Summary: The Communist Manifesto (page 6)

With the abolition of private property, only the state—that is, the proletariat organised as the ruling class ¹—will own property. The proletariat will therefore concentrate all instruments of production in the hands of the state ².

Marx explicitly acknowledges the violent nature of this process: This can, in the first instance, only be achieved through despotic inroads into property rights ³.

While the specific measures may vary from country to country, a general programme for the Communist Party can be outlined:

Expropriation of landed property
A steeply progressive income tax
Abolition of the right of inheritance
Confiscation of the property of emigrants and rebels
Centralisation of credit through a state bank with exclusive monopoly
Nationalisation of factories, instruments of production, and means of transport
Centralised planning of agriculture
Equal liability of all to labour
Free education for all children in public schools, combined with the abolition of child labour

This dictatorship is temporary. Once private property has been abolished, society can move towards its ideal form. Unfortunately, Marx devotes only a few lines to describing this transition:

The proletariat, having seized power by force, abolishes the conditions of class antagonism, for there is no one left but itself—thus, it abolishes class distinctions altogether, and in doing so, its own class rule as well ⁴. What emerges is a new social order: an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all ⁵.

Marx is careful to distinguish communism from movements that might be mistaken for it, such as feudal, Christian, or petty-bourgeois socialism.

He is particularly scornful of reformist socialism, which seeks to regulate rather than overthrow bourgeois production and free trade.

He also rejects utopian socialism — Fourier, Saint-Simon, and others — as having no grounding in historical materialism.

Marx and Engels, anticipating an imminent proletarian revolution in Germany, close with these famous words:

Let the ruling classes tremble before a communist revolution! The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Workers of the world, unite! ⁶

¹ p.51
² ibid.
³ ibid.
⁴ p.53
⁵ ibid.
⁶ p.67