congress could say in their name: “Continental socialism has lost its
terror for us.” Yet by 1887 continental socialism was almost exclusively the theory heralded in
the Manifesto. Thus, to a certain extent, the history of the Manifesto reflects the history of the
modern working-class movement since 1848. At present, it is doubtless the most widely
circulated, the most international product of all socialist literature, the common programme of
many millions of workers of all countries from Siberia to California.
Nevertheless, when it appeared, we could not have called it a socialist manifesto. In 1847, two
kinds of people were considered socialists. On the one hand were the adherents of the various
utopian systems, notably the Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France, both of whom, at
that date, had already dwindled to mere sects gradually dying out. On the other, the manifold
types of social quacks who wanted to eliminate social abuses through their various universal
panaceas and all kinds of patch-work, without hurting capital and profit in the least. In both cases,
people who stood outside the labor movement and who looked for support rather to the
“educated” classes. The section of the working class, however, which demanded a radical
reconstruction of society, convinced that mere political revolutions were not enough, then called
itself Communist. It was still a rough-hewn, only instinctive and frequently somewhat crude
communism. Yet, it was powerful enough to bring into being two systems of utopian communism
– in France, the “Icarian” communists of Cabet, and in Germany that of Weitling. Socialism in
1847 signified a bourgeois movement, communism a working-class movement. Socialism was,
on the Continent at least, quite respectable, whereas communism was the very opposite. And
since we were very decidedly of the opinion as early as then that “the emancipation of the
workers must be the task of the working class itself,” [from the General Rules of the
International] we could have no hesitation as to which of the two names we should choose. Nor
has it ever occurred to us to repudiate it.
“Working men of all countries, unite!” But few voices responded when we proclaimed these
words to the world 42 years ago, on the eve of the first Paris Revolution in which the proletariat
came out with the demands of its own. On September 28, 1864, however, the proletarians of most
of the Western European countries joined hands in the International Working Men’ s Association
of glorious memory. True, the International itself lived only nine years. But that the eternal union
of the proletarians of all countries created by it is still alive and lives stronger than ever, there is
no better witness than this day. Because today3, as I write these lines, the European and American
proletariat is reviewing its fighting forces, mobilized for the first time, mobilized as one army,
under one flag, for one immediate aim: the standard eight-hour working day to be established by
legal enactment, as proclaimed by the Geneva Congress of the International in 1866, and again by
the Paris Workers’ Congress of 1889. And today’ s spectacle will open the eyes of the capitalists
and landlords of all countries to the fact that today the proletarians of all countries are united
indeed.
If only Marx were still by my side to see this with his own eyes!

Frederick Engels
May 1, 1890, London

Preface to The 1892 Polish Edition

The fact that a new Polish edition of the Communist Manifesto has become necessary gives rise
to various thoughts.
First of all, it is noteworthy that of late the Manifesto has become an index, as it were, of the
development of large-scale industry on the European continent. In proportion as large-scale
industry expands in a given country, the demand grows among the workers of that country for
enlightenment regarding their position as the working class in relation to the possessing classes,
the socialist movement spreads among them and the demand for the Manifesto increases. Thus,
not only the state of the labour movement but also the degree of development of large-scale
industry can be measured with fair accuracy in every country by the number of copies of the
Manifesto circulated in the language of that country.
Accordingly, the new Polish edition indicates a decided progress of Polish industry. And there
can be no doubt whatever that this progress since the previous edition published ten years ago has
actually taken place. Russian Poland, Congress Poland, has become the big industrial region of
the Russian Empire. Whereas Russian large-scale industry is scattered sporadically – a part round
the Gulf of Finland, another in the centre (Moscow and Vladimir), a third along the coasts of the
Black and Azov seas, and still others elsewhere – Polish industry has been packed into a
relatively small area and enjoys both the advantages and disadvantages arising from such
concentration. The competing Russian manufacturers acknowledged the advantages when they
demanded protective tariffs against Poland, in spit of their ardent desire to transform the Poles
into Russians. The disadvantages – for the Polish manufacturers and the Russian government –
are manifest in the rapid spread of socialist ideas among the Polish workers and in the growing
demand for the Manifesto.
But the rapid development of Polish industry, outstripping that of Russia, is in its turn a new
proof of the inexhaustible vitality of the Polish people and a new guarantee of its impending
national restoration. And the restoration of an independent and strong Poland is a matter which
concerns not only the Poles but all of us. A sincere international collaboration of the European
nations is possible only if each of these nations is fully autonomous in its own house. The
Revolution of 1848, which under the banner of the proletariat, after all, merely let the proletarian
fighters do the work of the bourgeoisie, also secured the independence of Italy, Germany and
Hungary through its testamentary executors, Louis Bonaparte and Bismarck; but Poland, which
since 1792 had done more for the Revolution than all these three together, was left to its own
resources when it succumbed in 1863 to a tenfold greater Russian force. The nobility could
neither maintain nor regain Polish independence; today, to the bourgeoisie, this independence is,
to say the last, immaterial. Nevertheless, it is a necessity for the harmonious collaboration of the
European nations. It can be gained only by the young Polish proletariat, and in its hands it is
secure. For the workers of all the rest of Europe need the independence of Poland just as much as
the Polish workers themselves.

F. Engels
London, February 10, 1892

Preface to The 1893 Italian Edition

Publication of the Manifesto of the Communist Party coincided, one may say, with March 18,
1848, the day of the revolution in Milan and Berlin, which were armed uprisings of the two
nations situated in the centre, the one, of the continent of Europe, the other, of the Mediterranean;
two nations until then enfeebled by division and internal strife, and thus fallen under foreign
domination. While Italy was subject to the Emperor of Austria, Germany underwent the yoke, not
less effective though more indirect, of the Tsar of all the Russias. The consequences of March 18,
1848, freed both Italy and Germany from this disgrace; if from 1848 to 1871 these two great
nations were reconstituted and somehow again put on their own, it was as Karl Marx used to say,
because the men who suppressed the Revolution of 1848 were, nevertheless, its testamentary
executors in spite of themselves.
Everywhere that revolution was the work of the working class; it was the latter that built the
barricades and paid with its lifeblood. Only the Paris workers, in overthrowing the government,
had the very definite intention of overthrowing the bourgeois regime. But conscious though they
were of the fatal antagonism existing between their own class and the bourgeoisie, still, neither
the economic progress of the country nor the intellectual development of the mass of French
workers had as yet reached the stage which would have made a social reconstruction possible. In
the final analysis, therefore, the fruits of the revolution were reaped by the capitalist class. In the
other countries, in Italy, in Germany, in Austria, the workers, from the very outset, did nothing
but raise the bourgeoisie to power. But in any country the rule of the bourgeoisie is impossible
without national independence Therefore, the Revolution of 1848 had to bring in its train the
unity and autonomy of the nations that had lacked them up to then: Italy, Germany, Hungary.
Poland will follow in turn.
Thus, if the Revolution of 1848 was not a socialist revolution, it paved the way, prepared the
ground for the latter. Through the impetus given to large-scaled industry in all countries, the
bourgeois regime during the last forty-five years has everywhere created a numerous,
concentrated and powerful proletariat. It has thus raised, to use the language of the Manifesto, its
own grave-diggers. Without restoring autonomy and unity to each nation, it will be impossible to
achieve the international union of the proletariat, or the peaceful and intelligent co-operation of
these nations toward common aims. Just imagine joint international action by the Italian,
Hungarian, German, Polish and Russian workers under the political conditions preceding 1848!
The battles fought in 1848 were thus not fought in vain. Nor have the forty-five years separating
us from that revolutionary epoch passed to no purpose. The fruits are ripening, and all I wish is
that the publication of this Italian translation may augur as well for the victory of the Italian
proletariat as the publication of the original did for the international revolution.
The Manifesto does full justice to the revolutionary part played by capitalism in the past. The first
capitalist nation was Italy. The close of the feudal Middle Ages, and the opening of the modern
capitalist era are marked by a colossal figured: an Italian, Dante, both the last poet of the Middle
Ages and the first poet of modern times. Today, as in 1300, a new historical era is approaching.
Will Italy give us the new Dante, who will mark the hour of birth of this new, proletarian era?

Frederick Engels
London, February 1, 1893

Manifesto of the Communist Party

A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have
entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot,
French Radicals and German police-spies.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in
power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism,
against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
Two things result from this fact:

I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a
power.
II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world,
publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the
Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.

To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the
following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish
languages.

I. Bourgeois and Proletarians*

The history of all hitherto existing society† is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master‡ and journeyman, in a
word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an
uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary
reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society
into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians,
knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen,
apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done
away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression,
new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

* By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of
wage labour. By proletariat, the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are
reduced to selling their labour power in order to live. [Engels, 1888 English edition]
† That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organisation existing previous to recorded
history, all but unknown. Since then, August von Haxthausen (1792-1866) discovered common ownership of land in
Russia, Georg Ludwig von Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history,
and, by and by, village communities were found to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from
India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this primitive communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by
Lewis Henry Morgan’s (1818-1861) crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With
the dissolution of the primeval communities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic
classes. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, second
edition, Stuttgart, 1886. [Engels, 1888 English Edition and 1890 German Edition (with the last sentence omitted)]
‡ Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a master within, not a head of a guild. [Engels, 1888 English Edition]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/index.htm

15 Manifesto of the Communist Party

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has
simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great
hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these
burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.
The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising
bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the
colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce,
to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary
element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.
The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds,
now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system
took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class;
division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour
in each single workshop.
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturer no longer
sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of
manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by
industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the
way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to
communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry;
and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion
the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class
handed down from the Middle Ages.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of
development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.
Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political
advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and
self-governing association in the medieval commune*: here independent urban republic (as in
Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the
period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a
counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the
bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market,
conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive
of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole
bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal,
idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his
“natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-
interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious

* This was the name given their urban communities by the townsmen of Italy and France, after they had purchased or
conquered their initial rights of self-government from their feudal lords. [Engels, 1890 German edition] “Commune”
was the name taken in France by the nascent towns even before they had conquered from their feudal lords and masters
local self-government and political rights as the “Third Estate.” Generally speaking, for the economical development of
the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country, for its political development, France. [Engels, 1888
English Edition]

16 Manifesto of the Communist Party

fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical
calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless
indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom – Free Trade. In
one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked,
shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with
reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science,
into its paid wage labourers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family
relation to a mere money relation.
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle
Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful
indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished
wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has
conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production,
and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first
condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production,
uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation
distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their
train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones
become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is
profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his
relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire
surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions
everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character
to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has
drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established
national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new
industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by
industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the
remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter
of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new
wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old
local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal
inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual
creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-
mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local
literatures, there arises a world literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely
facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation.
The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese
walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It
compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels
them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves.
In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

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The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities,
has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a
considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country
dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the
civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.
The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of
the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means
of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this
was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate
interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation,
with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one
customs-tariff.
The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more
colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s
forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation,
railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers,
whole populations conjured out of the ground – what earlier century had even a presentiment that
such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?
We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built
itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means
of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and
exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the
feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive
forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.
Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution
adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class.
A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its
relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic
means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the
powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the
history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces
against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for
the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that
by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time
more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the
previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out
an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity – the epidemic of over-
production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears
as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of
subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much
civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The
productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the
conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these
conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring
disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The
conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how
does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of
productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough
exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more
destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

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The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against
the bourgeoisie itself.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called
into existence the men who are to wield those weapons – the modern working class – the
proletarians.
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the
proletariat, the modern working class, developed – a class of labourers, who live only so long as
they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers,
who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and
are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the
market.
Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the
proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He
becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and
most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is
restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for
the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to
its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the
wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour
increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the
working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of
machinery, etc.
Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory
of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like
soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect
hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the
bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above
all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims
gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.
The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more
modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women.
Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class.
All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.
No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he
receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the
landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.
The lower strata of the middle class – the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen
generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants – all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly
because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is
carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their
specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is
recruited from all classes of the population.
The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with
the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople
of a factory, then by the operative of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois
who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of
production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares
that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they
seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.

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At this stage, the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and
broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this
is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which
class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion,
and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight
their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the
landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical
movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory
for the bourgeoisie.
But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes
concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various
interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in
proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces
wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting
commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing
improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more
precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and
more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form
combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the
rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these
occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.
Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies,
not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped
on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place
the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was
needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national
struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain
which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the
modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.
This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is
continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever
rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests
of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-
hours’ bill in England was carried.
Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of
development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first
with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have
become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign
countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help,
and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the
proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes
the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.
Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the advance of
industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence.
These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.
Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going
on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent,
glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the
revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier

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period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie
goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have
raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.
Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a
really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern
Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.
The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these
fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle
class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for
they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in
view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their
future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.
The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown
off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a
proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed
tool of reactionary intrigue.
In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The
proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in
common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labour, modern subjection to
capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every
trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices,
behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.
All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by
subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become
masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of
appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of
their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and
insurances of, individual property.
All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities.
The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority,
in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society,
cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society
being sprung into the air.
Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first
a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with
its own bourgeoisie.
In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or
less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into
open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the
sway of the proletariat.
Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of
oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be
assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of
serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the
yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the
contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the
conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more
rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any
longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as

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an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave
within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him,
instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its
existence is no longer compatible with society.
The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation
and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests
exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary
promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the
revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore,
cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates
products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall
and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

II. Proletarians and Communists

In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.
They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.
They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the
proletarian movement.
The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the
national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the
front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the
various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has
to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.
The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute
section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all
others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the
advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general
results of the proletarian movement.
The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties:
formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of
political power by the proletariat.
The theoretical conclusions of the Communists 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. The abolition of existing property
relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism.
All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent
upon the change in historical conditions.
The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the
abolition of 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
antagonisms, 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 labour, 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 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 the modern bourgeois private property?
But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that
kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of
begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is

23 Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists

based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. 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 only 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-labour.
The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of
subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer.
What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his labour, merely suffices to
prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this personal
appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and
reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of
others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under
which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the
interest of the ruling class requires it.
In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In Communist
society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the
labourer.
In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present
dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the
living person is dependent and has no individuality.
And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and
freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and
bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.
By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free
selling and buying.
But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free
selling and buying, and all the other “brave words” of our bourgeois about freedom in general,
have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered
traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of
buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.
You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society,
private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the
few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us,
therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose
existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.
In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is
just what we intend.
From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a
social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can
no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say,
individuality vanishes.

24 Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists

You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois,
than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and
made impossible.
Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does
is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.
It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal
laziness will overtake us.
According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer
idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do
not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no
longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.
All objections urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating material
products, have, in the same way, been urged against the Communistic mode of producing and
appropriating intellectual products. Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property
is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identical
with the disappearance of all culture.
That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous majority, a mere training to act as
a machine.
But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property,
the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, &c. Your very ideas are but the
outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your
jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will whose essential character
and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.
The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason,
the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property –
historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production – this misconception you
share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient
property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in
the case of your own bourgeois form of property.
Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of
the Communists.
On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private
gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this
state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians,
and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both
will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime
we plead guilty.
But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by
social.
And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which
you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The
Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter
the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.
The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents
and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the

25 Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists

family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple
articles of commerce and instruments of labour.
But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.
The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of
production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that
the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.
He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as
mere instruments of production.
For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the
community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the
Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed
almost from time immemorial.
Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal,
not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.
Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the
Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for
a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-
evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of
the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.
The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.
The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the
proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the
nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois
sense of the word.
National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing
to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to
uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.
The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the
leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the
proletariat.
In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to, the
exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism
between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an
end.
The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, from an
ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.
Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one
word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material
existence, in his social relations and in his social life?
What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character
in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the
ideas of its ruling class.
When people speak of the ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express that fact that
within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the
old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.
When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by
Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal

26 Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists

society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious
liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within
the domain of knowledge.
“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been
modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political
science, and law, constantly survived this change.”
“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of
society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality,
instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical
experience.”
What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the
development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.
But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation
of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that 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 involved 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 ruling class to win the battle of democracy.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the
bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the
proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total 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 revolutionising the mode of production.
These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
Nevertheless, in 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 rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank
with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation 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 work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for
agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of
all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the

27 Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists

populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s
factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial
production, &c, &c.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has
been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will
lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of
one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is
compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a
revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions
of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the
existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own
supremacy as a class.
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an
association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of
all.

III. Socialist and Communist Literature

1. Reactionary Socialism

A. Feudal Socialism
Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of the aristocracies of France and
England to write pamphlets against modern bourgeois society. In the French Revolution of July
1830, and in the English reform agitation4, these aristocracies again succumbed to the hateful
upstart. Thenceforth, a serious political struggle was altogether out of the question. A literary
battle alone remained possible. But even in the domain of literature the old cries of the restoration
period had become impossible.*
In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight, apparently, of its own
interests, and to formulate their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited
working class alone. Thus, the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new
masters and whispering in his ears sinister prophesies of coming catastrophe.
In this way arose feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half an echo of the past, half
menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie
to the very heart’s core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend
the march of modern history.
The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarian alms-bag in front for a
banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats
of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.
One section of the French Legitimists and “Young England” exhibited this spectacle.
In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to that of the bourgeoisie, the
feudalists forget that they exploited under circumstances and conditions that were quite different
and that are now antiquated. In showing that, under their rule, the modern proletariat never
existed, they forget that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of their own form of
society.
For the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionary character of their criticism that their chief
accusation against the bourgeois amounts to this, that under the bourgeois régime a class is being
developed which is destined to cut up root and branch the old order of society.
What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it creates a proletariat as that it creates
a revolutionary proletariat.
In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive measures against the working class; and in
ordinary life, despite their high-falutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped
from the tree of industry, and to barter truth, love, and honour, for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar,
and potato spirits.†
As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has Clerical Socialism with
Feudal Socialism.

* Not the English Restoration (1660-1689), but the French Restoration (1814-1830). [Note by Engels to the English
edition of 1888.]
† This applies chiefly to Germany, where the landed aristocracy and squirearchy have large portions of their estates
cultivated for their own account by stewards, and are, moreover, extensive beetroot-sugar manufacturers and distillers
of potato spirits. The wealthier British aristocracy are, as yet, rather above that; but they, too, know how to make up for
declining rents by lending their names to floaters or more or less shady joint-stock companies. [Note by Engels to the
English edition of 1888.]

29 Chapter III: Socialist and Communist Literature

Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge. Has not Christianity
declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the State? Has it not preached in the
place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and
Mother Church? Christian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the
heart-burnings of the aristocrat.

B. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism
The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by the bourgeoisie, not the only
class whose conditions of existence pined and perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois
society. The medieval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the
modern bourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little developed, industrially and
commercially, these two classes still vegetate side by side with the rising bourgeoisie.
In countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, a new class of petty
bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing
itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The individual members of this class,
however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition, and,
as modern industry develops, they even see the moment approaching when they will completely
disappear as an independent section of modern society, to be replaced in manufactures,
agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen.
In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more than half of the population, it was
natural that writers who sided with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie should use, in their
criticism of the bourgeois régime, the standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and from the
standpoint of these intermediate classes, should take up the cudgels for the working class. Thus
arose petty-bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi was the head of this school, not only in France but
also in England.
This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in the conditions of
modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved,
incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the concentration of
capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the
petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying
inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the
dissolution of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.
In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of
production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to
cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old
property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case,
it is both reactionary and Utopian.
Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal relations in agriculture.
Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception,
this form of Socialism ended in a miserable fit of the blues.

C. German or “True” Socialism
The Socialist and Communist literature of France, a literature that originated under the pressure
of a bourgeoisie in power, and that was the expressions of the struggle against this power, was
introduced into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie, in that country, had just begun its
contest with feudal absolutism.
German philosophers, would-be philosophers, and beaux esprits (men of letters), eagerly seized
on this literature, only forgetting, that when these writings immigrated from France into
Germany, French social conditions had not immigrated along with them. In contact with German

30 Chapter III: Socialist and Communist Literature

social conditions, this French literature lost all its immediate practical significance and assumed a
purely literary aspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of the Eighteenth Century, the demands
of the first French Revolution were nothing more than the demands of “Practical Reason” in
general, and the utterance of the will of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie signified, in their
eyes, the laws of pure Will, of Will as it was bound to be, of true human Will generally.
The work of the German literati consisted solely in bringing the new French ideas into harmony
with their ancient philosophical conscience, or rather, in annexing the French ideas without
deserting their own philosophic point of view.
This annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign language is appropriated, namely,
by translation.
It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints over the manuscripts on
which the classical works of ancient heathendom had been written. The German literati reversed
this process with the profane French literature. They wrote their philosophical nonsense beneath
the French original. For instance, beneath the French criticism of the economic functions of
money, they wrote “Alienation of Humanity”, and beneath the French criticism of the bourgeois
state they wrote “Dethronement of the Category of the General”, and so forth.
The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of the French historical criticisms,
they dubbed “Philosophy of Action”, “True Socialism”, “German Science of Socialism”,
“Philosophical Foundation of Socialism”, and so on.
The French Socialist and Communist literature was thus completely emasculated. And, since it
ceased in the hands of the German to express the struggle of one class with the other, he felt
conscious of having overcome “French one-sidedness” and of representing, not true requirements,
but the requirements of Truth; not the interests of the proletariat, but the interests of Human
Nature, of Man in general, who belongs to no class, has no reality, who exists only in the misty
realm of philosophical fantasy.
This German socialism, which took its schoolboy task so seriously and solemnly, and extolled its
poor stock-in-trade in such a mountebank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic
innocence.
The fight of the Germans, and especially of the Prussian bourgeoisie, against feudal aristocracy
and absolute monarchy, in other words, the liberal movement, became more earnest.
By this, the long-wished for opportunity was offered to “True” Socialism of confronting the
political movement with the Socialist demands, of hurling the traditional anathemas against
liberalism, against representative government, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom
of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses
that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this bourgeois movement. German
Socialism forgot, in the nick of time, that the French criticism, whose silly echo it was,
presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its corresponding economic
conditions of existence, and the political constitution adapted thereto, the very things those
attainment was the object of the pending struggle in Germany.
To the absolute governments, with their following of parsons, professors, country squires, and
officials, it served as a welcome scarecrow against the threatening bourgeoisie.
It was a sweet finish, after the bitter pills of flogging and bullets, with which these same
governments, just at that time, dosed the German working-class risings.
While this “True” Socialism thus served the government as a weapon for fighting the German
bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, directly represented a reactionary interest, the interest of German
Philistines. In Germany, the petty-bourgeois class, a relic of the sixteenth century, and since then
constantly cropping up again under the various forms, is the real social basis of the existing state
of things.

31 Chapter III: Socialist and Communist Literature

To preserve this class is to preserve the existing state of things in Germany. The industrial and
political supremacy of the bourgeoisie threatens it with certain destruction – on the one hand,
from the concentration of capital; on the other, from the rise of a revolutionary proletariat. “True”
Socialism appeared to kill these two birds with one stone. It spread like an epidemic.
The robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric, steeped in the dew of
sickly sentiment, this transcendental robe in which the German Socialists wrapped their sorry
“eternal truths”, all skin and bone, served to wonderfully increase the sale of their goods amongst
such a public.
And on its part German Socialism recognised, more and more, its own calling as the bombastic
representative of the petty-bourgeois Philistine.
It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the German petty Philistine to be the
typical man. To every villainous meanness of this model man, it gave a hidden, higher, Socialistic
interpretation, the exact contrary of its real character. It went to the extreme length of directly
opposing the “brutally destructive” tendency of Communism, and of proclaiming its supreme and
impartial contempt of all class struggles. With very few exceptions, all the so-called Socialist and
Communist publications that now (1847) circulate in Germany belong to the domain of this foul
and enervating literature.*

2. Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism
A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the
continued existence of bourgeois society.
To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of
the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to
animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of
socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems.
We may cite Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misère as an example of this form.
The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the
struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society,
minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a
proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best;
and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete
systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway
into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within
the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the
bourgeoisie.
A second, and more practical, but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought to depreciate
every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class by showing that no mere political
reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical relations, could
be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of
Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production,
an abolition that can be affected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the
continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations
between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify the administrative work,
of bourgeois government.

* The revolutionary storm of 1848 swept away this whole shabby tendency and cured its protagonists of the desire to
dabble in socialism. The chief representative and classical type of this tendency is Mr Karl Gruen. [Note by Engels to
the German edition of 1890.]

32 Chapter III: Socialist and Communist Literature

Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure
of speech.
Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for the benefit of the working
class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only
seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism.
It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois – for the benefit of the working class.

3. Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism
We do not here refer to that literature which, in every great modern revolution, has always given
voice to the demands of the proletariat, such as the writings of Babeuf and others.
The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, made in times of universal
excitement, when feudal society was being overthrown, necessarily failed, owing to the then
undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to the absence of the economic conditions for its
emancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, and could be produced by the impending
bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that accompanied these first movements of
the proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character. It inculcated universal asceticism and
social levelling in its crudest form.
The Socialist and Communist systems, properly so called, those of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen,
and others, spring into existence in the early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle
between proletariat and bourgeoisie (see Section I. Bourgeois and Proletarians).
The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms, as well as the action of the
decomposing elements in the prevailing form of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy,
offers to them the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any independent political
movement.
Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the development of industry, the
economic situation, as they find it, does not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the
emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search after a new social science, after new social
laws, that are to create these conditions.
Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive action; historically created conditions of
emancipation to fantastic ones; and the gradual, spontaneous class organisation of the proletariat
to an organisation of society especially contrived by these inventors. Future history resolves
itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the practical carrying out of their social plans.
In the formation of their plans, they are conscious of caring chiefly for the interests of the
working class, as being the most suffering class. Only from the point of view of being the most
suffering class does the proletariat exist for them.
The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings, causes Socialists
of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve
the condition of every member of society, even that of the most favoured. Hence, they habitually
appeal to society at large, without the distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class.
For how can people, when once they understand their system, fail to see in it the best possible
plan of the best possible state of society?
Hence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary action; they wish to attain their
ends by peaceful means, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the
way for the new social Gospel.
Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the proletariat is still in a very
undeveloped state and has but a fantastic conception of its own position, correspond with the first
instinctive yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction of society.

33 Chapter III: Socialist and Communist Literature

But these Socialist and Communist publications contain also a critical element. They attack every
principle of existing society. Hence, they are full of the most valuable materials for the
enlightenment of the working class. The practical measures proposed in them – such as the
abolition of the distinction between town and country, of the family, of the carrying on of
industries for the account of private individuals, and of the wage system, the proclamation of
social harmony, the conversion of the function of the state into a more superintendence of
production – all these proposals point solely to the disappearance of class antagonisms which
were, at that time, only just cropping up, and which, in these publications, are recognised in their
earliest indistinct and forms only. These proposals, therefore, are of a purely Utopian
character.
The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an inverse relation to
historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes definite
shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical
value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of these systems were,
in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary
sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive
historical development of the proletariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and that consistently, to
deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dream of experimental
realisation of their social Utopias, of founding isolated “phalansteres”, of establishing “Home
Colonies”, or setting up a “Little Icaria”* – duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem – and to
realise all these castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the
bourgeois. By degrees, they sink into the category of the reactionary [or] conservative Socialists
depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic pedantry, and by their fanatical and
superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social science.
They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part of the working class; such action,
according to them, can only result from blind unbelief in the new Gospel.
The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respectively, oppose the Chartists and the
Réformistes.

* Phalanstéres were Socialist colonies on the plan of Charles Fourier; Icaria was the name given by Cabet to his Utopia
and, later on, to his American Communist colony. [Note by Engels to the English edition of 1888.]
“Home Colonies” were what Owen called his Communist model societies. Phalanstéres was the name of the public
palaces planned by Fourier. Icaria was the name given to the Utopian land of fancy, whose Communist institutions
Cabet portrayed. [Note by Engels to the German edition of 1890.]

IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the
Various Existing Opposition Parties

Section II has made clear the relations of the Communists to the existing working-class parties,
such as the Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America.
The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the
momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent
and take care of the future of that movement. In France, the Communists ally with the Social-
Democrats* against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take
up a critical position in regard to phases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great
Revolution.
In Switzerland, they support the Radicals, without losing sight of the fact that this party consists
of antagonistic elements, partly of Democratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly of radical
bourgeois.
In Poland, they support the party that insists on an agrarian revolution as the prime condition for
national emancipation, that party which fomented the insurrection of Cracow in 1846.
In Germany, they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way, against the
absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie.
But they never cease, for a single instant, to instil into the working class the clearest possible
recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the
German workers may straightway use, as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social
and political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy,
and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight against the
bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin.
The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a
bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European
civilisation and with a much more developed proletariat than that of England was in the
seventeenth, and France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in
Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.
In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing
social and political order of things.
In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property
question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.
Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all
countries.
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can
be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes
tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They
have a world to win.
Working Men of All Countries, Unite!5

* The party then represented in Parliament by Ledru-Rollin, in literature by Louis Blanc, in the daily
press by the Réforme. The name of Social-Democracy signifies, with these its inventors, a section of
the Democratic or Republican Party more or less tinged with socialism. [Engels, English Edition
1888]

Letter from Engels to Marx, 24 November 1847*

Paris, 23-24 November 1847
Dear Marx,
Not until this evening was it decided that I should be coming. Saturday evening, then, in Ostend,
Hôtel de la Couronne, just opposite the railway station beside the harbour, and Sunday morning
across the water. If you take the train that leaves between 4 and 5, you’ll arrive at about the
same time as I do. …

Tuesday evening
Verte [PTO]
Give a little thought to the “Confession of Faith.” I think we would do best to abandon the
catechetical form and call the thing “Communist Manifesto.” Since a certain amount of history
has to be narrated in it, the form hitherto adopted is quite unsuitable. I shall be bringing with me
the one from here, which I did [“Principles of Communism”]; it is in simple narrative form, but
wretchedly worded, in a tearing hurry. I start off by asking: What is communism? and then
straight on to the proletariat – the history of its origins, how it differs from earlier workers,
development of the antithesis between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, crises, conclusions. In
between, all kinds of secondary matter and, finally, the communists’ party policy, in so far as it
should be made public. The one here has not yet been submitted in its entirety for endorsement
but, save for a few quite minor points, I think I can get it through in such a form that at least there
is nothing in it which conflicts with our views. …

* From MECW Volume 38, p. 146; Written: 24 November 1847; First published: in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F.
Engels und K. Marx, 1913.

http://marx.org\../../1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm

Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith*

This document is the draft programme discussed at the First Congress of the Communist League in
London on June 2-9, 1847.
The Congress was a final stage in the reorganisation of the League of the Just – an organisation of
German workers and craftsmen, which was founded in Paris in 1836-37 and soon acquired an
international character, having communities in Germany, France, Switzerland, Britain and Sweden.
The activity of Marx and Engels directed towards the ideological and organisational unity of the
socialists and advanced workers prompted the leaders of the League (Karl Schapper, Joseph Moll,
Heinrich Bauer), who resided in London front November 1846, to ask for their help in reorganising
the League and drafting its new program me. When Marx and Engels were convinced that the leaders
of the League of the Just were ready to accept the principles of scientific communism as its
programme they accepted the offer to join the League made to them late in January 1847.
Engels’ active participation in the work of the Congress (Marx was unable to go to London) affected
the course and the results of its proceedings. The League was renamed the Communist League, the old
motto of the League of the Just “All men are brothers” was replaced by a new, Marxist one: “Working
Men of All Countries, Unite! “ The draft programme and the draft Rules of the League were approved
at the last sitting on June 9, 1847.
The full text of the “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith” (Credo) became known only in 1968.
It was found by the Swiss scholar Bert Andréas together with the draft Rules and the circular of the
First Congress to the members of the League in the archives of Joachim Friedrich Martens, an active
member of the Communist League, which are kept in the State and University Library in Hamburg.
This discovery made it possible to ascertain a number of important points in the history of the
Communist League and the drafting of its programme documents. It had been previously assumed that
the First Congress did no more than adopt a decision to draw up a programme and that the draft itself
was made by the London Central Authority of the Communist League (Joseph Moll, Karl Schapper
and Heinrich Bauer) after the Congress between June and August 1847. The new documents show that
the draft was ready by June 9, 1847 and that its author was Engels (the manuscript found in Martens’
archives, with the exception of some inserted words, the concluding sentence and the signatures of the
president and the secretary of the Congress, was written in Engels’ hand).
The document testifies to Engels’ great influence on the discussion of the programme at the Congress
– the formulation of the answers to most of the questions is a Marxist one. Besides, while drafting the
programme, Engels had to take into account that the members of the League had not yet freed
themselves from the influence of utopian ideas and this was reflected in the formulation of the first six
questions and answers. The form of a “revolutionary catechism” was also commonly used in the
League of the Just and other organisations of workers and craftsmen at the time. It may he assumed
that Engels intended to give greater precision to some of the formulations of the programme document
in the course of further discussion and revision.
After the First Congress of the Communist League, the “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith”
was sent, together with the draft Rules, to the communities for discussion, the results of which were to
be taken into account at the time of the final approval of the programme and the Rules at the Second
Congress. When working on another, improved draft programme, the Principles of Communism, in
late October 1847, Engels made direct use of the “Confession of Faith”, as can be seen from the
coincidences of the texts, and also from references in the Principles to the earlier document when
Engels had apparently decided to leave formulations of some of the answers as they were.

* From MECW Volume 6, p. 92; written by Engels, June 9 1847; first published in Gründungsdokumente des Bundes
der Kommunisten, Hamburg, 1969, in English in Birth of the Communist Manifesto, International Publishers, 1971.

37 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

A Communist Confession of Faith
Question 1: Are you a Communist?

Answer: Yes.

Question 2: What is the aim of the Communists?
Answer: To organise society in such a way that every member of it can develop
and use all his capabilities and powers in complete freedom and without thereby
infringing the basic conditions of this society.

Question 3: How do you wish to achieve this aim?
Answer: By the elimination of private property and its replacement by community
of property.

Question 4: On what do you base your community of property?
Answer: Firstly, on the mass of productive forces and means of subsistence
resulting from the development of industry, agriculture, trade and colonisation,
and on the possibility inherent in machinery, chemical and other resources of their
infinite extension.
Secondly, on the fact that in the consciousness or feeling of every individual there
exist certain irrefutable basic principles which, being the result of the whole of
historical development, require no proof.

Question 5: What are such principles?
Answer: For example, every individual strives to be happy. The happiness of the
individual is inseparable from the happiness of all, etc.

Question 6: How do you wish to prepare the way for your community of property?
Answer: By enlightening and uniting the proletariat.

Question 7: What is the proletariat?
Answer: The proletariat is that class of society which lives exclusively by its
labour and not on the profit from any kind of capital; that class whose weal and
woe, whose life and death, therefore, depend on the alternation of times of good
and bad business;. in a word, on the fluctuations of competition.

Question 8: Then there have not always been proletarians?
Answer: No. There have always been poor and working classes; and those who
worked were almost always the poor. But there have not always been proletarians,
just as competition has not always been free.

Question 9: How did the proletariat arise?
Answer: The proletariat came into being as a result of the introduction of the
machines which have been invented since the middle of the last century and the
most important of which are: the steam-engine, the spinning machine and the
power loom. These machines, which were very expensive and could therefore
only be purchased by rich people, supplanted the workers of the time, because by
the use of machinery it was possible to produce commodities more quickly and
cheaply than could the workers with their imperfect spinning wheels and hand-
looms. The machines thus delivered industry entirely into the hands of the big
capitalists and rendered the workers’ scanty property which consisted mainly of
their tools, looms, etc., quite worthless, so that the capitalist was left with
everything, the worker with nothing. In this way the factory system was

38 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

introduced. Once the capitalists saw how advantageous this was for them, they
sought to extend it to more and more branches of labour. They divided work more
and more between the workers so that workers who formerly had made a whole
article now produced only a part of it. Labour simplified in this way produced
goods more quickly and therefore more cheaply and only now was it found in
almost every branch of labour that here also machines could be used. As soon as
any branch of labour went over to factory production it ended up, just as in the
case of spinning and weaving. in the hands of the big capitalists, and the workers
were deprived of the last remnants of their independence. We have gradually
arrived at the position where almost all branches of labour are run on a factory
basis. This has increasingly brought about the ruin of the previously existing
middle class, especially of the small master craftsmen, completely transformed the
previous position of the workers, and two new classes which are gradually
swallowing up all other classes have come into being, namely:
I. The, class of the big capitalists, who in all advanced countries are in almost
exclusive possession of the means of subsistence and those means (machines,
factories, workshops, etc.) by which these means of subsistence are produced.
This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie.
II. The class of the completely propertyless, who are compelled to sell their labour
to the first class, the bourgeois, simply to obtain from them in return their means
of subsistence. Since the parties to this trading in labour are not equal, but the
bourgeois have the advantage, the propertyless must submit to the bad conditions
laid down by the bourgeois. This class, dependent on the bourgeois, is called the
class of the proletarians or the proletariat.

Question 10: In what way does the proletarian differ from the slave?
Answer: The slave is sold once and for all, the proletarian has to sell himself by
the day and by the hour. The slave is the property of one master and for that very
reason has a guaranteed subsistence, however wretched it may be. The proletarian
is, so to speak, the slave of the entire bourgeois class, not of one master, and
therefore has no guaranteed subsistence, since nobody buys his labour if he does
not need it. The slave is accounted a thing and not a member of civil society. The
proletarian is recognised as a person, as a member of civil society. The slave may,
therefore, have a better subsistence than the proletarian but the latter stands at a
higher stage of development. The slave frees himself by becoming a proletarian,
abolishing from the totality of property relationships only the relationship of
slavery. The proletarian can free himself only by abolishing property in general.

Question 11: In what way does the proletarian differ from the serf?
Answer: The serf has the use of a piece of land, that is, of an instrument of
production, in return for handing over a greater or lesser portion of the yield. The
proletarian works with instruments of production which belong to someone else
who, in return for his labour, hands over to him a portion, determined by
competition, of the products. In the case of the serf, the share of the labourer is
determined by his own labour, that is, by himself. In the case of the proletarian it
is determined by competition, therefore in the first place by the bourgeois. The
serf has guaranteed subsistence, the proletarian has not. The serf frees himself by
driving out his feudal lord and becoming a property owner himself, thus entering
into competition and joining for the time being the possessing class, the privileged
class. The proletarian frees himself by doing away with property, competition, and
all class differences.

39 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

Question 12: In what way does the proletarian differ from the handicraftsman?
Answer: As opposed to the proletarian, the so-called handicraftsman, who still
existed nearly everywhere during the last century and still exists here and there, is
at most a temporary proletarian. His aim is to acquire capital himself and so to
exploit other workers. He can often achieve this aim where the craft guilds still
exist or where freedom to follow a trade has not yet led to the organisation of
handwork on a factory basis and to intense competition. But as soon as the factory
system is introduced into handwork and competition is in full swing, this prospect
is eliminated and the handicraftsman becomes more and more a proletarian. The
handicraftsman therefore frees himself either by becoming a bourgeois or in
general passing over into the middle class, or, by becoming a proletarian as a
result of competition (as now happens in most cases) and joining the movement of
the proletariat – i. e., the more or less conscious communist movement.

Question 13: Then you do not believe that community of property has been possible at any time?
Answer: No. Communism has only arisen since machinery and other inventions
made it possible to hold out the prospect of an all-sided development, a happy
existence, for all members of society. Communism is the theory of a liberation
which was not possible for the slaves, the serfs, or the handicraftsmen, but only
for the proletarians and hence it belongs of necessity to the 19th century and was
not possible in any earlier period.

Question 14: Let m go back to the sixth question. As you wish to prepare for community of
property by the enlightening and uniting of the proletariat, then you reject revolution?

Answer: We are convinced not only of the uselessness but even of the
harmfulness of all conspiracies. We are also aware that revolutions are not made
deliberately and arbitrarily but that everywhere and at all times they are the
necessary consequence of circumstances which are not in any way whatever
dependent either on the will or on the leadership of individual parties or of whole
classes. But we also see that the development of the proletariat in almost all
countries of the world is forcibly repressed by the possessing classes and that thus
a revolution is being forcibly worked for by the opponents of communism. If, in
the end, the oppressed proletariat is thus driven into a revolution, then we will
defend the cause of the proletariat just as well by our deeds as now by our words.

Question 15: Do you intend to replace the existing social order by community of Property at one
stroke?

Answer: We have no such intention. The development of the masses cannot he
ordered by decree. It is determined by the development of the conditions in which
these masses live, and therefore proceeds gradually.

Question 16: How do you think the transition from the present situation to community of
Property is to be effected?

Answer: The first, fundamental condition for the introduction of community of
property is the political liberation of the proletariat through a democratic
constitution.

Question 17: What will be your first measure once you have established democracy?
Answer: Guaranteeing the subsistence of the proletariat.

Question 18: How will you do this?

40 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

Answer. I. By limiting private property in such a way that it gradually prepares
the way for its transformation into social property, e. g., by progressive taxation,
limitation of the right of inheritance in favour of the state, etc., etc.
II. By employing workers in national workshops and factories and on national
estates.
III. By educating all children at the expense of the state.

Question 19: How will you arrange this kind of education during the period of transition?
Answer: All children will be educated in state establishments from the time when
they can do without the first maternal care.

Question 20: Will not the introduction of community of property be accompanied by the
proclamation of the community of women?

Answer: By no means. We will only interfere in the personal relationship between
men and women or with the family in general to the extent that the maintenance of
the existing institution would disturb the new social order. Besides, we are well
aware that the family relationship has been modified in the course of history by
the property relationships and by periods of development, and that consequently
the ending of private property will also have a most important influence on it.

Question 21: Will nationalities continue to exist under communism?
Answer: The nationalities of the peoples who join together according to the
principle of community will be just as much compelled by this union to merge
with one another and thereby supersede themselves as the various differences
between estates and classes disappear through the superseding of their basis –
private property.

Question 22. Do Communists reject existing religions?
Answer: All religions which have existed hitherto were expressions of historical
stages of development of individual peoples or groups of peoples. But
communism is that stage of historical development which makes all existing
religions superfluous and supersedes them.

In the name and on the mandate of the Congress.
Secretary: Heide [Alias of Wilhelm Wolff in the League of the Just]
President: Karl Schill [Alias of Karl Schapper in the League of the Just]
London, June 9, 1847

The Principles of Communism*

In 1847 Engels wrote two draft programmes for the Communist League in the form of a catechism,
one in June and the other in October. The latter, which is known as Principles of Communism, was
first published in 1914. The earlier document “Draft of the Communist Confession of Faith”, was only
found in 1968. It was first published in 1969 in Hamburg, together with four other documents
pertaining to the first congress of the Communist League, in a booklet entitled Gründungs Dokumente
des Bundes der Kommunisten (Juni bis September 1847) [Founding Documents of the Communist
League].
At the June 1847 Congress of the League of the Just, which was also the founding conference of the
Communist League, it was decided to issue a draft “confession of faith” to be submitted for discussion
to the sections of the League. The document which has now come to light is almost certainly this
draft. Comparison of the two documents shows that Principles of Communism is a revised edition of
this earlier draft. In Principles of Communism, Engels left three questions unanswered, in two cases
with the notation “unchanged” (bleibt); this clearly refers to the answers provided in the earlier draft.
The new draft for the programme was worked out by Engels on the instructions of the leading body of
the Paris circle of the Communist League. The instructions were decided on after Engels’ sharp
criticism at the committee meeting, on October 22, 1847, of the draft programme drawn up by the
“true socialist“ Moses Hess, which was then rejected.
Still considering Principles of Communism as a preliminary draft, Engels expressed the view, in a
letter to Marx dated November 23-24 1847, that it would be best to drop the old catechistic form and
draw up a programme in the form of a manifesto.
At the second congress of the Communist League (November 29-December 8, 1847) Marx and Engels
defended the fundamental scientific principles of communism and were trusted with drafting a
programme in the form of a manifesto of the Communist Party. In writing the manifesto the founders
of Marxism made use of the propositions enunciated in Principles of Communism.
Engels uses the term Manufaktur, and its derivatives, which have been translated “manufacture”,
“manufacturing”, etc., Engels used this word literally, to indicate production by hand, not factory
production for which Engels uses “big industry”. Manufaktur differs from handicraft (guild production
in mediaeval towns), in that the latter was carried out by independent artisans. Manufacktur is carried
out by homeworkers working for merchant capitalists, or by groups of craftspeople working together
in large workshops owned by capitalists. It is therefore a transitional mode of production, between
guild (handicraft) and modern (capitalist) forms of production.

* Written: October-November 1847; Source: Selected Works, Volume One, p. 81-97, Progress Publishers, Moscow,
1969; first published: 1914, by Eduard Bernstein in the German Social Democratic Party’s Vorwärts!; translated: Paul
Sweezy; Transcribed: Zodiac, MEA 1993; marxists.org 1999; proofed and corrected by Andy Blunden, February 2005.
Footnotes are from the Chinese Edition of Marx/Engels Selected Works Peking, Foreign Languages Press, 1977, with
editorial additions by marxists.org.

42 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

The Principles of Communism

– 1 –
What is Communism?

Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.

– 2 –
What is the proletariat?

The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not
draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole
existence depends on the demand for labor – hence, on the changing state of business, on the
vagaries of unbridled competition. The proletariat, or the class of proletarians, is, in a word, the
working class of the 19th century.6

– 3 –
Proletarians, then, have not always existed?

No. There have always been poor and working classes; and the working class have mostly been
poor. But there have not always been workers and poor people living under conditions as they are
today; in other words, there have not always been proletarians, any more than there has always
been free unbridled competitions.

– 4 –
How did the proletariat originate?

The Proletariat originated in the industrial revolution, which took place in England in the last half
of the last (18th) century, and which has since then been repeated in all the civilized countries of
the world.
This industrial revolution was precipitated by the discovery of the steam engine, various spinning
machines, the mechanical loom, and a whole series of other mechanical devices. These machines,
which were very expensive and hence could be bought only by big capitalists, altered the whole
mode of production and displaced the former workers, because the machines turned out cheaper
and better commodities than the workers could produce with their inefficient spinning wheels and
handlooms. The machines delivered industry wholly into the hands of the big capitalists and
rendered entirely worthless the meagre property of the workers (tools, looms, etc.). The result was
that the capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers. This
marked the introduction of the factory system into the textile industry.
Once the impulse to the introduction of machinery and the factory system had been given, this
system spread quickly to all other branches of industry, especially cloth- and book-printing,
pottery, and the metal industries.
Labor was more and more divided among the individual workers so that the worker who
previously had done a complete piece of work now did only a part of that piece. This division of
labor made it possible to produce things faster and cheaper. It reduced the activity of the
individual worker to simple, endlessly repeated mechanical motions which could be performed
not only as well but much better by a machine. In this way, all these industries fell, one after
another, under the dominance of steam, machinery, and the factory system, just as spinning and
weaving had already done.
But at the same time, they also fell into the hands of big capitalists, and their workers were
deprived of whatever independence remained to them. Gradually, not only genuine manufacture
but also handicrafts came within the province of the factory system as big capitalists increasingly

43 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

displaced the small master craftsmen by setting up huge workshops, which saved many expenses
and permitted an elaborate division of labor.
This is how it has come about that in civilized countries at the present time nearly all kinds of
labor are performed in factories – and, in nearly all branches of work, handicrafts and
manufacture have been superseded. This process has, to an ever greater degree, ruined the old
middle class, especially the small handicraftsmen; it has entirely transformed the condition of the
workers; and two new classes have been created which are gradually swallowing up all the others.
These are:

(i) The class of big capitalists, who, in all civilized countries, are already in almost
exclusive possession of all the means of subsistence and of the instruments
(machines, factories) and materials necessary for the production of the means of
subsistence. This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie.
(ii) The class of the wholly propertyless, who are obliged to sell their labor to the
bourgeoisie in order to get, in exchange, the means of subsistence for their
support. This is called the class of proletarians, or the proletariat.

– 5 –
Under what conditions does this sale of the

labor of the proletarians to the bourgeoisie take place?
Labor is a commodity, like any other, and its price is therefore determined by exactly the same
laws that apply to other commodities. In a regime of big industry or of free competition – as we
shall see, the two come to the same thing – the price of a commodity is, on the average, always
equal to its cost of production. Hence, the price of labor is also equal to the cost of production of
labor.
But, the costs of production of labor consist of precisely the quantity of means of subsistence
necessary to enable the worker to continue working, and to prevent the working class from dying
out. The worker will therefore get no more for his labor than is necessary for this purpose; the
price of labor, or the wage, will, in other words, be the lowest, the minimum, required for the
maintenance of life.
However, since business is sometimes better and sometimes worse, it follows that the worker
sometimes gets more and sometimes gets less for his commodities. But, again, just as the
industrialist, on the average of good times and bad, gets no more and no less for his commodities
than what they cost, similarly on the average the worker gets no more and no less than his
minimum.
This economic law of wages operates the more strictly the greater the degree to which big
industry has taken possession of all branches of production.

– 6 –
What working classes were there before the industrial

revolution?
The working classes have always, according to the different stages of development of society,
lived in different circumstances and had different relations to the owning and ruling classes.
In antiquity, the workers were the slaves of the owners, just as they still are in many backward
countries and even in the southern part of the United States.
In the Middle Ages, they were the serfs of the land-owning nobility, as they still are in Hungary,
Poland, and Russia. In the Middle Ages, and indeed right up to the industrial revolution, there
were also journeymen in the cities who worked in the service of petty bourgeois masters.

44 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

Gradually, as manufacture developed, these journeymen became manufacturing workers who
were even then employed by larger capitalists.

– 7 –
In what way do proletarians differ from slaves?

The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly.
The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may
be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire
bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence.
This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.
The slave is outside competition; the proletarian is in it and experiences all its vagaries.
The slave counts as a thing, not as a member of society. Thus, the slave can have a better
existence than the proletarian, while the proletarian belongs to a higher stage of social
development and, himself, stands on a higher social level than the slave.
The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the
relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by
abolishing private property in general.

– 8 –
In what way do proletarians differ from serfs?

The serf possesses and uses an instrument of production, a piece of land, in exchange for which
he gives up a part of his product or part of the services of his labor.
The proletarian works with the instruments of production of another, for the account of this other,
in exchange for a part of the product.
The serf gives up, the proletarian receives. The serf has an assured existence, the proletarian has
not. The serf is outside competition, the proletarian is in it.
The serf liberates himself in one of three ways: either he runs away to the city and there becomes
a handicraftsman; or, instead of products and services, he gives money to his lord and thereby
becomes a free tenant; or he overthrows his feudal lord and himself becomes a property owner. In
short, by one route or another, he gets into the owning class and enters into competition. The
proletarian liberates himself by abolishing competition, private property, and all class differences.

– 9 –
In what way do proletarians differ from handicraftsmen?

In contrast to the proletarian, the so-called handicraftsman, as he still existed almost everywhere
in the past (eighteenth) century and still exists here and there at present, is a proletarian at most
temporarily. His goal is to acquire capital himself wherewith to exploit other workers. He can
often achieve this goal where guilds still exist or where freedom from guild restrictions has not
yet led to the introduction of factory-style methods into the crafts nor yet to fierce competition
But as soon as the factory system has been introduced into the crafts and competition flourishes
fully, this perspective dwindles away and the handicraftsman becomes more and more a
proletarian. The handicraftsman therefore frees himself by becoming either bourgeois or entering
the middle class in general, or becoming a proletarian because of competition (as is now more
often the case). In which case he can free himself by joining the proletarian movement, i.e., the
more or less communist movement.7

45 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

– 10 –
In what way do proletarians differ from manufacturing

workers?
The manufacturing worker of the 16th to the 18th centuries still had, with but few exception, an
instrument of production in his own possession – his loom, the family spinning wheel, a little plot
of land which he cultivated in his spare time. The proletarian has none of these things.
The manufacturing worker almost always lives in the countryside and in a more or less
patriarchal relation to his landlord or employer; the proletarian lives, for the most part, in the city
and his relation to his employer is purely a cash relation.
The manufacturing worker is torn out of his patriarchal relation by big industry, loses whatever
property he still has, and in this way becomes a proletarian.

– 11 –
What were the immediate consequences of the industrial
revolution and of the division of society into bourgeoisie

and proletariat?
First, the lower and lower prices of industrial products brought about by machine labor totally
destroyed, in all countries of the world, the old system of manufacture or industry based upon
hand labor.
In this way, all semi-barbarian countries, which had hitherto been more or less strangers to
historical development, and whose industry had been based on manufacture, were violently
forced out of their isolation. They bought the cheaper commodities of the English and allowed
their own manufacturing workers to be ruined. Countries which had known no progress for
thousands of years – for example, India – were thoroughly revolutionized, and even China is now
on the way to a revolution.
We have come to the point where a new machine invented in England deprives millions of
Chinese workers of their livelihood within a year’s time.
In this way, big industry has brought all the people of the Earth into contact with each other, has
merged all local markets into one world market, has spread civilization and progress everywhere
and has thus ensured that whatever happens in civilized countries will have repercussions in all
other countries.
It follows that if the workers in England or France now liberate themselves, this must set off
revolution in all other countries – revolutions which, sooner or later, must accomplish the
liberation of their respective working class.
Second, wherever big industries displaced manufacture, the bourgeoisie developed in wealth and
power to the utmost and made itself the first class of the country. The result was that wherever
this happened, the bourgeoisie took political power into its own hands and displaced the hitherto
ruling classes, the aristocracy, the guildmasters, and their representative, the absolute monarchy.
The bourgeoisie annihilated the power of the aristocracy, the nobility, by abolishing the
entailment of estates – in other words, by making landed property subject to purchase and sale,
and by doing away with the special privileges of the nobility. It destroyed the power of the
guildmasters by abolishing guilds and handicraft privileges. In their place, it put competition –
that is, a state of society in which everyone has the right to enter into any branch of industry, the
only obstacle being a lack of the necessary capital.
The introduction of free competition is thus public declaration that from now on the members of
society are unequal only to the extent that their capitals are unequal, that capital is the decisive
power, and that therefore the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, have become the first class in society.

46 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

Free competition is necessary for the establishment of big industry, because it is the only
condition of society in which big industry can make its way.
Having destroyed the social power of the nobility and the guildmasters, the bourgeois also
destroyed their political power. Having raised itself to the actual position of first class in society,
it proclaims itself to be also the dominant political class. This it does through the introduction of
the representative system which rests on bourgeois equality before the law and the recognition of
free competition, and in European countries takes the form of constitutional monarchy. In these
constitutional monarchies, only those who possess a certain capital are voters – that is to say, only
members of the bourgeoisie. These bourgeois voters choose the deputies, and these bourgeois
deputies, by using their right to refuse to vote taxes, choose a bourgeois government.
Third, everywhere the proletariat develops in step with the bourgeoisie. In proportion, as the
bourgeoisie grows in wealth, the proletariat grows in numbers. For, since the proletarians can be
employed only by capital, and since capital extends only through employing labor, it follows that
the growth of the proletariat proceeds at precisely the same pace as the growth of capital.
Simultaneously, this process draws members of the bourgeoisie and proletarians together into the
great cities where industry can be carried on most profitably, and by thus throwing great masses
in one spot it gives to the proletarians a consciousness of their own strength.
Moreover, the further this process advances, the more new labor-saving machines are invented,
the greater is the pressure exercised by big industry on wages, which, as we have seen, sink to
their minimum and therewith render the condition of the proletariat increasingly unbearable. The
growing dissatisfaction of the proletariat thus joins with its rising power to prepare a proletarian
social revolution.

– 12 –
What were the further consequences of the industrial

revolution?
Big industry created in the steam engine, and other machines, the means of endlessly expanding
industrial production, speeding it up, and cutting its costs. With production thus facilitated, the
free competition, which is necessarily bound up with big industry, assumed the most extreme
forms; a multitude of capitalists invaded industry, and, in a short while, more was produced than
was needed.
As a consequence, finished commodities could not be sold, and a so-called commercial crisis
broke out. Factories had to be closed, their owners went bankrupt, and the workers were without
bread. Deepest misery reigned everywhere.
After a time, the superfluous products were sold, the factories began to operate again, wages rose,
and gradually business got better than ever.
But it was not long before too many commodities were again produced and a new crisis broke
out, only to follow the same course as its predecessor.
Ever since the beginning of this (19th) century, the condition of industry has constantly fluctuated
between periods of prosperity and periods of crisis; nearly every five to seven years, a fresh crisis
has intervened, always with the greatest hardship for workers, and always accompanied by
general revolutionary stirrings and the direct peril to the whole existing order of things.

– 13 –
What follows from these periodic commercial crises?

First:
That, though big industry in its earliest stage created free competition, it has now
outgrown free competition;

47 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

that, for big industry, competition and generally the individualistic organization of
production have become a fetter which it must and will shatter;
that, so long as big industry remains on its present footing, it can be maintained
only at the cost of general chaos every seven years, each time threatening the
whole of civilization and not only plunging the proletarians into misery but also
ruining large sections of the bourgeoisie;
hence, either that big industry must itself be given up, which is an absolute
impossibility, or that it makes unavoidably necessary an entirely new organization
of society in which production is no longer directed by mutually competing
individual industrialists but rather by the whole society operating according to a
definite plan and taking account of the needs of all.

Second: That big industry, and the limitless expansion of production which it makes possible,
bring within the range of feasibility a social order in which so much is produced that every
member of society will be in a position to exercise and develop all his powers and faculties in
complete freedom.
It thus appears that the very qualities of big industry which, in our present-day society, produce
misery and crises are those which, in a different form of society, will abolish this misery and
these catastrophic depressions.
We see with the greatest clarity:

(i) That all these evils are from now on to be ascribed solely to a social order
which no longer corresponds to the requirements of the real situation; and
(ii) That it is possible, through a new social order, to do away with these evils
altogether.

– 14 –
What will this new social order have to be like?

Above all, it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the
hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these
branches of production are operated by society as a whole – that is, for the common account,
according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society.
It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with association.
Moreover, since the management of industry by individuals necessarily implies private property,
and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry
by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated
from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be
abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and
the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the
communal ownership of goods.
In fact, the abolition of private property is, doubtless, the shortest and most significant way to
characterize the revolution in the whole social order which has been made necessary by the
development of industry – and for this reason it is rightly advanced by communists as their main
demand.

48 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

– 15 –
Was not the abolition of private property possible at an

earlier time?
No. Every change in the social order, every revolution in property relations, is the necessary
consequence of the creation of new forces of production which no longer fit into the old property
relations.
Private property has not always existed.
When, towards the end of the Middle Ages, there arose a new mode of production which could
not be carried on under the then existing feudal and guild forms of property, this manufacture,
which had outgrown the old property relations, created a new property form, private property.
And for manufacture and the earliest stage of development of big industry, private property was
the only possible property form; the social order based on it was the only possible social order.
So long as it is not possible to produce so much that there is enough for all, with more left over
for expanding the social capital and extending the forces of production – so long as this is not
possible, there must always be a ruling class directing the use of society’s productive forces, and
a poor, oppressed class. How these classes are constituted depends on the stage of development.
The agrarian Middle Ages give us the baron and the serf; the cities of the later Middle Ages show
us the guildmaster and the journeyman and the day laborer; the 17th century has its
manufacturing workers; the 19th has big factory owners and proletarians.
It is clear that, up to now, the forces of production have never been developed to the point where
enough could be developed for all, and that private property has become a fetter and a barrier in
relation to the further development of the forces of production.
Now, however, the development of big industry has ushered in a new period. Capital and the
forces of production have been expanded to an unprecedented extent, and the means are at hand
to multiply them without limit in the near future. Moreover, the forces of production have been
concentrated in the hands of a few bourgeois, while the great mass of the people are more and
more falling into the proletariat, their situation becoming more wretched and intolerable in
proportion to the increase of wealth of the bourgeoisie. And finally, these mighty and easily
extended forces of production have so far outgrown private property and the bourgeoisie, that
they threaten at any moment to unleash the most violent disturbances of the social order. Now,
under these conditions, the abolition of private property has become not only possible but
absolutely necessary.

– 16 –
Will the peaceful abolition of private property be possible?

It would be desirable if this could happen, and the communists would certainly be the last to
oppose it. Communists know only too well that all conspiracies are not only useless, but even
harmful. They know all too well that revolutions are not made intentionally and arbitrarily, but
that, everywhere and always, they have been the necessary consequence of conditions which were
wholly independent of the will and direction of individual parties and entire classes.
But they also see that the development of the proletariat in nearly all civilized countries has been
violently suppressed, and that in this way the opponents of communism have been working
toward a revolution with all their strength. If the oppressed proletariat is finally driven to
revolution, then we communists will defend the interests of the proletarians with deeds as we now
defend them with words.

49 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

– 17 –
Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at

one stroke?
No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent
necessary for the creation of a communal society.
In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be
able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient
quantity.

– 18 –
What will be the course of this revolution?

Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect
dominance of the proletariat. Direct in England, where the proletarians are already a majority of
the people. Indirect in France and Germany, where the majority of the people consists not only of
proletarians, but also of small peasants and petty bourgeois who are in the process of falling into
the proletariat, who are more and more dependent in all their political interests on the proletariat,
and who must, therefore, soon adapt to the demands of the proletariat. Perhaps this will cost a
second struggle, but the outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat.
Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a
means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood
of the proletariat. The main measures, emerging as the necessary result of existing relations, are
the following:

(i) Limitation of private property through progressive taxation, heavy inheritance
taxes, abolition of inheritance through collateral lines (brothers, nephews, etc.)
forced loans, etc.
(ii) Gradual expropriation of landowners, industrialists, railroad magnates and
shipowners, partly through competition by state industry, partly directly through
compensation in the form of bonds.
(iii) Confiscation of the possessions of all emigrants and rebels against the
majority of the people.
(iv) Organization of labor or employment of proletarians on publicly owned land,
in factories and workshops, with competition among the workers being abolished
and with the factory owners, in so far as they still exist, being obliged to pay the
same high wages as those paid by the state.
(v) An equal obligation on all members of society to work until such time as
private property has been completely abolished. Formation of industrial armies,
especially for agriculture.
(vi) Centralization of money and credit in the hands of the state through a national
bank with state capital, and the suppression of all private banks and bankers.
(vii) Increase in the number of national factories, workshops, railroads, ships;
bringing new lands into cultivation and improvement of land already under
cultivation – all in proportion to the growth of the capital and labor force at the
disposal of the nation.
(viii) Education of all children, from the moment they can leave their mother’s
care, in national establishments at national cost. Education and production
together.

50 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

(ix) Construction, on public lands, of great palaces as communal dwellings for
associated groups of citizens engaged in both industry and agriculture and
combining in their way of life the advantages of urban and rural conditions while
avoiding the one-sidedness and drawbacks of each.
(x) Destruction of all unhealthy and jerry-built dwellings in urban districts.
(xi) Equal inheritance rights for children born in and out of wedlock.
(xii) Concentration of all means of transportation in the hands of the nation.

It is impossible, of course, to carry out all these measures at once. But one will always bring
others in its wake. Once the first radical attack on private property has been launched, the
proletariat will find itself forced to go ever further, to concentrate increasingly in the hands of the
state all capital, all agriculture, all transport, all trade. All the foregoing measures are directed to
this end; and they will become practicable and feasible, capable of producing their centralizing
effects to precisely the degree that the proletariat, through its labor, multiplies the country’s
productive forces.
Finally, when all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of
the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and
production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of
its old economic habits may remain.

– 19 –
Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one

country alone?
No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth,
and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is
independent of what happens to the others.
Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent
that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle
between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not
merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries –
that is to say, at least in England, America, France, and Germany.
It will develop in each of the these countries more or less rapidly, according as one country or the
other has a more developed industry, greater wealth, a more significant mass of productive forces.
Hence, it will go slowest and will meet most obstacles in Germany, most rapidly and with the
fewest difficulties in England. It will have a powerful impact on the other countries of the world,
and will radically alter the course of development which they have followed up to now, while
greatly stepping up its pace.
It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range.

– 20 –
What will be the consequences of the

ultimate disappearance of private property?
Society will take all forces of production and means of commerce, as well as the exchange and
distribution of products, out of the hands of private capitalists and will manage them in
accordance with a plan based on the availability of resources and the needs of the whole society.
In this way, most important of all, the evil consequences which are now associated with the
conduct of big industry will be abolished.
There will be no more crises; the expanded production, which for the present order of society is
overproduction and hence a prevailing cause of misery, will then be insufficient and in need of

51 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

being expanded much further. Instead of generating misery, overproduction will reach beyond the
elementary requirements of society to assure the satisfaction of the needs of all; it will create new
needs and, at the same time, the means of satisfying them. It will become the condition of, and the
stimulus to, new progress, which will no longer throw the whole social order into confusion, as
progress has always done in the past. Big industry, freed from the pressure of private property,
will undergo such an expansion that what we now see will seem as petty in comparison as
manufacture seems when put beside the big industry of our own day. This development of
industry will make available to society a sufficient mass of products to satisfy the needs of
everyone.
The same will be true of agriculture, which also suffers from the pressure of private property and
is held back by the division of privately owned land into small parcels. Here, existing
improvements and scientific procedures will be put into practice, with a resulting leap forward
which will assure to society all the products it needs.
In this way, such an abundance of goods will be able to satisfy the needs of all its members.
The division of society into different, mutually hostile classes will then become unnecessary.
Indeed, it will be not only unnecessary but intolerable in the new social order. The existence of
classes originated in the division of labor, and the division of labor, as it has been known up to
the present, will completely disappear. For mechanical and chemical processes are not enough to
bring industrial and agricultural production up to the level we have described; the capacities of
the men who make use of these processes must undergo a corresponding development.
Just as the peasants and manufacturing workers of the last century changed their whole way of
life and became quite different people when they were drawn into big industry, in the same way,
communal control over production by society as a whole, and the resulting new development, will
both require an entirely different kind of human material.
People will no longer be, as they are today, subordinated to a single branch of production, bound
to it, exploited by it; they will no longer develop one of their faculties at the expense of all others;
they will no longer know only one branch, or one branch of a single branch, of production as a
whole. Even industry as it is today is finding such people less and less useful.
Industry controlled by society as a whole, and operated according to a plan, presupposes well-
rounded human beings, their faculties developed in balanced fashion, able to see the system of
production in its entirety.
The form of the division of labor which makes one a peasant, another a cobbler, a third a factory
worker, a fourth a stock-market operator, has already been undermined by machinery and will
completely disappear. Education will enable young people quickly to familiarize themselves with
the whole system of production and to pass from one branch of production to another in response
to the needs of society or their own inclinations. It will, therefore, free them from the one-sided
character which the present-day division of labor impresses upon every individual. Communist
society will, in this way, make it possible for its members to put their comprehensively developed
faculties to full use. But, when this happens, classes will necessarily disappear. It follows that
society organized on a communist basis is incompatible with the existence of classes on the one
hand, and that the very building of such a society provides the means of abolishing class
differences on the other.
A corollary of this is that the difference between city and country is destined to disappear. The
management of agriculture and industry by the same people rather than by two different classes
of people is, if only for purely material reasons, a necessary condition of communist association.
The dispersal of the agricultural population on the land, alongside the crowding of the industrial
population into the great cities, is a condition which corresponds to an undeveloped state of both
agriculture and industry and can already be felt as an obstacle to further development.

52 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

The general co-operation of all members of society for the purpose of planned exploitation of the
forces of production, the expansion of production to the point where it will satisfy the needs of
all, the abolition of a situation in which the needs of some are satisfied at the expense of the needs
of others, the complete liquidation of classes and their conflicts, the rounded development of the
capacities of all members of society through the elimination of the present division of labor,
through industrial education, through engaging in varying activities, through the participation by
all in the enjoyments produced by all, through the combination of city and country – these are the
main consequences of the abolition of private property.

– 21 –
What will be the influence of communist society on the

family?
It will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private matter which concerns only
the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to intervene. It can do this since it
does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way
removes the two bases of traditional marriage – the dependence rooted in private property, of the
women on the man, and of the children on the parents.
And here is the answer to the outcry of the highly moral philistines against the “community of
women”. Community of women is a condition which belongs entirely to bourgeois society and
which today finds its complete expression in prostitution. But prostitution is based on private
property and falls with it. Thus, communist society, instead of introducing community of women,
in fact abolishes it.

– 22 –
What will be the attitude of communism to existing

nationalities?
The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of
community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and thereby
to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the
abolition of their basis, private property.8

– 23 –
What will be its attitude to existing religions?

All religions so far have been the expression of historical stages of development of individual
peoples or groups of peoples. But communism is the stage of historical development which
makes all existing religions superfluous and brings about their disappearance.9

– 24 –
How do communists differ from socialists?

The so-called socialists are divided into three categories.

[ Reactionary Socialists: ]
The first category consists of adherents of a feudal and patriarchal society which has already been
destroyed, and is still daily being destroyed, by big industry and world trade and their creation,
bourgeois society. This category concludes, from the evils of existing society, that feudal and
patriarchal society must be restored because it was free of such evils. In one way or another, all
their proposals are directed to this end.

53 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

This category of reactionary socialists, for all their seeming partisanship and their scalding tears
for the misery of the proletariat, is nevertheless energetically opposed by the communists for the
following reasons:

(i) It strives for something which is entirely impossible.
(ii) It seeks to establish the rule of the aristocracy, the guildmasters, the small
producers, and their retinue of absolute or feudal monarchs, officials, soldiers, and
priests – a society which was, to be sure, free of the evils of present-day society
but which brought it at least as many evils without even offering to the oppressed
workers the prospect of liberation through a communist revolution.
(iii) As soon as the proletariat becomes revolutionary and communist, these
reactionary socialists show their true colors by immediately making common
cause with the bourgeoisie against the proletarians.

[ Bourgeois Socialists: ]
The second category consists of adherents of present-day society who have been frightened for its
future by the evils to which it necessarily gives rise. What they want, therefore, is to maintain this
society while getting rid of the evils which are an inherent part of it.
To this end, some propose mere welfare measures – while others come forward with grandiose
systems of reform which, under the pretense of re-organizing society, are in fact intended to
preserve the foundations, and hence the life, of existing society.
Communists must unremittingly struggle against these bourgeois socialists because they work for
the enemies of communists and protect the society which communists aim to overthrow.

[ Democratic Socialists: ]
Finally, the third category consists of democratic socialists who favor some of the same measures
the communists advocate, as described in Question 18, not as part of the transition to
communism, however, but as measures which they believe will be sufficient to abolish the misery
and evils of present-day society.
These democratic socialists are either proletarians who are not yet sufficiently clear about the
conditions of the liberation of their class, or they are representatives of the petty bourgeoisie, a
class which, prior to the achievement of democracy and the socialist measures to which it gives
rise, has many interests in common with the proletariat.
It follows that, in moments of action, the communists will have to come to an understanding with
these democratic socialists, and in general to follow as far as possible a common policy with them
– provided that these socialists do not enter into the service of the ruling bourgeoisie and attack
the communists.
It is clear that this form of co-operation in action does not exclude the discussion of differences.

– 25 –
What is the attitude of the communists to the

other political parties of our time?
This attitude is different in the different countries.
In England, France, and Belgium, where the bourgeoisie rules, the communists still have a
common interest with the various democratic parties, an interest which is all the greater the more
closely the socialistic measures they champion approach the aims of the communists – that is, the
more clearly and definitely they represent the interests of the proletariat and the more they depend
on the proletariat for support. In England, for example, the working-class Chartists10 are infinitely
closer to the communists than the democratic petty bourgeoisie or the so-called Radicals.

54 Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith

In America, where a democratic constitution has already been established, the communists must
make the common cause with the party which will turn this constitution against the bourgeoisie
and use it in the interests of the proletariat – that is, with the agrarian National Reformers.11
In Switzerland, the Radicals, though a very mixed party, are the only group with which the
communists can co-operate, and, among these Radicals, the Vaudois and Genevese are the most
advanced.
In Germany, finally, the decisive struggle now on the order of the day is that between the
bourgeoisie and the absolute monarchy. Since the communists cannot enter upon the decisive
struggle between themselves and the bourgeoisie until the bourgeoisie is in power, it follows that
it is in the interest of the communists to help the bourgeoisie to power as soon as possible in order
the sooner to be able to overthrow it. Against the governments, therefore, the communists must
continually support the radical liberal party, taking care to avoid the self-deceptions of the
bourgeoisie and not fall for the enticing promises of benefits which a victory for the bourgeoisie
would allegedly bring to the proletariat. The sole advantages which the proletariat would derive
from a bourgeois victory would consist

(i) in various concessions which would facilitate the unification of the proletariat
into a closely knit, battle-worthy, and organized class; and
(ii) in the certainly that, on the very day the absolute monarchies fall, the struggle
between bourgeoisie and proletariat will start. From that day on, the policy of the
communists will be the same as it now is in the countries where the bourgeoisie is
already in power.

Demands of the Communist Party in Germany

“Demands of the Communist Party in Germany” were written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in
Paris between March 21 (when Engels arrived in Paris from Brussels) and March 24, 1848. This
document was discussed by members of the Central Authority, who approved and signed it as the.
political programme of the Communist League in the revolution that broke out in Germany. In March
it was printed as a leaflet, for distribution among revolutionary German emigrant workers who were
about to return home. Austrian and German diplomats in Paris informed their respective governments
about this as early as March 27, 28 and 29. (The Austrian Ambassador enclosed in his letter a copy of
the leaflet which he dated “March 25”.) The leaflet soon reached members of the Communist League
in other countries, in particular, German emigrant workers in London.
Early in April, the “Demands of the Communist Party in Germany” were published in such German
democratic papers as Berliner Zeitungs-Halle (special supplement to No. 82, April 5, 1848),
Düsseldorfer Zeitung (No. 96, April 5, 1848), Mannheimer Abendzeitung (No. 96, April 6, 1848),
Trier’sche Zeitung (No. 97, April 6, 1848, supplement), Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (No. 100, April
9, 1848, supplement), and Zeitung für das deutsche Volk (No. 2 1, April 9, 1848).
Marx and Engels, who left for Germany round about April 6 and some time later settled in Cologne,
did their best along with their followers to popularise this programme document during the revolution.
In 1848 and 1849 it was repeatedly published in the periodical press and in leaflet form. Not later than
September 10, 1848, the “Demands” were printed in Cologne as a leaflet for circulation by the
Cologne Workers’ Association both in the town itself and in a number of districts of Rhenish Prussia.
In addition to minor stylistic changes, point 10 in the text of the leaflet was worded differently from
that published in March-April 1848. At the Second Democratic Congress held in Berlin in October
1848, Friedrich Beust, delegate from the Cologne Workers’ Association, spoke, on behalf of the social
question commission, in favour of adopting a programme of action closely following the “Demands”.
In November and December 1848, various points of the “Demands” were discussed at meetings of the
Cologne Workers’ Association. Many editions of the “Demands” published during the revolution and
after its defeat have survived to this day in their original form, some of them as copies kept in the
police archives.
At the end of 1848 or the beginning of 1849 an abridged version of the “Demands” was published in
pamphlet form by Weller Publishers in Leipzig. The slogan at the beginning of the document, the
second paragraph of point 9 and the last sentence of point 10 were omitted, and the words “The
Committee” were not included among the signatories. In 1853, an abridged version of the “Demands”
was printed, together with other documents of the Communist League, in the first part of the book Die
Communisten-Verschworungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts published in Berlin for purposes of
information by Wermuth and Stieber, two police officials, who staged a trial against the Communists
in Cologne in 1852. Later Engels reproduced the main points of the “Demands” in his essay On the
History of the Communist League, published in November 1885 in the newspaper Sozialdemokrat, and
as an introduction to the pamphlet: K. Marx, Enthüllungen über den Kommunisten Prozess zu Köln,
Hottingen-Zürich, 1885.
English translations of the “Demands of the Communist Party in Germany” appeared in the
collections: The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels with an introduction and
explanatory notes by D. Ryazanoff, Martin Lawrence, London (1930); K. Marx, Selected Works, Vol.
II, ed. V. Adoratsky, Moscow-Leningrad, Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the
USSR (1936); ibid., New York (1 936); Birth of the Communist Manifesto, edited and annotated, with
an Introduction by D. J. Struik, International Publishers, New York, 197 1, and in other publications.
The text is from From MECW Volume 7, p. 3.

56 Demands of the Communist Party in Germany

Demands of the Communist Party in Germany

“Workers of all countries, unite!”

1. The whole of Germany shall be declared a single and indivisible republic.

2. Every German, having reached the age of 21, shall have the right to vote and to be elected,
provided he has not been convicted of a criminal offence.

3. Representatives of the people shall receive payment so that workers, too, shall be able to
become members of the German parliament.

4. Universal arming of the people. In future the armies shall be simultaneously labour armies, so
that the troops shall not, as formerly, merely consume, but shall produce more than is necessary
for their upkeep.
This will moreover be conducive to the organisation of labour.

5. Legal services shall be free of charge.

6. All feudal obligations, dues, corvées, tithes etc., which have hitherto weighed upon the rural
population, shall be abolished without compensation.

7. Princely and other feudal estates, together with mines, pits, and so forth, shall become the
property of the state. The estates shall be cultivated on a large scale and with the most up-to-date
scientific devices in the interests of the whole of society.

8. Mortgages on peasant lands shall be declared the property of the state. Interest on such
mortgages shall be paid by the peasants to the state.

9. In localities where the tenant system is developed, the land rent or the quit-rent shall be paid to
the state as a tax.
The measures specified in Nos. 6, 7, 8 and 9 are to be adopted in order to reduce the communal
and other burdens hitherto imposed upon the peasants and small tenant farmers without curtailing
the means available for defraying state expenses and without imperilling production.
The landowner in the strict sense, who is neither a peasant nor a tenant farmer, has no share in
production. Consumption on his part is, therefore, nothing but abuse.

10. A state bank, whose paper issues are legal tender, shall replace all private banks.
This measure will make it possible to regulate the credit system in the interest of the people as a
whole, and will thus undermine the dominion of the big financial magnates. Further, by gradually
substituting paper money for gold and silver coin, the universal means of exchange (that
indispensable prerequisite of bourgeois trade and commerce) will be cheapened, and gold and
silver will be set free for use in foreign trade. Finally, this measure is necessary in order to bind
the interests of the conservative bourgeoisie to the Government.

11. All the means of transport, railways, canals, steamships, roads, the posts etc. shall be taken
over by the state. They shall become the property of the state and shall be placed free at the
disposal of the impecunious classes.

12. All civil servants shall receive the same salary, the only exception being that civil servants
who have a family to support and who therefore have greater requirements, shall receive a higher
salary.

13. Complete separation of Church and State. The clergy of every denomination shall be paid
only by the voluntary contributions of their congregations.

14. The right of inheritance to be curtailed.

57 Demands of the Communist Party in Germany

15. The introduction of steeply graduated taxes, and the abolition of taxes on articles of
consumption.

16. Inauguration of national workshops. The state guarantees a livelihood to all workers and
provides for those who are incapacitated for work.

17. Universal and free education of the people.
It is to the interest of the German proletariat, the petty bourgeoisie and the small peasants to
support these demands with all possible energy. Only by the realisation of these demands will the
millions in Germany, who have hitherto been exploited by a handful of persons and whom the
exploiters would like to keep in further subjection, win the rights and attain to that power to
which they are entitled as the producers of all wealth.

The Committee
Karl Marx, Karl Schapper, H. Bauer, F. Engels, J. Moll, W. Wolff

The Paris Commune.
Address to the International Workingmen’s Association, May 1871

The “Paris Commune” was composed by Karl Marx as an address to the General Council of the
International, and included in a book, “The Civil War in France,” with the aim of distributing to
workers of all countries a clear understanding of the character and world-wide significance of the
heroic struggle of the Communards and their historical experience to learn from. The book was widely
circulated by 1872 it was translated into several languages and published throughout Europe and the
United States.
The first address was delivered on July 23rd, 1870, five days after the beginning of the Franco-
Prussian War. The second address, delivered on September 9, 1870, gave a historical overview of the
events a week after the army of Bonaparte was defeated. The third address, delivered on May 30,
1871, two days after the defeat of the Paris Commune – detailed the significance and the underlining
causes of the first workers government ever created.
The Civil War in France was originally published by Marx as only the third address, only the first
half of which is reproduced here. In 1891, on the 20th anniversary of the Paris Commune, Engels
put together a new collection of the work. Engels decided to include the first two addresses that
Marx made to the International.
The Address is included here because it can be regarded as an amendment to the Manifesto,
clarifying a number of issues relating to the state based on the experience of the Commune.

On the dawn of March 18, Paris arose to the thunder-burst of “Vive la Commune!” What is the
Commune, that sphinx so tantalizing to the bourgeois mind?
“The proletarians of Paris,” said the Central Committee in its manifesto of March 18, “amidst the
failures and treasons of the ruling classes, have understood that the hour has struck for them to
save the situation by taking into their own hands the direction of public affairs…. They have
understood that it is their imperious duty, and their absolute right, to render themselves masters of
their own destinies, by seizing upon the governmental power.”
But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield
it for its own purposes.
The centralized state power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy,
clergy, and judicature – organs wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of
labor – originates from the days of absolute monarchy, serving nascent bourgeois society as a
mighty weapon in its struggle against feudalism. Still, its development remained clogged by all
manner of medieval rubbish, seignorial rights, local privileges, municipal and guild monopolies,
and provincial constitutions. The gigantic broom of the French Revolution of the 18th century
swept away all these relics of bygone times, thus clearing simultaneously the social soil of its last
hindrances to the superstructure of the modern state edifice raised under the First Empire, itself
the offspring of the coalition wars of old semi-feudal Europe against modern France.
During the subsequent regimes, the government, placed under parliamentary control – that is,
under the direct control of the propertied classes – became not only a hotbed of huge national
debts and crushing taxes; with its irresistible allurements of place, pelf, and patronage, it became
not only the bone of contention between the rival factions and adventurers of the ruling classes;
but its political character changed simultaneously with the economic changes of society. At the
same pace at which the progress of modern industry developed, widened, intensified the class
antagonism between capital and labor, the state power assumed more and more the character of
the national power of capital over labor, of a public force organized for social enslavement, of an
engine of class despotism.

59 Third Address to the International Working Men’s Association, May 1871

After every revolution marking a progressive phase in the class struggle, the purely repressive
character of the state power stands out in bolder and bolder relief. The Revolution of 1830,
resulting in the transfer of government from the landlords to the capitalists, transferred it from the
more remote to the more direct antagonists of the working men. The bourgeois republicans, who,
in the name of the February Revolution, took the state power, used it for the June [1848]
massacres, in order to convince the working class that “social” republic means the republic
entrusting their social subjection, and in order to convince the royalist bulk of the bourgeois and
landlord class that they might safely leave the cares and emoluments of government to the
bourgeois “republicans.”
However, after their one heroic exploit of June, the bourgeois republicans had, from the front, to
fall back to the rear of the “Party of Order” – a combination formed by all the rival fractions and
factions of the appropriating classes. The proper form of their joint-stock government was the
parliamentary republic, with Louis Bonaparte for its president. Theirs was a regime of avowed
class terrorism and deliberate insult towards the “vile multitude.”
If the parliamentary republic, as M. Thiers said, “divided them [the different fractions of the
ruling class] least,” it opened an abyss between that class and the whole body of society outside
their spare ranks. The restraints by which their own divisions had under former regimes still
checked the state power, were removed by their union; and in view of the threatening upheaval of
the proletariat, they now used that state power mercilessly and ostentatiously as the national war
engine of capital against labor.
In their uninterrupted crusade against the producing masses, they were, however, bound not only
to invest the executive with continually increased powers of repression, but at the same time to
divest their own parliamentary stronghold – the National Assembly – one by one, of all its own
means of defence against the Executive. The Executive, in the person of Louis Bonaparte, turned
them out. The natural offspring of the “Party of Order” republic was the Second Empire.
The empire, with the coup d’état for its birth certificate, universal suffrage for its sanction, and
the sword for its sceptre, professed to rest upon the peasantry, the large mass of producers not
directly involved in the struggle of capital and labor. It professed to save the working class by
breaking down parliamentarism, and, with it, the undisguised subserviency of government to the
propertied classes. It professed to save the propertied classes by upholding their economic
supremacy over the working class; and, finally, it professed to unite all classes by reviving for all
the chimera of national glory.
In reality, it was the only form of government possible at a time when the bourgeoisie had already
lost, and the working class had not yet acquired, the faculty of ruling the nation. It was acclaimed
throughout the world as the savior of society. Under its sway, bourgeois society, freed from
political cares, attained a development unexpected even by itself. Its industry and commerce
expanded to colossal dimensions; financial swindling celebrated cosmopolitan orgies; the misery
of the masses was set off by a shameless display of gorgeous, meretricious and debased luxury.
The state power, apparently soaring high above society and the very hotbed of all its corruptions.
Its own rottenness, and the rottenness of the society it had saved, were laid bare by the bayonet of
Prussia, herself eagerly bent upon transferring the supreme seat of that regime from Paris to
Berlin. Imperialism is, at the same time, the most prostitute and the ultimate form of the state
power which nascent bourgeois society had commenced to elaborate as a means of its own
emancipation from feudalism, and which full-grown bourgeois society had finally transformed
into a means for the enslavement of labor by capital.
The direct antithesis to the empire was the Commune. The cry of “social republic,” with which
the February [1848] Revolution was ushered in by the Paris proletariat, did but express a vague
aspiration after a republic that was not only to supercede the monarchical form of class rule, but
class rule itself. The Commune was the positive form of that republic.

60 Third Address to the International Working Men’s Association, May 1871

Paris, the central seat of the old governmental power, and, at the same time, the social stronghold
of the French working class, had risen in arms against the attempt of Thiers and the Rurals to
restore and perpetuate that old governmental power bequeathed to them by the empire. Paris
could resist only because, in consequence of the siege, it had got rid of the army, and replaced it
by a National Guard, the bulk of which consisted of working men. This fact was now to be
transformed into an institution. The first decree of the Commune, therefore, was the suppression
of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people.
The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the
various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members
were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The
Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same
time.
Instead of continuing to be the agent of the Central Government, the police was at once stripped
of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the
Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of
the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workman’s wage. The vested
interests and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with
the high dignitaries themselves. Public functions ceased to be the private property of the tools of
the Central Government. Not only municipal administration, but the whole initiative hitherto
exercised by the state was laid into the hands of the Commune.
Having once got rid of the standing army and the police – the physical force elements of the old
government – the Commune was anxious to break the spiritual force of repression, the “parson-
power,” by the disestablishment and disendowment of all churches as proprietary bodies. The
priests were sent back to the recesses of private life, there to feed upon the alms of the faithful in
imitation of their predecessors, the apostles.
The whole of the educational institutions were opened to the people gratuitously, and at the same
time cleared of all interference of church and state. Thus, not only was education made accessible
to all, but science itself freed from the fetters which class prejudice and governmental force had
imposed upon it.
The judicial functionaries were to be divested of that sham independence which had but served to
mask their abject subserviency to all succeeding governments to which, in turn, they had taken,
and broken, the oaths of allegiance. Like the rest of public servants, magistrates and judges were
to be elective, responsible, and revocable.
The Paris Commune was, of course, to serve as a model to all the great industrial centres of
France. The communal regime once established in Paris and the secondary centres, the old
centralized government would in the provinces, too, have to give way to the self-government of
the producers.
In a rough sketch of national organisation, which the Commune had no time to develop, it states
clearly that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet, and
that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an
extremely short term of service. The rural communities of every district were to administer their
common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies
were again to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time
revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents. The few
but important functions which would still remain for a central government were not to be
suppressed, as has been intentionally misstated, but were to be discharged by Communal and
thereafter responsible agents.
The unity of the nation was not to be broken, but, on the contrary, to be organized by Communal
Constitution, and to become a reality by the destruction of the state power which claimed to be

61 Third Address to the International Working Men’s Association, May 1871

the embodiment of that unity independent of, and superior to, the nation itself, from which it was
but a parasitic excrescence.
While the merely repressive organs of the old governmental power were to be amputated, its
legitimate functions were to be wrested from an authority usurping pre-eminence over society
itself, and restored to the responsible agents of society. Instead of deciding once in three or six
years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal
suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every
other employer in the search for the workmen and managers in his business. And it is well-known
that companies, like individuals, in matters of real business generally know how to put the right
man in the right place, and, if they for once make a mistake, to redress it promptly. On the other
hand, nothing could be more foreign to the spirit of the Commune than to supercede universal
suffrage by hierarchical investiture.12
It is generally the fate of completely new historical creations to be mistaken for the counterparts
of older, and even defunct, forms of social life, to which they may bear a certain likeness. Thus,
this new Commune, which breaks with the modern state power, has been mistaken for a
reproduction of the medieval Communes, which first preceded, and afterward became the
substratum of, that very state power. The Communal Constitution has been mistaken for an
attempt to break up into the federation of small states, as dreamt of by Montesquieu and the
Girondins13, that unity of great nations which, if originally brought about by political force, has
now become a powerful coefficient of social production. The antagonism of the Commune
against the state power has been mistaken for an exaggerated form of the ancient struggle against
over-centralization. Peculiar historical circumstances may have prevented the classical
development, as in France, of the bourgeois form of government, and may have allowed, as in
England, to complete the great central state organs by corrupt vestries, jobbing councillors, and
ferocious poor-law guardians in the towns, and virtually hereditary magistrates in the counties.
The Communal Constitution would have restored to the social body all the forces hitherto
absorbed by the state parasite feeding upon, and clogging the free movement of, society. By this
one act, it would have initiated the regeneration of France.
The provincial French bourgeois saw in the Commune an attempt to restore the sway their order
had held over the country under Louis Philippe, and which, under Louis Napoleon, was
supplanted by the pretended rule of the country over the towns. In reality, the Communal
Constitution brought the rural producers under the intellectual lead of the central towns of their
districts, and there secured to them, in the working men, the natural trustees of their interests. The
very existence of the Commune involved, as a matter of course, local municipal liberty, but no
longer as a check upon the now superseded state power. It could only enter into the head of a
Bismarck – who, when not engaged on his intrigues of blood and iron, always likes to resume his
old trade, so befitting his mental calibre, of contributor to Kladderadatsch (the Berlin Punch14) –
it could only enter into such a head to ascribe to the Paris Commune aspirations after the
caricature of the old French municipal organization of 1791, the Prussian municipal constitution
which degrades the town governments to mere secondary wheels in the police machinery of the
Prussian state. The Commune made that catchword of bourgeois revolutions – cheap government
– a reality by destroying the two greatest sources of expenditure: the standing army and state
functionarism. Its very existence presupposed the non-existence of monarchy, which, in Europe at
least, is the normal encumbrance and indispensable cloak of class rule. It supplied the republic
with the basis of really democratic institutions. But neither cheap government nor the “true
republic” was its ultimate aim; they were its mere concomitants.
The multiplicity of interpretations to which the Commune has been subjected, and the multiplicity
of interests which construed it in their favor, show that it was a thoroughly expansive political
form, while all the previous forms of government had been emphatically repressive. Its true secret
was this: It was essentially a working class government, the product of the struggle of the

62 Third Address to the International Working Men’s Association, May 1871

producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to
work out the economical emancipation of labor.
Except on this last condition, the Communal Constitution would have been an impossibility and a
delusion. The political rule of the producer cannot co-exist with the perpetuation of his social
slavery. The Commune was therefore to serve as a lever for uprooting the economical foundation
upon which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of class rule. With labor emancipated,
every man becomes a working man, and productive labor ceases to be a class attribute.
It is a strange fact. In spite of all the tall talk and all the immense literature, for the last 60 years,
about emancipation of labor, no sooner do the working men anywhere take the subject into their
own hands with a will, than uprises at once all the apologetic phraseology of the mouthpieces of
present society with its two poles of capital and wage-slavery (the landlord now is but the
sleeping partner of the capitalist), as if the capitalist society was still in its purest state of virgin
innocence, with its antagonisms still undeveloped, with its delusions still unexploded, with its
prostitute realities not yet laid bare. The Commune, they exclaim, intends to abolish property, the
basis of all civilization!
Yes, gentlemen, the Commune intended to abolish that class property which makes the labor of
the many the wealth of the few. It aimed at the expropriation of the expropriators. It wanted to
make individual property a truth by transforming the means of production, land, and capital, now
chiefly the means of enslaving and exploiting labor, into mere instruments of free and associated
labor. But this is communism, “impossible” communism! Why, those member of the ruling
classes who are intelligent enough to perceive the impossibility of continuing the present system
– and they are many – have become the obtrusive and full-mouthed apostles of co-operative
production. If co-operative production is not to remain a sham and a snare; if it is to supersede the
capitalist system; if united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon
common plan, thus taking it under their own control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy
and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of capitalist production – what else, gentlemen,
would it be but communism, “possible” communism?
The working class did not expect miracles from the Commune. They have no ready-made utopias
to introduce par decret du peuple. They know that in order to work out their own emancipation,
and along with it that higher form to which present society is irresistibly tending by its own
economical agencies, they will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic
processes, transforming circumstances and men. They have no ideals to realize, but to set free the
elements of the new society with which old collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant. In the
full consciousness of their historic mission, and with the heroic resolve to act up to it, the working
class can afford to smile at the coarse invective of the gentlemen’s gentlemen with pen and
inkhorn, and at the didactic patronage of well-wishing bourgeois-doctrinaires, pouring forth their
ignorant platitudes and sectarian crotchets in the oracular tone of scientific infallibility.
When the Paris Commune took the management of the revolution in its own hands; when plain
working men for the first time dared to infringe upon the governmental privilege of their “natural
superiors,” and, under circumstances of unexampled difficulty, performed it at salaries the highest
of which barely amounted to one-fifth what, according to high scientific authority*, is the
minimum required for a secretary to a certain metropolitan school-board – the old world writhed
in convulsions of rage at the sight of the Red Flag, the symbol of the Republic of Labor, floating
over the Hôtel de Ville.
And yet, this was the first revolution in which the working class was openly acknowledged as the
only class capable of social initiative, even by the great bulk of the Paris bourgeois –
shopkeepers, tradesmen, merchants – the wealthy capitalist alone excepted. The Commune had

* Professor Huxley. [Note to the German addition of 1871.]

63 Third Address to the International Working Men’s Association, May 1871

saved them by a sagacious settlement of that ever recurring cause of dispute among the bourgeois
themselves – the debtor and creditor accounts.15 The same portion of the bourgeois, after they had
assisted in putting down the working men’s insurrection of June 1848, had been at once
unceremoniously sacrificed to their creditors16 by the then Constituent Assembly. But this was
not their only motive for now rallying around the working class. They felt there was but one
alternative – the Commune, or the empire – under whatever name it might reappear. The empire
had ruined them economically by the havoc it made of public wealth, by the wholesale financial
swindling it fostered, by the props it lent to the artificially accelerated centralization of capital,
and the concomitant expropriation of their own ranks. It had suppressed them politically, it had
shocked them morally by its orgies, it had insulted their Voltairianism by handing over the
education of their children to the fréres Ignorantins,17 it had revolted their national feeling as
Frenchmen by precipitating them headlong into a war which left only one equivalent for the ruins
it made – the disappearance of the empire. In fact, after the exodus from Paris of the high
Bonapartist and capitalist boheme, the true bourgeois Party of Order came out in the shape of the
“Union Republicaine,”18 enrolling themselves under the colors of the Commune and defending it
against the wilful misconstructions of Thiers. Whether the gratitude of this great body of the
bourgeois will stand the present severe trial, time must show.
The Commune was perfectly right in telling the peasants that “its victory was their only hope.” Of
all the lies hatched at Versailles and re-echoed by the glorious European penny-a-liner, one of the
most tremendous was that the Rurals represented the French peasantry. Think only of the love of
the French peasant for the men to whom, after 1815, he had to pay the milliard indemnity.19 In the
eyes of the French peasant, the very existence of a great landed proprietor is in itself an
encroachment on his conquests of 1789. The bourgeois, in 1848, had burdened his plot of land
with the additional tax of 45 cents, in the franc; but then he did so in the name of the revolution;
while now he had fomented a civil war against revolution, to shift on to the peasant’s shoulders
the chief load of the 5 milliards of indemnity to be paid to the Prussian. The Commune, on the
other hand, in one of its first proclamations, declared that the true originators of the war would be
made to pay its cost. The Commune would have delivered the peasant of the blood tax – would
have given him a cheap government – transformed his present blood-suckers, the notary,
advocate, executor, and other judicial vampires, into salaried communal agents, elected by, and
responsible to, himself. It would have freed him of the tyranny of the garde champetre, the
gendarme, and the prefect; would have put enlightenment by the schoolmaster in the place of
stultification by the priest. And the French peasant is, above all, a man of reckoning. He would
find it extremely reasonable that the pay of the priest, instead of being extorted by the tax-
gatherer, should only depend upon the spontaneous action of the parishioners’ religious instinct.
Such were the great immediate boons which the rule of the Commune – and that rule alone – held
out to the French peasantry. It is, therefore, quite superfluous here to expatiate upon the more
complicated but vital problems which the Commune alone was able, and at the same time
compelled, to solve in favor of the peasant – viz., the hypothecary debt, lying like an incubus
upon his parcel of soil, the prolétariat foncier (the rural proletariat), daily growing upon it, and
his expropriation from it enforced, at a more and more rapid rate, by the very development of
modern agriculture and the competition of capitalist farming.
The French peasant had elected Louis Bonaparte president of the republic; but the Party of Order
created the empire. What the French peasant really wants he commenced to show in 1849 and
1850, by opposing his maire to the government’s prefect, his school-master to the government’s
priest, and himself to the government’s gendarme. All the laws made by the Party of Order in
January and February 1850 were avowed measures of repression against the peasant. The peasant
was a Bonapartist, because the Great Revolution, with all its benefits to him, was, in his eyes,
personified in Napoleon. This delusion, rapidly breaking down under the Second Empire (and in

64 Third Address to the International Working Men’s Association, May 1871

its very nature hostile to the Rurals), this prejudice of the past, how could it have withstood the
appeal of the Commune to the living interests and urgent wants of the peasantry?
The Rurals – this was, in fact, their chief apprehension – knew that three months’ free
communication of Communal Paris with the provinces would bring about a general rising of the
peasants, and hence their anxiety to establish a police blockade around Paris, so as to stop the
spread of the rinderpest [cattle pest – contagious disease].
If the Commune was thus the true representative of all the healthy elements of French society,
and therefore the truly national government, it was, at the same time, as a working men’s
government, as the bold champion of the emancipation of labor, emphatically international.
Within sight of that Prussian army, that had annexed to Germany two French provinces, the
Commune annexed to France the working people all over the world.
The Second Empire had been the jubilee of cosmopolitan blackleggism, the rakes of all countries
rushing in at its call for a share in its orgies and in the plunder of the French people. Even at this
moment, the right hand of Thiers is Ganessco, the foul Wallachian, and his left hand is
Markovsky, the Russian spy. The Commune admitted all foreigners to the honor of dying for an
immortal cause. Between the foreign war lost by their treason, and the civil war fomented by their
conspiracy with the foreign invader, the bourgeoisie had found the time to display their patriotism
by organizing police hunts upon the Germans in France. The Commune made a German working
man [Leo Frankel] its Minister of Labor. Thiers, the bourgeoisie, the Second Empire, had
continually deluded Poland by loud professions of sympathy, while in reality betraying her to,
and doing the dirty work of, Russia. The Commune honoured the heroic sons of Poland [J.
Dabrowski and W. Wróblewski] by placing them at the head of the defenders of Paris. And, to
broadly mark the new era of history it was conscious of initiating, under the eyes of the
conquering Prussians on one side, and the Bonapartist army, led by Bonapartist generals, on the
other, the Commune pulled down that colossal symbol of martial glory, the Vendôme Column.20
The great social measure of the Commune was its own working existence. Its special measures
could but betoken the tendency of a government of the people by the people. Such were the
abolition of the nightwork of journeymen bakers; the prohibition, under penalty, of the
employers’ practice to reduce wages by levying upon their workpeople fines under manifold
pretexts – a process in which the employer combines in his own person the parts of legislator,
judge, and executor, and filches the money to boot. Another measure of this class was the
surrender to associations of workmen, under reserve of compensation, of all closed workshops
and factories, no matter whether the respective capitalists had absconded or preferred to strike
work.
The financial measures of the Commune, remarkable for their sagacity and moderation, could
only be such as were compatible with the state of a besieged town. Considering the colossal
robberies committed upon the city of Paris by the great financial companies and contractors,
under the protection of Haussman,21 the Commune would have had an incomparably better title to
confiscate their property than Louis Napoleon had against the Orleans family. The Hohenzollern
and the English oligarchs, who both have derived a good deal of their estates from church
plunders, were, of course, greatly shocked at the Commune clearing but 8,000f out of
secularization.
While the Versailles government, as soon as it had recovered some spirit and strength, used the
most violent means against the Commune; while it put down the free expression of opinion all
over France, even to the forbidding of meetings of delegates from the large towns; while it
subjected Versailles and the rest of France to an espionage far surpassing that of the Second
Empire; while it burned by its gendarme inquisitors all papers printed at Paris, and sifted all
correspondence from and to Paris; while in the National Assembly the most timid attempts to put
in a word for Paris were howled down in a manner unknown even to the Chambre introuvable of

65 Third Address to the International Working Men’s Association, May 1871

1816; with the savage warfare of Versailles outside, and its attempts at corruption and conspiracy
inside Paris – would the Commune not have shamefully betrayed its trust by affecting to keep all
the decencies and appearances of liberalism as in a time of profound peace? Had the government
of the Commune been akin to that of M. Thiers, there would have been no more occasion to
suppress Party of Order papers at Paris that there was to suppress Communal papers at Versailles.
It was irritating indeed to the Rurals that at the very same time they declared the return to the
church to be the only means of salvation for France, the infidel Commune unearthed the peculiar
mysteries of the Picpus nunnery22, and of the Church of St. Laurent. It was a satire upon M.
Thiers that, while he showered grand crosses upon the Bonapartist generals in acknowledgment
of their mastery in losing battles, singing capitulations, and turning cigarettes at Wilhelmshöhe,23
the Commune dismissed and arrested its generals whenever they were suspected of neglecting
their duties. The expulsion from, and arrest by, the Commune of one of its members [Blanchet]
who had slipped in under a false name, and had undergone at Lyons six days’ imprisonment for
simple bankruptcy, was it not a deliberate insult hurled at the forger, Jules Favre, then still the
foreign minister of France, still selling France to Bismarck, and still dictating his orders to that
paragon government of Belgium? But indeed the Commune did not pretend to infallibility, the
invariable attribute of all governments of the old stamp. It published its doings and sayings, it
initiated the public into all its shortcomings.
In every revolution there intrude, at the side of its true agents, men of different stamp; some of
them survivors of and devotees to past revolutions, without insight into the present movement,
but preserving popular influence by their known honesty and courage, or by the sheer force of
tradition; others mere brawlers who, by dint of repeating year after year the same set of
stereotyped declarations against the government of the day, have sneaked into the reputation of
revolutionists of the first water. After March 18, some such men did also turn up, and in some
cases contrived to play pre-eminent parts. As far as their power went, they hampered the real
action of the working class, exactly as men of that sort have hampered the full development of
every previous revolution. They are an unavoidable evil: with time they are shaken off; but time
was not allowed to the Commune.
Wonderful, indeed, was the change the Commune had wrought in Paris! No longer any trace of
the tawdry Paris of the Second Empire! No longer was Paris the rendezvous of British landlords,
Irish absentees, 24 American ex-slaveholders and shoddy men, Russian ex-serfowners, and
Wallachian boyards. No more corpses at the morgue, no nocturnal burglaries, scarcely any
robberies; in fact, for the first time since the days of February 1848, the streets of Paris were safe,
and that without any police of any kind.
“We,” said a member of the Commune, “hear no longer of assassination, theft, and personal
assault; it seems indeed as if the police had dragged along with it to Versailles all its Conservative
friends.”
The cocottes had refound the scent of their protectors – the absconding men of family, religion,
and, above all, of property. In their stead, the real women of Paris showed again at the surface –
heroic, noble, and devoted, like the women of antiquity. Working, thinking fighting, bleeding
Paris – almost forgetful, in its incubation of a new society, of the Cannibals at its gates – radiant
in the enthusiasm of its historic initiative!
Opposed to this new world at Paris, behold the old world at Versailles – that assembly of the
ghouls of all defunct regimes, Legitimists and Orleanists, eager to feed upon the carcass of the
nation – with a tail of antediluvian republicans, sanctioning, by their presence in the Assembly,
the slaveholders’ rebellion, relying for the maintenance of their parliamentary republic upon the
vanity of the senile mountebank at its head, and caricaturing 1789 by holding their ghastly

66 Third Address to the International Working Men’s Association, May 1871

meetings in the Jeu de Paume.1 There it was, this Assembly, the representative of everything dead
in France, propped up to the semblance of life by nothing but the swords of the generals of Louis
Bonaparte. Paris all truth, Versailles all lie; and that lie vented through the mouth of Thiers.
Thiers tells a deputation of the mayors of the Seine-et-Oise – “You may rely upon my word,
which I have never broken!”
He tells the Assembly itself that “it was the most freely elected and most liberal Assembly France
ever possessed”; he tells his motley soldiery that it was “the admiration of the world, and the
finest army France ever possessed”; he tells the provinces that the bombardment of Paris by him
was a myth: “If some cannon-shots have been fired, it was not the deed of the army of Versailles,
but of some insurgents trying to make believe that they are fighting, while they dare not show
their faces.” He again tells the provinces that “the artillery of Versailles does not bombard Paris,
but only cannonades it.” He tells the Archbishop of Paris that the pretended executions and
reprisals (!) attributed to the Versailles troops were all moonshine. He tells Paris that he was only
anxious “to free it from the hideous tyrants who oppress it,” and that, in fact, the Paris of the
Commune was “but a handful of criminals.”
The Paris of M. Thiers was not the real Paris of the “vile multitude,” but a phantom Paris, the
Paris of the francs-fileurs,25 the Paris of the Boulevards, male and female – the rich, the capitalist,
the gilded, the idle Paris, now thronging with its lackeys, its blacklegs, its literary bohome, and its
cocottes at Versailles, Saint-Denis, Rueil, and Saint-Germain; considering the civil war but an
agreeable diversion, eyeing the battle going on through telescopes, counting the rounds of
cannon, swearing by their own honour and that of their prostitutes, that the performance was far
better got up than it used to be at the Porte St. Martin. The men who fell were really dead; the
cries of the wounded were cries in good earnest; and, besides, the whole thing was so intensely
historical.
This is the Paris of M. Thiers, as the emigration of Coblenz was the France of M. de Calonne.26

1 The tennis court where the National Assembly of 1789 adopted its famous decisions. [Note to the German addition of
1871.]

67 Third Address to the International Working Men’s Association, May 1871

Endnotes

1 The first Russian translation of the Manifesto of the Communist Party was made by Bakunin, who
despite being one of Marx and Engels’ most pronounced opponents in the working class movement,
saw the great revolutionary importance contained within the Manifesto. Published in Geneva in 1869
(printing it in Russia was impossible due to state censorship), Bakunin’ s translation was not
completely accurate, and was replaced a decade later by Plekhanov’s translation in 1882, for which
both Marx and Engels wrote a preface.
2 A reference to the events that occurred in Russia after the assassination, on March, 1, 1881, of
Emperor Alexander II by Narodnaya Volya members. Alexander III, his successor, was staying in
Gatchina for fear of further terrorism.
3 This preface was written by Engels on May 1, 1890, when, in accordance with the decision of the
Paris Congress of the Second International (July 1889), mass demonstrations, strikes and meetings
were held in numerous European and American countries. The workers put forward the demand for an
8 hour working day and other demands set forth by the Congress. From that day forward workers all
over the world celebrate the first of May as a day of international proletarian solidarity.
4 A reference to the movement for an electoral reform which, under the pressure of the working class,
was passed by the British House of Commons in 1831 and finally endorsed by the House of Lords in
June, 1832. The reform was directed against monopoly rule of the landed and finance aristocracy and
opened the way to Parliament for the representatives of the industrial bourgeoisie. Neither workers nor
the petty-bourgeois were allowed electoral rights, despite assurances they would.
5 The famous final phrase of the Manifesto, “Working Men of All Countries, Unite!”, in the original
German is: “Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt euch!” Thus, a more correct translation would be
“Proletarians of all countries, Unite!”
“Workers of the World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!” is a popularisation of the
last three sentences, and is not found in any official translation. Since this English translation was
approved by Engels, we have kept the original intact.
6 In their works written in later periods, Marx and Engels substituted the more accurate concepts of
“sale of labour power”, “value of labour power” and “price of labour power” (first introduced by
Marx) for “sale of labour”, “value of labour” and “price of labour”, as used here.
7 Engels left half a page blank here in the manuscript. The “Draft of the Communist Confession of
Faith,” has the answer shown for the same question (Number 12).
8 Engels’ put “unchanged” here, referring to the answer in the June draft under No. 21 as shown.
9 Similarly, this refers to the answer to Question 23 in the June draft.
10 The Chartists were the participants in the political movement of the British workers which lasted
from the 1830s to the middle 1850s and had as its slogan the adoption of a People’s Charter,
demanding universal franchise and a series of conditions guaranteeing voting rights for all workers.
Lenin defined Chartism as the world’s “first broad, truly mass and politically organized proletarian
revolutionary movement” (Collected Works, Eng. ed., Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Vol. 29, p.
309.) The decline of the Chartist movement was due to the strengthening of Britain’s industrial and
commercial monopoly and the bribing of the upper stratum of the working class (“the labour
aristocracy”) by the British bourgeoisie out of its super-profits. Both factors led to the strengthening of
opportunist tendencies in this stratum as expressed, in particular, by the refusal of the trade union
leaders to support Chartism.
11 Probably a references to the National Reform Association, founded during the 1840s by George H.
Evans, with headquarters in New York City, which had for its motto, “Vote Yourself a Farm”.

68 Third Address to the International Working Men’s Association, May 1871

12 A top-down system of appointing officials in bourgeois systems, where high-up officials appoint
many or all lower officials.
13 Girondins – The party of the influential bourgeoisie during the French revolution at the end of the
18th century. (The name is derived from the Department of Gironde.) It came out against the Jacobin
government and the revolutionary masses which supported it, under the banner of defending the
departments’ right to autonomy and federation.
14 The party of the influential bourgeoisie during the French revolution at the end of the 18th century.
(The name is derived from the Department of Gironde.) It came out against the Jacobin government
and the revolutionary masses which supported it, under the banner of defending the departments’ right
to autonomy and federation.
15 A reference to the Paris Commune’s decree of April 16, 1871, providing for payment of all debts in
instalments over three years and abolition of interest on them.
16 On Aug. 22, 1848, the Constituent Assembly rejected the bill on “amiable agreements” (concordats
á l’amiable) aimed to introduce the deferred payment of debts. As a result of this measure, a
considerable section of the petty-bourgeoisie were utterly ruined and found themselves completely
dependent on the creditors of the richest bourgeoisie.
17 Fréres Ignorantins – Ignorant Brothers, a nickname for a religious order, founded in Rheims in
1680, whose members pledged themselves to educate children of the poor. The pupils received a
predominantly religious education and barely any knowledge otherwise.
18 Alliance républicaine des Départements – a political association of petty-bourgeois representatives
from the various departments of France, who lived in Paris; calling on the people to fight against the
Versailles government and the monarchist National Assembly and to support the Commune
throughout the country.
19 The law of April 27, 1825 on the payment of compensation to the former émigrés for the landed
states confiscated from them during the preceding French Revolution.
20 The Vendôme Column was erected between 1806 and 1810 in Paris in honour of the victories of
Napoleonic France; it was made out of the bronze captured from enemy guns and was crowned by a
statue of Napoleon. On May 16, 1871, by order of the Paris Commune, the Vendôme Column was
pulled down.
21 During the Second Empire, Baron Haussmann was Prefect of the Department of the Seine (the City
of Paris). He introduced a number of changes in the layout of the city for the purpose of crushing
workers’ revolts.
22 In the Picpus nunnery cases of the nuns being incarcerated in cells for many years were exposed and
instruments of torture were found; in the church of St. Laurent a secret cemetery was found attesting
to the murders that had been committed there. These facts were exposed by the Commune’s
newspaper Mot d’Ordre on May 5, 1871, and in a pamphlet Les Crimes des congrégations religieuses.
23 The chief occupation of the French prisoners of war in Wilhelmshöhe (those captured after the
Battle of Sedan) was making cigars for their own use.
24 Rich landowners who hardly ever visited their estates, but instead had their land managed by agents
or leased it to petty-bourgeois who, in their turn, sub-leased the land at high rents.
25 Francs-fileurs – literally rendered: “free absconder,” the nickname given to the Paris bourgeois who
fled from the city during the siege. The name carried brazen historical irony as a result of its
resemblance to the word “francs-tireurs” (“free sharpshooters”) – French guerrillas who actively
fought against the Prussians.
26 A city in Germany; during the French Revolution at the end of the 18th-century it was the centre
where the landlord monarchist emigrés made preparations for intervention against revolutionary
France. Coblenz was the seat of the emigré government headed by the rabid reactionary de Calonne, a
former minister of Louis XVI.

Manifesto of the Communist Party
Editorial Introduction
Preface to The 1872 German Edition
Preface to The 1882 Russian Edition
Preface to The 1883 German Edition
Preface to The 1888 English Edition
Preface to The 1890 German Edition
Preface to The 1892 Polish Edition
Preface to The 1893 Italian Edition
Manifesto of the Communist Party
I. Bourgeois and Proletarians*
II. Proletarians and Communists
III. Socialist and Communist Literature
A. Feudal Socialism
B. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism
C. German or “True” Socialism

IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Ex
Letter from Engels to Marx, 24 November 1847*
Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith*
The Principles of Communism*
Demands of the Communist Party in Germany
The Paris Commune.�Address to the International Workingmen’s
Endnotes

With more than 4 million copies in print in the English language
alone, Man’s Search for Meaning, the chilling yet inspirational
story of Viktor Frankl’s struggle to hold on to hope during his
three years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps, is a true
classic. Beacon Press is now pleased to present a special gift
edition of a work that was hailed in 1959 by Carl Rogers as”one
of the outstanding contributions to psychological thought in the
last fifty years.” Frankl’s training as a psychiatrist informed
every waking moment of his ordeal and allowed him a
remarkable perspective on the psychology of survival. His
assertion that “the will to meaning” is the basic motivation for
human life has forever changed the way we understand our
humanity in the face of suffering.
Man’s
Search for Meaning
AN INTRODUCTION TO LOGOTHERAPY
Fourth Edition
Viktor E. Frankl
PART ONE TRANSLATED BY ILSE LASCH
PREFACE BY GORDON W. ALLPORT
BEACON PRESS

TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER,
Beacon Press 25
Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892
www.beacon.org
Beacon Press books
are published under the auspices of
the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
© 1959, 1962, 1984, 1992 by Viktor E. Frankl
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America First
published in German in 1946 under the title
Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager. Original
English title was From Death-Camp to Existentialism.
05 04 03 02 01
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Frankl, Viktor Emil.
[Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager. English]
Man’s search for meaning: an introduction to logotherapy /
Viktor E. Frankl; part one translated by Use Lasch; preface
by
Gordon W. Allport. — 4th ed.
p. cm. Includes
bibliographical references (p. ).
ISBN 0-8070-1426-5 (cloth) 1. Frankl, Viktor
Emil. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939—1945)—
Personal narratives. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)—
Psychological aspects. 4. Psychologists—Austria—Biography.
5. Logotherapy. I. Title.
D810J4F72713 1992
i5o.ig’5—dc2o 92-21055
Contents
Preface by Gordon W. Allport 7
Preface to the 1992 Edition II
PART ONE
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 15
PART TWO
Logotherapy in a Nutshell 101
POSTSCRIPT 1984
The Case for a Tragic Optimism 137
Selected English Language Bibliography
of Logotherapy 155
About the Author
8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Preface
Dr. Frankl, author-psychiatrist, sometimes asks his pa­
tients who suffer from a multitude of torments great and
small, “Why do you not commit suicide?” From their an­
swers he can often find the guide-line for his psycho-
therapy: in one life there is love for one’s children to tie to;
in another life, a talent to be used; in a third, perhaps only
lingering memories worth preserving. To weave these
slender threads of a broken life into a firm pattern of mean­
ing and responsibility is the object and challenge of logo-
therapy, which is Dr. Frankl’s own version of modern exis­
tential analysis.
In this book, Dr. Frankl explains the experience which
led to his discovery of logotherapy. As a longtime prisoner
in bestial concentration camps he found himself stripped to
naked existence. His father, mother, brother, and his wife
died in camps or were sent to the gas ovens, so that, except­
ing for his sister, his entire family perished in these camps.
How could he—every possession lost, every value destroyed,
suffering from hunger, cold and brutality, hourly expecting
extermination—how could he find life worth preserving? A
psychiatrist who personally has faced such extremity is a
psychiatrist worth listening to. He, if anyone, should be

8 Preface Preface 9
able to view our human condition
wisely and with compassion. Dr.
Frankl’s words have a profoundly
honest ring, for they rest on
experiences too deep for
deception. What he has to say
gains in prestige because of his
present position on the Medical
Faculty of the University of
Vienna and because of the renown
of the logotherapy clinics that
today are springing up in many
lands, patterned on his own
famous Neurological Policlinic in
Vienna.
One cannot help but compare
Viktor Frankl’s approach to
theory and therapy with the work
of his predecessor, Sigmund
Freud. Both physicians concern
themselves primarily with the
nature and cure of neuroses.
Freud finds the root of these
distressing disorders in the anxiety
caused by conflicting and
unconscious motives. Frankl
distinguishes several forms of
neurosis, and traces some of them
(the noogenic neuroses) to the
failure of the sufferer to find
meaning and a sense of
responsibility in his existence.
Freud stresses frustration in the
sexual life; Frankl, frustration in
the “will-to-meaning.” In Europe
today there is a marked turning
away from Freud and a
widespread embracing of
existential analysis, which takes
several related forms—the school
of logotherapy being one. It is
characteristic of Frankl’s tolerant
outlook that he does not repudiate
Freud, but builds gladly on his
contributions; nor does he quarrel
with other forms of existential
therapy, but welcomes kinship
with them.
The present narrative, brief
though it is, is artfully constructed
and gripping. On two occasions I
have read it through at a single
sitting, unable to break away from
its spell. Somewhere beyond the
midpoint of the story Dr. Frankl
introduces his own philosophy of
logotherapy. He introduces it so
gently into the continuing
narrative that only after finishing
the book does the reader realize
that here is an essay of profound
depth, and not just one more brutal
tale of concentration camps.

From this autobiographical
fragment the reader learns much.
He learns what a human being
does when he suddenly realizes
he has “nothing to lose except his
so ridiculously naked life.”
Frankl’s description of the mixed
flow of emotion and apathy is
arresting. First to the rescue
comes a cold detached curiosity
concerning one’s fate. Swiftly,
too, come strategies to preserve
the remnants of one’s life,
though the chances of surviving
are slight. Hunger, humiliation,
fear and deep anger at injustice
are rendered tolerable by closely
guarded images of beloved
persons, by religion, by a grim
sense of humor, and even by
glimpses of the healing beauties of
nature—a tree or a sunset.
But these moments of comfort
do not establish the will to l i ve
unless they help the prisoner
make larger sense out of his
apparently senseless suffering. It
is here that we encounter the
central theme of existentialism:
to live is to suffer, to survive is to
find meaning in the suffering. If
there is a purpose in life at all,
there must be a purpose in suffer­
ing and in dying. But no man can
tell another what this purpose is.
Each must find out for himself,
and must accept t h e responsibility
that his answer prescribes. If he
succeeds he will continue to grow
in spite of all indignities. Frankl is
fond of quoting Nietzsche, “He
who has a why to live can bear
with almost any how.”
In the concentration camp
every circumstance conspires to
make the prisoner lose his hold.
All the familiar goals in l if e are
snatched away. What alone
remains is “the last of human
freedoms”—the ability to
“choose one’s attitude in a given
set of circumstances.” This
ultimate freedom, recognized by
the ancient Stoics as well as by
modern existentialists, takes on
vivid significance in Frankl’s
story. The prisoners were only
average men, but some, at least,
by choosing to be “worthy of their
suffering” proved man’s capacity
to rise above his outward fate.
As a psychotherapist, the
author, of course, wants to

10 Preface
know how men can be helped to achieve this distinctively
human capacity. How can one awaken in a patient the
feeling that he is responsible to life for something, however
grim his circumstances may be? Frankl gives us a moving
account of one collective therapeutic session he held with
his fellow prisoners.
At the publisher’s request Dr. Frankl has added a state­
ment of the basic tenets of logotherapy as well as a bibliog­
raphy. Up to now most of the publications of this “Third
Viennese School of Psychotherapy” (the predecessors being
the Freudian and Adlerian Schools) have been chiefly in
German. The reader will therefore welcome Dr. Frankl’s
supplement to his personal narrative.
Unlike many European existentialists, Frankl is neither
pessimistic nor antireligious. On the contrary, for a writer
who faces fully the ubiquity of suffering and the forces of
evil, he takes a surprisingly hopeful view of man’s capacity
to transcend his predicament and discover an adequate
guiding truth.
I recommend this little book heartily, for it is a gem of
dramatic narrative, focused upon the deepest of human
problems. It has literary and philosophical merit and pro­
vides a compelling introduction to the most significant
psychological movement of our day.
GORDON W. ALLPORT
Gordon W. Allport, formerly a professor of psychology at Harvard
University, was one of the foremost writers and teachers in the field in
this hemisphere. He was author of a large number of original works on
psychology and was the editor of the Journal of Abnormal and Social
Psychology. It is chiefly through the pioneering work of Professor All­
port that Dr. Frankl’s momentous theory was introduced to this
country; moreover, it is to his credit that the interest shown here in
logotherapy is growing by leaps and bounds.
Preface to the 1992
Edition
This book has now lived to see nearly one hundred print­
ings in English—in addition to having been published in
twenty-one other languages. And the English editions alone
have sold more than three million copies.
These are the dry facts, and they may well be the reason
why reporters of American newspapers and particularly of
American TV stations more often than not start their in­
terviews, after listing these facts, by exclaiming: “Dr. Frankl,
your book has become a true bestseller—how do you feel
about such a success?” Whereupon I react by reporting that
in the first place I do not at all see in the bestseller status
of my book an achievement and accomplishment on my part
but rather an expression of the misery of our time: if hun­
dreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very
title promises to deal with the question of a meaning to life,
it must be a question that burns under their fingernails.
To be sure, something else may have contributed to the
impact of the book: its second, theoretical part (“Logother­
apy in a Nutshell”) boils down, as it were, to the lesson one
may distill from the first part, the autobiographical account
(“Experiences in a Concentration Camp”), whereas Part One
11

12 Preface to the 1992 Edition Preface to the 1992 Edition 13
serves as the existential validation of my
theories. Thus, both parts mutually support
their credibility.
I had none of this in mind when I wrote the
book in 1945. And I did so within nine
successive days and with the firm
determination that the book should be
published anonymously. In fact, the first
printing of the original German version does
not show my name on the cover, though at
the last moment, just before the book’s initial
publication, I did finally give in to my friends
who had urged me to let it be published with
my name at least on the title page. At first,
however, it had been written with the
absolute conviction that, as an anonymous
opus, it could never earn its author literary
fame. I had wanted simply to convey to the
reader by way of a concrete example that life
holds a potential meaning under any
conditions, even the most miserable ones. And
I thought that if the point were demonstrated
in a situation as extreme as that in a
concentration camp, my book might gain a
hearing. I therefore felt responsible for
writing down what I had gone through, for I
thought it might be helpful to people who
are prone to despair.
And so it is both strange and remarkable
to me that— among some dozens of books I
have authored—precisely this one, which I
had intended to be published anonymously
so that it could never build up any
reputation on the part of the author, did
become a success. Again and again I therefore
admonish my students both in Europe and
in America: “Don’t aim at success—the
more you aim at it and make it a target, the
more you are going to miss it. For success, like
happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue,
and it only does so as the unintended side-effect
of one’s dedication to a cause greater than
oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender
to a person other than oneself. Happiness
must happen, and the same holds for success:
you have to let it happen by not caring about it.
I want you to listen to what your conscience
commands you to do and go on to carry it out
to the best of

your knowledge. Then you will live to see
that in the long run—in the long run, I say!
—success will follow you precisely because
you had forgotten to think of it.”
The reader may ask me why I did not try to
escape what was in store for me after Hitler
had occupied Austria. Let me answer by
recalling the following story. Shortly before
the United States entered World War II, I
received an invitation to come to the
American Consulate in Vienna to pick up my
immigration visa. My old parents were
overjoyed because they expected that I
would soon be allowed to leave Austria. I
suddenly hesitated, however. The question
beset me: could I really afford to leave my
parents alone to face their fate, to be sent,
sooner or later, to a concentration camp, or
even to a so-called extermination camp?
Where did my responsibility lie? Should I
foster my brain child, logotherapy, by
emigrating to fertile soil where I could write
my books? Or should I concentrate on my
duties as a real child, the child of my
parents who had to do whatever he could to
protect them? I pondered the problem this
way and that but could not arrive at a
solution; this was the type of dilemma that
made one wish for “a hint from Heaven,” as
the phrase goes.
It was then that I noticed a piece of marble
lying on a table at home. When I asked my
father about it, he explained that he had
found it on the site where the National
Socialists had burned down the largest
Viennese synagogue. He had taken the piece
home because it was a part of the tablets on
which the Ten Commandments were
inscribed. One gilded Hebrew letter was
engraved on the piece; my father explained
that this letter stood for one of the
Commandments. Eagerly I asked, “Which
one is it?” He answered, “Honor thy father
and thy mother that thy days may be long
upon the land.” At that moment I decided to
stay with my father and my mother upon the
land, and to let the American visa lapse.
VIKT
OR E.
FRAN
KL
Vien
na,
1992

PART ONE
Experiences in a
Concentration
Camp

THIS BOOK DOES NOT CLAIM TO BE an account of facts and events
but of personal experiences, experiences which millions of
prisoners have suffered time and again. It is the inside
story of a concentration camp, told by one of its survivors.
This tale is not concerned with the great horrors, which
have already been described often enough (though less
often believed), but with the multitude of small torments.
In other words, it will try to answer this question: How
was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the
mind of the average prisoner?
Most of the events described here did not take place in
the large and famous camps, but in the small ones where
most of the real extermination took place. This story is not
about the suffering and death of great heroes and martyrs,
nor is it about the prominent Capos—prisoners who acted
as trustees, having special privileges—or well-known pris­
oners. Thus it is not so much concerned with the sufferings
of the mighty, but with the sacrifices, the crucifixion and
the deaths of the great army of unknown and unrecorded
victims. It was these common prisoners, who bore no dis­
tinguishing marks on their sleeves, whom the Capos really
despised. While these ordinary prisoners had little or noth-

18 Man’s Search for Meaning
ing to eat, the Capos were never hungry; in fact many of
the Capos fared better in the camp than they had in their
entire lives. Often they were harder on the prisoners than
were the guards, and beat them more cruelly than the SS
men did. These Capos, of course, were chosen only from
those prisoners whose characters promised to make them
suitable for such procedures, and if they did not comply
with what was expected of them, they were immediately
demoted. They soon became much like the SS men and the
camp wardens and may be judged on a similar psychologi­
cal basis.
It is easy for the outsider to get the wrong conception of
camp life, a conception mingled with sentiment and pity.
Little does he know of the hard fight for existence which
raged among the prisoners. This was an unrelenting strug­
gle for daily bread and for life itself, for one’s own sake or
for that of a good friend.
Let us take the case of a transport which was officially
announced to transfer a certain number of prisoners to an­
other camp; but it was a fairly safe guess that its final
destination would be the gas chambers. A selection of sick
or feeble prisoners incapable of work would be sent to one
of the big central camps which were fitted with gas
chambers and crematoriums. The selection process was the
signal for a free fight among all the prisoners, or of group
against group. All that mattered was that one’s own name
and that of one’s friend were crossed off the list of victims,
though everyone knew that for each man saved another
victim had to be found.
A definite number of prisoners had to go with each
transport. It did not really matter which, since each of them
was nothing but a number. On their admission to the camp
(at least this was the method in Auschwitz) all their docu-
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 19
ments had been taken from them, together with their other
possessions. Each prisoner, therefore, had had an oppor­
tunity to claim a fictitious name or profession; and for vari­
ous reasons many did this. The authorities were interested
only in the captives’ numbers. These numbers were often
tattooed on their skin, and also had to be sewn to a certain
spot on the trousers, jacket, or coat. Any guard who wanted
to make a charge against a prisoner just glanced at his
number (and how we dreaded such glances!); he never
asked for his name.
To return to the convoy about to depart. There was nei­
ther time nor desire to consider moral or ethical issues.
Every man was controlled by one thought only: to keep
himself alive for the family waiting for him at home, and to
save his friends. With no hesitation, therefore, he would
arrange for another prisoner, another “number,” to take his
place in the transport.
As I have already mentioned, the process of selecting
Capos was a negative one; only the most brutal of the pris­
oners were chosen for this job (although there were some
happy exceptions). But apart from the selection of Capos
which was undertaken by the SS, there was a sort of self-
selecting process going on the whole time among all of the
prisoners. On the average, only those prisoners could keep
alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had
lost all scruples in their fight for existence; they were pre­
pared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal
force, theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save
themselves. We who have come back, by the aid of many
lucky chances or miracles—whatever one may choose to call
them—we know: the best of us did not return.
Many factual accounts about concentration camps are al­
ready on record. Here, facts will be significant only as far
as

20 Man’s Search for Meaning
they are part of a man’s experiences. It is the exact nature
of these experiences that the following essay will attempt
to describe. For those who have been inmates in a camp, it
will attempt to explain their experiences in the light of
present-day knowledge. And for those who have never been
inside, it may help them to comprehend, and above all to
understand, the experiences of that only too small per­
centage of prisoners who survived and who now find life
very difficult. These former prisoners often say, “We dislike
talking about our experiences. No explanations are needed
for those who have been inside, and the others will under­
stand neither how we felt then nor how we feel now.”
To attempt a methodical presentation of the subject is
very difficult, as psychology requires a certain scientific de­
tachment. But does a man who makes his observations
while he himself is a prisoner possess the necessary detach­
ment? Such detachment is granted to the outsider, but he is
too far removed to make any statements of real value. Only
the man inside knows. His judgments may not be objective;
his evaluations may be out of proportion. This is inevita­
ble. An attempt must be made to avoid any personal bias,
and that is the real difficulty of a book of this kind. At times
it will be necessary to have the courage to tell of very in­
timate experiences. I had intended to write this book
anonymously, using my prison number only. But when the
manuscript was completed, I saw that as an anonymous
publication it would lose half its value, and that I must
have the courage to state my convictions openly. I therefore
refrained from deleting any of the passages, in spite of an
intense dislike of exhibitionism.
I shall leave it to others to distill the contents of this
book into dry theories. These might become a contribution
to the psychology of prison life, which was investigated after
the First World War, and which acquainted us with the
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 21
syndrome of “barbed wire sickness.” We are indebted to the
Second World War for enriching our knowledge of the
“psychopathology of the masses,” (if I may quote a varia­
tion of the well-known phrase and title of a book by
LeBon), for the war gave us the war of nerves and it gave us
the concentration camp.
As this story is about my experiences as an ordinary pris­
oner, it is important that I mention, not without pride, that
I was not employed as a psychiatrist in camp, or even as a
doctor, except for the last few weeks. A few of my colleagues
were lucky enough to be employed in poorly heated first-aid
posts applying bandages made of scraps of waste paper. But
I was Number 119,104, and most of the time I was digging
and laying tracks for railway lines. At one time, my job
was to dig a tunnel, without help, for a water main under a
road. This feat did not go unrewarded; just before Christ­
mas 1944, I was presented with a gift of so-called “premium
coupons.” These were issued by the construction firm to
which we were practically sold as slaves: the firm paid the
camp authorities a fixed price per day, per prisoner. The
coupons cost the firm fifty pfennigs each and could be ex­
changed for six cigarettes, often weeks later, although they
sometimes lost their validity. I became the proud owner of a
token worth twelve cigarettes. But more important, the cig­
arettes could be exchanged for twelve soups, and twelve
soups were often a very real respite from starvation.
The privilege of actually smoking cigarettes was reserved
for the Capo, who had his assured quota of weekly coupons;
or possibly for a prisoner who worked as a foreman in a
warehouse or workshop and received a few cigarettes in
exchange for doing dangerous jobs. The only exceptions to
this were those who had lost the will to live and wanted to
“enjoy” their last days. Thus, when we saw a comrade
smoking his own cigarettes, we knew he had given up faith

22 Man’s Search for Meaning
in his strength to carry on, and, once lost, the will to live
seldom returned.
When one examines the vast amount of material which
has been amassed as the result of many prisoners’ observa­
tions and experiences, three phases of the inmate’s mental
reactions to camp life become apparent: the period follow­
ing his admission; the period when he is well entrenched in
camp routine; and the period following his release and
liberation.
The symptom that characterizes the first phase is shock.
Under certain conditions shock may even precede the pris­
oner’s formal admission to the camp. I shall give as an ex­
ample the circumstances of my own admission.
Fifteen hundred persons had been traveling by train for
several days and nights: there were eighty people in each
coach. All had to lie on top of their luggage, the few rem­
nants of their personal possessions. The carriages were so
full that only the top parts of the windows were free to let
in the grey of dawn. Everyone expected the train to head
for some munitions factory, in which we would be em­
ployed as forced labor. We did not know whether we were
still in Silesia or already in Poland. The engine’s whistle
had an uncanny sound, like a cry for help sent out in com­
miseration for the unhappy load which it was destined to
lead into perdition. Then the train shunted, obviously
nearing a main station. Suddenly a cry broke from the
ranks of the anxious passengers, “There is a sign,
Auschwitz!” Everyone’s heart missed a beat at that moment.
Auschwitz—the very name stood for all that was horrible:
gas chambers, crematoriums, massacres. Slowly, almost hesi­
tatingly, the train moved on as if it wanted to spare its
passengers the dreadful realization as long as possible:
Auschwitz!
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 23
With the progressive dawn, the outlines of an immense
camp became visible: long stretches of several rows of
barbed wire fences; watch towers; search lights; and long
columns of ragged human figures, grey in the greyness of
dawn, trekking along the straight desolate roads, to what
destination we did not know. There were isolated shouts
and whistles of command. We did not know their meaning.
My imagination led me to see gallows with people dangling
on them. I was horrified, but this was just as well, because
step by step we had to become accustomed to a terrible and
immense horror.
Eventually we moved into the station. The initial silence
was interrupted by shouted commands. We were to hear
those rough, shrill tones from then on, over and over again
in all the camps. Their sound was almost like the last cry of
a victim, and yet there was a difference. It had a rasping
hoarseness, as if it came from the throat of a man who had
to keep shouting like that, a man who was being murdered
again and again. The carriage doors were flung open and a
small detachment of prisoners stormed inside. They wore
striped uniforms, their heads were shaved, but they looked
well fed. They spoke in every possible European tongue,
and all with a certain amount of humor, which sounded
grotesque under the circumstances. Like a drowning man
clutching a straw, my inborn optimism (which has often
controlled my feelings even in the most desperate situa­
tions) clung to this thought: These prisoners look quite
well, they seem to be in good spirits and even laugh. Who
knows? I might manage to share their favorable position.
In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as “delu­
sion of reprieve.” The condemned man, immediately before
his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved
at the very last minute. We, too, clung to shreds of hope
and believed to the last moment that it would not be so
bad. Just the sight of the red cheeks and round faces of

24 Man’s Search for Meaning
those prisoners was a great encouragement. Little did we
know then that they formed a specially chosen elite, who
for years had been the receiving squad for new transports as
they rolled into the station day after day. They took charge
of the new arrivals and their luggage, including scarce items
and smuggled jewelry. Auschwitz must have been a strange
spot in this Europe of the last years of the war. There must
have been unique treasures of gold and silver, platinum
and diamonds, not only in the huge storehouses but also in
the hands of the SS.
Fifteen hundred captives were cooped up in a shed built
to accommodate probably two hundred at the most. We
were cold and hungry and there was not enough room for
everyone to squat on the bare ground, let alone to lie down.
One five-ounce piece of bread was our only food in four
days. Yet I heard the senior prisoners in charge of the shed
bargain with one member of the receiving party about a
tie-pin made of platinum and diamonds. Most of the profits
would eventually be traded for liquor—schnapps. I do not
remember any more just how many thousands of marks
were needed to purchase the quantity of schnapps required
for a “gay evening,” but I do know that those long-term
prisoners needed schnapps. Under such conditions, who
could blame them for trying to dope themselves? There was
another group of prisoners who got liquor supplied in al­
most unlimited quantities by the SS: these were the men
who were employed in the gas chambers and crematoriums,
and who knew very well that one day they would be re­
lieved by a new shift of men, and that they would have to
leave their enforced role of executioner and become victims
themselves.
Nearly everyone in our transport lived under the illusion
that he would be reprieved, that everything would yet be
well. We did not realize the meaning behind the scene that
was to follow presently. We were told to leave our luggage
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 25
in the train and to fall into two lines—women on one side,
men on the other—in order to file past a senior SS officer.
Surprisingly enough, I had the courage to hide my haver­
sack under my coat. My line filed past the officer, man by
man. I realized that it would be dangerous if the officer
spotted my bag. He would at least knock me down; I knew
that from previous experience. Instinctively, I straightened
on approaching the officer, so that he would not notice
my heavy load. Then I was face to face with him. He was a
tall man who looked slim and fit in his spotless uniform.
What a contrast to us, who were untidy and grimy after our
long journey! He had assumed an attitude of careless ease,
supporting his right elbow with his left hand. His right
hand was lifted, and with the forefinger of that hand he
pointed very leisurely to the right or to the left. None of us
had the slightest idea of the sinister meaning behind that
little movement of a man’s finger, pointing now to the right
and now to the left, but far more frequently to the left.
It was my turn. Somebody whispered to me that to be
sent to the right side would mean work, the way to the left
being for the sick and those incapable of work, who would
be sent to a special camp. I just waited for things to take
their course, the first of many such times to come. My haver­
sack weighed me down a bit to the left, but I made an effort
to walk upright. The SS man looked me over, appeared to
hesitate, then put both his hands on my shoulders. I tried
very hard to look smart, and he turned my shoulders very
slowly until I faced right, and I moved over to that side.
The significance of the finger game was explained to us
in the evening. It was the first selection, the first verdict
made on our existence or non-existence. For the great ma­
jority of our transport, about 90 per cent, it meant death.
Their sentence was carried out within the next few hours.
Those who were sent to the left were marched from the
station straight to the crematorium. This building, as I was

26 Man’s Search for Meaning
told by someone who worked there, had the word “bath”
written over its doors in several European languages. On
entering, each prisoner was handed a piece of soap, and
then but mercifully I do not need to describe the events
which followed. Many accounts have been written about
this horror.
We who were saved, the minority of our transport, found
out the truth in the evening. I inquired from prisoners who
had been there for some time where my colleague and
friend P had been sent.
“Was he sent to the left side?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Then you can see him there,” I was told.
“Where?” A hand pointed to the chimney a few hundred
yards off, which was sending a column of flame up into the
grey sky of Poland. It dissolved into a sinister cloud of
smoke.
“That’s where your friend is, floating up to Heaven,” was
the answer. But I still did not understand until the truth
was explained to me in plain words.
But I am telling things out of their turn. From a psycho­
logical point of view, we had a long, long way in front of us
from the break of that dawn at the station until our first
night’s rest at the camp.
Escorted by SS guards with loaded guns, we were made to
run from the station, past electrically charged barbed wire,
through the camp, to the cleansing station; for those of us
who had passed the first selection, this was a real bath.
Again our illusion of reprieve found confirmation. The SS
men seemed almost charming. Soon we found out their rea­
son. They were nice to us as long as they saw watches on
our wrists and could persuade us in well-meaning tones to
hand them over. Would we not have to hand over all our
possessions anyway, and why should not that relatively nice
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 27
person have the watch? Maybe one day he would do one a
good turn.
We waited in a shed which seemed to be the anteroom to
the disinfecting chamber. SS men appeared and spread out
blankets into which we had to throw all our possessions, all
our watches and jewelry. There were still naive prisoners
among us who asked, to the amusement of the more sea­
soned ones who were there as helpers, if they could not
keep a wedding ring, a medal or a good-luck piece. No one
could yet grasp the fact that everything would be taken
away.
I tried to take one of the old prisoners into my confi­
dence. Approaching him furtively, I pointed to the roll of
paper in the inner pocket of my coat and said, “Look, this
is the manuscript of a scientific book. I know what you will
say; that I should be grateful to escape with my life, that
that should be all I can expect of fate. But I cannot help
myself. I must keep this manuscript at all costs; it contains
my life’s work. Do you understand that?”
Yes, he was beginning to understand. A grin spread
slowly over his face, first piteous, then more amused, mock­
ing, insulting, until he bellowed one word at me in answer
to my question, a word that was ever present in the vocabu­
lary of the camp inmates: “Shit!” At that moment I saw the
plain truth and did what marked the culminating point of
the first phase of my psychological reaction: I struck out my
whole former life.
Suddenly there was a stir among my fellow travelers, who
had been standing about with pale, frightened faces, help­
lessly debating. Again we heard the hoarsely shouted com­
mands. We were driven with blows into the immediate
anteroom of the bath. There we assembled around an SS
man who waited until we had all arrived. Then he said, “I
will give you two minutes, and I shall time you by my
watch. In these two minutes you will get fully undressed

28 Man’s Search for Meaning
and drop everything on the floor where you are standing.
You will take nothing with you except your shoes, your belt
or suspenders, and possibly a truss. I am starting to count—
now!”
With unthinkable haste, people tore off their clothes. As
the time grew shorter, they became increasingly nervous
and pulled clumsily at their underwear, belts and shoe­
laces. Then we heard the first sounds of whipping; leather
straps beating down on naked bodies.
Next we were herded into another room to be shaved:
not only our heads were shorn, but not a hair was left on
our entire bodies. Then on to the showers, where we lined
up again. We hardly recognized each other; but with great
relief some people noted that real water dripped from the
sprays.
While we were waiting for the shower, our nakedness was
brought home to us: we really had nothing now except our
bare bodies—even minus hair; all we possessed, literally,
was our naked existence. What else remained for us as a
material link with our former lives? For me there were my
glasses and my belt; the latter I had to exchange later on
for a piece of bread. There was an extra bit of excitement
in store for the owners of trusses. In the evening the senior
prisoner in charge of our hut welcomed us with a speech in
which he gave us his word of honor that he would hang,
personally, “from that beam”—he pointed to it—any per­
son who had sewn money or precious stones into his truss.
Proudly he explained that as a senior inhabitant the camp
laws entitled him to do so.
Where our shoes were concerned, matters were not so
simple. Although we were supposed to keep them, those
who had fairly decent pairs had to give them up after all
and were given in exchange shoes that did not fit. In for
real trouble were those prisoners who had followed the ap-
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 29
parently well-meant advice (given in the anteroom) of the
senior prisoners and had shortened their jackboots by cut­
ting the tops off, then smearing soap on the cut edges to
hide the sabotage. The SS men seemed to have waited for
just that. All suspected of this crime had to go into a small
adjoining room. After a time we again heard the lashings of
the strap, and the screams of tortured men. This time it
lasted for quite a while.
Thus the illusions some of us still held were destroyed
one by one, and then, quite unexpectedly, most of us were
overcome by a grim sense of humor. We knew that we had
nothing to lose except our so ridiculously naked lives.
When the showers started to run, we all tried very hard to
make fun, both about ourselves and about each other. After
all, real water did flow from the spraysl
Apart from that strange kind of humor, another sensa­
tion seized us: curiosity. I have experienced this kind of
curiosity before, as a fundamental reaction toward certain
strange circumstances. When my life was once endangered
by a climbing accident, I felt only one sensation at the
critical moment: curiosity, curiosity as to whether I should
come out of it alive or with a fractured skull or some other
injuries.
Cold curiosity predominated even in Auschwitz, some­
how detaching the mind from its surroundings, which came
to be regarded with a kind of objectivity. At that time one
cultivated this state of mind as a means of protection. We
were anxious to know what would happen next; and what
would be the consequence, for example, of our standing in
the open air, in the chill of late autumn, stark naked, and
still wet from the showers. In the next few days our curi­
osity evolved into surprise; surprise that we did not catch
cold.
There were many similar surprises in store for new ar-

30 Man’s Search for Meaning
rivals. The medical men among us learned first of all:
“Textbooks tell lies!” Somewhere it is said that man cannot
exist without sleep for more than a stated number of hours.
Quite wrongl I had been convinced that there were certain
things I just could not do: I could not sleep without this or
I could not live with that or the other. The first night in
Auschwitz we slept in beds which were constructed in tiers.
On each tier (measuring about six-and-a-half to eight feet)
slept nine men, directly on the boards. Two blankets were
shared by each nine men. We could, of course, lie only on
our sides, crowded and huddled against each other, which
had some advantages because of the bitter cold. Though it
was forbidden to take shoes up to the bunks, some people
did use them secretly as pillows in spite of the fact that they
were caked with mud. Otherwise one’s head had to rest on
the crook of an almost dislocated arm. And yet sleep came
and brought oblivion and relief from pain for a few hours.
I would like to mention a few similar surprises on how
much we could endure: we were unable to clean our teeth,
and yet, in spite of that and a severe vitamin deficiency,
we had healthier gums than ever before. We had to wear
the same shirts for half a year, until they had lost all ap­
pearance of being shirts. For days we were unable to wash,
even partially, because of frozen water-pipes, and yet the
sores and abrasions on hands which were dirty from work in
the soil did not suppurate (that is, unless there was frost­
bite). Or for instance, a light sleeper, who used to be dis­
turbed by the slightest noise in the next room, now found
himself lying pressed against a comrade who snored loudly
a few inches from his ear and yet slept quite soundly
through the noise.
If someone now asked of us the truth of Dostoevski’s
statement that flatly defines man as a being who can get
used to anything, we would reply, “Yes, a man can get used
to anything, but do not ask us how.” But our psychological
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 31
investigations have not taken us that far yet; neither had
we prisoners reached that point. We were still in the first
phase of our psychological reactions.
The thought of suicide was entertained by nearly every­
one, if only for a brief time. It was born of the hopelessness
of the situation, the constant danger of death looming over
us daily and hourly, and the closeness of the deaths suffered
by many of the others. From personal convictions which
will be mentioned later, I made myself a firm promise, on
my first evening in camp, that I would not “run into the
wire.” This was a phrase used in camp to describe the most
popular method of suicide—touching the electrically
charged barbed-wire fence. It was not entirely difficult for
me to make this decision. There was little point in commit­
ting suicide, since, for the average inmate, life expectation,
calculating objectively and counting all likely chances, was
very poor. He could not with any assurance expect to be
among the small percentage of men who survived all the
selections. The prisoner of Auschwitz, in the first phase of
shock, did not fear death. Even the gas chambers lost their
horrors for him after the first few days—after all, they
spared him the act of committing suicide.
Friends whom I have met later have told me that I was
not one of those whom the shock of admission greatly de­
pressed. I only smiled, and quite sincerely, when the follow­
ing episode occurred the morning after our first night in
Auschwitz. In spite of strict orders not to leave our
“blocks,” a colleague of mine, who had arrived in Auschwitz
several weeks previously, smuggled himself into our hut.
He wanted to calm and comfort us and tell us a few things.
He had become so thin that at first we did not recognize
him. With a show of good humor and a Devil-may-care
attitude he gave us a few hurried tips: “Don’t be afraid!
Don’t fear
the selections! Dr. M (the SS medical chief) has a soft
spot for doctors.” (This was wrong; my friend’s kindly

32 Man’s Search for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp
words were misleading. One prisoner, the
doctor of a block, of huts and a man of some
sixty years, told me how he had
entreated Dr. M to let off his son, who
was destined for
gas. Dr. M coldly refused.)
“But one thing I beg of you”; he continued,
“shave daily, if at all possible, even if you
have to use a piece of glass to do it . . . even
if you have to give your last piece of bread
for it. You will look younger and the
scraping will make your cheeks look
ruddier. If you want to stay alive, there is
only one way: look fit for work. If you even
limp, because, let us say, you have a small
blister on your heel, and an SS man spots
this, he will wave you aside and the next day
you are sure to be gassed. Do you know what
we mean by a ‘Moslem’? A man who looks
miserable, down and out, sick and emaciated,
and who cannot manage hard physical labor
any longer . . . that is a ‘Moslem.’ Sooner or
later, usually sooner, every ‘Moslem’ goes to
the gas chambers. Therefore, remember:
shave, stand and walk smartly; then you
need not be afraid of gas. All of you
standing here, even if you have only been
here twenty-four hours, you need not fear
gas, except perhaps you.” And then he
pointed to me and said, “I hope you don’t
mind my telling you frankly.” To the others
he repeated, “Of all of you he is the only one
who must fear the next selection. So, don’t
worry!”
And I smiled. I am now convinced that
anyone in my place on that day would have
done the same.
I think it was Lessing who once said,
“There are things which must cause you to
lose your reason or you have none to lose.”
An abnormal reaction to an abnormal
situation is normal behavior. Even we
psychiatrists expect the reactions of a man to
an abnormal situation, such as being com­
mitted to an asylum, to be abnormal in
proportion to the

degree of his normality. The reaction of a
man to his admission to a concentration
camp also represents an abnormal state of
mind, but judged objectively it is a normal
and, as will be shown later, typical reaction
to the given circumstances. These reactions,
as I have described them, began to change in
a few days. The prisoner passed from the
first to the second phase; the phase of
relative apathy, in which he achieved a kind
of emotional death.
Apart from the already described
reactions, the newly arrived prisoner
experienced the tortures of other most
painful emotions, all of which he tried to
deaden. First of all, there was his boundless
longing for his home and his family. This
often could become so acute that he felt
himself consumed by longing. Then there
was disgust; disgust with all the ugliness
which surrounded him, even in its mere
external forms.
Most of the prisoners were given a uniform
of rags which would have made a scarecrow
elegant by comparison. Between the huts in
the camp lay pure filth, and the more one
worked to clear it away, the more one had to
come in contact with it. It was a favorite
practice to detail a new arrival to a work
group whose job was to clean the latrines
and remove the sewage. If, as usually
happened, some of the excrement splashed
into his face during its transport over bumpy
fields, any sign of disgust by the prisoner or
any attempt to wipe off the filth would only
be punished with a blow from a Capo. And
thus the mortification of normal reactions was
hastened.
At first the prisoner looked away if he
saw the punishment parades of another
group; he could not bear to see fellow
prisoners march up and down for hours in the
mire, their movements directed by blows.
Days or weeks later things changed. Early
in the morning, when it was still dark, the
prisoner stood in front of the gate with his
detachment, ready to march. He heard a
scream and saw how

34 Man’s Search for Meaning
a comrade was knocked down, pulled to his feet again,
and knocked down once more—and why? He was feverish
but had reported to sick-bay at an improper time. He was
being punished for this irregular attempt to be relieved of
his duties.
But the prisoner who had passed into the second stage of
his psychological reactions did not avert his eyes any more.
By then his feelings were blunted, and he watched un­
moved. Another example: he found himself waiting at sick­
bay, hoping to be granted two days of light work inside the
camp because of injuries or perhaps edema or fever. He
stood unmoved while a twelve-year-old boy was carried in
who had been forced to stand at attention for hours in the
snow or to work outside with bare feet because there were
no shoes for him in the camp. His toes had become frost­
bitten, and the doctor on duty picked off the black gan­
grenous stumps with tweezers, one by one. Disgust, horror
and pity are emotions that our spectator could not really
feel any more. The sufferers, the dying and the dead, be­
came such commonplace sights to him after a few weeks of
camp life that they could not move him any more.
I spent some time in a hut for typhus patients who ran
very high temperatures and were often delirious, many of
them moribund. After one of them had just died, I watched
without any emotional upset the scene that followed, which
was repeated over and over again with each death. One by
one the prisoners approached the still warm body. One
grabbed the remains of a messy meal of potatoes; another
decided that the corpse’s wooden shoes were an improve­
ment on his own, and exchanged them. A third man did
the same with the dead man’s coat, and another was glad to
be able to secure some—just imagine!—genuine string.
All this I watched with unconcern. Eventually I asked
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 35
the “nurse” to remove the body. When he decided to do so,
he took the corpse by its legs, allowing it to drop into the
small corridor between the two rows of boards which were
the beds for the fifty typhus patients, and dragged it across
the bumpy earthen floor toward the door. The two steps
which led up into the open air always constituted a prob­
lem for us, since we were exhausted from a chronic lack of
food. After a few months’ stay in the camp we could not
walk up those steps, which were each about six inches high,
without putting our hands on the door jambs to pull our­
selves up.
The man with the corpse approached the steps. Wearily
he dragged himself up. Then the body: first the feet, then
the trunk, and finally—with an uncanny rattling noise—
the head of the corpse bumped up the two steps.
My place was on the opposite side of the hut, next to the
small, sole window, which was built near the floor. While
my cold hands clasped a bowl of hot soup from which I
sipped greedily, I happened to look out the window. The
corpse which had just been removed stared in at me with
glazed eyes. Two hours before I had spoken to that man.
Now I continued sipping my soup.
If my lack of emotion had not surprised me from the
standpoint of professional interest, I would not remember
this incident now, because there was so little feeling in­
volved in it.
Apathy, the blunting of the emotions and the feeling that
one could not care any more, were the symptoms arising
during the second stage of the prisoner’s psychological re­
actions, and which eventually made him insensitive to daily
and hourly beatings. By means of this insensibility the pris­
oner soon surrounded himself with a very necessary protec­
tive shell.

36 Man’s Search for Meaning
Beatings occurred on the slightest provocation, sometimes
for no reason at all. For example, bread was rationed out at
our work site and we had to line up for it. Once, the man
behind me stood off a little to one side and that lack of
symmetry displeased the SS guard. I did not know what was
going on in the line behind me, nor in the mind of the SS
guard, but suddenly I received two sharp blows on my
head. Only then did I spot the guard at my side who was
using his stick. At such a moment it is not the physical
pain which hurts the most (and this applies to adults as
much as to punished children); it is the mental agony
caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all.
Strangely enough, a blow which does not even find its
mark can, under certain circumstances, hurt more than one
that finds its mark. Once I was standing on a railway track
in a snowstorm. In spite of the weather our party had to
keep on working. I worked quite hard at mending the track
with gravel, since that was the only way to keep warm. For
only one moment I paused to get my breath and to lean on
my shovel. Unfortunately the guard turned around just
then and thought I was loafing. The pain he caused me was
not from any insults or any blows. That guard did not
think it worth his while to say anything, not even a swear
word, to the ragged, emaciated figure standing before him,
which probably reminded him only vaguely of a human
form. Instead, he playfully picked up a stone and threw it
at me. That, to me, seemed the way to attract the attention
of a beast, to call a domestic animal back to its job, a
creature with which you have so little in common that you
do not even punish it.
The most painful part of beatings is the insult which
they imply. At one time we had to carry some long, heavy
girders over icy tracks. If one man slipped, he endangered
not only himself but all the others who carried the same
girder. An old friend of mine had a congenitally dislocated
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 37
hip. He was glad to be capable of working in spite of it,
since the physically disabled were almost certainly sent to
death when a selection took place. He limped over the track
with an especially heavy girder, and seemed about to fall
and drag the others with him. As yet, I was not carrying a
girder so I jumped to his assistance without stopping to
think. I was immediately hit on the back, rudely repri­
manded and ordered to return to my place. A few minutes
previously the same guard who struck me had told us
deprecatingly that we “pigs” lacked the spirit of comrade­
ship.
Another time, in a forest, with the temperature at 2°F, we
began to dig up the topsoil, which was frozen hard, in order
to lay water pipes. By then I had grown rather weak physi­
cally. Along came a foreman with chubby rosy cheeks. His
face definitely reminded me of a pig’s head. I noticed that
he wore lovely warm gloves in that bitter cold. For a time
he watched me silently. I felt that trouble was brewing, for
in front of me lay the mound of earth which showed exactly
how much I had dug.
Then he began: “You pig, I have been watching you the
whole time! I’ll teach you to work, yet! Wait till you dig
dirt with your teeth—you’ll die like an animal! In two days
I’ll finish you off! You’ve never done a stroke of work in
your life. What were you, swine? A businessman?”
I was past caring. But I had to take his threat of killing
me seriously, so I straightened up and looked him directly
in the eye. “I was a doctor—a specialist.”
“What? A doctor? I bet you got a lot of money out of
people.”
“As it happens, I did most of my work for no money at
all, in clinics for the poor.” But, now, I had said too much.
He threw himself on me and knocked me down, shouting
like a madman. I can no longer remember what he shouted.
I want to show with this apparently trivial story that

38 Man’s Search for Meaning
there are moments when indignation can rouse even a
seemingly hardened prisoner—indignation not about
cruelty or pain, but about the insult connected with it.
That time blood rushed to my head because I had to listen
to a man judge my life who had so little idea of it, a man (I
must confess: the following remark, which I made to my
fellow-prisoners after the scene, afforded me childish relief)
“who looked so vulgar and brutal that the nurse in the out-
patient ward in my hospital would not even have admitted
him to the waiting room.”
Fortunately the Capo in my working party was obligated
to me; he had taken a liking to me because I listened to his
love stories and matrimonial troubles, which he poured out
during the long marches to our work site. I had made an
impression on him with my diagnosis of his character and
with my psychotherapeutic advice. After that he was grate­
ful, and this had already been of value to me. On several
previous occasions he had reserved a place for me next to
him in one of the first five rows of our detachment, which
usually consisted of two hundred and eighty men. That
favor was important. We had to line up early in the morn­
ing while it was still dark. Everybody was afraid of being
late and of having to stand in the back rows. If men were
required for an unpleasant and disliked job, the senior
Capo appeared and usually collected the men he needed
from the back rows. These men had to march away to an­
other, especially dreaded kind of work under the command
of strange guards. Occasionally the senior Capo chose men
from the first five rows, just to catch those who tried to be
clever. All protests and entreaties were silenced by a few
well-aimed kicks, and the chosen victims were chased to
the meeting place with shouts and blows.
However, as long as my Capo felt the need of pouring out
his heart, this could not happen to me. I had a guaranteed
place of honor next to him. But there was another advan-
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 39
tage, too. Like nearly all the camp inmates I was suffering
from edema. My legs were so swollen and the skin on them
so tightly stretched that I could scarcely bend my knees. I
had to leave my shoes unlaced in order to make them fit my
swollen feet. There would not have been space for socks
even if I had had any. So my partly bare feet were always
wet and my shoes always full of snow. This, of course,
caused frostbite and chilblains. Every single step became
real torture. Clumps of ice formed on our shoes during our
marches over snow-covered fields. Over and again men
slipped and those following behind stumbled on top of
them. Then the column would stop for a moment, but not
for long. One of the guards soon took action and worked
over the men with the butt of his rifle to make them get up
quickly. The more to the front of the column you were, the
less often you were disturbed by having to stop and then to
make up for lost time by running on your painful feet. I
was very happy to be the personally appointed physician to
His Honor the Capo, and to march in the first row at an
even pace.
As an additional payment for my services, I could be sure
that as long as soup was being dealt out at lunchtime at our
work site, he would, when my turn came, dip the ladle right
to the bottom of the vat and fish out a few peas. This Capo,
a former army officer, even had the courage to whisper to
the foreman, whom I had quarreled with, that he knew me
to be an unusually good worker. That didn’t help matters,
but he nevertheless managed to save my life (one of the
many times it was to be saved). The day after the epi­
sode with the foreman he smuggled me into another work
party.
There were foremen who felt sorry for us and who did
their best to ease our situation, at least at the building site.

40 Man’s Search for Meaning
But even they kept on reminding us that an ordinary
laborer did several times as much work as we did, and in a
shorter time. But they did see reason if they were told that
a normal workman did not live on 10-1/2 ounces of bread
(theoretically—actually we often had less) and 1-3/4 pints of
thin soup per day; that a normal laborer did not live under
the mental stress we had to submit to, not having news of
our families, who had either been sent to another camp or
gassed right away; that a normal workman was not threat­
ened by death continuously, daily and hourly. I even al­
lowed myself to say once to a kindly foreman, “If you could
learn from me how to do a brain operation in as short a
time as I am learning this road work from you, I would
have great respect for you.” And he grinned.
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 41
is another matter; the dreamer had to wake from them to
the reality of camp life, and to the terrible contrast between
that and his dream illusions.
I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the
groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his
sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare. Since I had
always been especially sorry for people who suffered from
fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man.
Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake
him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that
moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no
dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the
reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I
was about to recall him.
Apathy, the main symptom of the second phase, was a
necessary mechanism of self-defense. Reality dimmed, and
all efforts and all emotions were centered on one task: pre­
serving one’s own life and that of the other fellow. It was
typical to hear the prisoners, while they were being herded
back to camp from their work sites in the evening, sigh with
relief and say, “Well, another day is over.”
It can be readily understood that such a state of strain,
coupled with the constant necessity of concentrating on the
task of staying alive, forced the prisoner’s inner life down
to a primitive level. Several of my colleagues in camp
who were trained in psychoanalysis often spoke of a
“regression” in the camp inmate—a retreat to a more
primitive form of mental life. His wishes and desires
became obvious in his dreams.
What did the prisoner dream about most frequently? Of
bread, cake, cigarettes, and nice warm baths. The lack of
having these simple desires satisfied led him to seek wish-
fulfillment in dreams. Whether these dreams did any good
Because of the high degree of undernourishment which
the prisoners suffered, it was natural that the desire for food
was the major primitive instinct around which mental life
centered. Let us observe the majority of prisoners when
they happened to work near each other and were, for once,
not closely watched. They would immediately start discuss­
ing food. One fellow would ask another working next to
him in the ditch what his favorite dishes were. Then they
would exchange recipes and plan the menu for the day
when they would have a reunion—the day in a distant
future when they would be liberated and returned home.
They would go on and on, picturing it all in detail, until
suddenly a warning was passed down the trench, usually in
the form of a special password or number: “The guard is
coming.”
I always regarded the discussions about food as danger­
ous. Is it not wrong to provoke the organism with such
detailed and affective pictures of delicacies when it has
somehow managed to adapt itself to extremely small
rations

42 Man’s Search for Meaning
and low calories? Though it may afford momentary psycho­
logical relief, it is an illusion which physiologically, surely,
must not be without danger.
During the later part of our imprisonment, the daily ra­
tion consisted of very watery soup given out once daily, and
the usual small bread ration. In addition to that, there was
the so-called “extra allowance,” consisting of three-fourths
of an ounce of margarine, or of a slice of poor quality sau­
sage, or of a little piece of cheese, or a bit of synthetic honey,
or a spoonful of watery jam, varying daily. In calories, this
diet was absolutely inadequate, especially taking into con­
sideration our heavy manual work and our constant ex­
posure to the cold in inadequate clothing. The sick who
were “under special care”—that is, those who were allowed
to lie in the huts instead of leaving the camp for work—-
were even worse off.
When the last layers of subcutaneous fat had vanished,
and we looked like skeletons disguised with skin and rags,
we could watch our bodies beginning to devour themselves.
The organism digested its own protein, and the muscles
disappeared. Then the body had no powers of resistance
left. One after another the members of the little community
in our hut died. Each of us could calculate with fair ac­
curacy whose turn would be next, and when his own would
come. After many observations we knew the symptoms well,
which made the correctness of our prognoses quite certain.
“He won’t last long,” or, “This is the next one,” we whis­
pered to each other, and when, during our daily search for
lice, we saw our own naked bodies in the evening, we
thought alike: This body here, my body, is really a corpse
already. What has become of me? I am but a small portion
of a great mass of human flesh . . . of a mass behind barbed
wire, crowded into a few earthen huts; a mass of which
daily a certain portion begins to rot because it has become
lifeless.
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 43
I mentioned above how unavoidable were the thoughts
about food and favorite dishes which forced themselves into
the consciousness of the prisoner, whenever he had a mo­
ment to spare. Perhaps it can be understood, then, that even
the strongest of us was longing for the time when he would
have fairly good food again, not for the sake of good food
itself, but for the sake of knowing that the sub-human exis­
tence, which had made us unable to think of anything other
than food, would at last cease.
Those who have not gone through a similar experience
can hardly conceive of the soul-destroying mental conflict
and clashes of will power which a famished man experi­
ences. They can hardly grasp what it means to stand dig­
ging in a trench, listening only for the siren to announce
9:30 or 10:00 A.M.—the half-hour lunch interval—when
bread would be rationed out (as long as it was still avail­
able); repeatedly asking the foreman—if he wasn’t a dis­
agreeable fellow—what the time was; and tenderly touch­
ing a piece of bread in one’s coat pocket, first stroking it
with frozen gloveless fingers, then breaking off a crumb and
putting it in one’s mouth and finally, with the last bit of
will power, pocketing it again, having promised oneself that
morning to hold out till afternoon.
We could hold endless debates on the sense or nonsense
of certain methods of dealing with the small bread ration,
which was given out only once daily during the latter part
of our confinement. There were two schools of thought.
One was in favor of eating up the ration immediately. This
had the twofold advantage of satisfying the worst hunger
pangs for a very short time at least once a day and of
safeguarding against possible theft or loss of the ration. The
second group, which held with dividing the ration up, used
different arguments. I finally joined their ranks.
The most ghastly moment of the twenty-four hours of
camp life was the awakening, when, at a still nocturnal

44 Man’s Search for Meaning
hour, the three shrill blows of a whistle tore us pitilessly
from our exhausted sleep and from the longings in our
dreams. We then began the tussle with our wet shoes, into
which we could scarcely force our feet, which were sore
and swollen with edema. And there were the usual moans
and groans about petty troubles, such as the snapping of
wires which replaced shoelaces. One morning I heard some­
one, whom I knew to be brave and dignified, cry like a
child because he finally had to go to the snowy marching
grounds in his bare feet, as his shoes were too shrunken for
him to wear. In those ghastly minutes, I found a little bit of
comfort; a small piece of bread which I drew out of my
pocket and munched with absorbed delight.
Undernourishment, besides being the cause of the gen­
eral preoccupation with food, probably also explains the
fact that the sexual urge was generally absent. Apart from
the initial effects of shock, this appears to be the only ex­
planation of a phenomenon which a psychologist was
bound to observe in those all-male camps: that, as opposed
to all other strictly male establishments—such as army
barracks—there was little sexual perversion. Even in his
dreams the prisoner did not seem to concern himself with
sex, although his frustrated emotions and his finer, higher
feelings did find definite expression in them.
With the majority of the prisoners, the primitive life and
the effort of having to concentrate on just saving one’s skin
led to a total disregard of anything not serving that purpose,
and explained the prisoners’ complete lack of sentiment.
This was brought home to me on my transfer from
Auschwitz to a camp affiliated with Dachau. The train
which carried us—about 2,000 prisoners—passed through
Vienna. At about midnight we passed one of the Viennese
railway stations. The track was going to lead us past the
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 45
street where I was born, past the house where I had lived
many years of my life, in fact, until I was taken prisoner.
There were fifty of us in the prison car, which had two
small, barred peepholes. There was only enough room for
one group to squat on the floor, while the others, who had
to stand up for hours, crowded round the peepholes. Stand­
ing on tiptoe and looking past the others’ heads through
the bars of the window, I caught an eerie glimpse of my
native town. We all felt more dead than alive, since we
thought that our transport was heading for the camp at
Mauthausen and that we had only one or two weeks to live.
I had a distinct feeling that I saw the streets, the squares
and the houses of my childhood with the eyes of a dead
man who had come back from another world and was look­
ing down on a ghostly city.
After hours of delay the train left the station. And there
was the street—my street! The young lads who had a num­
ber of years of camp life behind them and for whom such a
journey was a great event stared attentively through the
peephole. I began to beg them, to entreat them, to let me
stand in front for one moment only. I tried to explain how
much a look through that window meant to me just then.
My request was refused with rudeness and cynicism: “You
lived here all those years? Well, then you have seen quite
enough already!”
In general there was also a “cultural hibernation” in
the camp. There were two exceptions to this: politics and
religion. Politics were talked about everywhere in camp,
almost continuously; the discussions were based chiefly on
rumors, which were snapped up and passed around avidly.
The rumors about the military situation were usually con­
tradictory. They followed one another rapidly and suc­
ceeded only in making a contribution to the war of nerves

46 Man’s Search for Meaning
that was waged in the minds of all the prisoners. Many
times, hopes for a speedy end to the war, which had been
fanned by optimistic rumors, were disappointed. Some men
lost all hope, but it was the incorrigible optimists who were
the most irritating companions.
The religious interest of the prisoners, as far and as soon
as it developed, was the most sincere imaginable. The depth
and vigor of religious belief often surprised and moved a
new arrival. Most impressive in this connection were im­
provised prayers or services in the corner of a hut, or in the
darkness of the locked cattle truck in which we were
brought back from a distant work site, tired, hungry and
frozen in our ragged clothing.
In the winter and spring of 1945 there was an outbreak of
typhus which infected nearly all the prisoners. The mortal­
ity was great among the weak, who had to keep on with
their hard work as long as they possibly could. The quarters
for the sick were most inadequate, there were practically no
medicines or attendants. Some of the symptoms of the dis­
ease were extremely disagreeable: an irrepressible aversion
to even a scrap of food (which was an additional danger to
life) and terrible attacks of delirium. The worst case of
delirium was suffered by a friend of mine who thought that
he was dying and wanted to pray. In his delirium he could
not find the words to do so. To avoid these attacks of de­
lirium, I tried, as did many of the others, to keep awake for
most of the night. For hours I composed speeches in my
mind. Eventually I began to reconstruct the manuscript
which I had lost in the disinfection chamber of Auschwitz,
and scribbled the key words in shorthand on tiny scraps of
paper.
Occasionally a scientific debate developed in camp.
Once I witnessed something I had never seen, even in my
normal life, although it lay somewhat near my own
professional interests: a spiritualistic seance. I had been
invited to at-
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 47
tend by the camp’s chief doctor (also a prisoner), who knew
that I was a specialist in psychiatry. The meeting took place
in his small, private room in the sick quarters. A small
circle had gathered, among them, quite illegally, the war­
rant officer from the sanitation squad.
One man began to invoke the spirits with a kind of
prayer. The camp’s clerk sat in front of a blank sheet of
paper, without any conscious intention of writing. During
the next ten minutes (after which time the seance was ter­
minated because of the medium’s failure to conjure the
spirits to appear) his pencil slowly drew lines across the
paper, forming quite legibly “VAE V.” It was asserted that
the clerk had never learned Latin and that he had never
before heard the words “vae victis”—woe to the van­
quished. In my opinion he must have heard them once in
his life, without recollecting them, and they must have been
available to the “spirit” (the spirit of his subconscious
mind) at that time, a few months before our liberation and
the end of the war.
In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primi-
tiveness of the life in a concentration camp, it was possible
for spiritual life to deepen. Sensitive people who were used
to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain
(they were often of a delicate constitution), but the damage
to their inner selves was less. They were able to retreat from
their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and
spiritual freedom. Only in this way can one explain the
apparent paradox that some prisoners of a less hardy make­
up often seemed to survive camp life better than did those
of a robust nature. In order to make myself clear, I am
forced to fall back on personal experience. Let me tell what
happened on those early mornings when we had to march
to our work site.

48 Man’s Search for Meaning
There were shouted commands: “Detachment, forward
marchl Left-2-3-4! Left-2-3-4! Left-2-3-4! Left-2-3-4! First
man about, left and left and left and left! Caps off!” These
words sound in my ears even now. At the order “Caps off!”
we passed the gate of the camp, and searchlights were
trained upon us. Whoever did not march smartly got a kick.
And worse off was the man who, because of the cold, had
pulled his cap back over his ears before permission was
given.
We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and
through large puddles, along the one road leading from the
camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and
driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very
sore feet supported himself on his neighbor’s arm. Hardly a
word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk.
Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man
marching next to me whispered suddenly: “If our wives
could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their
camps and don’t know what is happening to us.”
That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And
as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, support­
ing each other time and again, dragging one another up
and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of
us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky,
where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morn­
ing was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds.
But my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with
an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her
smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her
look was then more luminous than the sun which was be­
ginning to rise.
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I
saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, pro­
claimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 49
—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which
man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest
secret that human poetry and human thought and belief
have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and
in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in
this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief mo­
ment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of
utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in posi­
tive action, when his only achievement may consist in en­
during his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way—
in such a position man can, through loving contemplation
of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.
For the first time in my life I was able to understand the
meaning of the words, “The angels are lost in perpetual
contemplation of an infinite glory.”
In front of me a man stumbled and those following him
fell on top of him. The guard rushed over and used his
whip on them all. Thus my thoughts were interrupted for a
few minutes. But soon my soul found its way back from the
prisoner’s existence to another world, and I resumed talk
with my loved one: I asked her questions, and she an­
swered; she questioned me in return, and I answered.
“Stop!” We had arrived at our work site. Everybody
rushed into the dark hut in the hope of getting a fairly
decent tool. Each prisoner got a spade or a pickaxe.
“Can’t you hurry up, you pigs?” Soon we had resumed
the previous day’s positions in the ditch. The frozen ground
cracked under the point of the pickaxes, and sparks flew.
The men were silent, their brains numb.
My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought
crossed my mind: I didn’t even know if she were still alive.
I knew only one thing—which I have learned well by now:
Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the be­
loved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his

50 Man’s Search for Meaning
inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or
not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of im­
portance.
I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had
no means of finding out (during all my prison life there
was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it
ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; noth­
ing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and
the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife
was dead, I think that I would still have given myself,
undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of
her image, and that my mental conversation with her
would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. “Set me
like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death.”
This intensification of inner life helped the prisoner find
a refuge from the emptiness, desolation and spiritual pov­
erty of his existence, by letting him escape into the past.
When given free rein, his imagination played with past
events, often not important ones, but minor happenings
and trifling things. His nostalgic memory glorified them
and they assumed a strange character. Their world and
their existence seemed very distant and the spirit reached
out for them longingly: In my mind I took bus rides, un­
locked the front door of my apartment, answered my tele­
phone, switched on the electric lights. Our thoughts often
centered on such details, and these memories could move
one to tears.
As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more
intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as
never before. Under their influence he sometimes even for­
got his own frightful circumstances. If someone had seen
our faces on the journey from Auschwitz to a Bavarian
camp as we beheld the mountains of Salzburg with their
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 51
summits glowing in the sunset, through the little barred
windows of the prison carriage, he would never have be­
lieved that those were the faces of men who had given up
all hope of life and liberty. Despite that factor—or maybe
because of it—we were carried away by nature’s beauty,
which we had missed for so long.
In camp, too, a man might draw the attention of a com­
rade working next to him to a nice view of the setting sun
shining through the tall trees of the Bavarian woods (as in
the famous water color by Diirer), the same woods in which
we had built an enormous, hidden munitions plant. One
evening, when we were already resting on the floor of our
hut, dead tired, soup bowls in hand, a fellow prisoner
rushed in and asked us to run out to the assembly grounds
and see the wonderful sunset. Standing outside we saw sin­
ister clouds glowing in the west and the whole sky alive
with clouds of ever-changing shapes and colors, from steel
blue to blood red. The desolate grey mud huts provided a
sharp contrast, while the puddles on the muddy ground
reflected the glowing sky. Then, after minutes of moving
silence, one prisoner said to another, “How beautiful the
world could be!”
Another time we were at work in a trench. The dawn was
grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey the snow in
the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow
prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was again con­
versing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to
find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last
violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death,
I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I
felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from
somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in answer to my ques­
tion of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that mo­
ment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on
the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miser-

52 Man’s Search for Meaning
able grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. “Et lux in
tenebris lucet”—and the light shineth in the darkness. For
hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed
by, insulting me, and once again 1 communed with my
beloved. More and more I felt that she was present, that she
was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her,
able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was
very strong: she was there. Then, at that very moment, a
bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on
the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch, and
looked steadily at me.
Earlier, I mentioned art. Is there such a thing in a con­
centration camp? It rather depends on what one chooses to
call art. A kind of cabaret was improvised from time to
time. A hut was cleared temporarily, a few wooden benches
were pushed or nailed together and a program was drawn
up. In the evening those who had fairly good positions in
camp—the Capos and the workers who did not have to
leave camp on distant marches—assembled there. They
came to have a few laughs or perhaps to cry a little; any­
way, to forget. There were songs, poems, jokes, some with
underlying satire regarding the camp. All were meant to
help us forget, and they did help. The gatherings were so
effective that a few ordinary prisoners went to see the
cabaret in spite of their fatigue even though they missed
their daily portion of food by going.
During the half-hour lunch interval when soup (which
the contractors paid for and for which they did not spend
much) was ladled out at our work site, we were allowed to
assemble in an unfinished engine room. On entering, every­
one got a ladleful of the watery soup. While we sipped it
greedily, a prisoner climbed onto a tub and sang Italian
arias. We enjoyed the songs, and he was guaranteed a dou-
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 53
ble helping of soup, straight “from the bottom”—that
meant with peas!
Rewards were given in camp not only for entertainment,
but also for applause. I, for example, could have found
protection (how lucky I was never in need of it!) from the
camp’s most dreaded Capo, who for more than one good
reason was known as “The Murderous Capo.” This is how
it happened. One evening I had the great honor of being
invited again to the room where the spiritualistic seance
had taken place. There were gathered the same intimate
friends of the chief doctor and, most illegally, the warrant
officer from the sanitation squad was again present. The
Murderous Capo entered the room by chance, and he was
asked to recite one of his poems, which had become famous
(or infamous) in camp. He did not need to be asked twice
and quickly produced a kind of diary from which he began
to read samples of his art. I bit my lips till they hurt in
order to keep from laughing at one of his love poems, and
very likely that saved my life. Since I was also generous with
my applause, my life might have been saved even had I
been detailed to his working party to which I had pre­
viously been assigned for one day—a day that was quite
enough for me. It was useful, anyway, to be known to The
Murderous Capo from a favorable angle. So I applauded as
hard as I could.
Generally speaking, of course, any pursuit of art in camp
was somewhat grotesque. I would say that the real impres­
sion made by anything connected with art arose only from
the ghostlike contrast between the performance and the
background of desolate camp life. I shall never forget how I
awoke from the deep sleep of exhaustion on my second
night in Auschwitz—roused by music. The senior warden of
the hut had some kind of celebration in his room, which
was near the entrance of the hut. Tipsy voices bawled some
hackneyed tunes. Suddenly there was a silence and into the

54 Man’s Search for Meaning
night a violin sang a desperately sad tango, an unusual
tune not spoiled by frequent playing. The violin wept and
a part of me wept with it, for on that same day someone
had a twenty-fourth birthday. That someone lay in another
part of the Auschwitz camp, possibly only a few hundred
or a thousand yards away, and yet completely out of
reach. That someone was my wife.
To discover that there was any semblance of art in a
concentration camp must be surprise enough for an out­
sider, but he may be even more astonished to hear that one
could find a sense of humor there as well; of course, only
the faint trace of one, and then only for a few seconds or
minutes. Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the
fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor,
more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford
an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even
if only for a few seconds. I practically trained a friend of
mine who worked next to me on the building site to de­
velop a sense of humor. I suggested to him that we would
promise each other to invent at least one amusing story
daily, about some incident that could happen one day after
our liberation. He was a surgeon and had been an assistant
on the staff of a large hospital. So I once tried to get him to
smile by describing to him how he would be unable to lose
the habits of camp life when he returned to his former
work. On the building site (especially when the supervisor
made his tour of inspection) the foreman encouraged us to
work faster by shouting: “Action! Action!” I told my
friend, “One day you will be back in the operating room,
performing a big abdominal operation. Suddenly an or­
derly will rush in announcing the arrival of the senior
surgeon by shouting, ‘Action! Action!’ ”
Sometimes the other men invented amusing dreams
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 55
about the future, such as forecasting that during a future
dinner engagement they might forget themselves when the
soup was served and beg the hostess to ladle it “from the
bottom.”
The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see
things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned
while mastering the art of living. Yet it is possible to prac­
tice the art of living even in a concentration camp, al­
though suffering is omnipresent. To draw an analogy: a
man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain
quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will
fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big
the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human
soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering
is great or little. Therefore the “size” of human suffering is
absolutely relative.
It also follows that a very trifling thing can cause the
greatest of joys. Take as an example something that hap­
pened on our journey from Auschwitz to the camp affiliated
with Dachau. We had all been afraid that our transport was
heading for the Mauthausen camp. We became more and
more tense as we approached a certain bridge over the
Danube which the train would have to cross to reach
Mauthausen, according to the statement of experienced
traveling companions. Those who have never seen anything
similar cannot possibly imagine the dance of joy performed
in the carriage by the prisoners when they saw that our
transport was not crossing the bridge and was instead head­
ing “only” for Dachau.
And again, what happened on our arrival in that camp,
after a journey lasting two days and three nights? There
had not been enough room for everybody to crouch on the
floor of the carriage at the same time. The majority of us

56 Man’s Search for Meaning
had to stand all the way, while a few took turns at squat­
ting on the scanty straw which was soaked with human
urine. When we arrived the first important news that we
heard from older prisoners was that this comparatively
small camp (its population was 2,500) had no “oven,” no
crematorium, no gas! That meant that a person who had
become a “Moslem” could not be taken straight to the gas
chamber, but would have to wait until a so-called “sick
convoy” had been arranged to return to Auschwitz. This
joyful surprise put us all in a good mood. The wish of the
senior warden of our hut in Auschwitz had come true: we
had come, as quickly as possible, to a camp which did not
have a “chimney”—unlike Auschwitz. We laughed and
cracked jokes in spite of, and during, all we had to go
through in the next few hours.
W7hen we new arrivals were counted, one of us was miss­
ing. So we had to wait outside in the rain and cold wind
until the missing man was found. He was at last discovered
in a hut, where he had fallen asleep from exhaustion. Then
the roll call was turned into a punishment parade. All
through the night and late into the next morning, we had
to stand outside, frozen and soaked to the skin after the
strain of our long journey. And yet we were all very
pleased! There was no chimney in this camp and Auschwitz
was a long way off.
Another time we saw a group of convicts pass our work
site. How obvious the relativity of all suffering appeared to
us then! We envied those prisoners their relatively well-
regulated, secure and happy life. They surely had regular
opportunities to take baths, we thought sadly. They surely
had toothbrushes and clothesbrushes, mattresses—a sep­
arate one for each of them—and monthly mail bringing
them news of the whereabouts of their relatives, or at least
of whether they were still alive or not. We had lost all that
a long time ago.
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 57
And how we envied those of us who had the opportunity
to get into a factory and work in a sheltered room! It was
everyone’s wish to have such a lifesaving piece of luck. The
scale of relative luck extends even further. Even among
those detachments outside the camp (in one of which I was
a member) there were some units which were considered
worse than others. One could envy a man who did not have
to wade in deep, muddy clay on a steep slope emptying the
tubs of a small field railway for twelve hours daily. Most of
the daily accidents occurred on this job, and they were
often fatal.
In other work parties the foremen maintained an ap­
parently local tradition of dealing out numerous blows,
which made us talk of the relative luck of not being under
their command, or perhaps of being under it only tem­
porarily. Once, by an unlucky chance, I got into such a
group. If an air raid alarm had not interrupted us after two
hours (during which time the foreman had worked on me
especially), making it necessary to regroup the workers
afterwards, I think that I would have returned to camp on
one of the sledges which carried those who had died or were
dying from exhaustion. No one can imagine the relief that
the siren can bring in such a situation; not even a boxer
who has heard the bell signifying the finish of a round and
who is thus saved at the last minute from the danger of a
knockout.
We were grateful for the smallest of mercies. We were
glad when there was time to delouse before going to bed,
although in itself this was no pleasure, as it meant standing
naked in an unheated hut where icicles hung from the
ceiling. But we were thankful if there was no air raid alarm
during this operation and the lights were not switched off.
If we could not do the job properly, we were kept awake
half the night.
The meager pleasures of camp life provided a kind of

58 Man’s Search for Meaning
negative happiness,—”freedom from suffering,” as Schopen­
hauer put it—and even that in a relative way only. Real
positive pleasures, even small ones, were very few. I remem­
ber drawing up a kind of balance sheet of pleasures one day
and finding that in many, many past weeks I had experi­
enced only two pleasurable moments. One occurred when,
on returning from work, I was admitted to the cook house
after a long wait and was assigned to the line filing up to
prisoner-cook F . He stood behind one of the huge pans
and ladled soup into the bowls which were held out to
him by the prisoners, who hurriedly filed past. He was the
only cook who did not look at the men whose bowls he was
filling; the only cook who dealt out the soup equally, re­
gardless of recipient, and who did not make favorites of his
personal friends or countrymen, picking out the potatoes
for them, while the others got watery soup skimmed from
the top.
But it is not for me to pass judgment on those prisoners
who put their own people above everyone else. Who can
throw a stone at a man who favors his friends under cir­
cumstances when, sooner or later, it is a question of life or
death? No man should judge unless he asks himself in ab­
solute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not
have done the same.
Long after I had resumed normal life again (that means
a long time after my release from camp), somebody showed
me an illustrated weekly with photographs of prisoners
lying crowded on their bunks, staring dully at a visitor.
“Isn’t this terrible, the dreadful staring faces—everything
about it.”
“Why?” I asked, for I genuinely did not understand. For
at that moment I saw it all again: at 5:00 A.M. it was still
pitch dark outside. I was lying on the hard boards in an
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 59
earthen hut where about seventy of us were “taken care of.”
We were sick and did not have to leave camp for work; we
did not have to go on parade. We could lie all day in our
little corner in the hut and doze and wait for the daily
distribution of bread (which, of course, was reduced for the
sick) and for the daily helping of soup (watered down and
also decreased in quantity). But how content we were;
happy in spite of everything. While we cowered against
each other to avoid any unnecessary loss of warmth, and
were too lazy and disinterested to move a finger unneces­
sarily, we heard shrill whistles and shouts from the square
where the night shift had just returned and was assembling
for roll call. The door was flung open, and the snowstorm
blew into our hut. An exhausted comrade, covered with
snow, stumbled inside to sit down for a few minutes. But
the senior warden turned him out again. It was strictly
forbidden to admit a stranger to a hut while a check-up on
the men was in progress. How sorry I was for that fellow
and how glad not to be in his skin at that moment, but
instead to be sick and able to doze on in the sick quarters!
What a lifesaver it was to have two days there, and perhaps
even two extra days after those 1
All this came to my mind when I saw the photographs
in the magazine. When I explained, my listeners under­
stood why I did not find the photograph so terrible: the
people shown on it might not have been so unhappy after
all.
On my fourth day in the sick quarters I had just been
detailed to the night shift when the chief doctor rushed in
and asked me to volunteer for medical duties in another
camp containing typhus patients. Against the urgent advice
of my friends (and despite the fact that almost none of my
colleagues offered their services), I decided to volunteer. I
knew that in a working party I would die in a short time.
But if I had to die there might at least be some sense in my

6o Man’s Search for Meaning
death. I thought that it would doubtless be more to the
purpose to try and help my comrades as a doctor than to
vegetate or finally lose my life as the unproductive laborer
that I was then.
For me this was simple mathematics, not sacrifice. But
secretly, the warrant officer from the sanitation squad had
ordered that the two doctors who had volunteered for the
typhus camp should be “taken care of” till they left. We
looked so weak that he feared that he might have two addi­
tional corpses on his hands, rather than two doctors.
I mentioned earlier how everything that was not con­
nected with the immediate task of keeping oneself and
one’s closest friends alive lost its value. Everything was sacri­
ficed to this end. A man’s character became involved to the
point that he was caught in a mental turmoil which threat­
ened all the values he held and threw them into doubt.
Under the influence of a world which no longer recognized
the value of human life and human dignity, which had
robbed man of his will and had made him an object to be
exterminated (having planned, however, to make full use
of him first—to the last ounce of his physical resources)—
under this influence the personal ego finally suffered a loss
of values. If the man in the concentration camp did not
struggle against this in a last effort to save his self-respect,
he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a
mind, with inner freedom and personal value. He thought
of himself then as only a part of an enormous mass of
people; his existence descended to the level of animal life.
The men were herded—sometimes to one place then to
another; sometimes driven together, then apart—like a
flock of sheep without a thought or a will of their own. A
small but dangerous pack watched them from all sides, well
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 61
versed in methods of torture and sadism. They drove the
herd incessantly, backwards and forwards, with shouts,
kicks and blows. And we, the sheep, thought of two things
only—how to evade the bad dogs and how to get a little
food.
Just like sheep that crowd timidly into the center of a
herd, each of us tried to get into the middle of our forma­
tions. That gave one a better chance of avoiding the blows
of the guards who were marching on either side and to the
front and rear of our column. The central position had the
added advantage of affording protection against the bitter
winds. It was, therefore, in an attempt to save one’s own
skin that one literally tried to submerge into the crowd.
This was done automatically in the formations. But at
other times it was a very conscious effort on our part—in
conformity with one of the camp’s most imperative laws of
self-preservation: Do not be conspicuous. We tried at all
times to avoid attracting the attention of the SS.
There were times, of course, when it was possible, and
even necessary, to keep away from the crowd. It is well
known that an enforced community life, in which attention
is paid to everything one does at all times, may result in an
irresistible urge to get away, at least for a short while. The
prisoner craved to be alone with himself and his thoughts.
He yearned for privacy and for solitude. After my transpor­
tation to a so-called “rest camp,” I had the rare fortune to
find solitude for about five minutes at a time. Behind the
earthen hut where I worked and in which were crowded
about fifty delirious patients, there was a quiet spot in a
corner of the double fence of barbed wire surrounding the
camp. A tent had been improvised there with a few poles
and branches of trees in order to shelter a half-dozen
corpses (the daily death rate in the camp). There was also a
shaft leading to the water pipes. I squatted on the wooden

62 Man’s Search for Meaning
lid of this shaft whenever my services were not needed. I
just sat and looked out at the green flowering slopes and
the distant blue hills of the Bavarian landscape, framed by
the meshes of barbed wire. I dreamed longingly, and my
thoughts wandered north and northeast, in the direction of
my home, but I could only see clouds.
The corpses near me, crawling with lice, did not bother
me. Only the steps of passing guards could rouse me from
my dreams; or perhaps it would be a call to the sick-bay or
to collect a newly arrived supply of medicine for my hut—
consisting of perhaps five or ten tablets of aspirin, to last for
several days for fifty patients. I collected them and then did
my rounds, feeling the patients’ pulses and giving half-
tablets to the serious cases. But the desperately ill received
no medicine. It would not have helped, and besides, it
would have deprived those for whom there was still some
hope. For light cases, I had nothing, except perhaps a word
of encouragement. In this way I dragged myself from patient
to patient, though I myself was weak and exhausted from a
serious attack of typhus. Then I went back to my lonely
place on the wood cover of the water shaft.
This shaft, incidentally, once saved the lives of three
fellow prisoners. Shortly before liberation, mass transports
were organized to go to Dachau, and these three prisoners
wisely tried to avoid the trip. They climbed down the shaft
and hid there from the guards. I calmly sat on the lid,
looking innocent and playing a childish game of throwing
pebbles at the barbed wire. On spotting me, the guard hesi­
tated for a moment, but then passed on. Soon I could tell
the three men below that the worst danger was over.
It is very difficult for an outsider to grasp how very little
value was placed on human life in camp. The camp inmate
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 63
was hardened, but possibly became more conscious of this
complete disregard of human existence when a convoy of
sick men was arranged. The emaciated bodies of the sick
were thrown on two-wheeled carts which were drawn by
prisoners for many miles, often through snowstorms, to the
next camp. If one of the sick men had died before the cart
left, he was thrown on anyway—the list had to be correct I
The list was the only thing that mattered. A man counted
only because he had a prison number. One literally became
a number: dead or alive—that was unimportant; the life of
a “number” was completely irrelevant. What stood behind
that number and that life mattered even less: the fate, the
history, the name of the man. In the transport of sick pa­
tients that I, in my capacity as a doctor, had to accompany
from one camp in Bavaria to another, there was a young
prisoner whose brother was not on the list and therefore
would have to be left behind. The young man begged so
long that the camp warden decided to work an exchange,
and the brother took the place of a man who, at the mo­
ment, preferred to stay behind. But the list had to be cor­
rect! That was easy. The brother just exchanged numbers
with the other prisoner.
As I have mentioned before, we had no documents;
everyone was lucky to own his body, which, after all, was
still breathing. All else about us, i.e., the rags hanging from
our gaunt skeletons, was only of interest if we were assigned
to a transport of sick patients. The departing “Moslems”
were examined with unabashed curiosity to see whether
their coats or shoes were not better than one’s own. After
all, their fates were sealed. But those who stayed behind in
camp, who were still capable of some work, had to make use
of every means to improve their chances of survival. They
were not sentimental. The prisoners saw themselves com­
pletely dependent on the moods of the guards—playthings

64 Man’s Search for Meaning
of fate—and this made them even less human than the
circumstances warranted.
In Auschwitz I had laid down a rule for myself which
proved to be a good one and which most of my comrades
later followed. I generally answered all kinds of questions
truthfully. But I was silent about anything that was not
expressly asked for. If I were asked my age, I gave it. If
asked about my profession, I said “doctor,” but did not
elaborate. The first morning in Auschwitz an SS officer came
to the parade ground. We had to fall into separate groups
of prisoners: over forty years, under forty years, metal work­
ers, mechanics, and so forth. Then we were examined for
ruptures and some prisoners had to form a new group. The
group that I was in was driven to another hut, where we
lined up again. After being sorted out once more and hav­
ing answered questions as to my age and profession, I was
sent to another small group. Once more we were driven to
another hut and grouped differently. This continued for
some time, and I became quite unhappy, finding myself
among strangers who spoke unintelligible foreign lan­
guages. Then came the last selection, and I found myself
back in the group that had been with me in the first hut!
They had barely noticed that I had been sent from hut to
hut in the meantime. But I was aware that in those few
minutes fate had passed me in many different forms.
When the transport of sick patients for the “rest camp”
was organized, my name (that is, my number) was put on
the list, since a few doctors were needed. But no one was
convinced that the destination was really a rest camp. A few
weeks previously the same transport had been prepared.
Then, too, everyone had thought that it was destined for
the gas ovens. When it was announced that anyone who
volunteered for the dreaded night shift would be taken off
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 65
the transport list, eighty-two prisoners volunteered immedi­
ately. A quarter of an hour later the transport was canceled,
but the eighty-two stayed on the list for the night shift. For
the majority of them, this meant death within the next
fortnight.
Now the transport for the rest camp was arranged for the
second time. Again no one knew whether this was a ruse to
obtain the last bit of work from the sick—if only for four­
teen days—or whether it would go to the gas ovens or to a
genuine rest camp. The chief doctor, who had taken a lik­
ing to me, told me furtively one evening at a quarter to ten,
“I have made it known in the orderly room that you can
still have your name crossed off the list; you may do so up
till ten o’clock.”
I told him that this was not my way; that I had learned
to let fate take its course. “I might as well stay with my
friends,” I said. There was a look of pity in his eyes, as if he
knew. . . . He shook my hand silently, as though it were a
farewell, not for life, but from life. Slowly I walked back
to my hut. There I found a good friend waiting for me.
“You really want to go with them?” he asked sadly.
“Yes, I am going.”
Tears came to his eyes and I tried to comfort him. Then
there was something else to do—to make my will:
“Listen, Otto, if I don’t get back home to my wife, and if
you should see her again, then tell her that I talked of her
daily, hourly. You remember. Secondly, I have loved her
more than anyone. Thirdly, the short time I have been
married to her outweighs everything, even all we have gone
through here.”
Otto, where are you now? Are you alive? What has hap­
pened to you since our last hour together? Did you find
your wife again? And do you remember how I made you
learn my will by heart—word for word—in spite of your
childlike tears?

66 Man’s Search for Meaning
The next morning I departed with the transport. This
time it was not a ruse. We were not heading for the gas
chambers, and we actually did go to a rest camp. Those who
had pitied me remained in a camp where famine was to
rage even more fiercely than in our new camp. They tried
to save themselves, but they only sealed their own fates.
Months later, after liberation, I met a friend from the old
camp. He related to me how he, as camp policeman, had
searched for a piece of human flesh that was missing from a
pile of corpses. He confiscated it from a pot in which he
found it cooking. Cannibalism had broken out. I had left
just in time.
Does this not bring to mind the story of Death in Teheran?
A rich and mighty Persian once walked in his garden with
one of his servants. The servant cried that he had just en­
countered Death, who had threatened him. He begged his
master to give him his fastest horse so that he could make
haste and flee to Teheran, which he could reach that same
evening. The master consented and the servant galloped off
on the horse. On returning to his house the master himself
met Death, and questioned him, “Why did you terrify and
threaten my servant?” “I did not threaten him; I only
showed surprise in still finding him here when I planned
to meet him tonight in Teheran,” said Death.
The camp inmate was frightened of making decisions
and of taking any sort of initiative whatsoever. This was the
result of a strong feeling that fate was one’s master, and
that one must not try to influence it in any way, but instead
let it take its own course. In addition, there was a great
apathy, which contributed in no small part to the feelings
of the prisoner. At times, lightning decisions had to be
made, decisions which spelled life or death. The prisoner
would have preferred to let fate make the choice for him.
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 67
This escape from commitment was most apparent when a
prisoner had to make the decision for or against an escape
attempt. In those minutes in which he had to make up
his mind—and it was always a question of minutes—he
suffered the tortures of Hell. Should he make the attempt to
flee? Should he take the risk?
I, too, experienced this torment. As the battle-front drew
nearer, I had the opportunity to escape. A colleague of
mine who had to visit huts outside the camp in the course
of his medical duties wanted to escape and take me with
him. Under the pretense of holding a consultation about a
patient whose illness required a specialist’s advice, he
smuggled me out. Outside the camp, a member of a foreign
resistance movement was to supply us with uniforms and
documents. At the last moment there were some technical
difficulties and we had to return to camp once more. We
used this opportunity to provide ourselves with provisions
—a few rotten potatoes—and to look for a rucksack.
We broke into an empty hut of the women’s camp, which
was vacant, as the women had been sent to another camp.
The hut was in great disorder; it was obvious that many
women had acquired supplies and fled. There were rags,
straw, rotting food, and broken crockery. Some bowls were
still in good condition and would have been very valuable
to us, but we decided not to take them. We knew that
lately, as conditions had become desperate, they had been
used not only for food, but also as washbasins and chamber
pots. (There was a strictly enforced rule against having any
kind of utensil in the hut. However, some people were
forced to break this rule, especially the typhus patients, who
were much too weak to go outside even with help.) While
I acted as a screen, my friend broke into the hut and re­
turned shortly with a rucksack which he hid under his coat.
He had seen another one inside which I was to take. So we
changed places and I went in. As I searched in the rubbish,

68 Man’s Search for Meaning
finding the rucksack and even a toothbrush, I suddenly saw,
among all the things that had been left behind, the body of
a woman.
I ran back to my hut to collect all my possessions: my
food bowl, a pair of torn mittens “inherited” from a dead
typhus patient, and a few scraps of paper covered with
shorthand notes (on which, as I mentioned before, I had
started to reconstruct the manuscript which I lost at
Auschwitz). I made a quick last round of my patients, who
were lying huddled on the rotten planks of wood on either
side of the huts. I came to my only countryman, who was
almost dying, and whose life it had been my ambition to
save in spite of his condition. I had to keep my intention to
escape to myself, but my comrade seemed to guess that
something was wrong (perhaps I showed a little nervous­
ness). In a tired voice he asked me, “You, too, are getting
out?” I denied it, but I found it difficult to avoid his sad
look. After my round I returned to him. Again a hopeless
look greeted me and somehow I felt it to be an accusation.
The unpleasant feeling that had gripped me as soon as I
had told my friend I would escape with him became more
intense. Suddenly I decided to take fate into my own hands
for once. I ran out of the hut and told my friend that I
could not go with him. As soon as I had told him with
finality that I had made up my mind to stay with my pa­
tients, the unhappy feeling left me. I did not know what
the following days would bring, but I had gained an in­
ward peace that I had never experienced before. I returned
to the hut, sat down on the boards at my countryman’s feet
and tried to comfort him; then I chatted with the others,
trying to quiet them in their delirium.
Our last day in camp arrived. As the battle-front came
nearer, mass transports had taken nearly all the prisoners to
other camps. The camp authorities, the Capos and the
cooks had fled. On this day an order was given that the
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 69
camp must be evacuated completely by sunset. Even the few
remaining prisoners (the sick, a few doctors, and some
“nurses”) would have to leave. At night, the camp was to be
set on fire. In the afternoon the trucks which were to collect
the sick had not yet appeared. Instead the camp gates were
suddenly closed and the barbed wire closely watched, so
that no one could attempt an escape. The remaining pris­
oners seemed to be destined to burn with the camp. For the
second time my friend and I decided to escape.
We had been given an order to bury three men outside
the barbed wire fence. We were the only two in camp who
had strength enough to do the job. Nearly all the others lay
in the few huts which were still in use, prostrate with fever
and delirium. We now made our plans: along with the first
body we would smuggle out my friend’s rucksack, hiding it
in the old laundry tub which served as a coffin. When we
took out the second body we would also carry out my ruck­
sack, and on the third trip we intended to make our escape.
The first two trips went according to plan. After we re­
turned, I waited while my friend tried to find a piece of
bread so that we would have something to eat during the
next few days in the woods. I waited. Minutes passed. I
became more and more impatient as he did not return.
After three years of imprisonment, I was picturing free­
dom joyously, imagining how wonderful it would be to run
toward the battle-front. But we did not get that far.
The very moment when my friend came back, the camp
gate was thrown open. A splendid, aluminum-colored car,
on which were painted large red crosses, slowly rolled on to
the parade ground. A delegate from the International Red
Cross in Geneva had arrived, and the camp and its inmates
were under his protection. The delegate billeted himself in
a farmhouse in the vicinity, in order to be near the camp at
all times in case of emergency. Who worried about escape
now? Boxes with medicines were unloaded from the car,

70 Man’s Search for Meaning
cigarettes were distributed, we were photographed and joy
reigned supreme. Now there was no need for us to risk
running toward the fighting line.
In our excitement we had forgotten the third body, so we
carried it outside and dropped it into the narrow grave we
had dug for the three corpses. The guard who accompanied
us—a relatively inoffensive man—suddenly became quite
gentle. He saw that the tables might be turned and tried to
win our goodwill. He joined in the short prayers that we
offered for the dead men before throwing soil over them.
After the tension and excitement of the past days and
hours, those last days in our race with death, the words of
our prayer asking for peace, were as fervent as any ever
uttered by the human voice.
And so the last day in camp passed in anticipation of
freedom. But we had rejoiced too early. The Red Cross
delegate had assured us that an agreement had been signed,
and that the camp must not be evacuated. But that night
the SS arrived with trucks and brought an order to clear the
camp. The last remaining prisoners were to be taken to a
central camp, from which they would be sent to Switzerland
within forty-eight hours—to be exchanged for some pris­
oners of war. We scarcely recognized the SS. They were so
friendly, trying to persuade us to get in the trucks without
fear, telling us that we should be grateful for our good luck.
Those who were strong enough crowded into the trucks and
the seriously ill and feeble were lifted up with difficulty. My
friend and I—we did not hide our rucksacks now—stood in
the last group, from which thirteen would be chosen for the
next to last truck. The chief doctor counted out the requi­
site number, but he omitted the two of us. The thirteen
were loaded into the truck and we had to stay behind.
Surprised, very annoyed and disappointed, we blamed the
chief doctor, who excused himself by saying that he had
been tired and distracted. He said that he had thought we
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 71
still intended to escape. Impatiently we sat down, keeping
our rucksacks on our backs, and waited with the few re­
maining prisoners for the last truck. We had to wait a long
time. Finally we lay down on the mattresses of the deserted
guard-room, exhausted by the excitement of the last few
hours and days, during which we had fluctuated continu­
ally between hope and despair. We slept in our clothes and
shoes, ready for the journey.
The noise of rifles and cannons woke us; the flashes of
tracer bullets and gun shots entered the hut. The chief
doctor dashed in and ordered us to take cover on the floor.
One prisoner jumped on my stomach from the bed above
me and with his shoes on. That awakened me all rightl
Then we grasped what was happening: the battle-front had
reached us! The shooting decreased and morning dawned.
Outside on the pole at the camp gate a white flag floated in
the wind.
Many weeks later we found out that even in those last
hours fate had toyed with us few remaining prisoners. We
found out just how uncertain human decisions are, es­
pecially in matters of life and death. I was confronted with
photographs which had been taken in a small camp not far
from ours. Our friends who had thought they were travel­
ing to freedom that night had been taken in the trucks to
this camp, and there they were locked in the huts and
burned to death. Their partially charred bodies were rec­
ognizable on the photograph. I thought again of Death in
Teheran.
Apart from its role as a defensive mechanism, the pris­
oners’ apathy was also the result of other factors. Hunger
and lack of sleep contributed to it (as they do in normal

72 Man’s Search for Meaning
life, also) and to the general irritability which was another
characteristic of the prisoners’ mental state. The lack of
sleep was due partly to the pestering of vermin which in­
fested the terribly overcrowded huts because of the general
lack of hygiene and sanitation. The fact that we had nei­
ther nicotine nor caffeine also contributed to the state of
apathy and irritability.
Besides these physical causes, there were mental ones, in
the form of certain complexes. The majority of prisoners
suffered from a kind of inferiority complex. We all had
once been or had fancied ourselves to be “somebody.” Now
we were treated like complete nonentities. (The conscious­
ness of one’s inner value is anchored in higher, more spir­
itual things, and cannot be shaken by camp life. But how
many free men, let alone prisoners, possess it?) Without
consciously thinking about it, the average prisoner felt him­
self utterly degraded. This became obvious when one ob­
served the contrasts offered by the singular sociological
structure of the camp. The more “prominent” prisoners,
the Capos, the cooks, the store-keepers and the camp police­
men, did not, as a rule, feel degraded at all, like the ma­
jority of prisoners, but on the contrary—promoted! Some
even developed miniature delusions of grandeur. The men­
tal reaction of the envious and grumbling majority toward
this favored minority found expression in several ways,
sometimes in jokes. For instance, I heard one prisoner talk
to another about a Capo, saying, “Imagine! I knew that
man when he was only the president of a large bank. Isn’t it
fortunate that he has risen so far in the world?”
Whenever the degraded majority and the promoted
minority came into conflict (and there were plenty of op­
portunities for this, starting with the distribution of food)
the results were explosive. Therefore, the general irritabil­
ity (whose physical causes were discussed above) became
most intense when these mental tensions were added. It is
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 73
not surprising that this tension often ended in a general
fight. Since the prisoner continually witnessed scenes of
beatings, the impulse toward violence was increased. I my­
self felt my fists clench when anger came over me while I
was famished and tired. I was usually very tired, since we
had to stoke our stove—which we were allowed to keep in
our hut for the typhus patients—throughout the nights.
However, some of the most idyllic hours I have ever spent
were in the middle of the night when all the others were
delirious or sleeping. I could lie stretched out in front of
the stove and roast a few pilfered potatoes in a fire made
from stolen charcoal. But the following day I always felt
even more tired, insensitive and irritable.
While I was working as a doctor in the typhus block, I
also had to take the place of the senior block warden who
was ill. Therefore, I was responsible to the camp authority
for keeping the hut clean—if “clean” can be used to de­
scribe such a condition. The pretense at inspection to which
the hut was frequently submitted was more for the purpose
of torture than of hygiene. More food and a few drugs
would have helped, but the only concern of the inspectors
was whether a piece of straw was left in the center corridor,
or whether the dirty, ragged and verminous blankets of the
patients were tucked in neatly at their feet. As to the fate of
the inmates, they were quite unconcerned. If I reported
smartly, whipping my prison cap from my shorn head and
clicking my heels, “Hut number VI/9: 52 patients, two
nursing orderlies, and one doctor,” they were satisfied. And
then they would leave. But until they arrived—often they
were hours later than announced, and sometimes did not
come at all—I was forced to keep straightening blankets,
picking up bits of straw which fell from the bunks, and
shouting at the poor devils who tossed in their beds and

74 Man’s Search for Meaning
threatened to upset all my efforts at tidiness and cleanli­
ness. Apathy was particularly increased among the feverish
patients, so that they did not react at all unless they were
shouted at. Even this failed at times, and then it took
tremendous self-control not to strike them. For one’s own
irritability took on enormous proportions in the face of the
other’s apathy and especially in the face of the danger (i.e.,
the approaching inspection) which was caused by it.
In attempting this psychological presentation and a
psychopathological explanation of the typical characteris­
tics of a concentration camp inmate, I may give the impres­
sion that the human being is completely and unavoidably
influenced by his surroundings. (In this case the surround­
ings being the unique structure of camp life, which forced
the prisoner to conform his conduct to a certain set pat­
tern.) But what about human liberty? Is there no spiritual
freedom in regard to behavior and reaction to any given
surroundings? Is that theory true which would have us be­
lieve that man is no more than a product of many condi­
tional and environmental factors—be they of a biological,
psychological or sociological nature? Is man but an acciden­
tal product of these? Most important, do the prisoners’
reactions to the singular world of the concentration camp
prove that man cannot escape the influences of his sur­
roundings? Does man have no choice of action in the face of
such circumstances?
We can answer these questions from experience as well as
on principle. The experiences of camp life show that man
does have a choice of action. There were enough examples,
often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be
overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a
vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even
in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 75
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the
men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving
away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in
number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can
be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human
freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of cir­
cumstances, to choose one’s own way.
And there were always choices to make. Every day, every
hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision
which determined whether you would or would not submit
to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very
self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not
you would become the plaything of circumstance, renounc­
ing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of
the typical inmate.
Seen from this point of view, the mental reactions of the
inmates of a concentration camp must seem more to us than
the mere expression of certain physical and sociological
conditions. Even though conditions such as lack of sleep,
insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest
that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the
final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the
prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and
not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally,
therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, de­
cide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually.
He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration
camp. Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing that I
dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.” These words
frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted
with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering
and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner free­
dom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of
their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a
genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom—

76 Man’s Search for Meaning
which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful
and purposeful.
An active life serves the purpose of giving man the op­
portunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive
life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain
fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there
is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both
creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one pos­
sibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude
to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A
creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But
not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If
there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a
meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of
life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death
human life cannot be complete.
The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the
suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross,
gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult
circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may
remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight
for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and
become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a
man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of
attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may
afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his
sufferings or not.
Do not think that these considerations are unworldly and
too far removed from real life. It is true that only a few
people are capable of reaching such high moral standards.
Of the prisoners only a few kept their full inner liberty and
obtained those values which their suffering afforded, but
even one such example is sufficient proof that man’s inner
strength may raise him above his outward fate. Such men
are not only in concentration camps. Everywhere man is
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 77
confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving some­
thing through his own suffering.
Take the fate of the sick—especially those who are in­
curable. I once read a letter written by a young invalid, in
which he told a friend that he had just found out he would
not live for long, that even an operation would be of no
help. He wrote further that he remembered a film he had
seen in which a man was portrayed who waited for death in
a courageous and dignified way. The boy had thought it a
great accomplishment to meet death so well. Now—he
wrote—fate was offering him a similar chance.
Those of us who saw the film called Resurrection—taken
from a book by Tolstoy—years ago, may have had similar
thoughts. Here were great destinies and great men. For us,
at that time, there was no great fate; there was no chance to
achieve such greatness. After the picture we went to the
nearest cafe, and over a cup of coffee and a sandwich we
forgot the strange metaphysical thoughts which for one
moment had crossed our minds. But when we ourselves
were confronted with a great destiny and faced with the
decision of meeting it with equal spiritual greatness, by
then we had forgotten our youthful resolutions of long ago,
and we failed.
Perhaps there came a day for some of us when we saw the
same film again, or a similar one. But by then other pic­
tures may have simultaneously unrolled before one’s inner
eye; pictures of people who attained much more in their
lives than a sentimental film could show. Some details of a
particular man’s inner greatness may have come to one’s
mind, like the story of the young woman whose death I
witnessed in a concentration camp. It is a simple story.
There is little to tell and it may sound as if I had invented
it; but to me it seems like a poem.
This young woman knew that she would die in the next
few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite

78 Man’s Search for Meaning
of this knowledge. “I am grateful that fate has hit me so
hard,” she told me. “In my former life I was spoiled and
did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.” Pointing
through the window of the hut, she said, “This tree here is
the only friend I have in my loneliness.” Through that
window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree,
and on the branch were two blossoms. “I often talk to this
tree,” she said to me. I was startled and didn’t quite know
how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have
occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree
replied. “Yes.” What did it say to her? She answered, “It
said to me, ‘I am here—I am here—I am life, eternal life.’ ”
We have stated that that which was ultimately responsi­
ble for the state of the prisoner’s inner self was not so much
the enumerated psychophysical causes as it was the result
of a free decision. Psychological observations of the
prisoners have shown that only the men who allowed their
inner hold on their moral and spiritual selves to subside
eventually fell victim to the camp’s degenerating influences.
The question now arises, what could, or should, have
constituted this “inner hold”?
Former prisoners, when writing or relating their experi­
ences, agree that the most depressing influence of all was
that a prisoner could not know how long his term of im­
prisonment would be. He had been given no date for his
release. (In our camp it was pointless even to talk about it.)
Actually a prison term was not only uncertain but unlim­
ited. A well-known research psychologist has pointed out
that life in a concentration camp could be called a “provi­
sional existence.” We can add to this by defining it as a
“provisional existence of unknown limit.”
New arrivals usually knew nothing about the conditions
at a camp. Those who had come back from other camps
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 79
were obliged to keep silent, and from some camps no one
had returned. On entering camp a change took place in the
minds of the men. With the end of uncertainty there came
the uncertainty of the end. It was impossible to foresee
whether or when, if at all, this form of existence would
end.
The latin word finis has two meanings: the end or the
finish, and a goal to reach. A man who could not see the
end of his “provisional existence” was not able to aim at an
ultimate goal in life. He ceased living for the future, in
contrast to a man in normal life. Therefore the whole struc­
ture of his inner life changed; signs of decay set in which we
know from other areas of life. The unemployed worker, for
example, is in a similar position. His existence has become
provisional and in a certain sense he cannot live for the
future or aim at a goal. Research work done on unem­
ployed miners has shown that they suffer from a peculiar
sort of deformed time—inner time—which is a result of
their unemployed state. Prisoners, too, suffered from this
strange “time-experience.” In camp, a small time unit, a
day, for example, filled with hourly tortures and fatigue,
appeared endless. A larger time unit, perhaps a week,
seemed to pass very quickly. My comrades agreed when I
said that in camp a day lasted longer than a week. How
paradoxical was our time-experience! In this connection we
are reminded of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain,
which contains some very pointed psychological remarks.
Mann studies the spiritual development of people who are
in an analogous psychological position, i.e., tuberculosis
patients in a sanatorium who also know no date for their
release. They experience a similar existence—without a fu­
ture and without a goal.
One of the prisoners, who on his arrival marched with a
long column of new inmates from the station to the camp,
told me later that he had felt as though he were marching

I
8o Man’s Search for Meaning
at his own funeral. His life had seemed to him absolutely
without future. He regarded it as over and done, as if he
had already died. This feeling of lifelessness was intensified
by other causes: in time, it was the limitlessness of the term
of imprisonment which was most acutely felt; in space, the
narrow limits of the prison. Anything outside the barbed
wire became remote—out of reach and, in a way, unreal.
The events and the people outside, all the normal life
there, had a ghostly aspect for the prisoner. The outside
life, that is, as much as he could see of it, appeared to him
almost as it might have to a dead man who looked at it
from another world.
A man who let himself decline because he could not see
any future goal found himself occupied with retrospective
thoughts. In a different connection, we have already spoken
of the tendency there was to look into the past, to help
make the present, with all its horrors, less real. But in rob­
bing the present of its reality there lay a certain danger. It
became easy to overlook the opportunities to make some­
thing positive of camp life, opportunities which really did
exist. Regarding our “provisional existence” as unreal was
in itself an important factor in causing the prisoners to lose
their hold on life; everything in a way became pointless.
Such people forgot that often it is just such an exception­
ally difficult external situation which gives man the oppor­
tunity to grow spiritually beyond himself. Instead of taking
the camp’s difficulties as a test of their inner strength, they
did not take their life seriously and despised it as something
of no consequence. They preferred to close their eyes and to
live in the past. Life for such people became meaningless.
Naturally only a few people were capable of reaching
great spiritual heights. But a few were given the chance to
attain human greatness even through their apparent worldly
failure and death, an accomplishment which in ordinary
circumstances they would never have achieved. To the
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 81
others of us, the mediocre and the half-hearted, the words
of Bismarck could be applied: “Life is like being at the
dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and
yet it is over already.” Varying this, we could say that most
men in a concentration camp believed that the real oppor­
tunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an
opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of
those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or
one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did
a majority of the prisoners.
Any attempt at fighting the camp’s psychopathological
influence on the prisoner by psychotherapeutic or psycho-
hygienic methods had to aim at giving him inner strength
by pointing out to him a future goal to which he could look
forward. Instinctively some of the prisoners attempted to
find one on their own. It is a peculiarity of man that he can
only live by looking to the future— sub specie aeternitatis.
And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his
existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to
the task.
I remember a personal experience. Almost in tears from
pain (I had terrible sores on my feet from wearing torn
shoes), I limped a few kilometers with our long column of
men from the camp to our work site. Very cold, bitter winds
struck us. I kept thinking of the endless little problems of
our miserable life. What would there be to eat tonight? If a
piece of sausage came as extra ration, should I exchange it
for a piece of bread? Should I trade my last cigarette, which
was left from a bonus I received a fortnight ago, for a bowl
of soup? How could I get a piece of wire to replace the
fragment which served as one of my shoelaces? Would I
get to our work site in time to join my usual working party
or would I have to join another, which might have a brutal

82 Man’s Search for Meaning Experiences in a Concentration Camp
foreman? What could I do to get on good
terms with the Capo, who could help me to
obtain work in camp instead of undertaking
this horribly long daily march?
I became disgusted with the state of affairs
which compelled me, daily and hourly, to
think of only such trivial things. I forced my
thoughts to turn to another subject. Suddenly
I saw myself standing on the platform of a
well-lit, warm and pleasant lecture room. In
front of me sat an attentive audience on
comfortable upholstered seats. I was giving a
lecture on the psychology of the
concentration camp! All that oppressed me at
that moment became objective, seen and
described from the remote viewpoint of
science. By this method I succeeded
somehow in rising above the situation,
above the sufferings of the moment, and I
observed them as if they were already of the
past. Both I and my troubles became the
object of an interesting psychoscientific study
undertaken by myself. What does Spinoza say
in his Ethics?—”Affectus, qui passio est,
desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et
distinctam formamus ideam.” Emotion, which
is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as
we form a clear and precise picture of it.
The prisoner who had lost faith in the
future—his future —was doomed. With his
loss of belief in the future, he also lost his
spiritual hold; he let himself decline and
became subject to mental and physical
decay. Usually this happened quite suddenly,
in the form of a crisis, the symptoms of which
were familiar to the experienced camp inmate.
We all feared this moment—not for
ourselves, which would have been pointless,
but for our friends. Usually it began with the
prisoner refusing one morning to get dressed
and wash or to go out on the parade grounds.
No entreaties, no blows, no threats had any
effect. He just lay there, hardly

moving. If this crisis was brought about by an
illness, he refused to be taken to the sick-bay
or to do anything to help himself. He simply
gave up. There he remained, lying in his
own excreta, and nothing bothered him any
more.
I once had a dramatic demonstration of the
close link
between the loss of faith in the future and
this dangerous
giving up. F , my senior block warden, a
fairly well-
known composer and librettist, confided in
me one day: “I
would like to tell you something, Doctor. I
have had a
strange dream. A voice told me that I could
wish for some
thing, that I should only say what I wanted
to know, and
all my questions would be answered. What do
you think I
asked? That I would like to know when the
war would be
over for me. You know what I mean, Doctor
—for me! I
wanted to know when we, when our camp,
would be liber
ated and our sufferings come to an end.”
“And when did you have this dream?” I asked.
“In February, 1945,” he answered. It was
then the beginning of March.
“What did your dream voice
answer?” Furtively he whispered to
me, “March thirtieth.”
When F told me about his dream, he
was still full of
hope and convinced that the voice of his
dream would be
right. But as the promised day drew nearer,
the war news
which reached our camp made it appear very
unlikely that
we would be free on the promised date. On
March twenty-
ninth, F suddenly became ill and ran a
high tempera
ture. On March thirtieth, the day his
prophecy had told
him that the war and suffering would be over
for him, he
became delirious and lost consciousness. On
March thirty-
first, he was dead. To all outward
appearances, he had died
of typhus.

84 Man’s Search for Meaning
Those who know how close the connection is between the
state of mind of a man—his courage and hope, or lack of
them—and the state of immunity of his body will under­
stand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a
deadly effect. The ultimate cause of my friend’s death was
that the expected liberation did not come and he was se­
verely disappointed. This suddenly lowered his body’s resis­
tance against the latent typhus infection. His faith in the
future and his will to live had become paralyzed and his
body fell victim to illness—and thus the voice of his dream
was right after all.
The observations of this one case and the conclusion
drawn from them are in accordance with something that
was drawn to my attention by the chief doctor of our con­
centration camp. The death rate in the week between
Christmas, 1944, and New Year’s, 1945, increased in camp
beyond all previous experience. In his opinion, the ex­
planation for this increase did not lie in the harder working
conditions or the deterioration of our food supplies or a
change of weather or new epidemics. It was simply that the
majority of the prisoners had lived in the naive hope that
they would be home again by Christmas. As the time drew
near and there was no encouraging news, the prisoners lost
courage and disappointment overcame them. This had a
dangerous influence on their powers of resistance and a
great number of them died.
As we said before, any attempt to restore a man’s inner
strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him
some future goal. Nietzsche’s words, “He who has a why to
live for can bear with almost any how,” could be the guid­
ing motto for all psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic
efforts regarding prisoners. Whenever there was an oppor­
tunity for it, one had to give them a why—an aim—for
their lives, in order to strengthen them to bear the terrible
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 85
how of their existence. Woe to him who saw no more sense
in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in
carrying on. He was soon lost. The typical reply with which
such a man rejected all encouraging arguments was, “I have
nothing to expect from life any more.” What sort of answer
can one give to that?
What was really needed was a fundamental change in
our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and,
furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it
did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather
what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about
the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as
those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly.
Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in
right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means
taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its
problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for
each individual.
These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ
from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is
impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way.
Questions about the meaning of life can never be answered
by sweeping statements. “Life” does not mean something
vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life’s
tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man’s des­
tiny, which is different and unique for each individual. No
man and no destiny can be compared with any other man
or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each
situation calls for a different response. Sometimes the situa­
tion in which a man finds himself may require him to shape
his own fate by action. At other times it is more advan­
tageous for him to make use of an opportunity for contem­
plation and to realize assets in this way. Sometimes man
may be required simply to accept fate, to bear his cross.

86 Man’s Search for Meaning
Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, and there
is always only one right answer to the problem posed by the
situation at hand.
When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will
have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and
unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even
in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one
can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His
unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his
burden.
For us, as prisoners, these thoughts were not speculations
far removed from reality. They were the only thoughts that
could be of help to us. They kept us from despair, even
when there seemed to be no chance of coming out of it
alive. Long ago we had passed the stage of asking what was
the meaning of life, a naive query which understands life as
the attaining of some aim through the active creation of
something of value. For us, the meaning of life embraced
the wider cycles of life and death, of suffering and of dying.
Once the meaning of suffering had been revealed to us,
we refused to minimize or alleviate the camp’s tortures by
ignoring them or harboring false illusions and entertaining
artificial optimism. Suffering had become a task on which
we did not want to turn out backs. We had realized its
hidden opportunities for achievement, the opportunities
which caused the poet Rilke to write, “Wie viel ist
aufzuleiden!”(How much suffering there is to get through!)
Rilke spoke of “getting through suffering” as others would
talk of “getting through work.” There was plenty of suffer­
ing for us to get through. Therefore, it was necessary to face
up to the full amount of suffering, trying to keep moments
of weakness and furtive tears to a minimum. But there was
no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a
man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer. Only
very few realized that. Shamefacedly some confessed occa-
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 87
sionally that they had wept, like the comrade who answered
my question of how he had gotten over his edema, by con­
fessing, “I have wept it out of my system.”
The tender beginnings of a psychotherapy or psycho-
hygiene were, when they were possible at all in the camp,
either individual or collective in nature. The individual
psychotherapeutic attempts were often a kind of “life-
saving procedure.” These efforts were usually concerned
with the prevention of suicides. A very strict camp ruling
forbade any efforts to save a man who attempted suicide. It
was forbidden, for example, to cut down a man who was
trying to hang himself. Therefore, it was all important to
prevent these attempts from occurring.
I remember two cases of would-be suicide, which bore a
striking similarity to each other. Both men had talked of
their intentions to commit suicide. Both used the typical
argument—they had nothing more to expect from life. In
both cases it was a question of getting them to realize that
life was still expecting something from them; something in
the future was expected of them. We found, in fact, that for
the one it was his child whom he adored and who was
waiting for him in a foreign country. For the other it was a
thing, not a person. This man was a scientist and had writ­
ten a series of books which still needed to be finished. His
work could not be done by anyone else, any more than
another person could ever take the place of the father in his
child’s affections.
This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each
individual and gives a meaning to his existence has a bear­
ing on creative work as much as it does on human love.
When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it
allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence
and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude. A man

Man’s Search for Meaning
who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward
a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an
unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life.
He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to
bear almost any “how.”
The opportunities for collective psychotherapy were nat­
urally limited in camp. The right example was more effec­
tive than words could ever be. A senior block warden who
did not side with the authorities had, by his just and en­
couraging behavior, a thousand opportunities to exert a far-
reaching moral influence on those under his jurisdiction.
The immediate influence of behavior is always more effec­
tive than that of words. But at times a word was effective
too, when mental receptiveness had been intensified by
some outer circumstances. I remember an incident when
there was occasion for psychotherapeutic work on the in­
mates of a whole hut, due to an intensification of their
receptiveness because of a certain external situation.
It had been a bad day. On parade, an announcement had
been made about the many actions that would, from then
on, be regarded as sabotage and therefore punishable by
immediate death by hanging. Among these were crimes
such as cutting small strips from our old blankets (in order
to improvise ankle supports) and very minor “thefts.” A few
days previously a semi-starved prisoner had broken into the
potato store to steal a few pounds of potatoes. The theft
had been discovered and some prisoners had recognized the
“burglar.” When the camp authorities heard about it they
ordered that the guilty man be given up to them or the
whole camp would starve for a day. Naturally the 2,500
men preferred to fast.
On the evening of this day of fasting we lay in our
earthen huts—in a very low mood. Very little was said and
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 89
every word sounded irritable. Then, to make matters even
worse, the light went out. Tempers reached their lowest
ebb. But our senior block warden was a wise man. He im­
provised a little talk about all that was on our minds at
that moment. He talked about the many comrades who had
died in the last few days, either of sickness or of suicide. But
he also mentioned what may have been the real reason for
their deaths: giving up hope. He maintained that there
should be some way of preventing possible future victims
from reaching this extreme state. And it was to me that the
warden pointed to give this advice.
God knows, I was not in the mood to give psychological
explanations or to preach any sermons—to offer my com­
rades a kind of medical care of their souls. I was cold and
hungry, irritable and tired, but I had to make the effort
and use this unique opportunity. Encouragement was now
more necessary than ever.
So I began by mentioning the most trivial of comforts
first. I said that even in this Europe in the sixth winter of
the Second World War, our situation was not the most
terrible we could think of. I said that each of us had to ask
himself what irreplaceable losses he had suffered up to then.
I speculated that for most of them these losses had really
been few. Whoever was still alive had reason for hope.
Health, family, happiness, professional abilities, fortune,
position in society—all these were things that could be
achieved again or restored. After all, we still had all our
bones intact. Whatever we had gone through could still be
an asset to us in the future. And I quoted from Nietzsche:
“Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich starker.” (That
which does not kill me, makes me stronger.)
Then I spoke about the future. I said that to the impar­
tial the future must seem hopeless. I agreed that each of
us could guess for himself how small were his chances of
survival. I told them that although there was still no typhus

90 Man’s Search for Meaning
epidemic in the camp, I estimated my own chances at about
one in twenty. But I also told them that, in spite of this, I
had no intention of losing hope and giving up. For no man
knew what the future would bring, much less the next
hour. Even if we could not expect any sensational military
events in the next few days, who knew better than we, with
our experience of camps, how great chances sometimes
opened up, quite suddenly, at least for the individual. For
instance, one might be attached unexpectedly to a special
group with exceptionally good working conditions—for this
was the kind of thing which constituted the “luck” of the
prisoner.
But I did not only talk of the future and the veil which
was drawn over it. I also mentioned the past; all its joys,
and how its light shone even in the present darkness. Again
I quoted a poet—to avoid sounding like a preacher myself
—who had written, “Was Du erlebst, kann keine Macht der
Welt Dir rauben.” (What you have experienced, no power
on earth can take from you.) Not only our experiences, but
all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have
had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it
is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is also a
kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.
Then I spoke of the many opportunities of giving life a
meaning. I told my comrades (who lay motionless, al­
though occasionally a sigh could be heard) that human life,
under any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning,
and that this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and
dying, privation and death. I asked the poor creatures who
listened to me attentively in the darkness of the hut to face
up to the seriousness of our position. They must not lose
hope but should keep their courage in the certainty that the
hopelessness of our struggle did not detract from its dignity
and its meaning. I said that someone looks down on each of
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 91
us in difficult hours—a friend, a wife, somebody alive or
dead, or a God—and he would not expect us to disappoint
him. He would hope to find us suffering proudly—not
miserably—knowing how to die.
And finally I spoke of our sacrifice, which had meaning
in every case. It was in the nature of this sacrifice that it
should appear to be pointless in the normal world, the
world of material success. But in reality our sacrifice did
have a meaning. Those of us who had any religious faith, I
said frankly, could understand without difficulty. I told
them of a comrade who on his arrival in camp had tried to
make a pact with Heaven that his suffering and death
should save the human being he loved from a painful end.
For this man, suffering and death were meaningful; his was
a sacrifice of the deepest significance. He did not want to
die for nothing. None of us wanted that.
The purpose of my words was to find a full meaning in
our life, then and there, in that hut and in that practically
hopeless situation. I saw that my efforts had been successful.
When the electric bulb flared up again, I saw the miserable
figures of my friends limping toward me to thank me with
tears in their eyes. But I have to confess here that only too
rarely had I the inner strength to make contact with my
companions in suffering and that I must have missed many
opportunities for doing so.
We now come to the third stage of a prisoner’s mental
reactions: the psychology of the prisoner after his liberation.
But prior to that we shall consider a question which the
psychologist is asked frequently, especially when he has per­
sonal knowledge of these matters: What can you tell us
about the psychological make-up of the camp guards? How
is it possible that men of flesh and blood could treat others

92 Man’s Search for Meaning
as so many prisoners say they have been treated? Having
once heard these accounts and having come to believe that
these things did happen, one is bound to ask how, psycho­
logically, they could happen. To answer this question with­
out going into great detail, a few things must be pointed
out:
First, among the guards there were some sadists, sadists in
the purest clinical sense.
Second, these sadists were always selected when a really
severe detachment of guards was needed.
There was great joy at our work site when we had per­
mission to warm ourselves for a few minutes (after two
hours of work in the bitter frost) in front of a little stove
which was fed with twigs and scraps of wood. But there were
always some foremen who found a great pleasure in taking
this comfort from us. How clearly their faces reflected this
pleasure when they not only forbade us to stand there but
turned over the stove and dumped its lovely fire into the
snow! When the SS took a dislike to a person, there was
always some special man in their ranks known to have a
passion for, and to be highly specialized in, sadistic torture,
to whom the unfortunate prisoner was sent.
Third, the feelings of the majority of the guards had
been dulled by the number of years in which, in ever-
increasing doses, they had witnessed the brutal methods of
the camp. These morally and mentally hardened men at
least refused to take active part in sadistic measures. But
they did not prevent others from carrying them out.
Fourth, it must be stated that even among the guards
there were some who took pity on us. I shall only mention
the commander of the camp from which I was liberated. It
was found after the liberation—only the camp doctor, a
prisoner himself, had known of it previously—that this man
had paid no small sum of money from his own pocket in
order to purchase medicines for his prisoners from the near-
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 93
est market town.1 But the senior camp warden, a prisoner
himself, was harder than any of the SS guards. He beat the
other prisoners at every slightest opportunity, while the
camp commander, to my knowledge, never once lifted his
hand against any of us.
It is apparent that the mere knowledge that a man was
either a camp guard or a prisoner tells us almost nothing.
Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those
which as a whole it would be easy to condemn. The
boundaries between groups overlapped and we must not try
to simplify matters by saying that these men were angels
and those were devils. Certainly, it was a considerable
achievement for a guard or foreman to be kind to the pris­
oners in spite of all the camp’s influences, and, on the other
hand, the baseness of a prisoner who treated his own com­
panions badly was exceptionally contemptible. Obviously
the prisoners found the lack of character in such men espe­
cially upsetting, while they were profoundly moved by the
smallest kindness received from any of the guards. I re­
member how one day a foreman secretly gave me a piece o£
bread which I knew he must have saved from his breakfast
ration. It was far more than the small piece of bread which
1 An interesting incident with reference to this SS commander is in
regard to the attitude toward him of some of his Jewish prisoners. At
the end of the war when the American troops liberated the prisoners
from our camp, three young Hungarian Jews hid this commander in
the Bavarian woods. Then they went to the commandant of the Ameri­
can Forces who was very eager to capture this SS commander and they
said they would tell him where he was but only under certain condi­
tions: the American commander must promise that absolutely no harm
would come to this man. After a while, the American officer finally
promised these young Jews that the SS commander when taken into
captivity would be kept safe from harm. Not only did the American
officer keep his promise but, as a matter of fact, the former SS com­
mander of this concentration camp was in a sense restored to his com­
mand, for he supervised the collection of clothing among the nearby
Bavarian villages, and its distribution to all of us who at that time
still wore the clothes we had inherited from other inmates of Camp
Auschwitz who were not as fortunate as we, having been sent to the gas
chamber immediately upon their arrival at the railway station.

94 Man’s Search for Meaning
moved me to tears at that time. It was the human “some­
thing” which this man also gave to me—the word and look
which accompanied the gift.
From all this we may learn that there are two races of
men in this world, but only these two—the “race” of the
decent man and the “race” of the indecent man. Both are
found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society.
No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In
this sense, no group is of “pure race”—and therefore one
occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards.
Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul
and exposed its depths. Is it surprising that in those depths
we again found only human qualities which in their very
nature were a mixture of good and evil? The rift dividing
good from evil, which goes through all human beings,
reaches into the lowest depths and becomes apparent even
on the bottom of the abyss which is laid open by the con­
centration camp.
And now to the last chapter in the psychology of a con­
centration camp—the psychology of the prisoner who has
been released. In describing the experiences of liberation,
which naturally must be personal, we shall pick up the
threads of that part of our narrative which told of the
morning when the white flag was hoisted above the camp
gates after days of high tension. This state of inner suspense
was followed by total relaxation. But it would be quite
wrong to think that we went mad with joy. What, then, did
happen?
With tired steps we prisoners dragged ourselves to the
camp gates. Timidly we looked around and glanced at each
other questioningly. Then we ventured a few steps out of
camp. This time no orders were shouted at us, nor was
there any need to duck quickly to avoid a blow or kick. Oh
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 95
no! This time the guards offered us cigarettesi We hardly
recognized them at first; they had hurriedly changed into
civilian clothes. We walked slowly along the road leading
from the camp. Soon our legs hurt and threatened to
buckle. But we limped on; we wanted to see the camp’s
surroundings for the first time with the eyes of free men.
“Freedom”—we repeated to ourselves, and yet we could not
grasp it. We had said this word so often during all the years
we dreamed about it, that it had lost its meaning. Its reality
did not penetrate into our consciousness; we could not
grasp the fact that freedom was ours.
We came to meadows full of flowers. We saw and realized
that they were there, but we had no feelings about them.
The first spark of joy came when we saw a rooster with a
tail of multicolored feathers. But it remained only a spark;
we did not yet belong to this world.
In the evening when we all met again in our hut, one
said secretly to the other, “Tell me, were you pleased
today?”
And the other replied, feeling ashamed as he did not
know that we all felt similarly, “Truthfully, nol” We had
literally lost the ability to feel pleased and had to relearn it
slowly.
Psychologically, what was happening to the liberated
prisoners could be called “depersonalization.” Everything
appeared unreal, unlikely, as in a dream. We could not
believe it was true. How often in the past years had we been
deceived by dreamsl We dreamt that the day of liberation
had come, that we had been set free, had returned home,
greeted our friends, embraced our wives, sat down at the
table and started to tell of all the things we had gone
through—even of how we had often seen the day of libera­
tion in our dreams. And then—a whistle shrilled in our

96 Man’s Search for Meaning
ears, the signal to get up, and our dreams of freedom came
to an end. And now the dream had come true. But could
we truly believe in it?
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 97
How long I knelt there and repeated this sentence mem­
ory can no longer recall. But I know that on that day, in
that hour, my new life started. Step for step I progressed,
until I again became a human being.
The body has fewer inhibitions than the mind. It made
good use of the new freedom from the first moment on. It
began to eat ravenously, for hours and days, even half the
night. It is amazing what quantities one can eat. And when
one of the prisoners was invited out by a friendly farmer
in the neighborhood, he ate and ate and then drank coffee,
which loosened his tongue, and he then began to talk, often
for hours. The pressure which had been on his mind for
years was released at last. Hearing him talk, one got the
impression that he had to talk, that his desire to speak was
irresistible. I have known people who have been under heavy
pressure only for a short time (for example, through a cross-
examination by the Gestapo) to have similar reactions.
Many days passed, until not only the tongue was loosened,
but something within oneself as well; then feeling suddenly
broke through the strange fetters which had restrained it.
One day, a few days after the liberation, I walked
through the country past flowering meadows, for miles and
miles, toward the market town near the camp. Larks rose to
the sky and I could hear their joyous song. There was no
one to be seen for miles around; there was nothing but the
wide earth and sky and the larks’ jubilation and the free­
dom of space. I stopped, looked around, and up to the
sky—and then I went down on my knees. At that moment
there was very little I knew of myself or of the world—I had
but one sentence in mind—always the same: “I called to
the Lord from my narrow prison and He answered me in
the freedom of space.”
The way that led from the acute mental tension of the
last days in camp (from that war of nerves to mental peace)
was certainly not free from obstacles. It would be an error
to think that a liberated prisoner was not in need of spir­
itual care any more. We have to consider that a man who
has been under such enormous mental pressure for such a
long time is naturally in some danger after his liberation,
especially since the pressure was released quite suddenly.
This danger (in the sense of psychological hygiene) is the
psychological counterpart of the bends. Just as the physical
health of the caisson worker would be endangered if he left
his diver’s chamber suddenly (where he is under enormous
atmospheric pressure), so the man who has suddenly been
liberated from mental pressure can suffer damage to his
moral and spiritual health.
During this psychological phase one observed that people
with natures of a more primitive kind could not escape the
influences of the brutality which had surrounded them in
camp life. Now, being free, they thought they could use
their freedom licentiously and ruthlessly. The only thing
that had changed for them was that they were now the
oppressors instead of the oppressed. They became insti­
gators, not objects, of willful force and injustice. They
justified their behavior by their own terrible experiences.
This was often revealed in apparently insignificant events.
A friend was walking across a field with me toward the
camp when suddenly we came to a field of green crops.
Automatically, I avoided it, but he drew his arm through
mine and dragged me through it. I stammered something

98 Man’s Search for Meaning
about not treading down the young crops. He became an­
noyed, gave me an angry look and shouted, “You don’t say!
And hasn’t enough been taken from us? My wife and child
have been gassed—not to mention everything else—and you
would forbid me to tread on a few stalks of oats!”
Only slowly could these men be guided back to the com­
monplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not
even if wrong has been done to them. We had to strive to
lead them back to this truth, or the consequences would
have been much worse than the loss of a few thousand stalks
of oats. I can still see the prisoner who rolled up his shirt
sleeves, thrust his right hand under my nose and shouted,
“May this hand be cut off if I don’t stain it with blood
on the day when I get home!” I want to emphasize that the
man who said these words was not a bad fellow. He had
been the best of comrades in camp and afterwards.
Apart from the moral deformity resulting from the sud­
den release of mental pressure, there were two other
fundamental experiences which threatened to damage the
character of the liberated prisoner: bitterness and disillu­
sionment when he returned to his former life.
Bitterness was caused by a number of things he came up
against in his former home town. When, on his return, a
man found that in many places he was met only with a
shrug of the shoulders and with hackneyed phrases, he
tended to become bitter and to ask himself why he had
gone through all that he had. When he heard the same
phrases nearly everywhere—”We did not know about it,”
and “We, too, have suffered,” then he asked himself, have
they really nothing better to say to me?
The experience of disillusionment is different. Here it
was not one’s fellow man (whose superficiality and lack of
feeling was so disgusting that one finally felt like creeping
into a hole and neither hearing nor seeing human beings
any more) but fate itself which seemed so cruel. A man who
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 99
for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of
all possible suffering now found that suffering has no limits,
and that he could suffer still more, and still more intensely.
When we spoke about attempts to give a man in camp
mental courage, we said that he had to be shown something
to look forward to in the future. He had to be reminded
that life still waited for him, that a human being waited for
his return. But after liberation? There were some men who
found that no one awaited them. Woe to him who found
that the person whose memory alone had given him courage
in camp did not exist any more! Woe to him who, when the
day of his dreams finally came, found it so different from all
he had longed for! Perhaps he boarded a trolley, traveled
out to the home which he had seen for years in his mind,
and only in his mind, and pressed the bell, just as he has
longed to do in thousands of dreams, only to find that the
person who should open the door was not there, and would
never be there again.
We all said to each other in camp that there could be no
earthly happiness which could compensate for all we had
suffered. We were not hoping for happiness—it was not
that which gave us courage and gave meaning to our suffer­
ing, our sacrifices and our dying. And yet we were not
prepared for unhappiness. This disillusionment, which
awaited not a small number of prisoners, was an experience
which these men have found very hard to get over and
which, for a psychiatrist, is also very difficult to help them
overcome. But this must not be a discouragement to him;
on the contrary, it should provide an added stimulus.
But for every one of the liberated prisoners, the day
comes when, looking back on his camp experiences, he can
no longer understand how he endured it all. As the day of
his liberation eventually came, when everything seemed to

100 Man’s Search for Meaning
him like a beautiful dream, so also the day comes when all
his camp experiences seem to him nothing but a nightmare.
The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming
man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered,
there is nothing he need fear any more—except his God.
PART TWO
Logotherapy in
a Nutshell*

READERS OF MY SHORT AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL STORY usually ask
for a fuller and more direct explanation of my therapeutic
doctrine. Accordingly I added a brief section on logother-
apy to the original edition of From Death-Camp to Exis­
tentialism. But that was not enough, and I have been
besieged by requests for a more extended treatment. There­
fore in the present edition I have completely rewritten and
considerably expanded my account.
The assignment was not easy. To convey to the reader
within a short space all the material which required twenty
volumes in German is an almost hopeless task. I am re­
minded of the American doctor who once turned up in my
office in Vienna and asked me, “Now, Doctor, are you a
psychoanalyst?” Whereupon I replied, “Not exactly a psy­
choanalyst; let’s say a psychotherapist.” Then he continued
questioning me: “What school do you stand for?” I an­
swered, “It is my own theory; it is called logotherapy.”
“Can you tell me in one sentence what is meant by logo-
therapy?” he asked. “At least, what is the difference be­
tween psychoanalysis and logotherapy?” “Yes,” I said, “but
in the first place, can you tell me in one sentence what you
think the essence of psychoanalysis is?” This was his answer:
“During psychoanalysis, the patient must lie down on a
couch and tell you things which sometimes are very dis­
agreeable to tell.” Whereupon I immediately retorted with
* This part, which has been revised and updated, first appeared as
“Basic Concepts of Logotherapy” in the 1968 edition of Man’s Search for
Meaning.
103

104 Man’s Search for Meaning Logotherapy in a Nutshell 105
the following improvisation: “Now, in
logotherapy the patient may remain sitting
erect but he must hear things which
sometimes are very disagreeable to hear.”
Of course, this was meant facetiously and
not as a capsule version of logotherapy.
However, there is something in it, inasmuch as
logotherapy, in comparison with
psychoanalysis, is a method less retrospective
and less introspective. Logotherapy focuses
rather on the future, that is to say, on the
meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his
future. (Logotherapy, indeed, is a meaning-
centered psychotherapy.) At the same time,
logotherapy defocuses all the vicious-circle
formations and feedback mechanisms which
play such a great role in the development of
neuroses. Thus, the typical self-centeredness
of the neurotic is broken up instead of being
continually fostered and reinforced.
To be sure, this kind of statement is an
oversimplification; yet in logotherapy the
patient is actually confronted with and
reoriented toward the meaning of his life.
And to make him aware of this meaning can
contribute much to his ability to overcome his
neurosis.
Let me explain why I have employed the
term “logotherapy” as the name for my
theory. Logos is a Greek word which denotes
“meaning.” Logotherapy, or, as it has been
called by some authors, “The Third Viennese
School of Psychotherapy,” focuses on the
meaning of human existence as well as on
man’s search for such a meaning. According to
logotherapy, this striving to find a meaning
in one’s life is the primary motivational force
in man. That is why I speak of a will to
meaning in contrast to the pleasure
principle (or, as we could also term it, the will
to pleasure) on which Freudian psychoanalysis
is centered, as well as in contrast to the will to
power on which Adlerian psychology, using
the term “striving for superiority,” is focused.

THE WILL TO MEANING
Man’s search for meaning is the primary
motivation in his life and not a “secondary
rationalization” of instinctual drives. This
meaning is unique and specific in that it must
and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then
does it achieve a significance which will
satisfy his own will to meaning. There are
some authors who contend that meanings
and values are “nothing but defense
mechanisms, reaction formations and
sublimations.” But as for myself, I would not
be willing to live merely for the sake of my
“defense mechanisms,” nor would I be ready
to die merely for the sake of my “reaction
formations.” Man, however, is able to live and
even to die for the sake of his ideals and
values!
A public-opinion poll was conducted a few
years ago in France. The results showed that
89 percent of the people polled admitted that
man needs “something” for the sake of which
to live. Moreover, 61 percent conceded that
there was something, or someone, in their
own lives for whose sake they were even
ready to die. I repeated this poll at my
hospital department in Vienna among both
the patients and the personnel, and the
outcome was practically the same as among
the thousands of people screened in France; the
difference was only 2 percent.
Another statistical survey, of 7,948 students
at forty-eight colleges, was conducted by
social scientists from Johns Hopkins
University. Their preliminary report is part of
a two-year study sponsored by the National
Institute of Mental Health. Asked what they
considered “very important” to them now, 16
percent of the students checked “making a lot
of money”; 78 percent said their first goal was
“finding a purpose and meaning to my life.”
Of course, there may be some cases in
which an individual’s concern with values is
really a camouflage of hidden inner conflicts;
but, if so, they represent the exceptions from

io6 Man’s Search for Meaning Logotherapy in a Nutshell 107
the rule rather than the rule itself. In these
cases we have actually to deal with
pseudovalues, and as such they have to be
unmasked. Unmasking, however, should stop
as soon as one is confronted with what is
authentic and genuine in man, e.g., man’s
desire for a life that is as meaningful as
possible. If it does not stop then, the only
thing that the “unmasking psychologist”
really unmasks is his own “hidden motive”—
namely, his unconscious need to debase and
depreciate what is genuine, what is
genuinely human, in man.
EXISTENTIAL FRUSTRATION
Man’s will to meaning can also be
frustrated, in which case logotherapy
speaks of “existential frustration.” The term
“existential” may be used in three ways: to
refer to (1) existence itself, i.e., the
specifically human mode of being; (2) the
meaning of existence; and (3) the striving to
find a concrete meaning in personal
existence, that is to say, the will to meaning.
Existential frustration can also result in
neuroses. For this type of neuroses,
logotherapy has coined the term “noogenic
neuroses” in contrast to neuroses in the
traditional sense of the word, i.e.,
psychogenic neuroses. Noogenic neuroses
have their origin not in the psychological but
rather in the “noological” (from the Greek
noos meaning mind) dimension of human
existence. This is another logotherapeutic
term which denotes anything pertaining to the
specifically human dimension.
NOOGENIC NEUROSES
Noogenic neuroses do not emerge from
conflicts between drives and instincts but
rather from existential problems.

Among such problems, the frustration of the
will to meaning plays a large role.
It is obvious that in noogenic cases the
appropriate and adequate therapy is not
psychotherapy in general but rather
logotherapy; a therapy, that is, which dares
to enter the specifically human dimension.
Let me quote the following instance: A
high-ranking American diplomat came to my
office in Vienna in order to continue
psychoanalytic treatment which he had begun
five years previously with an analyst in New
York. At the outset I asked him why he
thought he should be analyzed, why his
analysis had been started in the first place.
It turned out that the patient was
discontented with his career and found it
most difficult to comply with American
foreign policy. His analyst, however, had
told him again and again that he should try to
reconcile himself with his father; because the
government of the U.S. as well as his
superiors were “nothing but” father images
and, consequently, his dissatisfaction with his
job was due to the hatred he unconsciously
harbored toward his father. Through an
analysis lasting five years, the patient had
been prompted more and more to accept his
analyst’s interpretations until he finally was
unable to see the forest of reality for the trees
of symbols and images. After a few
interviews, it was clear that his will to
meaning was frustrated by his vocation, and
he actually longed to be engaged in some
other kind of work. As there was no reason
for not giving up his profession and embark­
ing on a different one, he did so, with most
gratifying results. He has remained
contented in this new occupation for over
five years, as he recently reported. I doubt
that, in this case, I was dealing with a
neurotic condition at all, and that is why I
thought that he did not need any psychother­
apy, nor even logotherapy, for the simple
reason that he was

108 Man’s Search for
Meaning
Logotherapy in a Nutshell 109
not actually a patient. Not every conflict is
necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict
is normal and healthy. In a similar sense
suffering is not always a pathological phenom­
enon; rather than being a symptom of
neurosis, suffering may well be a human
achievement, especially if the suffering
grows out of existential frustration. I would
strictly deny that one’s search for a meaning
to his existence, or even his doubt of it, in
every case is derived from, or results in, any
disease. Existential frustration is in itself
neither pathological nor pathogenic. A man’s
concern, even his despair, over the
worthwhileness of life is an existential
distress but by no means a mental disease. It
may well be that interpreting the first in
terms of the latter motivates a doctor to bury
his patient’s existential despair under a heap
of tranquilizing drugs. It is his task, rather,
to pilot the patient through his existential
crises of growth and development.
Logotherapy regards its assignment as that
of assisting the patient to find meaning in his
life. Inasmuch as logotherapy makes him
aware of the hidden logos of his existence, it
is an analytical process. To this extent,
logotherapy resembles psychoanalysis.
However, in logotherapy’s attempt to make
something conscious again it does not restrict
its activity to instinctual facts within the
individual’s unconscious but also cares for
existential realities, such as the potential
meaning of his existence to be fulfilled as well
as his will to meaning. Any analysis, however,
even when it refrains from including the
noological dimension in its therapeutic pro­
cess, tries to make the patient aware of what
he actually longs for in the depth of his
being. Logotherapy deviates from
psychoanalysis insofar as it considers man a
being whose main concern consists in
fulfilling a meaning, rather than in the mere
gratification and satisfaction of drives and
instincts, or in merely reconciling the
conflicting claims of

id, ego and superego, or in the mere
adaptation and adjustment to society and
environment.
NOO-DYNAMICS
To be sure, man’s search for meaning may
arouse inner tension rather than inner
equilibrium. However, precisely such
tension is an indispensable prerequisite of
mental health. There is nothing in the world,
I venture to say, that would so effectively help
one to survive even the worst conditions as the
knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s
life. There is much wisdom in the words of
Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live for can
bear almost any how.” I can see in these
words a motto which holds true for any
psychotherapy. In the Nazi concentration
camps, one could have witnessed that those
who knew that there was a task waiting for
them to fulfill were most apt to survive. The
same conclusion has since been reached by
other authors of books on concentration
camps, and also by psychiatric investigations
into Japanese, North Korean and North
Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camps.
As for myself, when I was taken to the
concentration camp of Auschwitz, a
manuscript of mine ready for publication was
confiscated.1 Certainly, my deep desire to
write this manuscript anew helped me to
survive the rigors of the camps I was in. For
instance, when in a camp in Bavaria I fell ill
with typhus fever, I jotted down on little
scraps of paper many notes intended to
enable me to rewrite the manuscript, should I
live to the day of liberation. I am sure that
this reconstruction of my lost manuscript in
the dark
1 It was the first version of my first book, the
English translation of which was published by Alfred
A. Knopf, New York, in 1955, under the title The
Doctor and the Soul: An Introduction to Logotherapy.

no Man’s Search for Meaning Logotherapy in a Nutshell m
barracks of a Bavarian concentration camp
assisted me in overcoming the danger of
cardiovascular collapse.
Thus it can be seen that mental health
is based on a certain degree of tension, the
tension between what one has already
achieved and what one still ought to
accomplish, or the gap between what one is
and what one should become. Such a
tension is inherent in the human being and
therefore is indispensable to mental well-
being. We should not, then, be hesitant
about challenging man with a potential
meaning for him to fulfill. It is only thus that
we evoke his will to meaning from its state
of latency. I consider it a dangerous
misconception of mental hygiene to assume
that what man needs in the first place is
equilibrium or, as it is called in biology,
“homeostasis,” i.e., a tensionless state.
What man actually needs is not a
tensionless state but rather the striving
and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a
freely chosen task. What he needs is not
the discharge of tension at any cost but
the call of a potential meaning waiting
to be fulfilled by him. What man needs
is not homeostasis but what I call “nod-
dynamics,” i.e., the existential dynamics in
a polar field of tension where one pole is
represented by a meaning that is to be
fulfilled and the other pole by the man who
has to fulfill it. And one should not think
that this holds true only for normal
conditions; in neurotic individuals, it is
even more valid. If architects want to
strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase
the load which is laid upon it, for thereby
the parts are joined more firmly together. So
if therapists wish to foster their patients’
mental health, they should not be afraid to
create a sound amount of tension through
a reorientation toward the meaning of
one’s life.
Having shown the beneficial impact of
meaning orientation, I turn to the
detrimental influence of that feeling of
which so many patients complain today,
namely, the feeling of the total and
ultimate meaninglessness of their lives.

They lack the awareness of a meaning
worth living for. They are haunted by the
experience of their inner emptiness, a void
within themselves; they are caught in that
situation which I have called the “existential
vacuum.”
THE EXISTENTIAL VACUUM
The existential vacuum is a widespread
phenomenon of the twentieth century. This
is understandable; it may be due to a
twofold loss which man has had to undergo
since he became a truly human being. At
the beginning of human history, man lost
some of the basic animal instincts in which
an animal’s behavior is imbedded and by
which it is secured. Such security, like
Paradise, is closed to man forever; man has
to make choices. In addition to this, however,
man has suffered another loss in his more
recent development inasmuch as the
traditions which buttressed his behavior are
now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells
him. what he has to do, and no tradition tells
him what he ought to do; sometimes he does
not even know what he wishes to do. Instead,
he either wishes to do what other people do
(conformism) or he does what other people
wish him to do (totalitarianism).
A statistical survey recently revealed that
among my European students, 25 percent
showed a more-or-less marked degree of
existential vacuum. Among my American
students it was not 25 but 60 percent.
The existential vacuum manifests itself
mainly in a state of boredom. Now we can
understand Schopenhauer when he said that
mankind was apparently doomed to vacillate
eternally between the two extremes of
distress and boredom. In actual fact,
boredom is now causing, and certainly
bringing to psychiatrists, more problems to
solve than distress. And these problems are
growing increasingly crucial, for
progressive automation will probably lead
to an enor-

112 Man’s Search for Meaning Logotherapy in a Nutshell
113
mous increase in the leisure hours available
to the average worker. The pity of it is that
many of these will not know what to do with
all their newly acquired free time.
Let us consider, for instance, “Sunday
neurosis,” that kind of depression which
afflicts people who become aware of the
lack of content in their lives when the rush
of the busy week is over and the void within
themselves becomes manifest. Not a few
cases of suicide can be traced back to this
existential vacuum. Such widespread
phenomena as depression, aggression and
addiction are not understandable unless we
recognize the existential vacuum underlying
them. This is also true of the crises of
pensioners and aging people.
Moreover, there are various masks and
guises under which the existential vacuum
appears. Sometimes the frustrated will to
meaning is vicariously compensated for by a
will to power, including the most primitive
form of the will to power, the will to money.
In other cases, the place of frustrated will to
meaning is taken by the will to pleasure. That
is why existential frustration often
eventuates in sexual compensation. We can
observe in such cases that the sexual libido
becomes rampant in the existential vacuum.
An analogous event occurs in neurotic
cases. There are certain types of feedback
mechanisms and vicious-circle formations
which I will touch upon later. One can
observe again and again, however, that this
symptomatology has invaded an existential
vacuum wherein it then continues to flourish.
In such patients, what we have to deal with
is not a noogenic neurosis. However, we will
never succeed in having the patient overcome
his condition if we have not supplemented the
psychotherapeutic treatment with logo-
therapy. For by filling the existential
vacuum, the patient will be prevented from
suffering further relapses. Therefore,
logotherapy is indicated not only in noogenic
cases, as pointed out above, but also in
psychogenic cases, and some-

times even the somatogenic (pseudo-)
neuroses. Viewed in this light, a statement
once made by Magda B. Arnold is justified:
“Every therapy must in some way, no matter
how restricted, also be logotherapy.”2
Let us now consider what we can do if a
patient asks what the meaning of his life is.
THE MEANING OF LIFE
I doubt whether a doctor can answer
this question in general terms. For the
meaning of life differs from man to man,
from day to day and from hour to hour.
What matters, therefore, is not the
meaning of life in general but rather the
specific meaning of a person’s life at a
given moment. To put the question in
general terms would be comparable to the
question posed to a chess champion: “Tell
me, Master, what is the best move in the
world?” There simply is no such thing as
the best or even a good move apart from a
particular situation in a game and the
particular personality of one’s opponent.
The same holds for human existence. One
should not search for an abstract meaning of
life. Everyone has his own specific vocation
or mission in life to carry out a concrete
assignment which demands fulfillment.
Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his
life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is as
unique as is his specific opportunity to
implement it.
As each situation in life represents a
challenge to man and presents a problem for
him to solve, the question of the meaning of
life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man
should not ask what the meaning of his life
is, but rather he must recognize that it is he
who is asked. In a word, each man is
questioned by life; and he can only answer to
life by answering for his own life; to life he
can only respond by
2 Magda B. Arnold and John A. Gasson, The
Human Person, Ronald
Press, New York, 1954, p. 618.

114 Man’s Search for Meaning Logotherapy in a Nutshell
115
being responsible. Thus, logotherapy sees in
responsibleness the very essence of human
existence.
THE ESSENCE OF EXISTENCE
This emphasis on responsibleness is
reflected in the categorical imperative of
logotherapy, which is: “Live as if you were
living already for the second time and as if
you had acted the first time as wrongly as you
are about to act now!” It seems to me that
there is nothing which would stimulate a
man’s sense of responsibleness more than
this maxim, which invites him to imagine
first that the present is past and, second,
that the past may yet be changed and
amended. Such a precept confronts him with
life’s finiteness as well as the finality of what
he makes out of both his life and himself.
Logotherapy tries to make the patient fully
aware of his own responsibleness; therefore,
it must leave to him the option for what, to
what, or to whom he understands himself to
be responsible. That is why a logotherapist
is the least tempted of all psychotherapists to
impose value judgments on his patients, for
he will never permit the patient to pass to
the doctor the responsibility of judging.
It is, therefore, up to the patient to decide
whether he should interpret his life task as
being responsible to society or to his own
conscience. There are people, however, who
do not interpret their own lives merely in
terms of a task assigned to them but also in
terms of the taskmaster who has assigned it
to them.
Logotherapy is neither teaching nor
preaching. It is as far removed from logical
reasoning as it is from moral exhortation. To
put it figuratively, the role played by a
logotherapist is that of an eye specialist
rather than that of a painter. A painter tries to
convey to us a picture of the world as he sees
it; an ophthalmologist tries to enable us
to see the

world as it really is. The logotherapist’s role
consists of widening and broadening the
visual field of the patient so that the whole
spectrum of potential meaning becomes con­
scious and visible to him.
By declaring that man is responsible and
must actualize the potential meaning of his
life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of
life is to be discovered in the world rather
than within man or his own psyche, as
though it were a closed system. I have
termed this constitutive characteristic “the
self-transcendence of human existence.” It
denotes the fact that being human always
points, and is directed, to something, or
someone, other than oneself—be it a meaning
to fulfill or another human being to
encounter. The more one forgets himself—by
giving himself to a cause to serve or another
person to love—the more human he is and
the more he actualizes himself. What is
called self-actualization is not an attainable
aim at all, for the simple reason that the
more one would strive for it, the more he
would miss it. In other words, self-
actualization is possible only as a side-effect of
self-transcendence.
Thus far we have shown that the meaning
of life always changes, but that it never ceases
to be. According to logotherapy, we can
discover this meaning in life in three different
ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed;
(2) by experiencing something or
encountering someone; and (3) by the
attitude we take toward unavoidable
suffering. The first, the way of achievement
or accomplishment, is quite obvious. The
second and third need further elaboration.
The second way of finding a meaning in
life is by experiencing something—such as
goodness, truth and beauty —by
experiencing nature and culture or, last but
not least, by experiencing another human
being in his very uniqueness;—by loving
him.

116 Man’s Search for Meaning Logotherapy in a Nutshell 117
THE MEANING OF LOVE
Love is the only way to grasp another
human being in the innermost core of his
personality. No one can become fully aware
of the very essence of another human being
unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled
to see the essential traits and features in the
beloved person; and even more, he sees that
which is potential in him, which is not yet
actualized but yet ought to be actualized.
Furthermore, by his love, the loving person
enables the beloved person to actualize these
potentialities. By making him aware of what
he can be and of what he should become, he
makes these potentialities come true.
In logotherapy, love is not interpreted as a
mere epiphe-nomenon3 of sexual drives and
instincts in the sense of a so-called
sublimation. Love is as primary a
phenomenon as sex. Normally, sex is a mode
of expression for love. Sex is justified, even
sanctified, as soon as, but only as long as, it is
a vehicle of love. Thus love is not understood
as a mere side-effect of sex; rather, sex is a
way of expressing the experience of that
ultimate togetherness which is called love.
The third way of finding a meaning in life
is by suffering.
THE MEANING OF SUFFERING
We must never forget that we may also
find meaning in life even when confronted
with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate
that cannot be changed. For what then matters
is to bear witness to the uniquely human
potential at its best, which is to transform a
personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s
predicament into a human achievement.
When we are no longer able to change a
situation— just think of an incurable disease
such as inoperable cancer —we are challenged
to change ourselves.
3 A phenomenon that occurs as the result of a
primary phenomenon.

Let me cite a clear-cut example: Once, an
elderly general practitioner consulted me
because of his severe depression. He could
not overcome the loss of his wife who had
died two years before and whom he had
loved above all else. Now, how could I help
him? What should I tell him? Well, I
refrained from telling him anything but
instead confronted him with the question,
“What would have happened, Doctor, if you
had died first, and your wife would have had
to survive you?” “Oh,” he said, “for her
this would have been terrible; how she would
have suffered!” Whereupon I replied, “You
see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared
her, and it was you who have spared her this
suffering—to be sure, at the price that now
you have to survive and mourn her.” He
said no word but shook my hand and calmly
left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to
be suffering at the moment it finds a
meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
Of course, this was no therapy in the proper
sense since, first, his despair was no disease;
and second, I could not change his fate; I
could not revive his wife. But in that
moment I did succeed in changing his attitude
toward his unalterable fate inasmuch as from
that time on he could at least see a meaning in
his suffering. It is one of the basic tenets of
logotherapy that man’s main concern is not
to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather
to see a meaning in his life. That is why man
is even ready to suffer, on the condition, to be
sure, that his suffering has a meaning.
But let me make it perfectly clear that in no
way is suffering necessary to find meaning. I
only insist that meaning is possible even in
spite of suffering—provided, certainly, that the
suffering is unavoidable. If it were avoidable,
however, the meaningful thing to do would be
to remove its cause, be it psychological,
biological or political. To suffer unnecessarily
is masochistic rather than heroic.
Edith Weisskopf-Joelson, before her
death professor of

118 Man’s Search for
Meaning
Logotherapy in a Nutshell
119
psychology at the University of Georgia,
contended, in her article on logotherapy, that
“our current mental-hygiene philosophy
stresses the idea that people ought to be
happy, that unhappiness is a symptom of
maladjustment. Such a value system might be
responsible for the fact that the burden of
unavoidable unhappiness is increased by
unhappiness about being unhappy.”4 And in
another paper she expressed the hope that
logotherapy “may help counteract certain
unhealthy trends in the present-day culture of
the United States, where the incurable
sufferer is given very little opportunity to be
proud of his suffering and to consider it
ennobling rather than degrading” so that “he
is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of
being unhappy.”8
There are situations in which one is cut off
from the opportunity to do one’s work or to
enjoy one’s life; but what never can be ruled
out is the unavoidability of suffering. In
accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life
has a meaning up to the last moment, and it
retains this meaning literally to the end. In
other words, life’s meaning is an
unconditional one, for it even includes the
potential meaning of unavoidable suffering.
Let me recall that which was perhaps the
deepest experience I had in the concentration
camp. The odds of surviving the camp were
no more than one in twenty-eight, as can
easily be verified by exact statistics. It did
not even seem possible, let alone probable,
that the manuscript of my first book, which I
had hidden in my coat when I arrived at
Auschwitz, would ever be rescued. Thus, I had
to undergo and to overcome the loss of my
mental child. And now it seemed as if nothing
and no one would survive me;
13″Some Comments on a Viennese School of
Psychiatry,” The Journal
of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51 (1955), pp.
701-3.
14″Logotherapy and Existential Analysis,” Ada
Psychotherapeutica,
6 (1958), pp.193-204.

neither a physical nor a mental child of my
own! So I found myself confronted with the
question whether under such circumstances
my life was ultimately void of any meaning.
Not yet did I notice that an answer to this
question with which I was wrestling so
passionately was already in store for me, and
that soon thereafter this answer would be
given to me. This was the case when I had
to surrender my clothes and in turn
inherited the worn-out rags of an inmate
who had already been sent to the gas chamber
immediately after his arrival at the
Auschwitz railway station. Instead of the
many pages of my manuscript, I found in a
pocket of the newly acquired coat one single
page torn out of a Hebrew prayer book,
containing the most important Jewish prayer,
Shema Yisrael. How should I have inter­
preted such a “coincidence” other than as a
challenge to live my thoughts instead of
merely putting them on paper?
A bit later, I remember, it seemed to me
that I would die in the near future. In this
critical situation, however, my concern was
different from that of most of my comrades.
Their question was, “Will we survive the
camp? For, if not, all this suffering has no
meaning.” The question which beset me
was, “Has all this suffering, this dying around
us, a meaning? For, if not, then ultimately
there is no meaning to survival; for a life
whose meaning depends upon such a
happenstance—as whether one escapes or not
—ultimately would not be worth living at all.”
META-CLINICAL PROBLEMS
More and more, a psychiatrist is
approached today by patients who confront
him with human problems rather than
neurotic symptoms. Some of the people who
nowadays call on a psychiatrist would have
seen a pastor, priest or rabbi in former days.
Now they often refuse to be handed

120 Man’s Search for Meaning Logotherapy in a Nutshell 121
over to a clergyman and instead confront
the doctor with questions such as, “What is
the meaning of my life?”
A LOGODRAMA
I should like to cite the following instance:
Once, the mother of a boy who had died at the
age of eleven years was admitted to my
hospital department after a suicide attempt.
Dr. Kurt Kocourek invited her to join a
therapeutic group, and it happened that I
stepped into the room where he was
conducting a psychodrama. She was telling her
story. At the death of her boy she was left
alone with another, older son, who was
crippled, suffering from the effects of infantile
paralysis. The poor boy had to be moved
around in a wheelchair. His mother, however,
rebelled against her fate. But when she tried
to commit suicide together with him, it was
the crippled son who prevented her from
doing so; he liked living! For him, life had
remained meaningful. Why was it not so for
his mother? How could her life still have a
meaning? And how could we help her to
become aware of it?
Improvising, I participated in the
discussion, and questioned another woman
in the group. I asked her how old she was
and she answered, “Thirty.” I replied, “No,
you are not thirty but instead eighty and
lying on your deathbed. And now you are
looking back on your life, a life which was
childless but full of financial success and
social prestige.” And then I invited her to
imagine what she would feel in this
situation. “What will you think of it? What
will you say to yourself?” Let me quote what
she actually said from a tape which was
recorded during that session. “Oh, I married
a millionaire, I had an easy life full of
wealth, and I lived it up! I flirted with men; I
teased them! But now I am eighty; I have no
children of my own. Looking back as an

old woman, I cannot see what all that was
for; actually, I must say, my life was a
failure!”
I then invited the mother of the
handicapped son to imagine herself similarly
looking back over her life. Let us listen to
what she had to say as recorded on the tape:
“I wished to have children and this wish has
been granted to me; one boy died; the other,
however, the crippled one, would have been
sent to an institution if I had not taken over
his care. Though he is crippled and helpless,
he is after all my boy. And so I have made a
fuller life possible for him; I have made a
better human being out of my son.” At this
moment, there was an outburst of tears and,
crying, she continued: “As for myself, I can
look back peacefully on my life; for I can say
my life was full of meaning, and I have tried
hard to fulfill it; I have done my best—I
have done the best for my son. My life was
no failure!” Viewing her life as if from her
deathbed, she had suddenly been able to see
a meaning in it, a meaning which even
included all of her sufferings. By the same
token, however, it had become clear as well
that a life of short duration, like that, for
example, of her dead boy, could be so rich in
joy and love that it could contain more
meaning than a life lasting eighty years.
After a while I proceeded to another
question, this time addressing myself to the
whole group. The question was whether an
ape which was being used to develop
poliomyelitis serum, and for this reason
punctured again and again, would ever be able
to grasp the meaning of its suffering.
Unanimously, the group replied that of
course it would not; with its limited
intelligence, it could not enter into the world
of man, i.e., the only world in which the
meaning of its suffering would be
understandable. Then I pushed forward
with the following question: “And what
about man? Are you sure that the human
world is a terminal point

122 Man’s Search for Meaning
Logotherapy in a Nutshell
123
in the evolution of the cosmos? Is it not
conceivable that there is still another
dimension, a world beyond man’s world; a
world in which the question of an ultimate
meaning of human suffering would find an
answer?”
THE SUPER-MEANING
This ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds
and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities
of man; in logotherapy, we speak in this
context of a super-meaning. What is de­
manded of man is not, as some existential
philosophers teach, to endure the
meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his
incapacity to grasp its unconditional
meaningful-ness in rational terms. Logos is
deeper than logic.
A psychiatrist who goes beyond the concept
of the super-meaning will sooner or later be
embarrassed by his patients, just as I was
when my daughter at about six years of age
asked me the question, “Why do we speak
of the good Lord?” Whereupon I said, “Some
weeks ago, you were suffering from measles,
and then the good Lord sent you full
recovery.” However, the little girl was not
content; she retorted, “Well, but please,
Daddy, do not forget: in the first place, he
had sent me the measles.”
However, when a patient stands on the firm
ground of religious belief, there can be no
objection to making use of the therapeutic
effect of his religious convictions and
thereby drawing upon his spiritual resources.
In order to do so, the psychiatrist may put
himself in the place of the patient. That is
exactly what I did once, for instance, when a
rabbi from Eastern Europe turned to me and
told me his story. He had lost his first wife and
their six children in the concentration camp of
Auschwitz where they were gassed, and now
it turned out that his second wife was sterile. I
observed that procreation is not the only
meaning of life, for then life in itself would
become meaningless, and some-

thing which in itself is meaningless cannot be
rendered meaningful merely by its
perpetuation. However, the rabbi evaluated
his plight as an orthodox Jew in terms of
despair that there was no son of his own who
would ever say Kad-dish6 for him after his
death.
But I would not give up. I made a last
attempt to help him by inquiring whether he
did not hope to see his children again in
Heaven. However, my question was followed
by an outburst of tears, and now the true
reason for his despair came to the fore: he
explained that his children, since they died
as innocent martyrs,7 were thus found
worthy of the highest place in Heaven, but as
for himself he could not expect, as an old,
sinful man, to be assigned the same place. I
did not give up but retorted, “Is it not con­
ceivable, Rabbi, that precisely this was the
meaning of your surviving your children: that
you may be purified through these years of
suffering, so that finally you, too, though not
innocent like your children, may become
worthy of joining them in Heaven? Is it not
written in the Psalms that God preserves all
your tears?8 So perhaps none of your sufferings
were in vain.” For the first time in many
years he found relief from his suffering
through the new point of view which I was
able to open up to him.
LIFE’S TRANSITORINESS
Those things which seem to take meaning
away from human life include not only
suffering but dying as well. I never tire of
saying that the only really transitory aspects
of life are the potentialities; but as soon as
they are actualized, they are rendered
realities at that very moment; they are
15A prayer for the dead.
16L’kiddush basbem, i.e., for the sanctification of
God’s name.
17″Thou hast kept count of my tossings; put thou
my tears in thy
bottle! Are they not in thy book?” (Ps. 56, 8.)

124 Man’s Search for Meaning Logotherapy in a Nutshell 125
saved and delivered into the past, wherein
they are rescued and preserved from
transitoriness. For, in the past, nothing is
irretrievably lost but everything irrevocably
stored.
Thus, the transitoriness of our existence in
no way makes it meaningless. But it does
constitute our responsibleness; for
everything hinges upon our realizing the
essentially transitory possibilities. Man
constantly makes his choice concerning the
mass of present potentialities; which of these
will be condemned to nonbeing and which
will be actualized? Which choice will be
made an actuality once and forever, an
immortal “footprint in the sands of time”?
At any moment, man must decide, for better
or for worse, what will be the monument of
his existence.
Usually, to be sure, man considers only
the stubble field of transitoriness and
overlooks the full granaries of the past,
wherein he had salvaged once and for all
his deeds, his joys and also his sufferings.
Nothing can be undone, and nothing can be
done away with. I should say having been is
the surest kind of being.
Logotherapy, keeping in mind the essential
transitoriness ,, of human existence, is not
pessimistic but rather activistic. To express this
point figuratively we might say: The pessimist
resembles a man who observes with fear and sad­
ness that his wall calendar, from which he
daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each
passing day. On the other hand, the person who
attacks the problems of life actively is like a man
who removes each successive leaf from his calen­
dar and files it neatly and carefully away with its
predecessors, after first having jotted down a
few diary notes on the back. He can reflect
with pride and joy on all the richness set down
in these notes, on all the life he has already
lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him
if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any
reason to envy the young people whom he
sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost
youth? What reasons has he to envy a young
person? For

the possibilities that a young person has, the
future which is in store for him? “No, thank
you,” he will think. “Instead of possibilities, I
have realities in my past, not only the reality of
work done and of love loved, but of sufferings
bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the
things of which I am most proud, though these
are things which cannot inspire envy.”
LOGOTHERAPY AS A TECHNIQUE
A realistic fear, like the fear of death, cannot
be tran-quilized away by its psychodynamic
interpretation; on the other hand, a neurotic fear,
such as agoraphobia, cannot be cured by
philosophical understanding. However,
logotherapy has developed a special technique to
handle such cases, too. To understand what is
going on whenever this technique is used, we
take as a starting point a condition which is
frequently observed in neurotic individuals,
namely, anticipatory anxiety. It is characteristic
of this fear that it produces precisely that of
which the patient is afraid. An individual, for
example, who is afraid of blushing when he
enters a large room and faces many people will
actually be more prone to blush under these
circumstances. In this context, one might
amend the saying “The wish is father to the
thought” to “The fear is mother of the event.”
Ironically enough, in the same way that
fear brings to pass what one is afraid of,
likewise a forced intention makes impossible
what one forcibly wishes. This excessive
intention, or “hyper-intention,” as I call it, can
be observed particularly in cases of sexual
neurosis. The more a man tries to demonstrate
his sexual potency or a woman her ability to
experience orgasm, the less they are able to
succeed. Pleasure is, and must remain, a side-
effect or by-product, and is destroyed and
spoiled to the degree to which it is made a
goal in itself.

126 Man’s Search for Meaning Logotherapy in a Nutshell 127
In addition to excessive intention as
described above, excessive attention, or
“hyper-reflection,” as it is called in
logotherapy, may also be pathogenic (that is,
lead to sickness). The following clinical
report will indicate what I mean: A young
woman came to me complaining of being
frigid. The case history showed that in her
childhood she had been sexually abused by
her father. However, it had not been this
traumatic experience in itself which had
eventuated in her sexual neurosis, as could
easily be evidenced. For it turned out that,
through reading popular psychoanalytic
literature, the patient had lived constantly
with the fearful expectation of the toll which
her traumatic experience would someday
take. This anticipatory anxiety resulted both
in excessive intention to confirm her feminin­
ity and excessive attention centered upon
herself rather than upon her partner. This was
enough to incapacitate the patient for the
peak experience of sexual pleasure, since the
orgasm was made an object of intention, and
an object of attention as well, instead of
remaining an unintended effect of
unreflected dedication and surrender to the
partner. After undergoing short-term
logotherapy, the patient’s excessive attention
and intention of her ability to experience
orgasm had been “dereflected,” to introduce
another logo-therapeutic term. When her
attention was refocused toward the proper
object, i.e., the partner, orgasm established
itself spontaneously.9
Logotherapy bases its technique called
“paradoxical intention” on the twofold fact
that fear brings about that which one is
afraid of, and that hyper-intention makes
impossible what one wishes. In German I
described paradoxi-
9 In order to treat cases of sexual impotence, a
specific logothera-peutic technique has been
developed, based on the theory of hyper-intention and
hyper-reflection as sketched above (Viktor E. Frankl,
“The Pleasure Principle and Sexual Neurosis,” The
International Journal of Sexology, Vol. 5, No. 3 [1952],
pp. 128-30). Of course, this cannot be dealt with in this
brief presentation of the principles of logotherapy.

cal intention as early as 1939.10 In this approach
the phobic patient is invited to intend, even if
only for a moment, precisely that which he
fears.
Let me recall a case. A young physician
consulted me because of his fear of perspiring.
Whenever he expected an outbreak of
perspiration, this anticipatory anxiety was
enough to precipitate excessive sweating. In
order to cut this circle formation I advised the
patient, in the event that sweating should recur,
to resolve deliberately to show people how
much he could sweat. A week later he returned
to report that whenever he met anyone who
triggered his anticipatory anxiety, he said to
himself, “I only sweated out a quart before,
but now I’m going to pour at least ten
quarts!” The result was that, after suffering
from his phobia for four years, he was able,
after a single session, to free himself
permanently of it within one week.
The reader will note that this procedure
consists of a reversal of the patient’s attitude,
inasmuch as his fear is replaced by a
paradoxical wish. By this treatment, the wind
is taken out of the sails of the anxiety.
Such a procedure, however, must make use
of the specifically human capacity for self-
detachment inherent in a sense of humor.
This basic capacity to detach one from
oneself is actualized whenever the
logotherapeutic technique called paradoxical
intention is applied. At the same time, the
patient is enabled to put himself at a
distance from his own neurosis. A statement
consistent with this is found in Gordon W.
Allport’s book, The Individual and His
Religion: “The neurotic who learns to laugh
at himself may be on the way to self-
management, perhaps to cure.”11
18Viktor E. Frankl, “Zur medikamentosen
Unterstiitzung der Psy-
chotherapie bei Neurosen,” Schweizer Archiv fur
Neurologie und Psy-
chiatrie, Vol. 43, pp. 26-31.
19New York, The Macmillan Co., 1956, p. 92.

128 Man’s Search for Meaning Logotherapy in a Nutshell 129
Paradoxical intention is the empirical
validation and clinical application of
Allport’s statement.
A few more case reports may serve to clarify
this method further. The following patient
was a bookkeeper who had been treated by
many doctors and in several clinics without
any therapeutic success. When he was
admitted to my hospital department, he was
in extreme despair, confessing that he was
close to suicide. For some years, he had
suffered from a writer’s cramp which had
recently become so severe that he was in
danger of losing his job. Therefore, only
immediate short-term therapy could alleviate
the situation. In starting treatment, Dr. Eva
Kozdera recommended to the patient that he
do just the opposite of what he usually had
done; namely, instead of trying to write as
neatly and legibly as possible, to write with
the worst possible scrawl. He was advised to
say to himself, “Now I will show people what a
good scribbler I am!” And at the moment in
which he deliberately tried to scribble, he was
unable to do so. “I tried to scrawl but simply
could not do it,” he said the next day. Within
forty-eight hours the patient was in this way
freed from his writer’s cramp, and remained
free for the observation period after he had
been treated. He is a happy man again and
fully able to work.
A similar case, dealing, however, with
speaking rather than writing, was related to
me by a colleague in the Laryngological
Department of the Vienna Poliklinik Hos­
pital. It was the most severe case of stuttering
he had come across in his many years of
practice. Never in his life, as far as the
stutterer could remember, had he been free
from his speech trouble, even for a moment,
except once. This happened when he was
twelve years old and had hooked a ride on a
streetcar. When caught by the conductor, he
thought that the only way to escape would be
to elicit his sympathy, and so he tried to
demonstrate that he was just a poor
stuttering boy. At that moment, when he tried
to stutter, he

was unable to do it. Without meaning to, he
had practiced paradoxical intention, though
not for therapeutic purposes.
However, this presentation should not
leave the impression that paradoxical
intention is effective only in mono-
symptomatic cases. By means of this
logotherapeutic technique, my staff at the
Vienna Poliklinik Hospital has succeeded in
bringing relief even in obsessive-compulsive
neuroses of a most severe degree and
duration. I refer, for instance, to a woman
sixty-five years of age who had suffered for
sixty years from a washing compulsion. Dr.
Eva Kozdera started logotherapeutic
treatment by means of paradoxical
intention, and two months later the patient
was able to lead a normal life. Before
admission to the Neurological Department
of the Vienna Poliklinik Hospital, she had
confessed, “Life was hell for me.” Handi­
capped by her compulsion and
bacteriophobic obsession, she finally
remained in bed all day unable to do any
housework. It would not be accurate to say that
she is now completely free of symptoms, for an
obsession may come to her mind. However,
she is able to “joke about it,” as she says; in
short, to apply paradoxical intention.
Paradoxical intention can also be applied
in cases of sleep disturbance. The fear of
sleeplessness12 results in a hyper-intention to
fall asleep, which, in turn, incapacitates the
patient to do so. To overcome this particular
fear, I usually advise the patient not to try
to sleep but rather to try to do just the
opposite, that is, to stay awake as long as
possible. In other words, the hyper-intention
to fall asleep, arising from the anticipatory
anxiety of not being able to do so, must be
replaced by the paradoxical intention not to
fall asleep, which soon will be followed by
sleep.
Paradoxical intention is no panacea. Yet it
lends itself as
12 The fear of sleeplessness is, in the majority of cases,
due to the patient’s ignorance of the fact that the organism
provides itself by itself with the minimum amount of sleep
really needed.

130 Man’s Search for Meaning Logotherapy in a Nutshell 131
a useful tool in treating obsessive-compulsive
and phobic conditions, especially in cases
with underlying anticipatory anxiety.
Moreover, it is a short-term therapeutic
device. However, one should not conclude
that such a short-term therapy necessarily
results in only temporary therapeutic effects.
One of “the more common illusions of
Freudian orthodoxy,” to quote the late
Emil A. Gutheil, “is that the durability of
results corresponds to the length of ther­
apy.”13 In my files there is, for instance, the
case report of a patient to whom paradoxical
intention was administered more than
twenty years ago; the therapeutic effect
proved to be, nevertheless, a permanent one.
One of the most remarkable facts is that
paradoxical intention is effective regardless
of the etiological basis of the case concerned.
This confirms a statement once made by
Edith Weisskopf-Joelson: “Although
traditional psychotherapy has insisted that
therapeutic practices have to be based on
findings on etiology, it is possible that
certain factors might cause neuroses during
early childhood and that entirely different
factors might relieve neuroses during
adulthood.”14
As for the actual causation of neuroses,
apart from constitutional elements, whether
somatic or psychic in nature, such feedback
mechanisms as anticipatory anxiety seem to
be a major pathogenic factor. A given
symptom is responded to by a phobia, the
phobia triggers the symptom, and the
symptom, in turn, reinforces the phobia. A
similar chain of events, however, can be
observed in obsessive-compulsive cases in
which the patient fights the ideas which
haunt him.15 Thereby, however, he increases
their power to dis-
20American Journal of Psychotherapy, 10 (1956), p.
134.
21″Some Comments on a Viennese School of
Psychiatry,” The Jour
nal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51 (1955),
pp. 701-3.
22This is often motivated by the patient’s fear that
his obsessions
indicate an imminent or even actual psychosis;
the patient is not aware
of the empirical fact that an obsessive-compulsive
neurosis is immuniz-

turb him, since pressure precipitates
counterpressure. Again the symptom is
reinforced! On the other hand, as soon as
the patient stops fighting his obsessions and
instead tries to ridicule them by dealing with
them in an ironical way—by applying
paradoxical intention—the vicious circle is
cut, the symptom diminishes and finally
atrophies. In the fortunate case where there
is no existential vacuum which invites and
elicits the symptom, the patient will not only
succeed in ridiculing his neurotic fear but
finally will succeed in completely ignoring it.
As we see, anticipatory anxiety has to be
counteracted by paradoxical intention; hyper-
intention as well as hyper-reflection have to
be counteracted by dereflection; dereflec-tion,
however, ultimately is not possible except by
the patient’s orientation toward his specific
vocation and mission in life.16
It is not the neurotic’s self-concern,
whether pity or contempt, which breaks the
circle formation; the cue to cure is self-
transcendence!
THE COLLECTIVE NEUROSIS
Every age has its own collective neurosis,
and every age needs its own psychotherapy to
cope with it. The existential vacuum which is
the mass neurosis of the present time can be
described as a private and personal form of
nihilism; for nihilism can be defined as the
contention that being has no meaning. As
for psychotherapy, however, it will never be
able to cope with this state of affairs on a
mass scale if it does not keep itself free
from the impact and influence of
ing him against a formal psychosis rather than
endangering him in this direction.
16 This conviction is supported by Allport who
once said, “As the focus of striving shifts from the
conflict to selfless goals, the life as a whole becomes
sounder even though the neurosis may never completely
disappear” (op. cit., p. 95).

132 Man’s Search for Meaning Logotherapy in a Nutshell 133
the contemporary trends of a nihilistic
philosophy; otherwise it represents a
symptom of the mass neurosis rather than its
possible cure. Psychotherapy would not only
reflect a nihilistic philosophy but also, even
though unwillingly and unwittingly,
transmit to the patient what is actually a
caricature rather than a true picture of man.
First of all, there is a danger inherent in the
teaching of man’s “nothingbutness,” the
theory that man is nothing but the result of
biological, psychological and sociological
conditions, or the product of heredity and
environment. Such a view of man makes a
neurotic believe what he is prone to believe
anyway, namely, that he is the pawn and
victim of outer influences or inner
circumstances. This neurotic fatalism is
fostered and strengthened by a psychotherapy
which denies that man is free.
To be sure, a human being is a finite
thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not
freedom from conditions, but it is freedom
to take a stand toward the conditions. As I
once put it: “As a professor in two fields,
neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of
the extent to which man is subject to
biological, psychological and sociological
conditions. But in addition to being a
professor in two fields I am a survivor of
four camps—concentration camps, that is—
and as such I also bear witness to the
unexpected extent to which man is capable of
defying and braving even the worst conditions
conceivable.”17
CRITIQUE OF PAN-DETERMINISM
Psychoanalysis has often been blamed for its
so-called pan-sexualism. I, for one, doubt
whether this reproach has ever
17 “Value Dimensions in Teaching,” a color
television film produced by Hollywood Animators,
Inc., for the California Junior College Association.

been legitimate. However, there is
something which seems to me to be an even
more erroneous and dangerous assumption,
namely, that which I call “pan-
determinism.” By that I mean the view of
man which disregards his capacity to take a
stand toward any conditions whatsoever.
Man is not fully conditioned and determined
but rather determines himself whether he
gives in to conditions or stands up to them.
In other words, man is ultimately self-
determining. Man does not simply exist but
always decides what his existence will be,
what he will become in the next moment.
By the same token, every human being
has the freedom to change at any instant.
Therefore, we can predict his future only
within the large framework of a statistical
survey referring to a whole group; the
individual personality, however, remains
essentially unpredictable. The basis for any
predictions would be represented by
biological, psychological or sociological
conditions. Yet one of the main features of
human existence is the capacity to rise above
such conditions, to grow beyond them. Man
is capable of changing the world for the
better if possible, and of changing himself
for the better if necessary.
Let me cite the case of Dr. J. He was the
only man I ever encountered in my whole life
whom I would dare to call a
Mephistophelean being, a satanic figure. At
that time he was generally called “the mass
murderer of Steinhof” (the large mental
hospital in Vienna). When the Nazis started
their euthanasia program, he held all the
strings in his hands and was so fanatic in the
job assigned to him that he tried not to let
one single psychotic individual escape the
gas chamber. After the war, when I came
back to Vienna, I asked what had happened
to Dr. J. “He had been imprisoned by the
Russians in one of the isolation cells of
Steinhof,” they told me. “The next day,
however, the door of his cell stood open
and Dr. J. was never seen again.”

134 Man’s Search for
Meaning Logotherapy in a Nutshell 135
Later I was convinced that, like others, he
had with the help of his comrades made his
way to South America. More recently,
however, I was consulted by a former
Austrian diplomat who had been imprisoned
behind the Iron Curtain for many years, first
in Siberia and then in the famous Lubianka
prison in Moscow. While I was examining
him neurologically, he suddenly asked me
whether I happened to know Dr. J. After my
affirmative reply he continued: “I made his
acquaintance in Lubianka. There he died, at
about the age of forty, from cancer of the
urinary bladder. Before he died, however, he
showed himself to be the best comrade you can
imagine! He gave consolation to everybody.
He lived up to the highest conceivable moral
standard. He was the best friend I ever met
during my long years in prison!”
This is the story of Dr. J., “the mass
murderer of Stein-hof.” How can we dare to
predict the behavior of man? We may predict
the movements of a machine, of an automaton;
more than this, we may even try to predict the
mechanisms or “dynamisms” of the human
psyche as well. But man is more than psyche.
Freedom, however, is not the last word.
Freedom is only part of the story and half of
the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect
of the whole phenomenon whose positive
aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in
danger of degenerating into mere
arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of
responsibleness. That is why / recommend
that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast
be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility
on the West Coast.
THE PSYCHIATRIC CREDO
There is nothing conceivable which would
so condition a man as to leave him without
the slightest freedom. Therefore, a residue of
freedom, however limited it may be, is left

to man in neurotic and even psychotic cases.
Indeed, the innermost core of the patient’s
personality is not even touched by a
psychosis.
An incurably psychotic individual may lose
his usefulness but yet retain the dignity of a
human being. This is my psychiatric credo.
Without it I should not think it worthwhile to
be a psychiatrist. For whose sake? Just for the
sake of a damaged brain machine which
cannot be repaired? If the patient were not
definitely more, euthanasia would be justified.
PSYCHIATRY REHUMANIZED
For too long a time—for half a century, in
fact—psychiatry tried to interpret the human
mind merely as a mechanism, and
consequently the therapy of mental disease
merely in terms of a technique. I believe
this dream has been dreamt out. What now
begins to loom on the horizon are not the
sketches of a psychologized medicine but
rather those of a humanized psychiatry.
A doctor, however, who would still interpret
his own role mainly as that of a technician
would confess that he sees in his patient
nothing more than a machine, instead of
seeing the human being behind the diseasel
A human being is not one thing among
others; things determine each other, but man
is ultimately self-determining. What he
becomes—within the limits of endowment
and environment—he has made out of
himself. In the concentration camps, for
example, in this living laboratory and on this
testing ground, we watched and witnessed
some of our comrades behave like swine while
others behaved like saints. Man has both
potentialities within himself; which one is
actualized depends on decisions but not on
conditions.

136 Man’s Search for Meaning
Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know
man as he really is. After all, man is that being who in­
vented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also
that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with
the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.
POSTSCRIPT 1984
The Case for a
Tragic Optimism*
Dedicated to the memory of Edith Weisskopf-Joelson, whose
pioneering efforts in logotherapy in the United States began
as early as 1955 and whose contributions to the field have
been invaluable.

LET us FIRST ASK OURSELVES WHAT SHOULD BE understood by “a
tragic optimism.” In brief it means that one is, and remains,
optimistic in spite of the “tragic triad,” as it is called in
logotherapy, a triad which consists of those aspects of
human existence which may be circumscribed by: (1) pain;
(2) guilt; and (3) death. This chapter, in fact, raises the
question, How is it possible to say yes to life in spite of all
that? How, to pose the question differently, can life retain
its potential meaning in spite of its tragic aspects? After all,
“saying yes to life in spite of everything,” to use the phrase
in which the title of a German book of mine is couched,
presupposes that life is potentially meaningful under any
conditions, even those which are most miserable. And this
in turn presupposes the human capacity to creatively turn
life’s negative aspects into something positive or construc­
tive. In other words, what matters is to make the best of any
given situation. “The best,” however, is that which in Latin
is called optimum—hence the reason I speak of a tragic
optimism, that is, an optimism in the face of tragedy and in
• This chapter is based on a lecture I presented at the Third World
Congress of Logotherapy, Regensburg University, West Germany, June
1983.
139

140 Man’s Search for Meaning
view of the human potential which at its best always allows
for: (1) turning suffering into a human achievement and
accomplishment; (2) deriving from guilt the opportunity
to change oneself for the better; and (3) deriving from life’s
transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action.
It must be kept in mind, however, that optimism is not
anything to be commanded or ordered. One cannot even
force oneself to be optimistic indiscriminately, against all
odds, against all hope. And what is true for hope is also
true for the other two components of the triad inasmuch as
faith and love cannot be commanded or ordered either.
To the European, it is a characteristic of the American
culture that, again and again, one is commanded and or­
dered to “be happy.” But happiness cannot be pursued; it
must ensue. One must have a reason to “be happy.” Once
the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automati­
cally. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of
happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy,
last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning
inherent and dormant in a given situation.
This need for a reason is similar in another specifically
human phenomenon—laughter. If you want anyone to
laugh you have to provide him with a reason, e.g., you have
to tell him a joke. In no way is it possible to evoke real
laughter by urging him, or having him urge himself, to
laugh. Doing so would be the same as urging people posed
in front of a camera to say “cheese,” only to find that in the
finished photographs their faces are frozen in artificial
smiles.
In logotherapy, such a behavior pattern is called “hyper-
intention.” It plays an important role in the causation of
sexual neurosis, be it frigidity or impotence. The more a
patient, instead of forgetting himself through giving him­
self, directly strives for orgasm, i.e., sexual pleasure, the
more this pursuit of sexual pleasure becomes self-defeating.
The Case for a Tragic Optimism 141
Indeed, what is called “the pleasure principle” is, rather, a
fun-spoiler.
Once an individual’s search for a meaning is successful, it
not only renders him happy but also gives him the capabil­
ity to cope with suffering. And what happens if one’s grop­
ing for a meaning has been in vain? This may well result in
a fatal condition. Let us recall, for instance, what some­
times happened in extreme situations such as prisoner-of-
war camps or concentration camps. In the first, as I was told
by American soldiers, a behavior pattern crystallized to
which they referred as “give-up-itis.” In the concentration
camps, this behavior was paralleled by those who one morn­
ing, at five, refused to get up and go to work and instead
stayed in the hut, on the straw wet with urine and feces.
Nothing—neither warnings nor threats—could induce
them to change their minds. And then something typical
occurred: they took out a cigarette from deep down in a
pocket where they had hidden it and started smoking. At
that moment we knew that for the next forty-eight hours or
so we would watch them dying. Meaning orientation had
subsided, and consequently the seeking of immediate plea­
sure had taken over.
Is this not reminiscent of another parallel, a parallel that
confronts us day by day? I think of those youngsters who,
on a worldwide scale, refer to themselves as the “no future”
generation. To be sure, it is not just a cigarette to which
they resort; it is drugs.
In fact, the drug scene is one aspect of a more general
mass phenomenon, namely the feeling of meaninglessness
resulting from a frustration of our existential needs which
in turn has become a universal phenomenon in our indus­
trial societies. Today it is not only logotherapists who claim
that the feeling of meaninglessness plays an ever increasing
role in the etiology of neurosis. As Irvin D. Yalom of Stan­
ford University states in Existential Psychotherapy: “Of

142 Man’s Search for Meaning
forty consecutive patients applying for therapy at a psychi­
atric outpatient clinic . . . twelve (30 percent) had some
major problem involving meaning (as adjudged from self-
ratings, therapists, or independent judges).”1 Thousands of
miles east of Palo Alto, the situation differs only by 1 per­
cent; the most recent pertinent statistics indicate that in
Vienna, 29 percent of the population complain that mean­
ing is missing from their lives.
As to the causation of the feeling of meaninglessness, one
may say, albeit in an oversimplifying vein, that people have
enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the
means but no meaning. To be sure, some do not even have
the means. In particular, I think of the mass of people who
are today unemployed. Fifty years ago, I published a study2
devoted to a specific type of depression I had diagnosed in
cases of young patients suffering from what I called “un­
employment neurosis.” And I could show that this neurosis
really originated in a twofold erroneous identification:
being jobless was equated with being useless, and being
useless was equated with having a meaningless life. Con­
sequently, whenever I succeeded in persuading the patients
to volunteer in youth organizations, adult education, public
libraries and the like—in other words, as soon as they could
fill their abundant free time with some sort of unpaid but
meaningful activity—their depression disappeared although
their economic situation had not changed and their hunger
was the same. The truth is that man does not live by
welfare alone.
Along with unemployment neurosis, which is triggered
by an individual’s socioeconomic situation, there are other
types of depression which are traceable back to psycho-
23Basic Books, New York, 1980, p. 448.
24″Wirtschaftskrise und Seelenleben vom Standpunkt des Jugend-
beraters,” Sozialdrztliche Rundschau, Vol. 4 (1933), pp. 43-46.
The Case for a Tragic Optimism 143
dynamic or biochemical conditions, whichever the case may
be. Accordingly, psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy are
indicated respectively. Insofar as the feeling of meaningless-
ness is concerned, however, we should not overlook and
forget that, per se, it is not a matter of pathology; rather
than being the sign and symptom of a neurosis, it is, I
would say, the proof of one’s humanness. But although it
is not caused by anything pathological, it may well cause a
pathological reaction; in other words, it is potentially
pathogenic. Just consider the mass neurotic syndrome so
pervasive in the young generation: there is ample empirical
evidence that the three facets of this syndrome—depression,
aggression, addiction—are due to what is called in logo-
therapy “the existential vacuum,” a feeling of emptiness
and meaninglessness.
It goes without saying that not each and every case of
depression is to be traced back to a feeling of meaningless­
ness, nor does suicide—in which depression sometimes
eventuates—always result from an existential vacuum. But
even if each and every case of suicide had not been under­
taken out of a feeling of meaninglessness, it may well be
that an individual’s impulse to take his life would have
been overcome had he been aware of some meaning and
purpose worth living for.
If, thus, a strong meaning orientation plays a decisive role
in the prevention of suicide, what about intervention in
cases in which there is a suicide risk? As a young doctor I
spent four years in Austria’s largest state hospital where I
was in charge of the pavilion in which severely depressed
patients were accommodated—most of them having been
admitted after a suicide attempt. I once calculated that I
must have explored twelve thousand patients during those
four years. What accumulated was quite a store of experi­
ence from which I still draw whenever I am confronted

144 Man’s Search for Meaning
with someone who is prone to suicide. I explain to such a
person that patients have repeatedly told me how happy
they were that the suicide attempt had not been successful;
weeks, months, years later, they told me, it turned out that
there was a solution to their problem, an answer to their
question, a meaning to their life. “Even if things only take
such a good turn in one of a thousand cases,” my explana­
tion continues, “who can guarantee that in your case it will
not happen one day, sooner or later? But in the first place,
you have to live to see the day on which it may happen, so
you have to survive in order to see that day dawn, and from
now on the responsibility for survival does not leave you.”
Regarding the second facet of the mass neurotic syn­
drome—aggression—let me cite an experiment once con­
ducted by Carolyn Wood Sherif. She had succeeded in
artificially building up mutual aggressions between groups
of boy scouts, and observed that the aggressions only sub­
sided when the youngsters dedicated themselves to a collec­
tive purpose—that is, the joint task of dragging out of the
mud a carriage in which food had to be brought to their
camp. Immediately, they were not only challenged but also
united by a meaning they had to fulfill.3
As for the third issue, addiction, I am reminded of the
findings presented by Annemarie von Forstmeyer who
noted that, as evidenced by tests and statistics, 90 percent of
the alcoholics she studied had suffered from an abysmal
feeling of meaninglessness. Of the drug addicts studied by
Stanley Krippner, 100 percent believed that “things seemed
meaningless.”4
25For further information on this experiment, see Viktor E. Frankl,
The Unconscious God, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1978, p.
140;
and Viktor E. Frankl, The Unheard Cry for Meaning, New
York,
Simon and Schuster, 1978, p. 36.
26For further information, see The Unconscious God, pp. 97-100; and
The Unheard Cry for Meaning, pp. 26-28.
The Case for a Tragic Optimism 145
Now let us turn to the question of meaning itself. To
begin with, I would like to clarify that, in the first place,
the logotherapist is concerned with the potential meaning
inherent and dormant in all the single situations one has to
face throughout his or her life. Therefore, I will not be
elaborating here on the meaning of one’s life as a whole,
although I do not deny that such a long-range meaning
does exist. To invoke an analogy, consider a movie: it con­
sists of thousands upon thousands of individual pictures,
and each of them makes sense and carries a meaning, yet
the meaning of the whole film cannot be seen before its last
sequence is shown. However, we cannot understand the
whole film without having first understood each of its com­
ponents, each of the individual pictures. Isn’t it the same
with life? Doesn’t the final meaning of life, too, reveal itself,
if at all, only at its end, on the verge of death? And doesn’t
this final meaning, too, depend on whether or not the po­
tential meaning of each single situation has been actualized
to the best of the respective individual’s knowledge and
belief?
The fact remains that meaning, and its perception, as
seen from the logotherapeutic angle, is completely down to
earth rather than afloat in the air or resident in an ivory
tower. Sweepingly, I would locate the cognition of meaning
—of the personal meaning of a concrete situation—midway
between an “aha” experience along the lines of Karl
Biihler’s concept and a Gestalt perception, say, along the
lines of Max Wertheimer’s theory. The perception of mean­
ing differs from the classical concept of Gestalt perception
insofar as the latter implies the sudden awareness of a
“figure” on a “ground,” whereas the perception of mean­
ing, as I see it, more specifically boils down to becoming
aware of a possibility against the background of reality or,
to express it in plain words, to becoming aware of what can
be done about a given situation.

146 Man’s Search for Meaning
And how does a human being go about finding meaning?
As Charlotte Buhler has stated: “All we can do is study the
lives of people who seem to have found their answers to the
questions of what ultimately human life is about as against
those who have not.”6 In addition to such a biographical
approach, however, we may as well embark on a biological
approach. Logotherapy conceives of conscience as a
prompter which, if need be, indicates the direction in
which we have to move in a given life situation. In order to
carry out such a task, conscience must apply a measuring
stick to the situation one is confronted with, and this situa­
tion has to be evaluated in the light of a set of criteria,
in the light of a hierarchy of values. These values, how­
ever, cannot be espoused and adopted by us on a conscious
level—they are something that we are. They have crystal­
lized in the course of the evolution of our species; they are
founded on our biological past and are rooted in our bio­
logical depth. Konrad Lorenz might have had something
similar in mind when he developed the concept of a biologi­
cal a priori, and when both of us recently discussed my own
view on the biological foundation of the valuing process, he
enthusiastically expressed his accord. In any case, if a pre-
reflective axiological self-understanding exists, we may as­
sume that it is ultimately anchored in our biological her­
itage.
As logotherapy teaches, there are three main avenues on
which one arrives at meaning in life. The first is by creating
a work or by doing a deed. The second is by experiencing
something or encountering someone; in other words, mean­
ing can be found not only in work but also in love. Edith
Weisskopf-Joelson observed in this context that the logo-
therapeutic “notion that experiencing can be as valuable as
achieving is therapeutic because it compensates for our
one-
5 “Basic Theoretical Concepts of Humanistic Psychology,” Ameri­
can Psychologist, XXVI (April 1971), p. 378.
The Case for a Tragic Optimism 147
sided emphasis on the external world of achievement at the
expense of the internal world of experience.”6
Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning
in life: even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation,
facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may
grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself. He
may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph. Again it was
Edith Weisskopf-Joelson who, as mentioned on p. 118, once
expressed the hope that logotherapy “may help counteract
certain unhealthy trends in the present-day culture of the
United States, where the incurable sufferer is given very
little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to con­
sider it ennobling rather than degrading” so that “he is not
only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy.”
For a quarter of a century I ran the neurological depart­
ment of a general hospital and bore witness to my patients’
capacity to turn their predicaments into human achieve­
ments. In addition to such practical experience, empirical
evidence is also available which supports the possibility that
one may find meaning in suffering. Researchers at the Yale
University School of Medicine “have been impressed by the
number of prisoners of war of the Vietnam war who ex­
plicitly claimed that although their captivity was ex­
traordinarily stressful—filled with torture, disease, malnu­
trition, and solitary confinement—they nevertheless . . .
benefited from the captivity experience, seeing it as a
growth experience.”7
But the most powerful arguments in favor of “a tragic
optimism” are those which in Latin are called argumenta
ad hominem. Jerry Long, to cite an example, is a living
testimony to “the defiant power of the human spirit,” as it
27″The Place of Logotherapy in the World Today,” The Interna
tional Forum for Logotherapy, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1980), pp. 3-7.
28W. H. Sledge, J. A. Boydstun and A. J. Rabe, “Self-Concept
Changes
Related to War Captivity,” Arch. Gen. Psychiatry, 37 (1980), pp.
430-
443-

148 Man’s Search for Meaning
is called in logotherapy.8 To quote the Texarkana Gazette,
“Jerry Long has been paralyzed from his neck down since a
diving accident which rendered him a quadriplegic three
years ago. He was 17 when the accident occurred. Today
Long can use his mouth stick to type. He ‘attends’ two
courses at Community College via a special telephone. The
intercom allows Long to both hear and participate in class
discussions. He also occupies his time by reading, watching
television and writing.” And in a letter I received from
him, he writes: “I view my life as being abundant with
meaning and purpose. The attitude that I adopted on that
fateful day has become my personal credo for life: I broke
my neck, it didn’t break me. I am currently enrolled in my
first psychology course in college. I believe that my handi­
cap will only enhance my ability to help others. I know that
without the suffering, the growth that I have achieved
would have been impossible.”
Is this to say that suffering is indispensable to the dis­
covery of meaning? In no way. I only insist that meaning is
available in spite of—nay, even through—suffering, pro­
vided, as noted in Part Two of this book, that the suffering
is unavoidable. If it is avoidable, the meaningful thing to
do is to remove its cause, for unnecessary suffering is maso­
chistic rather than heroic. If, on the other hand, one cannot
change a situation that causes his suffering, he can still
choose his attitude.9 Long had not chosen to break his
29″The Defiant Power of the Human Spirit” was in fact the title
of
a paper presented by Long at the Third World Congress of
Logotherapy
in June 1983.
30I won’t forget an interview I once heard on Austrian TV, given
by
a Polish cardiologist who, during World War II, had helped
organize
the Warsaw ghetto upheaval. “What a heroic deed,” exclaimed the
re
porter. “Listen,” calmly replied the doctor, “to take a gun and
shoot
is no great thing; but if the SS leads you to a gas chamber or to a
mass
grave to execute you on the spot, and you can’t do anything about
it—
except for going your way with dignity—you see, this is what I
would
call heroism.” Attitudinal heroism, so to speak.

The Case for a Tragic Optimism 149
neck, but he did decide not to let himself be broken by
what had happened to him.
As we see, the priority stays with creatively changing the
situation that causes us to suffer. But the superiority goes to
the “know-how to suffer,” if need be. And there is empirical
evidence that—literally—the “man in the street” is of the
same opinion. Austrian public-opinion pollsters recently
reported that those held in highest esteem by most of the
people interviewed are neither the great artists nor the
great scientists, neither the great statesmen nor the great
sports figures, but those who master a hard lot with their
heads held high.
In turning to the second aspect of the tragic triad,
namely guilt, I would like to depart from a theological
concept that has always been fascinating to me. I refer to
what is called mysterium iniquitatis, meaning, as I see it,
that a crime in the final analysis remains inexplicable in­
asmuch as it cannot be fully traced back to biological,
psychological and/or sociological factors. Totally explain­
ing one’s crime would be tantamount to explaining away
his or her guilt and to seeing in him or her not a free and
responsible human being but a machine to be repaired.
Even criminals themselves abhor this treatment and prefer
to be held responsible for their deeds. From a convict serv­
ing his sentence in an Illinois penitentiary I received a letter
in which he deplored that “the criminal never has a chance
to explain himself. He is offered a variety of excuses to
choose from. Society is blamed and in many instances the
blame is put on the victim.” Furthermore, when I addressed
the prisoners in San Quentin, I told them that “you are
human beings like me, and as such you were free to commit
a crime, to become guilty. Now, however, you are responsi­
ble for overcoming guilt by rising above it, by growing

150 Man’s Search for Meaning
beyond yourselves, by changing for the better.” They felt
understood.10 And from Frank E.W., an ex-prisoner, I re­
ceived a note which stated that he had “started a logother-
apy group for ex-felons. We are 27 strong and the newer
ones are staying out of prison through the peer strength of
those of us from the original group. Only one returned—
and he is now free.”11
As for the concept of collective guilt, I personally think
that it is totally unjustified to hold one person responsible
for the behavior of another person or a collective of persons.
Since the end of World War II I have not become weary of
publicly arguing against the collective guilt concept.12
Sometimes, however, it takes a lot of didactic tricks to de­
tach people from their superstitions. An American woman
once confronted me with the reproach, “How can you still
write some of your books in German, Adolf Hitler’s lan­
guage?” In response, I asked her if she had knives in her
kitchen, and when she answered that she did, I acted dis­
mayed and shocked, exclaiming, “How can you still use
knives after so many killers have used them to stab and
murder their victims?” She stopped objecting to my writing
books in German.
The third aspect of the tragic triad concerns death. But it
concerns life as well, for at any time each of the moments of
which life consists is dying, and that moment will never
recur. And yet is not this transitoriness a reminder that
challenges us to make the best possible use of each moment
31See also Joseph B. Fabry, The Pursuit of Meaning, New York,
Harper and Row, 1980.
32Cf. Viktor E. Frankl, The Unheard Cry for Meaning, New York,
Simon and Schuster, 1978, pp. 42-43.
33See also Viktor E. Frankl, Psychotherapy and Existentialism, New
York, Simon and Schuster, 1967.
The Case for a Tragic Optimism 151
of our lives? It certainly is, and hence my imperative: Live
as if you were living for the second time and had acted as
wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.
In fact, the opportunities to act properly, the potentiali­
ties to fulfill a meaning, are affected by the irreversibility of
our lives. But also the potentialities alone are so affected.
For as soon as we have used an opportunity and have actu­
alized a potential meaning, we have done so once and for
all. We have rescued it into the past wherein it has been
safely delivered and deposited. In the past, nothing is ir­
retrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is
irrevocably stored and treasured. To be sure, people tend to
see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and
forget the full granaries of the past into which they have
brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves
loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone
through with courage and dignity.
From this one may see that there is no reason to pity old
people. Instead, young people should envy them. It is true
that the old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the
future. But they have more than that. Instead of possibili­
ties in the future, they have realities in the past—the po­
tentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have
fulfilled, the values they have realized—and nothing and
nobody can ever remove these assets from the past.
In view of the possibility of finding meaning in suffering,
life’s meaning is an unconditional one, at least potentially.
That unconditional meaning, however, is paralleled by the
unconditional value of each and every person. It is that
which warrants the indelible quality of the dignity of man.
Just as life remains potentially meaningful under any con­
ditions, even those which are most miserable, so too does
the value of each and every person stay with him or her,
and it does so because it is based on the values that he or

152 Man’s Search for Meaning
she has realized in the past, and is not contingent on the
usefulness that he or she may or may not retain in the
present.
More specifically, this usefulness is usually defined in
terms of functioning for the benefit of society. But today’s
society is characterized by achievement orientation, and
consequently it adores people who are successful and happy
and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores
the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing
blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the
sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of useful­
ness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that
an individual’s value stems only from his present useful­
ness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal incon­
sistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hit­
ler’s program, that is to say, “mercy” killing of all those
who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old
age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever
handicap they may suffer.
Confounding the dignity of man with mere usefulness
arises from a conceptual confusion that in turn may be
traced back to the contemporary nihilism transmitted on
many an academic campus and many an analytical couch.
Even in the setting of training analyses such an indoctrina­
tion may take place. Nihilism does not contend that there is
nothing, but it states that everything is meaningless. And
George A. Sargent was right when he promulgated the con­
cept of “learned meaninglessness.” He himself remembered
a therapist who said, “George, you must realize that the
world is a joke. There is no justice, everything is random.
Only when you realize this will you understand how silly it
is to take yourself seriously. There is no grand purpose in
the universe. It just is. There’s no particular meaning
The Case for a Tragic Optimism 153
in what decision you make today about how to act.”13
One must not generalize such a criticism. In principle,
training is indispensable, but if so, therapists should see
their task in immunizing the trainee against nihilism rather
than inoculating him with the cynicism that is a defense
mechanism against their own nihilism.
Logotherapists may even conform to some of the training
and licensing requirements stipulated by the other schools
of psychotherapy. In other words, one may howl with the
wolves, if need be, but when doing so, one should be, I
would urge, a sheep in wolf’s clothing. There is no need
to become untrue to the basic concept of man and the
principles of the philosophy of life inherent in logotherapy.
Such a loyalty is not hard to maintain in view of the fact
that, as Elisabeth S. Lukas once pointed out, “throughout
the history of psychotherapy, there has never been a school
as undogmatic as logotherapy.”14 And at the First World
Congress of Logotherapy (San Diego, California, November
6-8, 1980) I argued not only for the rehumanization of
psychotherapy but also for what I called “the degurufica-
tion of logotherapy.” My interest does not lie in raising
parrots that just rehash “their master’s voice,” but rather in
passing the torch to “independent and inventive, innovative
and creative spirits.”
Sigmund Freud once asserted, “Let one attempt to expose
a number of the most diverse people uniformly to hunger.
34″Transference and Countertransference in Logotherapy,” The
International Forum for Logotherapy, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Fall/Winter
1982),
pp. 115-18.
35Logotherapy is not imposed on those who are interested in psycho
therapy. It is not comparable to an Oriental bazaar but rather
to a
supermarket. In the former, the customer is talked into buying
some
thing. In the latter, he is shown, and offered, various things from
which
he may pick what he deems usable and valuable.

154 Man’s Search for Meaning
With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger all in­
dividual differences will blur, and in their stead will appear
the uniform expression of the one unstilled urge.” Thank
heaven, Sigmund Freud was spared knowing the concentra­
tion camps from the inside. His subjects lay on a couch
designed in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the
filth of Auschwitz. There, the “individual differences” did
not “blur” but, on the contrary, people became more dif­
ferent; people unmasked themselves, both the swine and the
saints. And today you need no longer hesitate to use the
word “saints”: think of Father Maximilian Kolbe who was
starved and finally murdered by an injection of carbolic
acid at Auschwitz and who in 1983 was canonized.
You may be prone to blame me for invoking examples
that are the exceptions to the rule. “Sed omnia praeclara tarn
difficilia quam rara sunt” (but everything great is just as
difficult to realize as it is rare to find) reads the last
sentence of the Ethics of Spinoza. You may of course ask
whether we really need to refer to “saints.” Wouldn’t it
suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they
form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a
minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join
the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything
will become still worse unless each of us does his best.
So, let us be alert—alert in a twofold sense: Since
Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And
since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
About the Author
Viktor E. Frankl is Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry
at the University of Vienna Medical School. He is the founder
of what has come to be called the Third Viennese School of
Psychotherapy (after Freud’s psychoanalysis and Adler’s in­
dividual psychology)—the school of logotherapy. His work
has been called “perhaps the most significant thinking since
Freud and Adler” by the American Journal of Psychiatry.
Born in 1905, Dr. Frankl received the degrees of Doctor of
Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of
Vienna. During World War II he spent three years at Ausch­
witz, Dachau, and other concentration camps.
Dr. Frankl first published in 1924 in the International Journal
of Psychoanalysis and has since published thirty books, which
have been translated into twenty-three languages, including
Japanese and Chinese. He has been a visiting professor at
Harvard, as well as at universities in Pittsburgh, San Diego,
and Dallas. Honorary doctoral degrees have been conferred
upon him by twenty-seven universities, and the American Psy­
chiatric Association has honored him with the Oskar Pfister
Award. He has been a guest lecturer at universities throughout
the world and has made more than ninety lecture tours
throughout the United States alone.

Final Core Paper

A reflective essay with Anzaldúa or Satrapi & other Core friends 

Due on Canvas on Monday, March 16th by 11:59pm

Assignment

Your assignment is to reflect on your second quarter of Core as it relates to your life and your world.  Use close analysis of Core texts (at least one of them will be Anzaldúa or Satrapi) to help you understand and document what you’ve learned about yourself, your history, your communities, and the roles you play.  Include memories and dialogue to help with specificity. This is not a thesis-driven paper, so while analytic engagement with the text is key, you don’t need to support an overall argument. We are expecting 4-5 pages of writing (please do not do any weird spacing). 

*Please include a works cited page in MLA at the end of your paper!

*Please leave some instructor comments in the notes section of your submission (we will be leaving your overall comments as well)!

Mention meaningfully at least:

· At least 4 primary texts (Marx, Thoreau, Plato, King, Sor Juana, Woolf, Malcolm X, Anzaldúa, Satrapi, or Frankl)

· At least 1 auxiliary source (lectures from Kehler, or Camblin; the film 13th; “The Hamlet Fire,” Harris-Perry, McIntosh, any other articles in the Reader)

· 2 items from your annotations or homework assignments (item = an excerpt of ideas) or ideas expressed in your previous papers

· 1 memorable or interesting moment in class (from the large and small group discussions, fishbowl discussions, Malcolm X Identity activity, Little Women lesson, debate on the knoll, group presentations, videos, or other activities and conversations)

· 1 conversation or experience outside of class

Audience

Yourself: to know yourself better in the present, and to provide a reference point for yourself in the future.  Us, as your instructors. Anyone with whom you’d like to share this work (friend, parent, partner).

Options

1. My Borderlands. In what way or ways do you live in your own “borderlands/la frontera”?  This could be culturally, economically, linguistically, politically, religiously, sexually, gender-wise, or otherwise. Using Anzaldúa’s approach, incorporate research, myth, imagery, poetry, and memoir to articulate and explore the productive and valuable place of “both and somewhere in between.” What are the gifts of the borderlands? What insights have you developed about life in the borderlands? How do you move forward, knowing what you know?

0. Creating My Identity. How are you shaping your identity, and how has it been previously shaped by society?  Explore the development of your identity in connection with your political awareness and social alignments (e.g. your behavior, appearance, style of dress, or name; identifying with particular groups). Tell your story, borrowing from Satrapi’s mix of childhood and adolescent memoir, pathos, humor, minimalism, and/or the incorporation of a visual art element. What insights have you developed through your Core experience about who you are and what matters to you? How do you move forward, knowing what you know?

0. The Myths of My Tribe.  Anzaldúa proclaims that she no longer believes all the myths of the tribe into which she was born.  What changes in perspective about the “myths of your tribe” have arisen in you over the course of the quarter?  Any subtle (or shattering!) realizations about your history, community, or nation? How are you seeing yourself as a citizen or resident? How do you move forward, knowing what you know?

Rubric
Instructor’s Evaluation	Eval
Piece is loaded with textual reference  (several relevant quotes from all required sources) and makes sophisticated philosophical use of it.  Ideas are true and accurate to the authors represented.  Has an original and specific point of view that is well supported and clearly conveyed.  Shows clarity of thinking and depth of engagement.  Overall, the piece is engaging and polished.   Includes works cited page.	Excellent
Piece has minimum textual reference (uses all required sources) and makes interesting, relevant use of it.  Ideas are true and accurate to the authors represented.  Has a point of view. Overall, the piece is engaging and somewhat polished.   Includes works cited page.	Good
Piece has some textual references that are mostly relevant and fruitful. Has some sense of point of view.  Ideas are mostly accurate to the authors represented. Piece may be engaging, but may need further clarity and depth to be more successful. Might be somewhat short.	Satisfactory
Piece may need more relevant textual reference and may need a stronger sense of point of view.  There may be inaccuracies. May need much more depth, clarity, and cohesion. Might be much shorter than expected.	NP
Instructor’s Overall Comments to Student

To my parents

I
INTRODUCTION

n the second millennium B.C., while the Elam nation was developing a
civilization alongside Babylon, Indo-European invaders gave their name to

the immense Iranian plateau where they settled. The word “Iran” was derived
from “Ayryana Vaejo,” which means “the origin of the Aryans.” These people
were semi-nomads whose descendants were the Medes and the Persians. The
Medes founded the first Iranian nation in the seventh century B.C.; it was later
destroyed by Cyrus the Great. He established what became one of the largest
empires of the ancient world, the Persian Empire, in the sixth century B.C. Iran
was referred to as Persia — its Greek name — until 1935 when Reza Shah, the
father of the last Shah of Iran, asked everyone to call the country Iran.

Iran was rich. Because of its wealth and its geographic location, it invited
attacks: From Alexander the Great, from its Arab neighbors to the west, from
Turkish and Mongolian conquerors, Iran was often subject to foreign
domination. Yet the Persian language and culture withstood these invasions.
The invaders assimilated into this strong culture, and in some ways they
became Iranians themselves.

In the twentieth century, Iran entered a new phase. Reza Shah decided to
modernize and westernize the country, but meanwhile a fresh source of wealth
was discovered: oil. And with the oil came another invasion. The West,
particularly Great Britain, wielded a strong influence on the Iranian economy.
During the Second World War, the British, Soviets, and Americans asked Reza
Shah to ally himself with them against Germany. But Reza Shah, who
sympathized with the Germans, declared Iran a neutral zone. So the Allies
invaded and occupied Iran. Reza Shah was sent into exile and was succeeded by
his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was known simply as the Shah.

In 1951, Mohammed Mossadeq, then prime minister of Iran, nationalized the
oil industry. In retaliation, Great Britain organized an embargo on all exports
of oil from Iran. In 1953, the CIA, with the help of British intelligence,
organized a coup against him. Mossadeq was overthrown and the Shah, who
had earlier escaped from the country, returned to power. The Shah stayed on
the throne until 1979, when he fled Iran to escape the Islamic revolution.

Since then, this old and great civilization has been discussed mostly in
connection with fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism. As an Iranian who
has lived more than half of my life in Iran, I know that this image is far from
the truth. This is why writing Persepolis was so important to me. I believe that
an entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists. I
also don’t want those Iranians who lost their lives in prisons defending
freedom, who died in the war against Iraq, who suffered under various

repressive regimes, or who were forced to leave their families and flee their
homeland to be forgotten.

One can forgive but one should never forget.
Marjane Satrapi
Paris, September 2002

CREDITS

Translation of first part of Persepolis: Mattias Ripa

Translation of second part of Persepolis: Blake Ferris

Supervision of translation: Marjane Satrapi and Carol Bernstein

Lettering: Celine Merrien and Eve Deluze

THANKS TO

Anjali Singh

L’Association

David B.

Jean-Christophe Menu

Emile Bravo

Christophe Blain

Guillaume Dumora

Fanny Dalle-Rive

Nicolas Leroy

Matthieu Wahiche

Charlotte Miquel

Amber Hoover

Persepolis, translation copyright © 2003 by L’Association, Paris, France
Persepolis 2, translation copyright © 2004 by Anjali Singh

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited,

Toronto.

The Complete Persepolis was originally published in the United States in two separate
volumes:

Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Satrapi, Marjane, [date]

[Persepolis, English]
The complete Persepolis / Marjane Satrapi.

p. cm.
Contains the author’s Persepolis (2003) and Persepolis 2 (2004)

eISBN: 978-0-307-51802-6
1. Satrapi, Marjane, [date]—Comic books, strips, etc. I. Satrapi, Marjane, [date]

Persepolis 2. English. II. Title.
PN6747.S245P4713 2007

955.05′42092—dc22
[B] 2007060106

www.pantheonbooks.com
v3.0

http://www.pantheonbooks.com

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 22
• Chapter 23
• Chapter 24
• Chapter 25
• Chapter 26
• Chapter 27
• Chapter 28
• Chapter 29
• Chapter 30
• Chapter 31
• Chapter 32
• Chapter 33
• Chapter 34
• Chapter 35
• Chapter 36
• Chapter 37
• Chapter 38
• Chapter 39
• Credits
• Copyright

[Last Name] 1

[Last Name] 4

[Your Name]

[Instructor Name]

[Course Number]

[Date]

Quote Analysis from ‘Proletarians and Communists’ by Karl Marx

Introduction

Karl Marx explains the industrial revolution and the resulting impact of the industrialization as ‘fedual system of industry’ due to its exploitative features. Marx explains the Boergeoise of modern industrail world as more powerful and controlling in comparison to previous dominating classes. The labor class, proletriate, is meeting the ends and unable to escape poverty. The Marxist critique of modren industrialized society has transformed the capitalist world in a positive way as it managed to provide recommendations of improvement. The term ‘bare existence as a laborer’ is referred to by Marx as the permanent status of the labourer throughout there lives due to lack of capital and lack of capacity to accumulate capital.

Analysis

Marx state, ‘The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer’ (23). In other words, Marx explains tht the labor class is paid the minimum wage as the average price as wages for their labor. The moral argument surrounding the statement is a strong critic of the industrialization which employs labor on mimimum wage which they need to meet there basic needs. There are two major flaws in such a policy towards, that is, lack of surplus income to raise capital, and lack of surplus income to invest in gaining technology, skills, and educaiton. No doubt the income class is broadly divided into two groups, though it is equally contradictory with the fact that the future decades of industrialization revealed that there are more than two classes, that is, lower-income, middle-income, and upper-income. The income classes are further divided into lower, middle, and upper. The creation of multiple income groups worldwide has been a strong argument nagating the fact that the industrialization has trapped lower-income groups into permanent poverty. Many immigrants across the world from developing or under-developed world has migrated to developed and industrialized world for higher wages and has turned up well. East Asians in United States have gained there reputation for intelligence and achieved higher income within a single change of generation. The generation which migrated in post World War II has received incomes lower then the average income of White people, though the next generation to follow has accomplished the required skills and educaiton to compete with majority.

Marx points out by stating, ‘What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence’ (23). This significantly contirbutes to the fact that the first generation of labor without proper government regulations will not be able to meet the needs of their generation, and probably will remian in the same income for next couple of generations. The marxist critique have ended up well for the majority because the government policies and generation intelligence level of labor unions have used these arguments to raise the general welfare of labor class. Marx also used the term ‘appropriation’ to signify the importance of average set as the mimumum wage to be offerred to the labor. Marx states, ‘All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it’ (Marx 23). In other words, the interest of the ruling class is not in raising the standard of living of lower income group, stated as proletariate; instead, the purpose of appropriating a price which barely meets the basic needs for suriviving is to retain the labor for suprlus income.

The ruling elite, or boergeoise, aims at extracting surplus capital out of the existing resources and one of the inputs required for output is the labor. As per Adam Smith, there exists four basic factors of production, that is, land, labor, capital, and orgnaization. Land and capital are acquired by the organization (ruling class, boergeoise) in a way that the labor is used and reatined. Providing a minimum wage to the labor will deprive the labor of the opporutnity to accumulate wealth and remain laborer for the boergeoise. The last two centuries have revealed that the minimum wage has depried labor class of the opporunity to enhance and raise there standard of living. In order to increase the standard of living of lower-income class, government introduces programs to uplift the general state of their living, though not all the people across the world has the same level of government policies and regulations. Though, history reveals that the Marxist critique of industrialization and class based society has provided voice to the lower income class who are mainly laborer living a life to meet the basic ends of their lives. Despite the fact that the industrial revolution has entirely changed the way we organize our lives today, it has deprived many of the opporutnity to live a healthy life provided by the nature to man.

Conclusion

The element of appropriation explained by Karl Marx in Communist Manifesto is considered as voice of the proletriate and it has resulted in multiple interpretation. One of the dominant interpretation has resulted in a bi-polar world during cold-war era whereby USSR has set a system of governance that so-callled aimed at creating class-less society. Marxist ciritique of mimimum wage and creating an exploitative system has benefited the capitalist in a way that it has tranformed it system. Today, there are multiple opporutnities available to people to escape poverty and raise their respective standard of living. Last, but not the least, economists like Joseph E. Stiglitz argues that the income gape between rich and poor is widening with each passing year (14). As per one estimate, more than ninety percent of the world capital is accumulated by less then ten percent of the world poulation. The Marxist critique is as relevant today as it was in nineteenth century, though much have improved during the two centuries and capitalist system is improving itself. In other worlds, Marx was not absolutely true about the future of the industrialization and developed world, but it has managed to provide the other side of the story which benefited the society.

References

Marx, Karl. Manifesto of the Communist Party. Hyweb Technology Co. Ltd., 2011. Retrieved 20 January 2020, from

https://ttu.ee/public/m/mart-murdvee/EconPsy/1/Karl_Marx_Frederick_Engels_1848_Manifesto_of_the_Communist_Party

Stiglitz, Joseph E. The price of inequality: How today’s divided society endangers our future. WW Norton & Company, 2012.

Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. This essay is excerpted from Working
Paper 189. “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women’s
Studies” (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $4.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181
The working paper contains a longer list of privileges. This excerpted essay is reprinted from the Winter 1990 issue of Independent
School.

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
Peggy McIntosh

“I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring
dominance on my group”

Through work to bring materials from women’s studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often
noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are overprivileged, even though they may grant that
women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to women’s statues, in the society, the
university, or the curriculum, but they can’t or won’t support the idea of lessening men’s. Denials that
amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men gain from women’s disadvantages. These
denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened, or ended.

Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in
our society are interlocking, there are most likely a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our
society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of while privilege that was similarly
denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts
others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege,
which puts me at an advantage.

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize
male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have
come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in
each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible
weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank
checks.

Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in women’s studies work to reveal male
privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one who writes about having white privilege
must ask, “having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?”

After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood
that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from
women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we
are just seen as oppressive, even when we don’t see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in
which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.

My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or
as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state
depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth
Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and
average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow
“them” to be more like “us.”

Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. This essay is excerpted from Working
Paper 189. “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women’s
Studies” (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $4.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181
The working paper contains a longer list of privileges. This excerpted essay is reprinted from the Winter 1990 issue of Independent
School.

Daily effects of white privilege

I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in
my life. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color
privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other
factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can tell, my African American coworkers, friends, and
acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and time of
work cannot count on most of these conditions.

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to
mistrust my kind or me.

3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can
afford and in which I would want to live.

4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely
represented.

7. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my
color made it what it is.

8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their
race.

9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.

11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person’s voice in a group in which s/he is the
only member of his/her race.

12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket
and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find
someone who can cut my hair.

13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the
appearance of financial reliability.

Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. This essay is excerpted from Working
Paper 189. “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women’s
Studies” (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $4.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181
The working paper contains a longer list of privileges. This excerpted essay is reprinted from the Winter 1990 issue of Independent
School.

14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical
protection.

16. I can be pretty sure that my children’s teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and
workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others’ attitudes toward their race.

17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.

18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute
these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.

19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world’s
majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.

23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without
being seen as a cultural outsider.

24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the “person in charge”, I will be facing a person of my race.

25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled
out because of my race.

26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children’s
magazines featuring people of my race.

27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than
isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.

28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize
her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.

29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a program
centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues
disagree with me.

30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn’t a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me
more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.

Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. This essay is excerpted from Working
Paper 189. “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women’s
Studies” (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $4.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181
The working paper contains a longer list of privileges. This excerpted essay is reprinted from the Winter 1990 issue of Independent
School.

31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage
them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative
consequences of any of these choices.

32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.

33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my
race.

34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.

35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job
suspect that I got it because of my race.

36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether
it had racial overtones.

37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my
next steps, professionally.

38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking whether
a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.

39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.

40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be
mistreated in the places I have chosen.

41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.

42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my
race.

43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my race is not the problem.

44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of my race.

45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race.

46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin.

47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal
with us.

Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. This essay is excerpted from Working
Paper 189. “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women’s
Studies” (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $4.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181
The working paper contains a longer list of privileges. This excerpted essay is reprinted from the Winter 1990 issue of Independent
School.

48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household.

49. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not
turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.

50. I will feel welcomed and “normal” in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.

Elusive and fugitive

I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For me white privilege has
turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must
give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one’s life is not
what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.

In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white privilege, I have listed conditions of daily experience that
I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these perquisites as bad for the holder. I now think that
we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what
one would want for everyone in a just society, and others give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant,
and destructive.

I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a patter of assumptions that were passed on
to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turn, and I was among
those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to
make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways and of making social systems work for me. I
could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms.
Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.

In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups
were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many
kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit, in turn, upon people
of color.

For this reason, the word “privilege” now seems to me misleading. We usually think of privilege as
being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have
described here work systematically to over empower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers
dominance because of one’s race or sex.

Earned strength, unearned power

I want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and unearned power conferred privilege can look
like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate. But not all of the privileges on my
list are inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or that your
race will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to
ignore less powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as the ignored groups.

Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. This essay is excerpted from Working
Paper 189. “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women’s
Studies” (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $4.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181
The working paper contains a longer list of privileges. This excerpted essay is reprinted from the Winter 1990 issue of Independent
School.

We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages, which we can work to spread, and
negative types of advantage, which unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For
example, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say, should not be
seen as privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is
an unearned advantage for them. This paper results from a process of coming to see that some of the
power that I originally say as attendant on being a human being in the United States consisted in
unearned advantage and conferred dominance.

I have met very few men who truly distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred
dominance. And so one question for me and others like me is whether we will be like them, or whether
we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance,
and, if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they
actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that
racism doesn’t affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see “whiteness” as a racial
identity. In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly
to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or
advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.

Difficulties and angers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many. Since racism, sexism, and
heterosexism are not the same, the advantages associated with them should not be seen as the same. In
addition, it is hard to disentangle aspects of unearned advantage that rest more on social class, economic
class, race, religion, sex, and ethnic identity that on other factors. Still, all of the oppressions are
interlocking, as the members of the Combahee River Collective pointed out in their “Black Feminist
Statement” of 1977.

One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms, which we
can see, and embedded forms, which as a member of the dominant groups one is taught not to see. In my
class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in
individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought
racial dominance on my group from birth.

Disapproving of the system won’t be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end
if white individuals changed their attitude. But a “white” skin in the United States opens many doors for
whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can
palliate but cannot end, these problems.

To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences
and denials surrounding privilege are the key political surrounding privilege are the key political tool
here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and
conferred dominance by making these subject taboo. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems
to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that
systems of dominance exist.

It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is
kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that

Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. This essay is excerpted from Working
Paper 189. “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women’s
Studies” (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $4.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181
The working paper contains a longer list of privileges. This excerpted essay is reprinted from the Winter 1990 issue of Independent
School.

democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident
action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the
hands of the same groups that have most of it already.

Although systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and, I imagine, for
some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light-skinned. What
will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we
will choose to use unearned advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to
try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.

Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. This
essay is excerpted from Working Paper 189. “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account
of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies” (1988), by Peggy McIntosh;
available for $4.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181
The working paper contains a longer list of privileges. This excerpted essay is reprinted from the
Winter 1990 issue of Independent School.

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SHI LYU

Kelly Morimoto & Paige Andersen

SELF AND SOCIETY 2

4 MARCH, 2020

The Sixth Sense

The topic that I chose for this essay is one of my favorite movies, ​The Sixth Sense​. I am

further pairing it with Virginia Woolf as an author to write a critique about this movie. ​The Sixth

Sense is an American film which was released in 1999. It is a psychological thriller film that

covers a story about a boy who is able to see and speak to dead people who is being helped by a

child psychologist. I chose this movie because it fits well with the writing style of Woolf. This is

because Woolf had mastered the writing style which was called the Stream of Consciousness.

The film is made up of flashbacks of memories, time montages and free association of images

that show the past, present and future of the boy’s story that intermingle to form the

consciousness of the boy. The feelings and thoughts of the boy are shown uninterruptedly

forming a stream of consciousness just how Woolf does in her literary work. Therefore, I

believed as Woolf’s writing style was mainly focused on caching the technique of stream of

consciousness, it would be better to critique ​The Sixth Sense​ by using Woolf’s writing style.

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The Sixth Sense is a psychological thriller film that is a genuinely thrilling masterpiece. The

movie is about a boy named Cole who can see dead people as he narrates to his psychologist

that, “I can see dead people. They want me to do things for them.” (Shyamalan 01:33:24) This

film covers an important aspect that only innocent children can see dead people, things that

cannot be seen by adults. The film describes the thoughts and feelings of Cole throughout. He

fears darkness because he is afraid to see dead people there just like how every individual fears

darkness. It is as if the world has gone into a black hole and his heartbeat can be heard even from

miles away. Cole feelings are transferred into the audience like a river being poured inside. In

my point of view, this film brings out the reality of life before the audience and while evoking

feelings of Cole, thus the audience feels thrilled and understands how the dead soul do not find

peace until justice has been done in this world to their culprits. The film uses a classic narration

of only Cole as the main character while the entire film revolves around him. The main focus is

placed on the boy who is assumed by doctors to be suffering from a disease where he

hallucinates images. Whereas, in reality he actually sees another dimension of this life where

dead people live and communicate with Cole to complete their unfinished tasks in this world.

This is kind of like how the book “a room of one’s own”. She wants to learn more things, but

during that time no one understands her like this movie no one understands Cole.

The film probes into the mind of the characters and shows their imagination. It is about the

internalities of life rather than externals of personality of the character. In one of the scenes, Cole

is sitting in his classroom when he starts getting flashbacks of how his school once used to be a

courtroom where people were hanged. He sees crying families that are being departed from their

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loved ones. He conveys it to his teacher saying, “they used to hang people here.” (Shyamalan

00:35:36-39). Cole can see the injustice that has been done to people in the old days. The

perceptions of Cole create a feeling of fear in the viewers’ mind as they can relate to the mental

consciousness of Cole. For him, a normal day is not like us, rather he sees dead people walking

while their cries echo in the buildings, rooms or roads. The film is an art of magical realism

where the characters are put at the best of their constructions to bring the realistic images out.

Another interesting thing to be noticed in the movie is the magic sleight that the

psychologist performs on Cole. The psychologist uses a penny to perform a magic of hand

routine on Cole whereas he says “That’s stupid.” (Shyamalan 00:41:45-47). However, the magic

trick works well for the plot of ​The Sixth Sense where the audience is tricked to watch the entire

film through one long sleight of the magic trick. At the end, the audience realizes the doctor, who

had come to help Cole, was himself a dead person that Cole had been seeing all this time.

The review of the film, ​The Sixth Sense​, has been written in the writing style of Virginia

Woolf. Firstly, the main style of Woolf that is her famous writing style is the Stream of

Consciousness where Woolf uses the continuous flow of mental thoughts, feelings and

perceptions of the character. She comprises long passages of introspection of the minds and

thoughts of her character in a narrative method. . Similarly, in my critical review of the film, I

have written showing the stream of consciousness of Cole where it was described that “Cole is

sitting in his classroom when he starts getting flashbacks of how his school once used to be a

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courtroom where people were hanged. This shows the stream of consciousness of Cole that is

coherent with the writing style of Woolf. Woolf used symbolism as an important tool to

present her work in a distinctive manner. “I must ask you to imagine a room, like many

thousands, with a window looking across people’s hats and vans and motor-cars to other

windows and on the table inside the room a blank sheet of paper on which was written in large

letters WOMEN AND FICTION”, ( A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN. part 2) Similarly, in the

review above a symbolism has been used to show the magic trick as sleight for the audience

because they only see the movie through one lens where psychologist is actually an alive man

who is helping Cole. Thus, the magic trick is a symbolism for the psychological trick that is

being played on the audience throughout the film.

I chose this film because it is important for people to consider the issues of children

seriously rather than ignoring them. In our society, most of the things that children say are

ignored or unnoticed because we do not value their views or stories. However, it is important to

give consideration towards their feelings, thoughts and perceptions because they may be

suffering. Therefore, it is important to be considerate towards children and give them the time

they need for their stories to be heard. This movie and this book are all related to our class topic:

self and society. This movie shows how children impact this society. The book kind shows that

woman and that society, woman cannot have their own room, woman cannot study. The movie

and the book all show their society.

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Works Cited

The Sixth Sense​. Dir. Shyamalan. Perf. Haley Osment. 1999.

Woolf, V. A room of one’s Own. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1929.