SOCIALIST OPPORTUNISM
The Communist Manifesto, written in 1847, closes with the words:
"Workingmen of all countries, unite!" But this battle cry came too
early to become a living actuality at once. The historical order of the
day just then was the middle class revolution of 1848. And in this
revolution the part that fell to the authors of the Manifesto themselves
was not that of leaders of an international proletariat, but of fighters
on the extreme left of the national Democracy.
The Revolution of 1848 did not solve a single one of the national
problems; it merely revealed them. The counter-revolution, along with
the great industrial development that then took place, broke off the
thread of the revolutionary movement. Another century of peace went by
until recently the antagonisms that had not been removed by the
Revolution demanded the intervention of the sword. This time it was not
the sword of the Revolution, fallen from the hands of the middle class,
but the militaristic sword of war drawn from a dynastic scabbard. The
wars of 1859, 1864, 1866, and 1870 created a new Italy and a new
Germany. The feudal caste fulfilled, in their own way, the heritage of
the Revolution of 1848. The political bankruptcy of the middle class,
which expressed itself in this historic interchange of roles, became a
direct stimulus to an independent proletarian movement based on the
rapid development of capitalism.
In 1863 Lassalle founded the first political labor union in Germany. In
1864 the first International was formed in London under the guidance of
Karl Marx. The closing watch-word of the Manifesto was taken up and
used in the first circular issued by the International Association of
Workingmen. It is most characteristic for the tendencies of the modern
Labor Movement that its first organization had an international
character. Nevertheless this organization was an anticipation of the
future needs of the movement rather than a real steering instrument in
the class-struggle. There was still a wide gulf between the ultimate
goal of the International, the communistic revolution, and its immediate
activities, which took the form mainly of international co-operation in
the chaotic strike movements of the laborers in various countries. Even
the founders of the International hoped that the revolutionary march of
events would very soon overcome the contradiction between ideology and
practice. While the General Council was giving money to aid groups of
strikers in England and on the Continent, it was at the same time making
classic attempts to harmonize the conduct of the workers in all
countries in the field of world politics.
But these endeavors did not as yet have a sufficient material
foundation. The activity of the First International coincided with that
period of wars which opened the way for capitalistic development in
Europe and North America. In spite of its doctrinal and educational
importance, the attempts of the International to mingle in world
politics must all the more clearly have shown the advanced workingmen of
all countries their impotence as against the national class state. The
Paris Commune, flaring up out of the war, was the culmination of the
First International. Just as the Communist Manifesto was the
theoretical anticipation of the modern labor movement, and the First
International was the practical anticipation of the labor associations
of the world, so the Paris Commune was the revolutionary anticipation of
the dictatorship of the proletariat.
But only an anticipation, nothing more. And for that very reason it was
clear that it is impossible for the proletariat to overthrow the
machinery of state and reconstruct society by nothing but revolutionary
improvisations. National states that emerged from the wars created the
one real foundation for this historical work, the national foundation.
Therefore, the proletariat must go through the school of self-education.
The First International fulfilled its mission of a nursery for the
National Socialist Parties. After the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris
Commune, the International dragged along a moribund existence for a few
years more and in 1872 was transplanted to America, to which various
religious, social and other experiments had often wandered before, to
die there.
Then began the period of prodigious capitalistic development, on the
foundation of the national state. For the Labor Movement this was the
period of the gradual gathering of strength, of the development of
organization, and of political possibilism.
In England the stormy period of Chartism, that revolutionary awakening
of the English proletariat, had completely exhausted itself ten years
before the birth of the First International. The repeal of the Corn
Laws (1846) and the subsequent industrial prosperity that made England
the workshop of the world; the establishment of the ten-hour working day
(1847), the increase of emigration from Ireland to America, and the
enfranchisement of the workers in the cities (1867), all these
circumstances, which considerably improved the lot of the upper strata
of the proletariat, led the class movement in England into the peaceful
waters of trade unionism and its supplemental liberal labor policies.
The period of possibilism, that is, of the conscious, systematic
adaptation to the economic, legal, and state forms of national
capitalism began for the English proletariat, the oldest of the
brothers, even before the birth of the International, and twenty years
earlier than for the continental proletariat. If nevertheless the big
English unions joined the International at first, it was only because it
afforded them protection against the importation of strike breakers in
wage disputes.
The French labor movement recovered but slowly from the loss of blood in
the Commune, on the soil of a retarded industrial growth, and in a
nationalistic atmosphere of the most noxious greed for "revenge."
Wavering between an anarchistic "denial" of the state and a
vulgar-democratic capitulation to it, the French proletarian movement
developed by adaptation to the social and political framework of the
bourgeois republic.
As Marx had already foreseen in 1870, the center of gravity of the
Socialist movement shifted to Germany.
After the Franco-Prussian War, united Germany entered upon an era
similar to the one England had passed through in the twenty years
previous: an era of capitalistic prosperity, of democratic suffrage, of
a higher standard of living for the upper strata of the proletariat.
Theoretically the German labor movement marched under the banner of
Marxism. Still in its dependence on the conditions of the period,
Marxism became for the German proletariat not the algebraic formula of
the revolution that it was at the beginning, but the theoretic method
for adaptation to a national-capitalistic state crowned with the
Prussian helmet. Capitalism, which had achieved a temporary
equilibrium, continually revolutionized the economic foundation of
national life. To preserve the power that had resulted from the
Franco-Prussian War, it was necessary to increase the standing army.
The middle class had ceded all its _political_ positions to the feudal
monarchy, but had intrenched itself all the more energetically in its
_economic_ positions under the protection of the militaristic police
state. The main currents of the last period, covering forty-five years,
are: victorious capitalism, militarism erected on a capitalist
foundation, a political reaction resulting from the intergrowth of
feudal and capitalist classes--a revolutionizing of the economic life,
and a complete abandonment of revolutionary methods and traditions in
political life. The entire activity of the German Social Democracy was
directed towards the awakening of the backward workers, through a
systematic fight for their most immediate needs--the gathering of
strength, the increase of membership, the filling of the treasury, the
development of the press, the conquest of all the positions that
presented themselves, their utilization and expansion. This was the
great historical work of the awakening and educating of the
"unhistorical" class.
The great centralized trade unions of Germany developed in direct
dependence upon the development of national industry, adapting
themselves to its successes in the home and the foreign markets, and
controlling the prices of raw materials and manufactured products.
Localized in political districts to adapt itself to the election laws
and stretching feelers in all cities and rural communities, the Social
Democracy built up the unique structure of the political organization of
the German proletariat with its many-branched bureaucratic hierarchy,
its one million dues-paying members, its four million voters, ninety-one
daily papers and sixty-five Party printing presses. This whole
many-sided activity, of immeasurable historical importance, was
permeated through and through with the spirit of possibilism.
In forty-five years history did not offer the German proletariat a
single opportunity to remove an obstacle by a stormy attack, or to
capture any hostile position in a revolutionary advance. As a result of
the mutual relation of social forces, it was forced to avoid obstacles
or adapt itself to them. In this, Marxism as a theory was a valuable
tool for political guidance, but it could not change the opportunist
character of the class movement, which in essence was at that time alike
in England, France and Germany. For all the undisputed superiority of
the German organization, the tactics of the unions were very much the
same in Berlin and London. Their chief achievement was the system of
tariff treaties. In the political field the difference was much greater
and deeper. While the English proletariat were marching under the banner
of Liberalism, the German workers formed an independent party with a
Socialist platform. Yet this difference does not go nearly as deep in
politics as it does in ideologic forms, and the forms of organization.
Through the pressure that English labor exerted on the Liberal Party it
achieved certain limited political victories, the extension of suffrage,
freedom to unionize, and social legislation. The same was preserved or
improved by the German proletariat through its independent party, which
it was obliged to form because of the speedy capitulation of German
liberalism. And yet this party, while in _principle_ fighting the fight
for political power, was compelled in actual practice to adapt itself to
the ruling power, to protect the labor movement against the blows of
this power, and to achieve a few reforms. In other words: on account of
the difference in historical traditions and political conditions, the
English proletariat adapted itself to the capitalist state through the
medium of the Liberal Party; while the German proletariat was forced to
form a party of its own to achieve the very same political ends. And the
political struggle of the German proletariat in this entire period had
the same opportunist character limited by historical conditions as did
that of the English proletariat.
The similarity of these two phenomena so different in their forms comes
out most clearly in the final results at the close of the period. The
English proletariat in the struggle to meet its daily issues was forced
to form an independent party of its own, without, however, breaking with
its liberal traditions; and the party of the German proletariat, when
the War forced upon it the necessity of a decisive choice, gave an
answer in the spirit of the national-liberal traditions of the English
labor party.
Marxism, of course, was not merely something accidental or insignificant
in the German labor movement. Yet there would be no basis for deducing
the social-revolutionary character of the Party from its official
Marxist ideology.
Ideology is an important, but not a decisive factor in politics. Its
role is that of waiting on politics. That deep-seated contradiction,
which was inherent in the awakening revolutionary class on account of
its relation to the feudal-reactionary state, demanded an irreconcilable
ideology which would bring the whole movement under the banner of social
revolutionary aims. Since historical conditions forced opportunist
tactics, the irreconcilability of the proletarian class found expression
in the revolutionary formulas of Marxism. Theoretically, Marxism
reconciled with perfect success the contradiction between reform and
revolution. Yet the process of historical development is something far
more involved than theorizing in the realm of pure thought. The fact
that the class which was revolutionary in its tendencies was forced for
several decades to adapt itself to the monarchical police state, based
on the tremendous capitalistic development of the country, in the course
of which adaptation an organization of a million members was built up
and a labor bureaucracy which led the entire movement was educated--this
fact does not cease to exist and does not lose its weighty significance
because Marxism anticipated the revolutionary character of the future
movement. Only the most naive ideology could give the same place to
this forecast that it does to the political actualities of the German
labor movement.
The German Revisionists were influenced in their conduct by the
contradiction between the reform practice of the Party and its
revolutionary theories. They did not understand that this contradiction
is conditioned by temporary, even if long-lasting circumstances and that
it can only be overcome by further social development. To them it was a
logical contradiction. The mistake of the Revisionists was not that they
confirmed the reformistic character of the Party's tactics in the past,
but that they wanted to perpetuate reformism theoretically and make it
the only method of the proletarian class struggle. Thus, the
Revisionists failed to take into account the objective tendencies of
capitalistic development, which by deepening class distinctions must
lead to the social revolution as the one way to the emancipation of the
proletariat. Marxism emerged from this theoretical dispute as the
victor all along the line. But revisionism, although defeated on the
field of theory, continued to live, drawing sustenance from the actual
conduct and the psychology of the whole movement. The critical
refutation of revisionism as a theory by no means signified its defeat
tactically and psychologically. The parliamentarians, the unionists,
the comrades continued to live and to work in the atmosphere of general
opportunism, of practical specializing and of nationalistic narrowness.
Reformism made its impress even upon the mind of August Bebel, the
greatest representative of this period.
The spirit of opportunism must have taken a particularly strong hold on
the generation that came into the party in the eighties, in the time of
Bismarck's anti-Socialist laws and of oppressive reaction all over
Europe. Lacking the apostolic zeal of the generation that was connected
with the First International, hindered in its first steps by the power
of victorious imperialism, forced to adapt itself to the traps and
snares of the anti-Socialist laws, this generation grew up in the spirit
of moderation and constitutional distrust of revolution. They are now
men of fifty to sixty years old, and they are the very ones who are now
at the head of the unions and the political organizations. Reformism is
their political psychology, if not also their doctrine. The gradual
growing into Socialism--that is the basis of Revisionism--proved to be
the most miserable Utopian dream in face of the facts of capitalistic
development. But the gradual political growth of the Social Democracy
into the mechanism of the national state has turned out to be a tragic
actuality--for the entire race.
The Russian Revolution was the first great event to bring a fresh whiff
into the stale atmosphere of Europe in the thirty-five years since the
Paris Commune. The rapid development of the Russian working class and
the unexpected strength of their concentrated revolutionary activity
made a great impression on the entire civilized world and gave an
impetus everywhere to the sharpening of political differences. In
England the Russian Revolution hastened the formation of an independent
labor party. In Austria, thanks to special circumstances, it led to
universal manhood suffrage. In France the echo of the Russian Revolution
took the form of Syndicalism, which gave expression, in inadequate
practical and theoretical form, to the awakened revolutionary tendencies
of the French proletariat. And in Germany the influence of the Russian
Revolution showed itself in the strengthening of the young Left wing of
the Party, in the rapprochement of the leading Center to it, and in the
isolation of Revisionism. The question of the Prussian franchise, this
key to the political position of Junkerdom, took on a keener edge. And
the Party adopted in principle the revolutionary method of the general
strike. But all this external shaping up proved inadequate to shove the
Party on to the road of the political offensive. In accordance with the
Party tradition, the turn toward radicalism found expression in
discussions and the adoption of resolutions. That was as far as it ever
went.