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 Babeuf 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
Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen and others, spring into existence in the
early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle between
proletariat and bourgeoisie (see Section 1. Bourgeois and
Proletarians).
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 fantastic ones, and
the gradual, spontaneous class-organisation of the proletariat to the
organisation 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 interests 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, causes 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 favoured. 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
endeavour, by small experiments, necessarily doomed to failure, and by
the force of example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel.
Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the
proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a
fantastic 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 recognised in 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 fantastic
standing apart from the contest, these fantastic 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, endeavour, and that consistently, to
deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They
still dream of experimental realisation of their social Utopias, of
founding isolated “phalansteres,” of establishing “Home Colonies,” of
setting up a “Little Icaria”—duodecimo editions of the New
Jerusalem—and to realise 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 “Réformistes.”
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, 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 straightaway 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 civilisation,
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 labour 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.