Selected Essays Part 7

If Labour revolts are now breaking out all over England, the bourgeoisie and the Government there are no better advised than in the last third of the eighteenth century. Their sole expedient is material force, and as material force diminishes in the same degree as the spread of pauperism and the insight of the proletariat increase, English perplexity necessarily grows in geometrical proportion.

Lastly, it is in point of fact untrue that the German bourgeoisie has entirely missed the general significance of the Silesian revolt.

In several towns the masters are endeavouring to combine with the journeymen. All the liberal German newspapers, the organs of the liberal bourgeoisie, are gus.h.i.+ng about the organization of labour, the reform of society, the criticism of monopoly and of compet.i.tion, etc.

All this as a result of the labour movements. The newspapers of Treves, Aachen, Cologne, Wesel, Mannheim, Breslau, even of Berlin, are constantly publis.h.i.+ng quite intelligent articles on social affairs, from which "Prussian" may learn at any time. Yes, letters from Germany are constantly expressing astonishment at the slight opposition which the bourgeoisie offers to social tendencies.

If "Prussian" had been better acquainted with the history of the social movement, he would have put his question the other way round.

Why does the German bourgeoisie itself interpret the partial distress as relatively universal? Whence the animosity and cynicism of the political bourgeoisie? Whence the supineness and the sympathies of the unpolitical bourgeoisie with respect to the proletariat?

Now to "Prussian's" oracular p.r.o.nouncements concerning the German workers. "The German poor," he puns, "are not wiser than the poor Germans, that is, they can nowhere see beyond their hearth, their factory, their district: the whole question has so far been neglected by the all-comprehending political soul."

In order to be able to compare the condition of the German workers with the condition of the French and English workers, "Prussian" must compare the first manifestation, the beginning of the English and French Labour movement, with the German movement which has just begun.

He neglects to do this. His reasoning therefore runs upon a triviality, such as that industry in Germany is not yet so developed as in England, or that a movement in its beginnings looks different from a movement that has made progress.

If, however, "Prussian" would place himself at the correct standpoint, he would find that not any of the French and English Labour revolts possessed such a theoretical and conscious character as the Silesian weavers' revolt.

In the first place, let us recall the song of the weavers, those bold accents of the struggle, wherein hearth, factory, and district are not once mentioned, but the proletariat immediately gets into the stride of its opposition to the society of private property in the most vigorous, ruthless, and powerful fas.h.i.+on. The Silesian revolt begins just where the French and English Labour revolts end, with the consciousness of the being of the proletariat. The action itself bears this superior character. Not only the machines, these rivals of the worker, were destroyed, but also the ledgers, the t.i.tle of property, and while all other movements have been directed in the first place against the visible enemy, the lords of industry, this movement was simultaneously directed against the bankers, the concealed foe.

Lastly, no single English Labour revolt has been conducted with equal bravery, circ.u.mspection, and persistence.

As regards the state of education or the capacity for education of the German workers generally, I may recall Weitling's excellent writings, which frequently represent an advance upon Proudhon in a theoretical respect, although they may be inferior to him in finish. Where can the bourgeoisie--their philosophers and scholars included--show a work similar to Weitling's "Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom" pertaining to the emanc.i.p.ation of the bourgeoisie--the political emanc.i.p.ation? If we compare the mediocrity of German political literature with this expansive and brilliant literary debut of the German worker; if we compare this giant child's shoe of the proletariat with the dwarf proportions of the worn-out political shoe of the German bourgeoisie, we must predict an athletic figure for the German Cinderella. It must be admitted that the German proletariat is the theorist of the European proletariat, just as the English proletariat is its political economist, and the French proletariat its politician. Germany possesses a cla.s.sical vocation for the social revolution although she is incapable of the political revolution. For if the impotence of the German bourgeoisie is the same thing as the political impotence of Germany, the talent of the German proletariat--even apart from German theory--is the social talent of Germany. The disproportion between the philosophical and the political development in Germany is no abnormality. It is a necessary disproportion. Only by means of socialism can a philosophical people put its philosophy into practice, and only in the proletariat, therefore, can it find the active element for its emanc.i.p.ation.

At this moment, however, I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain to "Prussian" the relation of "German society" to the social transformation, and from this relation to explain, on the one side, the weak reaction of the German bourgeoisie to socialism, and, on the other hand, the exceptional talent of the German proletariat for socialism. The first elements for the understanding of this phenomenon he will find in my introduction to the criticism of Hegel's philosophy of right ("Franco-German Annuals"). (See pp. 11 _et seq._ of this book.)

The wisdom of the German poor is therefore in inverse proportion to the wisdom of the poor Germans. Thus "Prussian's" attempt to manipulate his thought in the form of ant.i.thesis on the occasion of the Silesian labour unrest had led to the greatest ant.i.thesis against the truth. What a thoughtful mind should do in connection with a first outbreak, such as the Silesian workers' revolt, is not to play the schoolmaster to this event, but to study its peculiar character. For this a certain amount of scientific insight and some goodwill is necessary, whereas for the other operation a glib phraseology, saturated in shallow egoism, fully suffices.

Why does "Prussian" judge the German workers so contemptuously?

Because he finds that the "whole question,"--namely the question of labour distress--has not yet been taken up by the "all-comprehending political soul." He carries his Platonic love to the political soul so far as to say:

"All revolts which break out from the isolation of men from the community and the separation of their thoughts from the social principles will be extinguished in blood and unreason; but if the distress first creates the understanding, and if the political understanding of the Germans discovers the roots of social distress, then these incidents would also be felt in Germany as the symptom of a great transformation."

In the first half of the sentence we read: if distress creates understanding, and in the second half: if political understanding discovers the roots of social distress. Simple understanding in the first half of the ant.i.thesis becomes political understanding in the second half, just as the simple distress of the first half of the ant.i.thesis becomes social distress in the second half. Why has the artist in style so unequally endowed the two halves of the ant.i.thesis?

Had "Prussian" written: "If social distress creates political understanding, and if political understanding discovers the roots of social distress," the absurdity of this ant.i.thesis could not have escaped any impartial reader. Such a reader would have immediately wondered why the anonymous writer did not couple social understanding with social distress and political understanding with political distress, as the simplest logic dictates? Now to business.

So false is it to say that social distress creates political understanding that the truth is rather the reverse; social well-being creates political understanding. Political understanding is an intellectual quality and is given to him who already has, who lives in clover. Our "Prussian" should hear what a French political economist, M. Michel Chevalier, has to say upon this subject: "In the year 1789 when the bourgeoisie revolted, the sole thing they wanted was a share in the government of the country. Emanc.i.p.ation consisted in s.n.a.t.c.hing the direction of public affairs, the high civic, military and religious functions, from the hands of the privileged persons who possessed the monopoly of these functions. Wealthy and enlightened, able to govern themselves, they desired to escape from the _regime du bon plaisir_."

How incapable political understanding is of discovering the source of social distress we have already demonstrated to "Prussian." Another word about this opinion of his. The more cultivated and general the political understanding of a people is, all the more does the proletariat--at least at the beginning of the movement--dissipate its energies in irrational, useless, and brutally suppressed revolts.

Because it thinks along political lines, it perceives the cause of all evils in the wills of men, and all remedies to lie in force and the overthrow of a particular form of the State. In proof whereof we cite the first outbreak of the French proletariat. The workers in Lyons believed they were only pursuing political aims and were only soldiers of the Republic, whereas they were in truth soldiers of socialism. Thus their political understanding hid from them the roots of social distress; it distorted their insight into their real aims; their political understanding deceived their social instinct.

"Prussian" prophesies the suppression of revolts which break out owing to the "isolation of men from the community and the separation of their thoughts from social principles."

We have shown that the Silesian revolt was by no means characterized by the separation of ideas from social principles. It remains to deal with the "isolation of men from the community." By community is to be understood in this connection the political community, the State inst.i.tution. It is the old story of unpolitical Germany.

But do not all revolts without exception break out from the isolation of men from the community? Does not every revolt necessarily presuppose this isolation? Would the Revolution of 1789 have taken place without the isolation of the French citizens from the community?

Its aim, in fact, was to end this isolation.

But the community from which the worker is isolated is a community of quite a different nature from and of quite other dimensions than the political community. This community, from which his own labour separates him, is life itself, physical and intellectual life, human morality, human activity, human enjoyment, the human community.

Human life is the real community of men. Just as the isolation from this body is more complete, more painful, more to be feared, more contradictory than is isolation from the political community, so too the removal of this isolation, and even a partial reaction, a revolt against the same, are tasks all the more infinite as man is more infinite than the citizen, and human life than political life. However partial the industrial revolt may be, it conceals within itself a universal soul: political revolt may be never so universal but it hides a narrow-minded spirit under the most colossal form.

"Prussian" worthily closes his article with the following phrase: "A social revolution without a political soul (that is, without organized insight from the standpoint of the whole) is impossible."

We have seen that a social revolution maybe considered to be from the standpoint of the whole because, even if it only occurs in a factory district, it is a protest of men against degraded life, because it proceeds from the standpoint of the real individual, because the community against whose separation from himself the individual reacts, is the real community of men, the civic community.

The political soul of a revolution, on the other hand, consists in the endeavour of the cla.s.ses without political influence to abolish their isolation from the community and from government. Their standpoint is that of the State, an abstract whole, which exists only in and through its separation from real life, which is unthinkable without the organized antagonism between the general idea and the individual existence of man. Consequently a revolution of political souls organizes a ruling clique in society, in accordance with the limited and doubly-cleft nature of these souls, at the cost of society.

We should like to confide to "Prussian" what a "social revolution with a political soul" is; we should like at the same time to suggest to him that not once has he been able to raise himself above the restricted political standpoint.

A "social" revolution with a political soul is either a composite absurdity, if "Prussian" means by "social" revolution a social revolution in contrast to a political, and yet invests the social revolution with a political, instead of a social, soul. Or a "social revolution with a political soul" is nothing but what is otherwise called a "political revolution" or a "revolution pure and simple."

Every revolution dissolves the old society; in so far it is social.

Every revolution overthrows the old power; in so far it is political.

"Prussian" may choose between the paraphrase and the absurdity.

Equally ridiculous is the notion of a political revolution with a social soul. The revolution as such--the overthrow of the existing power and the dissolution of the old conditions--is a political act.

But without a revolution, socialism cannot be enforced. It requires this political act, so far as it has need of the process of destruction and dissolution. But where its organizing activity begins, where its proper aim, its soul, emerges, there socialism casts away the political hull.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Arnold Ruge was the author of this article.

[9] Marx in later years changed his views about MacCulloch and Ricardo.

MORALIZING CRITICISM AND CRITICAL MORALITY: A POLEMIC AGAINST KARL HEINZEN

"I cannot imagine that Mr Engels and our communists are so blind as not to see that force also dominates property, and that the injustice in the property relations is only maintained by force. I call that person a fool and a coward who cherishes animosity towards a bourgeois because he is acc.u.mulating money, and leaves a king in peace because he has acquired power," states Mr Heinzen.

"Force also dominates property." Property is likewise also a species of power. The economists call capital, for example, "the command over other labour." We are thus confronted with two kinds of force or power: on the one hand, the power of property, that is, of the property owner; on the other hand, the political power, the State power. "Force also dominates property" means that property has not yet got the political power in its hands, but is rather vexed by it, for example, by arbitrary taxes, by confiscation, by privileges, by the disturbing interference of the bureaucracy in industry and trade and the like.

In other words: The bourgeoisie is not yet politically const.i.tuted as a cla.s.s. The State power is not yet its own power. In countries where the bourgeoisie has already conquered political power, and where political rule is nothing less than the rule, not of the individual bourgeois over the workers, but of the bourgeois cla.s.s over the whole of society, Mr Heinzen's dictum has lost its meaning. The propertyless are, of course, not affected by political rule, so far as it relates directly to property.

Whilst, therefore, Mr Heinzen fancies he is uttering a truth as eternal as it is original, he has only recorded the fact that the German bourgeoisie must capture the political power, that is, he is saying unconsciously what Engels says, in the brave belief that he is saying the opposite.

"The injustice in the property relations," continues Mr Heinzen, "is only maintained by force." Either Mr Heinzen understands by "the injustice in the property relations" the above-mentioned pressure, which the German bourgeoisie still suffers in its "most sacred"

interests from the absolute monarchy, and then he only repeats what has just been said--or he understands by "the injustice in the property relations" the economic relations of the workers, and in that case his revelation amounts to this: The existing bourgeois property relations are "maintained" by the State power, which the bourgeoisie has organized for the protection of its property relations. The proletarians must, therefore, overthrow the political power where it is already in the hands of the bourgeoisie. They must themselves attain to power, to revolutionary power. Mr Heinzen again says unconsciously what Engels says, again in the sincere conviction of having said the opposite. What he says he does not mean, and what he means he does not say.

Moreover, if the bourgeoisie politically, that is, through the agency of its State power, maintains "the injustice in the property relations," it does not create the latter. The "injustice in the property relations," conditioned by the modern division of labour, the modern form of exchange, compet.i.tion, concentration, etc., does not in any way proceed from the political rule of the bourgeoisie, but, contrariwise, the political rule of the bourgeoisie proceeds from these modern relations of production, which are proclaimed by the bourgeois economists to be necessary and eternal laws.

If, therefore, the proletariat should overthrow the political rule of the bourgeoisie, its victory would be only temporary, only an episode in the service of the bourgeois revolution, so long as the material conditions which would render necessary the abolition of the bourgeois mode of production, and consequently the definitive overthrow of the political rule of the bourgeoisie, had not yet been created in the course of historical development. From this point of view, the Reign of Terror in France did no more than to clear away the feudal ruins from French soil by its hammer blows.

The anxious and cautious bourgeoisie would have taken decades to perform this work. The b.l.o.o.d.y action of the people, therefore, prepared the way. Similarly, the overthrow of the absolute monarchy would have been merely a momentary incident, if the economic conditions for the rule of the bourgeois cla.s.s had not been developed to the point of ripeness.