Revolution and Class Consciousness

[p007] Revolution and Class Consciousness Cliff Slaughter In the last two years many Marxists have had to re- examine their basic assumptions, and have realized that their understanding of Marxist theory was perhaps dis- torted by their ailegiance to latter-day ‘communism’, which for want oi a better term will be referred to here as ‘Stalinism’. The aim of this article is to go to the root of the concept which is the principal target of all revisionists of Marxism: the concept of the working- class revolution and working-class power. In one form or another, all ‘new thinkers’ in the socialist movement, as well as critics on the outside, challenge Marx’s hypo- thesis that the working class is the only revolutionary force in the capitalist system, and that it will inevitably establish its own dictatorship as the first step to a classless society. Some people say that capitalism has changed in such a way that revolution is no longer possible or necessary for the working class. Others say that when revolution did occur, in Russia in November 1917, experience proved that the working class could not prevent the rise of an oppressive and brutal dictator- ship, the very negation of socialism. These attacks on Marxism (and they are often ex- pressed with laudatory phrases about ‘the great con- tributions of Marx’) arise from a lack of knowledge of Marx’s theory of the revolutionary working class. Con- sequently their interpretation of the experience of the working class since 1848 is superficial and non- dialectical. This article attempts to present briefly the basic approach of Marxism to the problem of working- class revolutionary consciousness. The reader would be helped if he reread the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848). THE METAPHYSICAL DILEMMA If the development of society is seen from the point of view of old-fashioned ‘mechanistic’ materialism, then conscious revolutionary activity can have no place, since human beings are expected to behave in a manner strictly determined by their environment, whether social or natural. Philosophical idealism is no better basis for political action, neglecting as it does the dependence of consciousness upon social reality and proceeding from the assumption that society can be transformed accord- ing to what the human will finds most reasonable or desirable. In the years immediately preceding 1848, Marx and Engels solved the dilemma of metaphysics, a dilemma which made reformers, ‘socialists’ and ‘com- munists’ ask: ‘If man is indeed the product of his social environment, a fact that becomes increasingly evident once we are liberated from religious dogma, how will it be possible for the products of capitalism—an evil society—to be the creators of a new socialist society?’ This contradiction bedevilled the social and political thinkers of the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century France, who showed the dependence of men’s thought on their material existence but, at the same time, acted politically as though pure reason, once injected into the heads of society’s rulers, would put the world right. The Utopian socialists of Marx’s day were victims of the same dilemma. Owen thought that Queen Victoria would support his socialist co-operative schemes be- cause they were so transparently reasonable. Fourier, although a great thinker, waited many years for rich men to answer his advertisement for support for similar schemes. Certain modern socialist sects (e.g., the Socialist Party of Great Britain) devote themselves to pure propaganda, believing that the people must be converted to socialism before we overthrow capitalism. They are another variety of the same species. We also have large numbers of people at the other extreme, as it were, who feel they have been knocking their heads against a brick wall in politics and that capitalism has so corrupted the working class and its leadership that. there is no hope for the socialist movement. Marxism is often accused of ngurishing a similar con- tradiction at its heart. The American scholar Crane Brinton, for example, while acknowledging that the conception of class struggle is a scientific one, helping the analysis of historical development and based on objective evidence, states that the idea of proletariar dictatorship is a compound of propaganda and guess- work and the classless society is pure theology—or more properly eschatology.'. Another renowned historian, E. H. Carr, makes a similar criticism of Marxism when he discusses the differences between Lenin and the Mensheviks in pre-revolutionary Russia. The teaching of Marx, from the ‘Communist Manifesto” onwards, contained both evolutionary or scientific or objec- tive elements and revolutionary or propagandist or subjec- tive elements. Marxism was at one and the same time a statement of the laws of social and economic development and an exhortation to resort both to non-violent and to violent action in order to further the fulfilment of those laws. The two aspects of Marxism could be reconciled on the view that human affairs are subject to a process of continuous evolution which, none the less, does not dispense with occasional discontinuous acts of revolution forming an essential part of the process.2 According to Carr the Mensheviks stressed the evolu- tionary, and the Bolsheviks the revolutionary side of. Marxism. In fact Carr’s own ‘common sense’, non- dialectical approach leads him to miss the whole point: of Marx’s historical materialism; and this in turn gives: rise to the implication that Lenin was above all an organizer and brilliant conspirator rather than a theorist. Carr’s own history shows clearly that the difference be-- tween Lenin and Mensheviks like Dan, Axelrod and). later, Plekhanov was one of understanding dialectically (rather than mechanically) the social and economic: development of Russia, particularly of its peasantry and proletariat. Carr ‘reconciles’ the objective and subjective aspects: of Marxism by a nev‘ formula about continuity and discontinuity. Yet ..:e actual reconciliation is not in 1 Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution (New York, 1952),. Appendix. Eschatology is the doctrine of death, judgment, heaven and hell. 2 BE. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol. i (1950), pp. 38-44.. 5;

[p008] LABOUR REVIEW Carr’s head but in social vractice, in the class struggle, just as the reconciliation of objective and subjective aspects in natural science is practical. No one ever sup- poses that there is a problem in chemistry of reconciling the objective and active sides of the science, because the essence of the whole thing is practice, grappling with the real problems of the material universe. What Carr has missed is the great advance made by Marx from mechanistic materialism and Utopian socialism to scientific socialism. The vital link between an objective Science of society and revolutionary activity is the objective, practical role of human consciousness in history. Marx showed that the evolution of society, that which ‘makes men what they are’, is not something out- side of man, but is itself the product of human activity. The world of human affairs, then, is not simply a part of ‘matter’, alien to man. Nor is it the work of men’s minds, not even the externalized ‘essence of man’ as some of the more advanced thinkers of Marx’s time thought. History, said Marx, is made by men; not by *Man’, abstract ‘Man’, but by real, living active men. And men make history under definite, historically- evolved conditions which are not of their own choosing. The processes through which these conditions come about are law-governed and can be scientifically in- vestigated. Men can begin to understand the processes of development of which their lives are a part. They will then understand the significance of their own social experiences and by this means become actors of a different kind in the historical process. From this point their actions will not be based on blind ignorance and complete unawareness of the changes taking place in social life. Nor- will they be chained to the illusion of absolute free will. They will then attempt to analyse scientifically their own experience and the experience of other'men. — THE ROLE OF CLASS STRUGGLE Marx’s greatest discovery after he had learned to view human consciousness as itself an objective force in. history. was the central role of class struggle in the process of social change. History could now be seen in its broad outlines as a series of transformations from’ lower to higher forms of social and economic organization. Men differentiated themselves from the animal world by becoming producers. As opposed to the mere food-gathering of other animals, human pro- duction. implies the systematic use and manufacture of implements or tools, ie., utilizing one part of nature refashioned by man to appropriate energy from the rest of nature. Throughout his history man has con- stantly improved the efficiency of these tools. This active, creative adaptation to the environment is what dist'*rcuishes man historically and function- ally from the rest of the animal kingdom. However this form of adaptation has a very important corollary. The standardization and use of these implements re- quires that men establish certain definite production relations among themselves. These relations—the co- operation of men to do certain jobs and the division of labour——have to be adapted to the tools of produc- tion. otherwise the economy will break down. At a certain stage of cultural development the relations of production are characterized by division into classes, groups within the same economy, but with different interests and sources of income in the products of labour, different ‘rights’ to these products—with 6 April-May 1959 exploitation (i.e., some men living on the fruits of other men’s labour) as a necessary adjunct. During critical or revolutionary periods the forces of production de. velop to a point where existing class divisions become a barrier to their further advance. There ensues a period of conflict, often prolonged, during which ,the classes become conscious enough of their own interests to fight out. the issue. In the process of these class struggles men remake the structure of society and lay the basis for renewed advance. Very often the results of social cenflict are not those intended by the participants. Moreover, the slogans of the contending classes are often clothed in religious and other ideological disguises. Yet it is along class lines that the basic alinements are made in all large- scale social conflicts. The analysis of this active: relationship between a class and its environment, an environment which in- cludes its enemies, is a fundamental aspect of Marxism. From this point of view it is easy to see what was the crux of the opposition of Lenin and the Bolsheviks to the Mensheviks. The Mensheviks took an ‘objective’ view of the development of Russia’s economy, but one which excluded a dynamic analysis of class relation- ships in Russia, of the retarded development of classes there. The Menshevik analysis did not begin to examine the special problems of the working class in a backward country after the emergence of the prole- tariat internationally as a threat to capitalism. This is why the Mensheviks failed to see the opportunity for the proletariat of such a backward country as Russia to combine its struggle against capital with the eman- cipation of the peasantry—a task which in earlier periods was performed by the bourgeoisie in over- throwing feudalism. The Russian Mensheviks were not alone in using Marxist phrases and formulas to cover up their rejec- tion of the revolutionary role of the working class. Throughout European social democracy the so-called ‘orthodox Marxists’ tended to become embroiled in the day-to-day processes of the parliamentary system and the trade union struggle. Lenin’s struggle against the ideas of Menshevism was only a prelude to his struggle against the ideas of the Second International. Against their own declared programmes, the various social- - democratic parties in the Second International sup- ported their own ‘fatherlands’, thus laying bare its theoretical decay. The German _ Social-Democratic Party, from being the outstanding example of proletar- ian political organization, became the home of the most conservative Labour bureaucracy, capable of the bloodiest counter-revolutionary actions in 1918 and 1919. This transition took place without any departure from the profession of ‘Marxism’ by the social-demo- cratic leaders. Had it been possible for Rosa Luxem- burg and her comrades to struggle against the ideas of Bebel, David and the other leaders of the German party as early and as successfully as Lenin began a parallel struggle in Russia, then the tragic defeat of the Spartacus League in 1918-19 and the destruction of the German soviets might never have happened—and the Russian Revolution of 1917 would have had that revolutionary support from the west whose absence was finally the cause of the Revolution’s degeneration. The Mensheviks failed in Russia because they did not base their politics on the real position of the work- ing class as part of an international revolutionary

[p009] REVOLUTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS movement. Instead they saw Russia’s future as a schematic series of inevitable economic stages through which she must ‘inevitably’ pass. On this line of reasoning the next stage was the bourgeois revolution, and it was no good the socialists trying to by-pass it. Bourgeois revolution therefore must be encouraged, and in the ensuing period of bourgeois democracy the working class would learn how to act as a political unit and then the socialist revolution would take its proper place on the time-table. Lenin and Trotsky, and to a great extent Rosa Luxemburg, realized that in the necessary period of parliamentary and trade union action within the bourgeois State (necessary for the purpose of forging links between Marxists and the masses of the people) there had taken place a certain degeneration and corruption of the working-class parties. The fundamental revolutionary lessons of the revolutions of 1848, reinforced and enriched in the Paris Commurie in 1871, had been pushed into the background. If, as Marx said, ‘the emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves’, then revolutionaries must have a clear and firm under- standing of the process by which the working class be- ‘comes a tevolutionary force. As an economic grouping, based on the exploitation of its labour through the system, the working class is potentially a revolutionary force. Its experience of capitalism creates its conscious- ness of its class interests. The first part of the Com- munist Manifesto is devoted to a demonstration of the necessary concentration and _ solidification of the working class as a social force by the development of capital itself. THE NEED FOR SOCIALIST CONSCIOUSNESS But the historical task of the working class is to effect the greatest transformation which has ever taken place in human history. To this task corresponds man’s highest level of consciousness—the scientific under- standing of the development of society. Thus Marxism is a theory in which man’s subjective and objective existence are united. The experience of an individual worker is sufficient to make him conscious of the need to fight his immediate enemy, the employer, but it is such that he is excluded from the possibility of inde- pendently arriving at scientific socialism. For the com- — prehension of the total processes of the capitalist system and of the interrelations of its parts, the highest development of natural and historical science was re- quired. Only with these weapons, expressed at their highest and most general in materialist dialectics, can the total experience of the working class, and the system of which it is part, be comprehended. The working- class party, a fusion of scientific theory and working- class practice and experience, is the means for the development of socialist consciousness. The revolution- ary party is the necessary, logical outcome of Marx’s teaching on the nature of human consciousness. Demo- cratic centralism is the method by which the practice and experience of the working class is worked over, scientifically checked and analysed, and thrown back into the furnace of the class struggle. Without such an organization the experience of the workers is largely wasted; defeats are bitter blows and victories are illusory; theory becomes sterile formalism. Marx and Engels made several errors in their great work, the Communist Manifesto. Their mistake in thinking that the working class was more or less ready to play its decisive revolutionary role, and that capital- ism was very near its final collapse, was very soon corrected. It became necessary to stress the need for patient mass work and participation in political activi- ties which were not directly revolutionary, but which reflected the consciousness of the working class at its given stage of development. Marx: himsei turned to a thorough, scientific study of the system whose over- throw he had forecast. The results of this study were embodied in Capital, where he put to the test his hypo- thesis that the contradiction between the forces of pro- duction and the relations of production led to the over- throw of any class system. In the period between 1850 and 1905 the European Marxists absorbed and developed these two sides of Marx’s work: the creation of working-class political parties (with especially good results in Germany) and the application of historical materialism to problems of social development. Somewhere in the process, however, the essential content of Marx’s theory—proletarian re- volution and proletarian dictatorship—was more and more pushed into the background. It was Lenin and Trotsky in Russia, and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany, who rediscovered the fundamental revolutionary ideas contained in the Communist Manifesto. Capital was only a massive theoretical verification of the revolu- tionary message of 1848. Similarly, the turn to new forms of political work in the First International was likewise only a particular historical application of the same dialectical method which is so brilliantly used in the Communist Manifesto. In this document, which is without parallel in histori- cal significance, the ideas of class struggle, the economic structure of society, the revolutionary role of the work- ing class, the necessary self-destruction of capitalism and the dialectical method itself are startling in their simplicity and maturity. Many people read the Mani- festo when they first discover socialism, and think of it as just one more pamphlet. Yet it is perhaps the most complete work of Marx and Engels, in the context of which all their later work should be interpreted. The revolutions of 1848 showed that society was not as ripe for the socialist revolution as Marx and Engels had thought: indeed another half-century elapsed before the contradictions reached the intensity neces- sary for revolution. Although remaining an active revo- lutionary, Marx devoted the rest of his life principally to the scientific demonstration of the laws of capttalist. development, showing the inevitability of its collapse: when it seemed to be expanding endlessly, and when: the revolutionary elements in the working class seemed’ to be defeated and broken in will and organization. So: much for those who say that if Marx and Engels were: alive today they would not be revolutionaries! In the: nineteenth century, these people tell us, it was ‘natural’ to be a revolutionary. Yet the truth is that the prevailing mood among nineteenth-century econom-: ists, philosophers and social theorists was one of: optimism for capitalism’s future and belief in auto- matic progress. The contradictions of capitalism were: much more concealed than they are today—after two: world wars, the depression of the thirties, the collapse of colonialism, and the Russian and Chinese revolutions. If the Communist Manifesto is seen as a statement of Marx’s general theory, the framework for Capital 7

[p010] LABOUR REVIEW and the other works of-Marx and Engels, the remark, ‘How “out of date” it is’, is seen to be superficial. The accuracy of the Manifesto’s predictions ceases to be a mechanical matter of adding up correct and incorrect prophecies. It is the mature expression, in terms of an analysis of the classes within capitalism, of Marx’s -philosophical rejection of idealism and mechanistic materialism, a rejection already brilliantly stated more abstractly in the Theses on Feuerbach (1844). It is also the harbinger of the world proletarian revolution. Henceforth anyone who tried to separate social science and the revolution would be unable to develop the one or achieve the other. THE METHOD OF MARXIST ANALYSIS In examining any phenomenon, Marx’s method is to look for the basic internal contradiction which determines the movement of the whole. He shows ‘how the working out of this contradiction provides the key to the relationships between particular events in particular places and periods. It does so in spite of the fact that some of these particular events have an appearance exactly opposite to that mechanically ‘expected’ from the basic law. In the study of the revo- tionary socialist movement the key question, is the contradictory relationship between the objective de- velopment of the material basis of capitalist society and the consciousness and organization of the working class in struggle. Both of these, of course, contain their own internal contradictions. But it must be remem- bered that these two are not separate abstract things, developing independently and acting upon one an- other as external forces, like billiard balls in collision or like an electricity power-station and the machines which it drives. They develop as aspects of one unified ‘social system. Marx showed in the Manifesto that the ‘development of capitalism implies the inevitable ‘develop ment of the working class, but not in a simple, mechanical way. Particular stages and characteristics of capitalism bring big but temporary differences between different sections of the working class. Today, for instance, Labour Party theorists do not see Britain’s Welfare State, as a transitory chance phenomenon in the whole world revolutionary development, a com- bination of particular historical characteristics, an essentially accidental formation. These ‘new thinkers’ see it as a basically new type of society and a refutation -of Marxism. Others look at the USSR and again fail to see it historically as the particular product of a specific stage of the world revolution, whose forward movement was arrested in 1923 and distorted by its political isolation ever since, and whose regeneration has been retarded by hundreds of unique features of world economics and political development in addition to the special problems of tsarist Russia’s backward economy. Instead of this, they consider it as a special and unique phenomenon, an independent process. ° For example, the Webbs talked about ‘the Soviet experiment’; the Stalinists of the British Communist Party discuss Russia as an ‘example’ of the socialist type of society, and then engage in endless sterile dis- ‘cussions about whether this is a ‘model’ for others. The whole point of Trotsky’s critique of Stalinism was not to nag at Stalin’s political deficiencies or even his ‘cult of the individual’, but to keep discussion of the USSR in the context of the basic process of which it is a part— the world revolution against capitalism. Only in this Rs April-May ‘1959 way can the dual role of the Stalinist bureaucracy be grasped. People brought up on Stalinist ideas find ‘frotsky’s ideas on Russia hard to understand and even wholly negative because this whole difference of method is involved. They take particular criticisms of the USSR, of Gollan, of the French Communist Party, and reject them or rationalize them away because they retain a general static, one-sided picture of the USSR as the great bastion of socialism, and of the communist parties as the working-class vanguard, isolated and untouched by the rest of the world; therefore criticism of them is to be regarded as reactionary. Unless the historical method of Marx is grasped it is difficult to avoid a ‘common-sense’ impressionism, the logical end of which is either the conviction that ‘despite its negative sides’ Stalinism is the answer to the needs of the working class, or the conviction that history has proved Marx wrong in thinking the working class capable of revolution. from the Marxist analysis of revolution the USSR appears in a very different light from the ‘either-or’ of the Stalinist method and of bourgeois eclecticism. Marxism sees Russia first as a living example of the collapse and ciisis of capitalism (both by its break from the world capitalist system and by its threat to the economy and political stability of the capitalist powers). At the same time the existence of the USSR within the framework of world capitalism, and on the restricted socio-economic basis of: old Russia from which it developed, has a particular historical effect on the international working class. Today the point has been reached when, for the working class to achieve full consciousness of its revolutionary role in society, all the illusions about the nature of the USSR have to be dispelled—and, in particular, socialists all over the world have to understand the origins and function of the Soviet bureaucracy which now rules Russia. To state the point more generally, the working class can only achieve the degree of conciousness and organization necessary for victory if it has a leadership able to grasp the totality of social development in all the richness of its contradictory processes. Each new feature in the evolution of capitalism (e.g., its economic expansion after 1850, the emergence of imperialism, the rise of fascism, the breakdown of colonialism, the overwhelming economic superiority of the USA) places new and complex problems of theory and _ praciice before the working-class movement. Imperialism not only creates new, knotty problems for economic and sociological research workers, Marxist or otherwise, to analyse: it also produces whole areas of social-structural distortion in which the achievement of class conscious - ness is for long periods very difficult. Imperialism has erected a barrier between European and black workers in southern Africa, where white workers organize to protect jobs from the Africans. Marxists must be able to explain tc workers the real meaning of their position in society, no matter what the chance deter- minants and special features. Only with the grasp of the world-historical character of their role can these contradictory processes be integrated with the con- sciousness of the working class. The present leaders of the working-class movements in many countries operate on the basis not of such a total view of the situation of their class, but of the special, superficial interests of particular (usually national) sections in special periods. This is not to say

[p011] REVOLUTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS that these leaders cannot construct great organizations and disseminate widely their own special ideas through- out society. Indeed. such organizations and ideologies have often been able to give the impression of impregnability and durability. But such phases always last foi relatively brief periods. At a given moment they collapse in face of the deeper currents of the basic struggle between the classes. It is enough to cite on'y three examples: craft unionism in Britain during the period 1851-89; the German Social-Democratic Pariy of the turn of the century; and the Stalin dictatorship. THE NATURE OF PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION It has been suggested that in criticizing the Communist Manifesto as ‘out of date’ the opponents of Marxism misunderstand Marx’s version of the revolutionary role of the working class and hence mis- interpret the subsequent experience of the working-class movement. A revo:ution is the seizure of power by a class in order to effect, in its own interests, the overthrow of the existing social structure. In all previous revolutions the victorious class has not overthrown the whole of the existing social conditions. For classes like the bourgeoisie, the aim of political revolution was to substitute for the previously dominant mode of appro- priation their own, already developed, mode of appropriation. But the inevitable tendency of capitalism is to sweep aside all modes of appropriation other than the capitalist exploitation of wage-labour, so that only two basic classes confront each other. This is the key to the unique role of the working class in history. It cannot substitute its own mode of appro- priation for that of the capitalist class, since by abolish- ing capital it abolishes its necessary opposite—wage- labour. The interests of the proletariat are directed towards a society without a proletariat, without exploitation, without a State.’ The historical appearance of such a class, whose aim is not to replace one form of exploitation by another, is the basis in reality for the proof of Marx’s theories of consciousness and social development. Such a class does not need to create illusions with which to cover up differences with its allies, as the French bourgeoisie did when they coined the slogan, ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’, to rally the masses whose assistance was required to defeat the old régime. The proletariat is a class whose experience and tasks compel it to com- 3 ‘When the proletariat is victorious, it by no means becomes the absolute side of society, for it is victorious only by abolishing itself and its opposite. Then the proletariat disappears as well as the opposite which determines it, private property’ (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Holy Family, 1956, p. 52). Elsewhere in his early works, Marx characterized the working class thus: ‘A class in civil society, which is not a class of civil society, a class which is the dissolution of all classes, a sphere of society which has a universal character because its sufferings are universal, and which does not claim a particular redress because the wrong which is done to it is not a particular wrong but wrong in general. .. which claims no traditional status but only a human status .. . a sphere, finally, which cannot emancipate itself! without emancipating itself from all the other spheres of society, without therefore emancipating all these other spheres’ (Karl Marx, Introduction to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law, in Marx and Engels on Religion, 1957, p. 56). prehend the world scientifically, and to which illusions and self-deception are anathema. What Marx and Engels did in 1848 was to break out of the ‘socialism’ which argued from sentiment and ‘pure reason’, and to insist that communists must base their politics on things as they are. This means seeing things in their real development, and not suspended in an imaginary historical vacuum. Communists must not erect beautiful Utopias on the principles of freedom and justice, but first ‘observe what was going on under their very eyes’. If this is the starting point, then ‘the communists have no interests other than those of the working class as a whole’. Thus the revolutionary party of the working class must not be ‘just another political party’, seeking to take over the State machine and distribute offices and privileges among its own élite and faithful followers. It stands not above but in front of its class, with the aim of arming that class theoretically and practically for the struggle against capitalism. “The emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself.” By 1846 Marx had already begun to approach the work of the Communist League in this spirit.t Writing of his work in that year, he said: We issued a series of pamphlets, some of them printed, others lithographed, mercilessly criticizing the mixture of Anglo-French socialism or communism and German philo- cophy which represented the secret teachings of the League, and putting forward instead a scientific insight into the economic structure of bourgeois society as the only tenable basis, explaining this in a popular form and pointing out that the task was not to work out a Utopian system but to: participate consciously in the historical process of social. transformation taking place before our eyes.> The depth of Marx’s insight into the character of the proletariat in the 1840s is remarkable. Even in Great Britain, the most advanced centre of capitalism, large factories were very rare and remained so for many years after 1848, whereas in France and Germany the Industrial Revolution had hardly begun. In the USA the frontier was still expanding, and the slave system of the South still flourished. Socialist and communist , organizations were minute in Europe and non-existent elsewhere. The developing revolutionary movements in Europe were national or bourgeois in character. Only the dynamic synthesis made by Marx of German dialectical philosophy, British political economy and. French socialism could have burrowed so far and so accurately under the surface of European society and. politics. With the advantage of seventy years of hindsight,. Mehring could say in his classic biography that events proceeded differently and certainly less rapidly than. expected by Marx and Engels in 1848. He also made: a valuable criticism of the Communist Manifesto’s limitations. Marx and Engels underestimated the importance of wage Struggles and of the trade union organizations of the: workers, which were regarded primarily as training schools to prepare them for the political class struggle. . . . The ‘Manifesto’ therefore regarded the reaction of the proletariat to the impoverishing tendencies of the capitalist mode of 4 The Communist League, an international organization, had only 300 members.. 5 Quoted in F. Mehring, Karl Marx (1936), p. 150.

[p012] LABOUR REVIEW > production too one-sidedly in. the light of a _ political revolution. It based its conclusions on the English and French revolutionc, and expected several decades of civil war and national wars in whose hectic atmosphere the proijetariat would quickly ripen into political maturity.6 In the much debated Introduction to The Class Struggles in France, Engels stressed the same points in evaluating the views which he and Marx held in 1848: History has proved us, and all who thought like us, wrong. It has made it clear ‘that the state of economic development on the Continent at that time was not, by a long way, ripe for the removal of capitalist production; it has proved this by the economic revolution which, since 1848, has seized the whole of the Continent. . . . At that time the masses, sundered and differing according to locality and nationality, _ dinked only by a feeling of common suffering, undeveloped, tossed to and fro in their perplexity from enthusiarm to despair.7 Yet these brief statements may be misinterpreted if we do not look a little deeper. It was to Germany that the Manifesto directed the immediate attention of its readers, and it was only a matter of weeks before that country gave an astounding confirmation of the prophecy that a bourgeois revolution would break out there. What also emerged from the 1848 events in Germany was that, given the appearance of an inter- national proletariat even remotely conscious of its independent interests, the bourgeoisie was incapable of carrying out the classical democratic tasks of the bourgeois revolution.’ Henceforth to talk about rev- olution and political struggle except on a basis of classes and their relationships would be a relapse into theology. In this sense the main lines of the Manifesto received immediate confirmation. The proletariat appeared on the political scene, and its appearance shaped European politics for the future. From now on no national bourgeoisie could attempt to attack feudal régimes or their remnants without looking over its shoulder at a class no longer content only to ‘fight the enemies of its enemies’. Now Marx’s picture of the working class in relation to capitalist development was a generalization from British and French experience. In the period following 1848, given the further expansion of capitalism and its spread to every corner of the globe, there. were to arise enormous differences in the conditions and stages of development of the working class in different countries and continents. Even in the nineteenth century Marx and Engels did not mechanically look to Britain, the most advanced capitalist country, for the greatest advances in working-class struggle, nor to France with its turbulent revolutionary tradition. It was a question rather of the dialectics of class struggle in the specific conditions, and Germany continued until the end of the century to be the main focus of working-class and Marxist development, with the temporary ‘though important exception of the Paris Commune of 1871.° 6 Thid. p. 150. ‘7 Karl Marx, Selected Works, vol. ii (1943), pp. 76-7. 8 ‘To be sure, the German bourgeoisie was frightened not so much by the German as by the French proletariat. The June battle in Paris, in 1848, showed the bourgeoisie what it had to expect’ (Engels, Preface to the second German edition, The Peasant War in Germany, 1956 ed., p. 22). 9 It is not simply a matter of ‘uneven development’ in the separate countries, but of the total revolutionary process being 10 April-May 1959 Indeed the special results of Britain’s being first in the field of capitalist development were already evident in the nineteenth century, so that Engels spoke of the ‘bourgeois proletariat’ which was growing up in the form of a labour aristocracy. British capitalism could give comparatively high standards to considerable numbers ot skilled tradesmen, and these, the most highly organized, influenced strongly the ideology of the Labour movement in this country.!° Characteristics which are at one stage an advantage are quickly transformed into their opposite, of course, and it is dangerous to talk about ‘the privilege of backwardness’. The first countries to see the defeat of capitalism were those without such a long-standing tradition ef conservative trade unionism, so that they have often been described as having had ‘the privilege of backwardness’. However, this can be a misleading generalization: what is a privilege at one stage becomes under other circumstances a great handicap. What is decisive is the total configuration of class relationships rather than any particular characteristics such as ‘backwardness’. Trotsky brings out this point very well: One might say that the richer the history of a country, and, at the same time, of its working class, the greater within it the accumulation of memories, traditions, habits, the larger the number of old groupings—the harder it is to achieve a revolutionary unity of the working class. ‘The Russian proletariat is poor in cla*s history and class traditions. This has undoubtedly faciliated its revolutionary education leading up to October. It causes, on the other hand, the difficulty of constructive work afer October. The Russian workman—except the very top of the class—usually lacks the most elementary habits and notions of culture (in regard to tidiness, instruction, punctuality, etc.). The west European worker possecses these habits. He has acquired them, by a long and slow process, under the bourgeois régime. This explains why in the west of Europe the working clasc—its superior elements at any rate—is so strongly attracted to the bourgeois régime with its democracy, freedom of the capitalist Press, and all the other blessings.!1 expressed most sharply now in one area, now in another. Since the turn of the century this international character of capitalism, already decisive for the ideas of the Manifesto, is the basis without which the strategy of the Bolshevik revo'ution would have been unthinkable. The Bolsheviks saw Russia not just as a particular example of a national capitalism with its own ‘national peculiarities’, but above all as the weakest link in the chain of imperialism. Since the 1930s there is no doubt that the focus of capitalism’s death struggle has passed to the colonial areas. But here again this is a temporary phenomenon. The metropolitan countries, with their economy and social structure founded upon privileged foreign trade and imperialist exploitation, find themselves faced with insoluble difficulties as the empires crumble: away. Now the surface calm of social relations in the western countries will be broken by violent class struggles. Only a leadership able to comprehend and react to these rapid changes, to see the industrial struggles here as part of this world process, and to profit from the crises of Stalinism and social democracy, will be able to lead these struggles politically. 10 For some typical expressions of the conservatism and class collaboration of the craft unions of the second half of the nineteenth century, see the selection Labour’s Formative Years (1948), edited by James B. Jefferys. 11 L. Trotsky, Problems of Life (1924), p. 11.

[p013] REVOLUTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS National differences and the ebb and flow of class conflicts, often with long periods of calm in particular countries, together with the appearance of privileged groupings among the working class, were a great obstacle to the achievement of revolutionary conscious- ness and a true revolutionary leadership. What was a correct strategy for many years, work through Parliament, an open party and the creation of strong trade unions, proved eventually to have its own dangers when it persisted into the monopoly phase of capitalist developmeni—a phase when the parliamentary and trade union machines gradually became incorporated into the bourgeois State.!2 Not only a ‘labour aristoc- racy’ but a labour bureaucracy encrusted itself on the working class, acting as a butler between the classes, wanting at all costs to prevent an open clash between the workers and their enemies. But to the problem of lack of homogeneity in the working class was added another which more than once bedevilled Marxist theory and the revolutionary mobilization of the working class. This was the fact that, although after 1848 capitalism extended its economic tentacles to every part of the world, the social and political tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution remained unsolved everywhere except in Britain, France, and, to a certain extent, the USA and the Low Countries. In the political struggle to defeat autocracy, the real revolutionary role of the working class was played down, and this was justified by appeals to Marx’s theory of history which, it was alleged, insisted that each nation must first win democracy and on this battlefield the working class would learn to win power. As we saw, the Mensheviks denied the leading role of the working class in Russia on these grounds.'3 Even in Germany in 1918, there were ‘Marxists’ who argued that until the democratic revolution was com- pleted the working class could not be prepared to take power. From 1848 onwards the political experience of the working class, in revolutionary as well as in peaceful periods, has been a struggle to break through and defeat the false theories, false leaders and false strategies which have followed from a lack of understanding of the above phenomena. In the interests of particular sec- tions of the working class, or in the search for middle- class ‘allies’ against feudalism or imperialist powers, Labour leaders have spoken and acted as though the revolutionary role of the workers was not on the agenda. Lip-service to ‘Marxism’ has not interfered with these betrayals; neither that of European social democracy in 1914; nor that of the Stalinists in the period of the ‘popular front? and ‘parliamentary roads’; nor the betrayal of the Chinese workers into the hands of Chiang Kai-shek in 1927. If the history of the role of the working class and its leaders is examined, it becomes apparent that none of these questions is new, and that today’s opportunists of all varieties are in direct line from the influence of petty-bourgeois and bourgeois ‘socialism’ in the earliest stages of the socialist movement. 12 Again Britain is a good example. The Labour Party is now either Her Majesty’s Government or Her Majesty’s Opposition and the trade unions are regarded as ‘one of the institutions of democratic society’. 13 For a detailed discussion see L. H. Haimson, The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism (Harvard, 1955). Only a few months after the Manifesto’s characierization of bourgeois and _petty-bourgeois socialism came the great events of 1848, which had vital lessons for the working class. Two other world- shaking events, the Commune of 1871 and the Russian revolution of 1905, were to add their own lessons, no less decisive, before there was achieved in 1917 the first workers’ revolution after the Manifesto. It might be useful to give a preliminary summary of ground which should be covered by a Marxist analysis of thils experience.!4 I, 1848 France; An immature working-class revolt in Paris. No independent political leadership of the working class, but many demands calling for a solution of ‘social’ as well as political questions. This revolt is staged in the context of a bourgeois revolution at a late stage of its retarded completion. The workers fight alongside successive sections of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie.!5 Germany and Austria: Here begin bourgeois revolutions, which prove incapable of victory largely because of ther lack of initiative and revolutionary drive, caused primarily by fear of the urban proletariat.!© Lessons of 1848: The bourgeoisie is no longer capable of carrying through a democratic revolution. Working-class strategy and tactics must take account of the fact that the bourgeoisie will sell out to autocracy rather than give scope for the political development of the working class. Only independent working- class leadership and working-class demands can avoid the Bonapartism which settles over both France and Germany. Bonapartism is a régime in which the State authority takes on a certain independence in its rule, an autonomy deriving from the weakness of the ruling class, but possible only if the working class is not mobilized to the full, is not independently led, and has sustained defeats. Although Bonapartism is often un- pleasant for large sections of the ruling class it is necessary because of their inability to rule by ‘normal’ methods. For a _ bourgeoisie to rule through parliamentary democracy it must have strong bases of support in the middle classes and also among the workers.!7 II. 1871 The Paris Commune: Wearied by the Franco- Prussian war and enraged by the national betrayal of the French bourgeoisie, the workers of Paris take up arms against the State, expelling the government from 14 This is done rather more generally in Trotsky’s 1905: Results and Prospects. 15 Karl Marx, The Class Struggles in France and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. 16 Marx and Engels, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany, Engels, Preface to the second German edition of The Feasant War in Germany. A good history of the period is Priscilla Robertson’s Revolutions of 1848: A Social History (Princeton, 1952). 17 The lessons of 1848 are brilliantly summarized by Marx in his Address of the Central Committee to the Central Council of the Communist League. 1b

[p014] LABOUR REVIEW Paris. But in the events which follow, the leadership fails to free itself from ‘democratic’ politics, basing itself on the classical figures of the 1789 revolution and -abstract principles of justice rather than upon the class struggle.!® Lessons of 1871: The proletariat cannot simply ‘seize hold of the existing machinery of State’ but must smash the old State machine and develop independent organs of power for the working class. Revolution requires relentless pursuit and defeat of the enemy, not a perfection of democratic principles. The working class requires a disciplined, centralized leadership based on revolutionary theory and able to advance a strategy of demands drawing in other sections of the population, particularly the peasantry in countries with large agricultural populations.!9 Hit. 1905 The Russian Revolution: A proletarian revolution in a country without a bourgeois revolution. Here the bourgeoisie does not even take the first steps against the autocracy in 1905. Rosa Luxemburg called it: ‘A collision of two epochs ... a result of the delayed development of class relations in Russia and of their over-ripe development in western Europe.’ Lessons of 1905: The Russian bourgeoisie was not a revolutionary class within Russian tsardom. Only an independent working-class movement could overthrow 18 Karl Marx, The Civil War in France; Tales, La Commune de 1871 (Paris, 1924); Lissagaray, History of the Commune of 1871 (1902). 19 See especially L. Trotsky, The Defence of Terrorism (1921) and V. I. Lenin, The Paris Commune (1931). 20 Rosa Luxemburg, Juniusbroschiire (Berlin, 1916), quoted in P. Frélich, Rosa Luxemburg (1940), p. 142. 12 April-May 1959 the autocracy. In the soviets the workers had evolved a form of action and power suited to their revolution, but they required: first, a party of a new type, highly centralized and disciplined; secondly, links with the peasantry which would enable the working class to solve the peasantry’s first problems, elsewhere a task of the bourgeois revolution; thirdly, a strategy based on the international struggles of the working class. These lessons are summed up in Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution and Lenin’s Imperialism. Not only was the working class of a country like Russia left with the tasks normally falling to the bourgeoisie, but its social demands would make it impossible for the revolution to stop short at the foundation of democratic political institutions and the ending of landlordism. The logic of events would push the working class into the larger process of international proletarian revolution; this world revolution would decide the tempo and quality of the development of the proletarian dictatorship in Russia. * * * Both social democracy and Stalinism are cut adrift from the central ideas of Marxism, which are confirmed in the revolutionary experience of the working class. Both deny the essential class basis of all serious political issues and of all fundamental institutions in society. Both reject the view that the bourgeois State, including Parliament, must be smashed and workers’ organs of power set up in its place. Both have departed from true working-class internationalism. Both fear more than anything else the action and initiative of the masses of the people themselves, and therefore erect bureaucratic party machines or State systems which act ‘on behalf of? the workers. Each one of these departures from Marxism was already condemned by Marx in the Manifesto and in his writings on the revolutions of 1848.