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 whose 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 floggings 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 the German
philistines. In Germany the _petty bourgeois_ class, a relique of the
16th century and since then constantly cropping up again under various
forms, is the real social basis of the existing state of things.
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 recognized 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, organizers 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 Misere_ 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 bourgeosie.
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 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 effected 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 labor, but, at
the best, lessen the cost and simplify the administrative work of
bourgeois government.
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 Baboeuf 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, these attempts 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 St.
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., Bourgeoisie and
Proletariat.)
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 phantastic ones, and
the gradual, spontaneous class organization of the proletariat to an
organization of society specially 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 interest 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 cause 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 favored. Hence they
habitually appeal to society at large, without 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, and endeavor,
by small experiments, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force
of example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel.
Such phantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the
proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a
phantastic conception of its own position, correspond with the first
instinctive yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction of
society.
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 functions of the State into a mere
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 recognized under
their earliest, indistinct and undefined 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
phantastic standing apart from the contest, these phantastic 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, endeavor, and that consistently, to
deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They
still dream of experimental realization of their social Utopias, of
founding isolated "phalansteres," of establishing "Home Colonies," of
setting up a "Little Icaria"(c)--duodecimo editions of the New
Jerusalem, and to realize 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 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 "Reformistes."
(a) Not the English Restoration 1660 to 1689, but the French
Restoration 1814 to 1830.
(b) 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 beet-root 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 of more
or less shady joint-stock companies.
(c) Phalansteres 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.
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 themselves with
the Social-Democrats(a), against the conservative and radical
bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical
position in regard to phrases 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 civilization,
and with a much more developed proletariat, than that of England was in
the seventeenth, and of 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 labor 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.
Workingmen of all countries unite!
(a) The party then represented in parliament by Ledru-Rollin, in
literature by Louis Blanc, in the daily press by the Reforme. The name
of Social-Democracy signified, with these its inventors, a section of
the Democratic or Republican party more or less tinged with Socialism.
THE END.
The Preamble
OF THE
INDUSTRIAL WORKERS
OF THE WORLD
An Address Delivered at Minneapolis, Minn,
By DANIEL DE LEON
The organization of the Industrial Workers of the World, at Chicago,
July 10, 1905, marked an epoch in the history of the Labor Movement in
America, for the reason that, as the preamble to the constitution
declares, there can be no peace between the exploited working class and
the exploiting capitalist class; the I. W. W. organized on that
basis--the recognition of the class struggle.
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WHAT MEANS THIS STRIKE?
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"What Means This Strike?" is an address delivered before the striking
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which to begin the study of Socialism. The strike is used as an object
lesson to show the nature of capitalist society. The development of
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CONTENTS.--Whence Do Wages Come, and Whence Profits--The Capitalist
System of Production--Nature of the "Work" Performed by the
Capitalist--Mechanism of Stock Corporation--Nature of the "Work"
Performed by the "Directors" of Stock Corporations--"Original
Accumulation"--How the Capitalist in General Gets His Capital--How Levi
P. Morton Got His Capital--The Class Struggle--Nature of the Conflict
Between the Working Class and the Capitalist Class--Development of
Capitalist Society--Development of the Strike--How the Capitalists Rob
Inventors--How the Capitalist Uses Machinery to Rob and Subjugate the
Working Class--Why the Modern Strike Is Usually a Failure--Principles
of the Organization the Working Class Must Have to Fight Successfully
the Capitalist Class--Weaknesses of "Pure and Simple" Trade
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VALUE, PRICE, AND PROFIT
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Introduction and Annotations by LUCIEN SANIAL.
This book is especially timely, like everything else that Marx wrote.
Written a couple of years before his "Capital" appeared, it is an
address to workingmen, and covers in popular form many of the subjects
later scientifically expanded in "Capital."
Lucien Sanial says of it: "It is universally considered as the best
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things inverted."
Special interest attaches to what Marx says relative to strikes. Were
the working Class thoroughly acquainted with the subject matter of this
little work, we should hear no more of the "common ground" on which
capital and labor might meet to settle their differences.
The thousand and one schemes that are daily being flaunted in the faces
of the working class by the lieutenants of the capitalists show the
necessity there is on the part of the working class for a comprehensive
understanding of the matter of wages, the relation of the worker to the
employer, the source of profits, and the relation between profits and
wages. These and other subjects are here presented, and so clearly
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From a Mechanical Standpoint
it is the first one Marx's works published in America that can be
looked upon as a careful piece of publishing. It is to be hoped that
this excellent volume is the forerunner of other volumes of Marx, and
that America will have the honor of publishing an edition that is
accurate as to text, thorough in annotations, convenient in size, and
presentable in every way. The present book will delight the lover of
Marx, and every Socialist will desire a copy of it.--N. Y. Daily People.
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