Strona 10 z 88

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 its 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.