The Social Revolution.
1.--The Transformation of Society.
The tide rises and undermines the foundation of state and society.
Every one feels that the pillars are swaying and that only powerful
props can support them. But to erect such props means great sacrifices
on the part of the ruling classes, and there the difficulty lies.
Every proposition, the realization of which would seriously damage
the material interests of the ruling classes and would threaten to
question their privileged position, is bitterly opposed by them and
roundly condemned as a measure destined to overturn the present
order of state and society. But, without questioning and ultimately
removing the privileges of the ruling classes, the diseased world
cannot be cured.
“The struggle for the liberation of the working class is not a struggle
for privileges, but one for equal rights and equal duties and for
the removal of all privileges.” This declaration of principles is
contained in the Socialist platform. It follows that nothing can be
attained by half measures and small concessions.
But the ruling classes regard their privileged position as natural
and self-understood; they will admit of no doubt in its permanence
and justification. So it is quite natural that they oppose and combat
every attempt to shatter their privileges. Even proposed measures and
laws that do not change their privileged position and the present
order of society in the least, cause the greatest excitement among
them, if their purse-strings are loosened thereby or likely to be
loosened. In the parliaments mountains of paper are printed with
speeches until the laboring mountains bring forth a ridiculous mouse.
The most self-understood demands of workingmen’s protection are met
with as much opposition as if the existence of society depended upon
it. When, after endless struggles, some concessions are won from the
ruling classes, they act as if they had sacrificed a part of their
fortune. They show the same stubborn opposition when called upon to
recognize the oppressed classes on a basis of formal equality; for
instance, to discuss questions of labor agreements with them as with
their equals.
This opposition to the simplest things and the most self-understood
demands confirms the old experience that no ruling class can ever
be convinced by ~reason~, unless the force of circumstances compels
discretion and compliance. But the force of circumstances may be found
in the growing measure of understanding created in the oppressed by
the development of our conditions. The class extremes are constantly
becoming more severe, more noticeable and more evident. The oppressed
and exploited classes begin to recognize that existing conditions are
untenable; their indignation increases, and with it the imperious
demand to transform and humanize conditions. As this perception
grows and reaches ever widening circles, it finally conquers the
vast majority of society, which is most directly interested in this
transformation. But to the same extent in which this perception
of the untenableness of existing conditions and the need of their
transformation grows among the masses, ~the power of resistance of
the ruling classes declines, since their power is founded upon the
ignorance and the lack of understanding of the oppressed and exploited
classes~. This reciprocal action is evident, and therefore everything
that advances it must be welcomed. The progress of capitalism on the
one hand is balanced on the other by the growing perception that the
existing social order is adverse to the wellfare of the vast majority
of the people. Although the solution and removal of social extremes
will require great sacrifices and many exertions, a solution will
be found as soon as the extremes have attained the height of their
development, toward which they are rapidly advancing.
What measures are to be resorted to at the various stages of
development, depends upon circumstances. It is impossible to predict
what measures will be necessitated by circumstances in particular
instances. No government, no prime-minister, be he the most powerful
person, can predict what circumstances will compel him to do a year
hence. It is all the more impossible to predict measures that will
be dictated by circumstances unknown to us at present. The question
of measures is a question of tactics to be observed in a struggle.
The tactics are influenced by the opponent and also by the resources
at the command of both parties. Means that are splendid to-day may
be harmful to-morrow, because the circumstances that justified
their employment may have changed. It is but necessary always to
keep our aim before us; the means for attaining same depend upon
time and circumstances. ~But the most effective means that time and
circumstances permit of should be resorted to.~ In depicting future
developments we must therefore resort to hypothetical methods; we
must surmise certain conditions.
~Proceeding from this point of view, we surmise that, at a given
time, all the depicted evils will have developed to such extremes
and will have become so evident and tangible to the great majority
of the population, that they come to be regarded as unbearable; that
a general, irresistible demand for a thoroughgoing transformation
will manifest itself, and that, accordingly, the quickest help will
be considered the most appropriate.~
All social evils, without exception, spring from the present social
order, which, as has been shown, is founded on capitalism, on the
capitalistic method of production. This method of production enables
the capitalist class--the owners of all the means of production,
the ground, mines, raw materials, tools, machines, means of
transportation--to exploit and oppress the masses, which leads to
insecurity of existence and to the degradation of the exploited
classes. Accordingly the most rapid and direct way would be to
transform capitalistic property into common, or social property by
a general expropriation. ~The production of commodities will be
socialized; it will become a production for and by society. Manufacture
on a large scale and the increasing productivity of social labor,
until now a source of misery and oppression for the exploited classes,
will then become a source of well-being and harmonious development
for all.~
2.--Expropriation of the Expropriators.
The transformation of all means of production into common property
forms the new basis of society. The conditions of life and work for
both sexes in industry, agriculture, traffic, education, marriage,
science, art and social intercourse become radically different.
Human life is given a new purpose. Gradually the organization of
the state also loses ground; ~the state disappears~; it, so to say,
abolishes itself.
In the first part of this book we have shown why the state had to
arise. It is the product of development from primitive society,
founded on communism, that becomes dissolved as ~private property~
develops. With the rise of private property antagonistic interests
are formed within society. Differences of class and caste arise
that necessarily lead to class struggles among the different groups
and threaten the maintenance of the new order. To keep down the
opponents of the new order and to protect the threatened proprietors,
an organization is required that opposes such attacks and declares
property to be “righteous” and “sacred.” ~This organization, which
protects and maintains private property, becomes the state.~ By laws
the state secures the proprietor’s right to his property, and upon
those who would attack the order laid down by law it turns as judge
and avenger. By their innermost nature, then, the interests of the
ruling, possessing class, and of the powers of the state, always are
conservative. The organization of the state only changes when the
interest of property demands it. Thus the state is the ~indispensable~
organization of a society founded on class rule. As soon as class
extremes have been removed by the abolition of private property, it
becomes ~unnecessary~ and ~impossible~. The state gradually ceases
to exist with the passing away of class rule, as surely as religion
ceases to exist when belief in superior beings and occult powers is
no longer met with. Words must have a purport; when they lose same
they cease to convey a meaning.
Here a reader who is capitalistically minded may object and may ask
on what legal ground can society justify these overthrowing changes?
The legal ground will be the same that always was found, when similar
changes and transformations were needful: ~The common wellfare~.
Society, not the state, is the source of law. The state is only clerk
to the society, whose duty it is to measure and dispense the law.
Until now, ruling society was always but a small minority, but this
small minority acted in behalf of the entire nation and represented
itself as being society, just as Louis XIV. represented himself as
being the state: “L’état c’est moi.” (I am the state.) When our
newspapers report: “The season has begun, society is returning to
town;” or: “The season is over, society is hastening to the country,”
they do not mean the people, but the upper ten thousand who constitute
society as they constitute the state. The masses are the “plebs,”
the vile multitude. In the same way, everything undertaken by the
state for society in behalf of “the common welfare,” has, first
and foremost, served the interests of the ruling classes. “~Salus
reipublicae suprema lex esto~” (the welfare of the republic shall
be the supreme law), is the well-known legal principle laid down by
the ancient Romans. But who formed the Roman republic? The subjected
peoples, the millions of slaves? No! The comparatively small number
of Roman citizens, above all the Roman nobility, who permitted the
slaves to support them.
When, during the middle ages, nobility and princes robbed the communal
property, they did so on the legal ground of “the common welfare,”
and in what manner they disposed of the communal property and the
property of the helpless peasants, the history of the middle ages,
down to recent times, has amply shown. The agrarian history of the
past thousand years is a history of uninterrupted robbery of communal
and peasant property, practiced by the nobility and the Church in
all civilized states of Europe. When the great French Revolution
then proceeded to expropriate the property of the nobility and the
Church, it did so “in behalf of the common welfare,” and the greater
part of the eight million of property holders who form the chief
stay of Bourgeois France, owe their existence to this expropriation.
In behalf of the “common welfare,” Spain took possession of much
Church property, and Italy confiscated it entirely, applauded by the
most ardent defenders of “sacred property.” The English nobility for
centuries robbed the Irish and English nations of their property, and
from 1804 to 1832 legally presented itself--“in behalf of the common
welfare”--with no less than 3,511,710 acres of communal property.
When, after the great North American civil war, millions of slaves
were emancipated, who had been the lawfully acquired property of
their masters, without reimbursing the latter, this was done “in
behalf of the common welfare.” Our entire bourgeois development is
an uninterrupted process of expropriation and confiscation. In this
process the mechanic is expropriated by the manufacturer, the peasant
by the great landowner, the small dealer by the large merchant, and,
finally, one capitalist by another. To judge by the declamations of
our bourgeoisie, all this is being done to serve “the common welfare,”
in the “interest of society.” On the 18 Brumaire and December 2, the
followers of Napoleon “saved” “society” and “society” congratulated
them. When society will save itself by taking back the property it
has created, it will perform the most noteworthy deed. ~For then
its actions will not purpose to suppress one to the advantage of
another, but to obtain equality of opportunity for all and to enable
each and every one to lead an existence worthy of a human being.~
It will be the grandest measure, morally, ever enacted by society.
In what forms this great process of social expropriation will be
consummated and under what conditions, is of course quite impossible
to predict.
In his fourth social letter to v. Kirchmann, entitled “Capital,”[211]
Rodbertus says: “A confiscation of all private property in land, is
not a chimera, but quite possible from the standpoint of political
economy. It would also be the most radical help for society. For
society suffers from the increase of rent in land and capital. With
the abolition of private property in land, traffic and the progress
of national wealth would not be interrupted for one moment.” What do
the Agrarians say to this opinion of one who was formerly a member
of their party?
The further course of events, after such a measure has been resorted
to, cannot be definitely laid down. No human being is able to foresee
how coming generations will shape the details of their social
organizations, and in what manner they will best succeed in satisfying
their requirements. In society, as in nature, there is constant
change. One thing appears while another disappears; what is old and
wasted is replaced by what is new and full of vitality. Inventions
and discoveries along varied lines are made whose significance cannot
be foreseen, and when applied, such inventions and discoveries may
revolutionize human life and the entire social organization.
In the following, therefore, we can only discuss the development of
general principles. They may be laid down as a logical outcome of the
prior explanations, and to some extent it is possible to overlook
in what manner they will be carried out. Even heretofore society
could not be guided and directed by single individuals, although
it sometimes appeared so. But appearances are deceiving; presuming
to direct, we are being directed. Even heretofore society has been
an organism that developed in accordance with definite, inherent
laws. In the future the guidance and direction, according to the
will of individuals, will be entirely out of the question. Society
will then be a democracy that will have unravelled the secrets of
its nature. It will have discovered the laws of its development and
will consciously apply them to its further growth.
[211] Berlin, 1884.