of human society into classes, is as logical a process, that is, a
result attained by the operations of reason, as the division of
animals, plants, and minerals into various classes. A specific group
of social beings, which bear the stamp of common characteristics, is
put in a certain class by social science. This classification cannot
be made by purely empirical methods of immediate sensuous perceptions.
It cannot be determined from the appearance of modern men, whether
they are capitalists or workers. We must look for certain
scientifically established features which determine the social
classification of men. As we have just seen, Marx held economic facts
to be fundamental, and he contended that the economic characteristics
were valid for purposes of classification. In his view, the manner in
which a specific human group obtained its sustenance was the chief
characteristic. Men whose chief means of life are wages form the
working class. Men whose most important source of livelihood is the
ownership of capital (land, buildings, workshops, and raw material)
form the capitalist class. It is of little moment that a worker owns a
savings-bankbook, and draws interest or dividends from a co-operative
society, or that a capitalist personally supervises his undertaking,
or organises his business, so that his profits partly consist in wages
of superintendence or salary. The outstanding feature is that the
chief interest of the worker is concentrated on wages, whilst that of
the capitalist is directed on property. It goes without saying that
the social classes are not completely homogeneous. Like botanical and
zoological classes, they may be divided into kinds and species; the
working classes include well-paid hand and brain workers, as well as
sweated sections; but all the subdivisions of the social classes
possess the common outstanding quality of the same source of
livelihood, which is either personal labour or the possession of
capital. One class disposes only of labour-power, while the other
class owns the means of production.
Between these two classes, says Marx, there are deep-seated,
unbridgeable antagonisms, which lead to a class struggle. The
antagonisms are primarily of an economic nature. The wage-earners, as
the owners of labour power, are constrained to sell this as dear as
possible, i.e., to obtain the highest possible wages, whereas the
owners of capital endeavour to buy such labour-power as cheap as
possible, i.e., to pay the least possible wages. This antagonism is
indeed fundamental, but, at first sight, does not touch the
intellectual sphere very deeply. On the surface, this antagonism is
only one as between buyer and seller, but in reality the distinction
is very great, as the seller of labour-power will quickly starve if he
does not market his commodity. The owner of the means of production is
therefore in a position to cause the seller of labour-power to starve,
if the latter does not accept the conditions which the capitalist
imposes. Ownership of capital reveals itself as a power that can
oppress the owner of labour-power.
This antagonism leads to the formation of Trade Unions. It is also the
prime cause of the class struggle, but mere trade unionism is but its
incipient stage. It develops into a class struggle when the workers
recognise that their condition of subjection is not a temporary state,
but the result of the economic system of private capitalism, that the
subjection will last so long as this economic system exists, and that
the latter could be replaced by an economic order in which the means
of production belong to all the members of society. The wage-workers
only participate in the class struggle when they learn to think in a
Socialist sense, when hostility to the existing social order develops
out of the sporadic and unrelated wage struggle and actions of Trade
Unions, and when the proletariat, as an organised class, turns from
the preoccupations of the present to the tasks of the future, and
strives to change the basis of society from private property to common
property. The workers then become aware that there can be neither
freedom nor equality for them in the existing society, and that their
emancipation can only be attained through Socialism. The class
struggle may, however, stop short at the recognition of these facts.
The dialectical movement will be incomplete if the working class does
not take its fate into its own hands, and is not convinced that it has
the power to achieve its own emancipation, and therefore contents
itself with small social reforms, or relies on noble-minded and
benevolent men and heroic redeemers. This was actually the case in the
beginnings of the Socialist movement, when the workers saw in
Socialism the only way out, but were still too weak to take their fate
into their own hands. This was the period which Marx called Utopian,
when outstanding personalities spread Socialist ideas, and made
Socialist plans and experiments to free the labouring masses. As these
personalities knew the impotence of the masses, they turned to
philanthropists and humane rulers, and sought to convince them that
reason, justice, and the general welfare demanded that Socialism
should be introduced, and poverty, misery, and their consequences
abolished. This period of Utopian Socialism gave way before the
further development of industry, the progress of machine technique,
the centralisation and concentration of the means of production and
exchange, which brought with it an increase in the number, strength,
organisation, and class-consciousness of the working classes. It is
the centralisation of the means of production and exchange, in
particular, which renders it possible for the working class, by
paralysing industry and power stations, to cause the whole of society
to feel that living labour-power forms the soul of the economic life.
At the same time Socialist investigators appear, who not only show the
reasonableness and justice of Socialism, but exhibit the proof that
the new economic order of Socialism is being prepared in the womb of
Capitalism, and that therefore the aspirations of the worker are in
harmony with the course of social development.
In this wise, a science and an aspiring Socialist movement founded
upon reality develops from Utopian Socialism, and, conscious of class,
of power, and of aim, enters upon the decisive struggle with the
capitalist economic order. The class struggle acts as a lever of
social revolution.
The original antagonism of the worker and capitalist over wages and
hours of labour becomes am impassionate struggle of two classes over
the question of the maintenance or transformation of the social and
economic system--one of which classes fights for the existing order of
private property and the other for the coming Socialistic system.
Great social class struggles inevitably become political struggles.
The immediate object of the struggle is the possession of the power of
the State, with the aid of which the capitalist class endeavours to
maintain its position, whilst the working class aims at the conquest
of the power of the State in order to accomplish its larger objects.
The following chapter will show the direction taken by the Labour
movement. Here we will but briefly refer to the profound influence of
Marx's doctrine of the class struggle as exercised in political
thought. Prior to Marx, political thought and the struggles of
political parties seemed to revolve around ideas and great
personalities. Idealogy and hero-worship were prevalent. Now,
political thought, consciously or unconsciously, proceeds along class
and economic lines. This is equally true of historical investigations.
These new political and historical orientations are largely the result
of Marx's life-work.
Rigidly conceived and applied, the Marxian doctrine of the
class-struggle may lead to ultra-revolutionary tactics of the
Socialist and Labour movement, to the system of Workers' Councils, and
Proletarian Dictatorship. If the emerging class and its struggle
constitutes the lever of social revolution and the impulse of the
dialectical social process, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is
justified, and in any case, democracy, which includes both the
capitalist and working class, cannot be the State form during the
transition period from private property to Socialism. Considered from
the economic standpoint, political democracy is generally impossible,
or only sham democracy so long as economic inequality exists. The
Communist Manifesto does not contain a single political democratic
reform. The conclusion can be drawn from Marx's idea, as a whole, that
in his estimation, the class stood higher than so-called democracy.
This is one of the sources of Bolshevism.
III. THE ROLE OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT AND THE PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP.
The Labour Party is the political expression of the whole Trade Union
movement so far as the latter formulates national demands, directed
towards the State and society generally. The Labour Party will
function the more effectively, and be able to accomplish its allotted
task, as its foundation--the Trade Union movement--becomes established
and strengthened, and the more comprehensive will be its effects. The
Trade Unions are not merely to be satisfied with the work of the
present, but are to become the focus and centre of gravity of the
proletarian aspirations which arise out of the social transformation
process, and are to work for the abolition of Capitalism. The most
effective lever for the achievement of this object is the conquest of
political power. With its aid the proletariat can consciously carry
out the transformation of a Capitalist into a Communist society. To
this transformation, there also corresponds a political transition
period, the state of which can be nothing else than a revolutionary
Dictatorship of the Proletariat.--(Marx, Letter to the German Social
Democracy, 1875, on their Gotha Programme.)
Marx considered himself to be the real author of the idea of the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In a letter written by him, in 1852,
to his American friend, Weydemeyer, he declares:
"As far as I am concerned, I can't claim to have discovered the
existence of classes in modern society or their strife against
one another. Middle-class historians long ago described the
evolution of the class struggles, and political economists
showed the economic physiology of the classes. I have added as a
new contribution the following propositions: (1) that the
existence of classes is bound up with certain phases of material
production; (2) that the class struggle leads necessarily to the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat; (3) that this dictatorship is
but the transition to the abolition of all classes and to the
creation of a society of free and equal."--("Neue Zeit," Vol.
XXV., second part, p. 164.)
With the exception of the year 1870, Marx remained true to his
doctrine of Proletarian Dictatorship: he thought in 1875 as he did in
1847, when he sketched the groundwork of the Proletarian Dictatorship
in the Communist Manifesto:
"The first step in the revolution by the working class is to
raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win
the battle of democracy.
"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by
degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all
instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of
the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase
the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
"Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by
means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the
conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures,
therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable,
but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves,
necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are
unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of
production."
But suppose that it is not the revolutionary working class which first
attains to power in the revolution, but the democracy of the lower
middle class and the social reformists. In this case, Marx gives the
following advice: "Separate from it, and fight it." In the address to
the League of Communists in 1850 he said:
"It may be taken for granted that in the bloody conflicts that
are coming, as in the case of previous ones, the courage,
resolution, and sacrifice of the workers will be the chief
factor in the attainment of victory. As hitherto, so in this
struggle, the mass of the lower middle class will maintain an
attitude of delay, irresolution, and inactivity as long as
possible, in order that, as soon as victory is assured, to
arrogate it to themselves and call on the workers to remain
quiet, return to work, avoid so-called excesses, and to exclude
the proletariat from the fruits of victory. It is not in the
power of the workers to hinder the lower middle classes from
doing this, but it is within their power to render their success
over the armed proletariat very difficult, to dictate to them
such conditions that from the beginning the rule of the
middle-class democrats is doomed to failure, and its later
substitution by the rule of the proletariat is considerably
facilitated.
"The workers must, during the conflict and immediately
afterwards, as much as ever possible, oppose the compromises of
the middle class, and compel the democrats to execute their
present terrorist threats. They must aim at preventing the
subsiding of the revolutionary excitement immediately after the
victory. On the contrary, they must endeavour to maintain it as
long as possible.
"Far from opposing so-called excesses, and making examples of
hated individuals or public buildings to which hateful
remembrances are attached, by sacrificing them to the popular
rage, such examples must not only be tolerated, but their
direction must even be taken in hand. During the struggle and
after the struggle, the workers must seize every opportunity to
present their own demands side by side with those of the
middle-class democrats. The workers must demand guarantees as
soon as the middle-class democrats propose to take the
government in hand. If necessary, these guarantees must be
exacted, and the new rulers must be compelled to make every
possible promise and concession, which is the surest way to
compromise them. The workers must size up the conditions in a
cool and dispassionate fashion, and manifest open distrust of
the new Government, in order to quench, as much as possible, the
ardour for the new order of things and the elation which follows
every successful street fight. Against the new official
Government, they must set up a revolutionary workers'
government, either in the form of local committees, communal
councils, or workers' clubs or workers' committees, so that the
democratic middle-class government not only immediately loses
its support amongst the working classes, but from the
commencement finds itself supervised and threatened by a
jurisdiction, behind which stands the entire mass of the working
class. In a word: from the first moment of victory the workers
must no longer level their distrust against the defeated
reactionary party, but direct it against their former allies,
who would seek to exploit the common victory for their own ends.
The workers must be armed and organised to enable them to
threaten energetic opposition to this party, whose treason to
the workers will commence in the first hour of victory. The
arming of the whole proletariat with rifles and ammunition must
be carried out at once, and steps taken to prevent the reviving
of the old militia, which would be directed against the workers.
But should this not be successful, the workers must endeavour to
organise themselves as an independent guard, choosing their own
chief and general staff, with orders to support not the State
power, but the councils formed by the workers. Where workers are
employed in State service, they must arm and organise in a
special corps, with a chief chosen by themselves, or form a part
of the Proletarian Guard. Under no pretext must they give up
their arms and equipment, and any attempt at disarmament must
be forcibly resisted. Destruction of the influence of the
middle-class democrats over the workers, immediate independent
and armed organisation of the workers, and the imposition of the
most irksome and compromising conditions possible upon the rule
of the bourgeois democracy, which is for the time
unavoidable.... We have noted that the Democrats come to power
in the next phase of the movement, and how they will be obliged
to impose measures of a more or less Socialistic nature. It will
be asked what contrary measures should be proposed by the
workers. Naturally, in the beginning of the movement the workers
cannot propose actual Communist measures, but they can (1)
compel the Democrats to attack the old social order from as many
sides as possible, disturb its regular course, and compromise
themselves, and concentrate in the hands of the State as much as
possible of the productive forces, means of transport,
factories, railways, etc. (2) When the Democrats propose
measures which are not revolutionary, but merely reformist, the
workers must press them to the point of turning such measures
into direct attacks on private property; thus, for example, if
the small middle class propose to purchase the railways and
factories the workers must demand that such railways and
factories, being the property of the reactionaries, shall be
simply confiscated by the State, without compensation. If the
Democrats propose a proportional tax, the workers must demand a
progressive tax; if the Democrats themselves declare for a
moderate progressive tax, the workers must insist on a tax so
steeply graduated as to cause the collapse of large fortunes; if
the Democrats demand the regulation of the State debt, the
workers must demand State bankruptcy. Thus the demands of the
workers must everywhere be directed against the concessions and
measures of the Democrats.... Further, the Democrats will either
work directly for a Federal Republic, or, at least, if they
cannot avoid the Republic one and indivisible, will seek to
paralyse it by granting the greatest possible independence to
the municipalities and provinces. The workers must set
themselves against this plan, not only to secure the one and
indivisible German Republic, but to concentrate as much power as
possible in the hands of the State. They need not be misled by
democratic platitudes about the freedom of the Communes,
self-determination, etc. Their battle-cry must be 'the
revolution in permanence.'"
This Address of Marx, written in 1850, appears to be the guide of the
Bolsheviks and Spartacists.
The working classes may, however, not expect their immediate
emancipation from their political victory.
"In order to work out their own emancipation, and with it that
higher form of life which present-day society inevitably
opposes, the protracted struggle must pass through a whole
series of historical processes, in the course of which men and
circumstances alike will be changed. They have no ideal to
realise; they have only to set free the elements of the new
society, which have already developed in the womb of the
collapsing bourgeois society."--(Marx, "Civil War in France.")
The means of production will gradually be socialised, production will
be placed on a co-operative basis, education will be combined with
productive work, in order to transform the members of society into
producers. So long as the transition period lasts the Communist
maxim, "From each according to his capacity, to each according to his
needs," cannot become operative. For this period is in every
respect--economic, social, and intellectual--still tainted with the
marks of the old society, and "rights cannot transcend the economic
structure of society, and the cultural development which it
determines."--(Criticism of Gotha Program.) To each will be given
according to his deeds.
"Accordingly the individual producer will receive back what he gives
to society, after deductions for government, education, and other
social charges. He will give society his individual quota of labour.
For example: the social working day consists in the sum total of
individual working days; the individual labour time of the individual
producer is the part of the social working day which he contributes;
his share thereof. He will receive from society a certificate that he
has performed so much work (after deducting his work for social
funds), and with this certificate he will draw from the social
provision of articles of consumption as much as a similar quantity of
labour costs. The same quantity of labour as he will give to society
in one form he will receive back in another.... The right of producers
will be proportionate to the work they will perform: the equality will
consist in the application of the same measure: labour."
Because performances will vary in accordance with unequal gifts and
degrees of diligence, an unequal distribution will actually take place
during the transition period. Only in a fully developed Communistic
society, after the distinction between intellectual and physical
labour has disappeared, when productive activity has become a first
need of life, when the all-round development of the individual and
the productive forces has been achieved, and all the springs of
co-operative riches flow abundantly; only then can the narrow
middle-class idea of rights be improved on, and the Communist
principle of equality be put into operation.
Marx, who reasoned on strictly economic lines, and placed the
emancipation of the working class as the highest goal, to which all
other political and economic movements are subordinated, did not
mistake the economic, political, and historical role of the nation:
this is shown by the Communist Manifesto, where the creation of the
national State by the bourgeoisie is indicated. He mocked at the young
enthusiasts who thought they could brush aside the nation as an
obsolete prejudice, but, in spite of this, he considerably
under-estimated the unifying force of national feeling, considered
from a biological and cultural point of view. He divided civilised
mankind into antagonistic classes, and assumed that the economic
dividing lines would prove to be more effective than national and
political boundary lines. He was, therefore, through and through
international. Marx demanded that the national Labour Parties should
act internationally as soon as there was a possibility of the collapse
of the capitalist domination. He reproached the original Gotha program
with the fact that "it borrowed from middle-class Leagues of Peace and
Freedom the phrase of the international brotherhood of peoples,
whereas it was necessary to promote the international combination of
the working classes in a common struggle against the ruling classes
and their Governments." Marx had no confidence in the pacifism of the
bourgeoisie.
IV. OUTLINES OF THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINES.
1. _Capital._
As we already know, Marx became a Socialist in the year 1843. As a
believer in dialectics, he knew that Socialism can only be understood
by a knowledge of the movement operating in middle-class society and
its developing forces. His investigations in 1843-4 led to the result
that political economy forms the basis of bourgeois society.
Henceforth political economy became the chief department of his
studies. His comprehensive studies of French and English economists,
especially Sismondi and Ricardo, and the anti-capitalist literature of
England of the years 1820-40, which were connected with the Ricardian
theory of value, furnished him with a wealth of suggestions and
materials for the criticism of political economy, for the source and
origin and development and decline of capitalism, written from the
standpoint of the working class and the coming Socialistic society.
Such a work is "Capital." It consists of three volumes. Only the first
volume (1867) was carried through the press by Marx himself. The other
two volumes he only sketched, and they were completed and published by
Engels after Marx's death.