Thursday, May 13, 2021

The Socialism of the Communist Manifesto (1977)

From the May 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard
“Society can no longer live under the bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society”.
The Communist Manifesto
Obviously Marx and Engels were optimistic about the immediate future and were stressing the urgency of a working-class revolution. Both men, fired with the vigour and enthusiasm of youth, thought the working class were ready for Socialism.

The warning given in the Manifesto about the false forms of Socialism has not been heeded. The result is that there is more confusion now about what Socialism is than there was in Marx's day. Marx’s descriptions of “socialism” in the Manifesto (Section 3) relate to the activities of sections of the ruling class, old and new, who were endeavouring to get the support of the workers by claiming that their interests and those of the worker were identical. The word “socialism” had a magic appeal to the worker and the capitalists then, as now, were trying to frustrate any real Socialist movement. All the familiar weapons of misrepresentation, lying and slander were brought into play. Today, misrepresentation and distortion have produced a new industry, one which manufactures myths about Socialism and the Socialist Party. Metaphysics, alchemy and phantomology are the raw materials this thriving industry relies upon.

In the chapter on “reactionary socialism” Marx showed how not only the capitalists but the old feudal ruling class will try to get working-class support in restoring the conditions of feudal exploitation. This he called Feudal Socialism. Their quarrel with the rising capitalists was that their system of exploitation would generate a class which would destroy the old social order. Capitalism was not only creating a working class but a revolutionary working class at that. In a different way the small capitalists or petty bourgeois, formerly the Guildmasters, sought the support of workers in trying to bring back the old methods of production. Machinery and modern manufacture had made the mediaeval Guild system obsolete, with the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeoisie. The system of production was outmoded together with its property relations, and a call for its return was reactionary. The Guildmaster either graduated to full status of capitalist or fell back into the ranks of the workers.

German “true socialism”, borrowed from French socialist literature, was the gospel of would-be philosophers who treated Socialism as purely intellectual. They removed it from the issue of the class struggle; they talked about the “alienation of the essence of mankind” in dealing with the criticism of the monetary system and its evils. When criticizing the state they wrote about the creation of “the supremacy of the abstract universal” (p. 59, The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, D. Ryazanoff). They were not concerned about defending true needs but spoke about defending the need for truth. Everything could be reasoned out without the necessity of class conflict.

This philosophical point of view favoured the existing social relations and political arrangements which were based on small production and land tenure, but did not suit the developing capitalist. His system could not be reasoned into existence—on the contrary, it had to be opposed on the grounds of reason. Class struggle was an irrational expression which fell outside logical reasoning and outlawed it. The class struggle based on property at all stages of society has always been the agent of social change. This meant the overthrow of the existing order with political power passing to the challenging class. With political power that class dominated society and legislated in its own economic interests. It removed the previous owners of wealth from their position of privilege and endowed itself with those privileges. It is easy to see why those in control of the political machinery then or now must always try and prove that the class struggle is an anachronism and something which has no place in modern industrial relations, and is only kept alive by agitation and class hatred.

Dealing with bourgeois socialism, Marx stated that it was no more than a reform movement which aimed at retaining the basic conditions of society, but without the struggles and disintegrating elements which are the inevitable outcome of those conditions. For Marx, humanitarians, welfare workers, economists, philanthropists, charity organizers, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind, existed solely to safeguard bourgeois society. Modern bourgeois socialism expresses itself in the policies and activities of Social Democratic, Labour and Community parties throughout the world. All the spurious brands of socialism referred to in the Manifesto find their rightful place in these organizations. The right of all capital to a profit, fair wages for the workers, the right of landlords to charge rent and bankers to collect interest, the right of small shopkeepers, manufacturers and the self-employed, the rights of trade unions, freedom of worship, and the rights of commodities to freely circulate, are all embodied in the literature of these parties The revolutionary concept of Socialism as envisaged by the Manifesto, and kept alive by genuine Socialist movements, is absent.

The abolition of the wages system is the main plank of the Manifesto, and is the test of a revolutionary organization. Labour and Communist parties do not advocate and work for this simple demand; their function is to run capitalism. To say that the Social Democratic movement, including the German Social Democratic Party and the British Labour Party, have moved away from the original revolutionary position would be untrue. As early as 1891 the German party at its conference at Erfurt laid down the pattern which has been faithfully followed by all Communist, Social Democratic and Labour parties all over the globe. First, it proclaimed itself to be a Socialist party seeking the abolition of class society, at the same time stressing the need for international class-consciousness, and the need to convert the means of production into social property. However, after laying down the general principles of Socialism, the conference produced a list of “immediate demands”, which were nothing less than a statement of the conditions under which the working class would continue to accept capitalism. This was in complete contradiction to its Socialist objective, because you cannot advocate revolution and reform at the same time.

As a matter of historical fact, all the immediate demands of the Erfurt programme were introduced many years ago: universal suffrage, the right to form trade unions, abolition of capital punishment, free medical treatment, 8-hour day, restrictions on child labour, direct taxation instead of indirect taxation, etc. The idea behind the list of immediate demands was that Socialism could only be reached in stages. It was argued that the workers would not support such a drastic social change and had to be led to accept it gradually, and partly because of the resistance of the capitalists. History has exposed this fallacy. In practice, the theory of getting Socialism gradually has been shown to be wrong. Inevitably, the socialism of the Social Democratic Party got lost in the fight for reforms. Later it backed the 1914-18 War, as did the Labour Party, and paved the way for Hitler afterwards. Not being a Socialist party it could only concern itself with the administration of capitalism and legislate for capitalism’s problems.

Today the Social Democratic Party forms the government of West Germany, but the position of the German workers remains basically the same. They are still propertyless wage-slaves supporting the rights of propertied people, and without any revolutionary aspirations whatsoever. Like most workers elsewhere they have a narrow-minded conservatism which is born out of the poverty of life in a capitalist environment. Our home-grown Labour Party has followed the same path. It never had much revolutionary zeal to begin with; it was a conglomeration of trade unions, methodists, liberals and small capitalists. Now its policies are so wide that they have no difficulty at all in attracting rich industrialists, bankers and landlords. Its leaders, particularly Wedgwood Benn and Michael Foot, still mouth phrases about Socialism, but they are capitalist politicians for all that. The capitalists know a good thing when they see it—even if the wolf is in sheep’s clothing. If the Labour Party is the party of the working class, as its supporters claim, how can it serve the capitalists at the same time? The truth is that it has consistently formed the breakdown gang of the capitalist class—a role which it is fulfilling at the present time. Again, we are not dealing with a theoretical situation but with the practical results of bourgeois socialism (reformism) and its failure as an instrument for furthering Socialism.

The communist parties referred to in the Manifesto had no connection with the present-day Communists. We have seen not only the development of state capitalism in Russia under the dictatorship of the Communist Party, but its present policy of imperialism in Africa and Asia. The spread of so-called communism, or bourgeois communism, has come to be equated with the establishment of military and neo-fascist dictatorships. Every backward country moving into capitalism adopts a state-capitalist form which is based on rabid nationalism. Outside of the United States practically every country in the world has either a “Communist” government or a Social Democratic one. The position of the working class has not altered at all. nor can it alter by changes of government.

It is rather ironic to notice that most Communist dictatorships claim to be based on the teachings of Marx and Engels. In the Manifesto, Marx laid great stress on the need for the workers to win the battle of democracy; the Russian workers have a long way to go, not against the Czar but against the new Czars —the Communist Party. Both Chinese and Russian governments subsidize the publication of Marx’s works as evidence that Marxism, or socialism, is an integral part of their political system. Any careful reading of Marx’s Manifesto will soon dispel that illusion. This is the scale of the misrepresentation about Socialism, and the lengths capitalist governments will go to.

One of the excuses advanced by Communists was that Marx envisaged a transition period in which “the proletariat will use its political supremacy in order, by degrees, to wrest all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise the means of production into the hands of the state, and to increase the total mass of the productive forces” (p. 79, Communist Manifesto, SPGB edn.). The last point is important because at that time the productive forces had not been developed, and Marx and Engels held that this could be accomplished by the state under the control of the working class. We have no such problem today. The productive forces are fully developed and need only be modified to suit the demands of a Socialist society. Owing to the nature of modern industry one section is dependent on another; production and distribution cannot be separated, neither can individual industries be taken over piecemeal. Engels in the 1888 Preface to the Manifesto acknowledged that the ten measures proposed under the heading “Wresting capital by degrees” through the state were to some extent antiquated, and the passage in the Manifesto would be worded very differently in the light of the development of modern industry.

Present-day Communists and their supporters are asking us to believe against all the evidence that these ten measures formed the basis of a revolutionary political programme for the establishment of Socialism. Marx was laying down guide-lines for the dispossession of the ruling class after the workers had gained political power. We do not require to do this because all the social wealth, starting from the means of production and distribution, will become common property simultaneously with the advent of a Socialist society.

In the course of the last 130 years the working-class movement has gone in many wrong directions. The curse of reformism has perverted its purpose, which is ultimately the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. Countless Labour leaders, careerists, and others hoping to establish a reputation, have grown fat on the movement and sucked it of much of its vitality. Other aspiring parasites are waiting to tread the boards. Shall we continue with the ‘‘socialism” of the reformer, or does reformist activity form part of the necessary experience of a politically immature working class groping for a revolutionary policy and a political framework providing the elbow-room in which to operate? That apprenticeship has been served. The working class are mature, they have the ability to organize, they have universal suffrage. The productive forces are fully developed. Reformism is therefore reactionary. It belongs to a past era. It is a transition stage of political development and is now a hundred years out of date.

The publication of the Manifesto was the first major public statement about the new science of Socialism. This science developed from the social laws immanent in capitalist society, and emerges as the modern form of revolutionary thought and activity. It sees the antagonism between capital and labour as an irreconcilable feature of class society. It sees the divorce of man from his means of production. It exposes the mysteries surrounding the accumulation of surplus-value and the evils of the pernicious wages system. It raises the whole question of man’s relationship to his productive forces, and poses the question whether they exist for the benefit of society or for the benefit of a few privileged people. It challenges the whole body of capitalist economic and political arrangements. This is the revolutionary attitude we want workers to adopt. It’s simple, it’s all-embracing, and it’s effective—and we should have done it a long time ago.
Jim D'Arcy

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