Public and private (2025)

From the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent scandals involving the once public, and now privatised, utility businesses such as those of water, rail and gas/electric have once again reopened the age-old debate between those on the left who favour public ownership of the utilities (and much else) and those on the right who think that privatisation is the only answer to the continuing travails of these services. Perhaps it might be in order to take a deep breath and look at the historical, ideological and even psychological origins of these unlikely political allegiances.

Human beings have long loved dualities in the attempt to understand the world and private/public takes its place alongside capitalist/socialist, worker/capital, reform/revolution, democracy/autocracy among countless others within polemical discourse. It is only recently that I’ve encountered any objection to this intellectual tradition courtesy of a young relative of mine claiming that she is ‘non-binary’ in her sexuality. Having long thought that man/woman was never a satisfactory duality in the first place I was not surprised by this revelation but it does serve to show the lasting power of this ideological mechanism to both inform and provoke. I won’t go into the historical origins of left and right ideological designations but their lasting allegiance to public or private capitalist economics respectively is surprising.

Nationalisation (state ownership) has a long history and we can be certain that the rich and powerful would not put their hands deep into their pockets to pay a tax that made this possible unless they could see some financial advantage. In 1858 the British state took over the East India Company to save it from the disastrous implications of the Indian Rebellion of the previous year which endangered British imperialism and the massive profits that it made for the parasite capitalist class.

In 1871 that well-known ‘socialist’ Otto von Bismarck embarked on massive state investment and control of many industries including railways, mining, agriculture, road building and, of course, the military. Needless to say that this was done, not to improve working conditions, but to accelerate German industrial development so that it might compete on the international stage both economically and militarily whilst simultaneously making unimaginable profits for his Junker supporters. Ironically Bismarck was also known as a ‘state socialist’ as well as a ‘state capitalist’ because of his introduction of a ‘welfare state’ which was supposed to blunt the increasing popularity of socialism. To do this he consulted the traitor Ferdinand Lassalle who had come up with the crackpot theory that the bourgeois state was politically neutral and could be used by the proletariat to reform capitalism until socialism was achieved. To this day leftists still use this as a programme for socialism, conveniently forgetting that it was instigated by one of socialism’s greatest enemies.

Because of these historical contradictions we have ended up with an unholy mess of Orwellian definitions of what socialism, capitalism, state capitalism, state socialism, democracy, public, private, etc. really mean. In the popular mind we can safely say that many believe socialism to be state ownership of industry and that capitalism represents ‘private’ ownership. The fact that sometimes the exact opposite is true represents the internal contradictions of capitalism and its subsequent ideological claims which, in our tabloid sound-bite media, is way too complex for their narrow political agendas. Remember that mainstream political parties are effectively PR organisations for the continuation of capitalism and have no interest in historical, economic or political truth. To celebrate the meaninglessness of it all we have two wonderful British examples: public schools are private schools and companies that go ‘public’ are secretive private enterprises with a veneer of public transparency.

The concepts of public and private predate, of course, the vicissitudes of contemporary political debate. The right to a ‘private life’ is a rather new social concept given that our species is intensely social and has lived communally for aeons. There have been many who have had to operate under secrecy for religious and ideological reasons but this is rather different since all those in power suffer from degrees of paranoia and are always suspicious of privacy in others. Hypocritically these same people are always the first to claim the right to privacy and secrecy under the name of national security.

So what does privacy really mean? Is it the need to separate yourself from others due to the shame that accompanies sexual preference or corruption or criminal intent or is it a basic human need for occasional solitude so that the contemplation of the ‘self’ can occur? True introspection is rare so it’s reasonable to suspect that the right to ‘private property’ and the bourgeois cult of individuality lie more at the heart of the contemporary concept of privacy. Your wealth is due to your own efforts and has nothing to do with the exploitation of the labour of others. This is the lie at the centre of the concept.

Privacy, with its modicum of ‘control’, militates against the reality of interdependence, the recognition of which is our only hope as a species. Individuals and their families locked up in their mortgaged jerry-built houses with security cameras and an inbuilt fear of ‘the other’ are infinitely more insecure than those who live in communities of mutual aid and respect. Divide and rule is one of the strongest propaganda tools available to the tiny parasitic elite that rule us so don’t be fooled that state ownership is public ownership because the state only exists to prevent those who create wealth from accessing it. Any state-owned business will be systematically underfunded to keep the taxes of the rich at a bare minimum with all of the subsequent industrial unrest that this inevitably causes.

We are sometimes told that ‘socialist sects’ should all join up in a mass coalition to have more power but it doesn’t matter a jot how much power you have if you are ignorant of the origins of your ideologies and the true nature of capitalism whether it’s in traditional bourgeois form or of the state capitalist incarnation – neither can, or will, improve your life.

Wez.

Engels' review of Capital (1983)

From the March 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Universal suffrage has added to the already existing parliamentary parties a new one, the Social-Democratic Party. In the last elections to the North-German Reichstag it nominated its own candidates in most large towns, in all factory districts, and six or eight of its deputies were returned. In comparison with the last election but one it has developed considerably greater strength and it can therefore be assumed that, for the present at least it is still growing. It would be folly to wish to continue to pass over in splendid silence the existence, activity and doctrines of such a party in a country in which universal suffrage has laid the final decision in the hands of the most numerous and poorest class.

However divided and unsettled the few Social-Democratic deputies may be among themselves, it can be assumed with assurance that all groups of that party will welcome the present book as their theoretical bible, the arsenal from which they will draw their most substantial arguments. On these grounds alone the book already deserves particular attention. Rut its contents too are such as will arouse interest. Whereas Lassalle's main argumentation — and in political economy Lasalle was but a disciple of Marx — is confined to continual repetition of Ricardo's so-called wages law, we have before us a work which treats the whole relation of capital and labour in its connection with the whole of economic science with indisputably rare erudition and which sets as its ultimate aim "to lay hare the economic law of motion of modern society”, and thereby, after obviously sincere investigations carried out with unmistakable knowledge of the subject, comes to the conclusion that the whole “capitalist mode of production” must be abolished. We should, however, like further to draw attention to the fact that, apart from the conclusions, the author in the course of his work presents quite a number of the major points of economics in a completely new light and in purely scientific questions arrives at results which are greatly at variance with current economics and wInch orthodox economists must seriously criticise and scientifically refute if they do not wish to see the doctrine they have so far professed founder. In the interest of science it is desirable that a polemic should develop very soon in specialised journals precisely on these points.

Marx begins by expounding the relation between commodity and money, the most essential of which was already published some time ago in a special work. Then he goes on to capital and here we have the cardinal point of the whole work. What is capital? Money which is changed into a commodity in order to be changed back from a commodity into more money than the original sum. When I buy cotton for 100 talers and sell it for 110 talers I preserve my 100 talers as capital, value which expands itself. Now the question arises: where do the 10 talers which I gain in this process come from? How does it happen that as a result of two simple exchanges 100 talers becomes 110. For economics presupposes that in all exchanges equal values are exchanged. Marx then considers all possible cases (fluctuation in prices of commodities, etc.) in order to prove that in the conditions assumed by economics the creation of 10 talers surplus-value out of the original 100 talers is impossible. Yet this process takes place daily and the economists have not yet given us an explanation for it. Marx provides the following explanation: the puzzle can be solved only if we find on the market a commodity of a quite peculiar kind, a commodity whose use-value consists in producing exchange-value. This commodity exists — it is labour-power. The capitalist buys labour-power on the market and makes it work for him in order in turn to sell its product. So we must first of all investigate labour-power.

What is the value of labour-power? According to the generally known law, it is the value of the means of subsistence necessary to maintain and procreate the labourer in the way established in a given country and a given historical epoch. We assume that the labourer is paid the entire value of his labour-power. Further we assume that this value is represented by six hours’ work daily, or half a working-day. But the capitalist asserts that he has bought labour-power for a whole working-day and he makes the labourer work twelve hours or more. With a twelve-hour working-day he therefore acquires the product of six hours' work without paying for it. From this Marx concludes: all surplus-value, no matter how it is divided, as profit of the capitalist, ground-rent, taxes, etc. is unpaid labour.

From the manufacturer's interest to extract as much unpaid labour as possible every day and the contrary interest of the labourer arises the struggle over the length of the working-day. In an illustration which is very much worth reading and which takes up about a hundred pages, Marx describes the origin of this struggle in English modern industry which, in spite of the protests of the free-trade manufacturers, ended last spring in not only factory industry but all small establishments and even ail domestic industry being subjected to the restrictions of the Factory Act, according to which the maximum working-day for women and children under eighteen — and thereby indirectly for men too in the most important branches of industry — was fixed at 10½ hours. At the same time he explains why English industry did not suffer, but on the contrary gained thereby, as the work of each individual won more in intensity than it lost in duration.

But there is another way of increasing surplus-value besides lengthening the working-day beyond the time required for the production of the necessary means of subsistence or their value. A given working-day. let us say of twelve hours, includes, according to our previous assumption, six hours of necessary work and six hours used for the production of surplus-value. If a means is found to cut the necessary working-time down to five hours, seven hours remain during which surplus-value will be produced. This can be achieved by a reduction in the working-time required to produce the necessary means of subsistence, in other words by cheapening the means of subsistence, and this in turn only by improving production. On this point Marx again gives a detailed illustration by investigating or describing the three main levers by which these improvements are brought about: 1) co-operation, or multiplication of power, which results from the simultaneous and systematic joint work of a number of workers; 2) division of labour, as it took shape in the period of manufacture proper (i.e. up to about 1770); finally. 3) machinery by the help of which modern industry has since developed. These descriptions are also of great interest and show astonishing knowledge of the subject even down to technological details.

We cannot enter into further details of the investigation on surplus-value and wages: we merely note, in order to avoid misunderstandings, that, as Marx proves by a number of quotations, orthodox economics is not unaware of the fact that wages are less than the whole product of work. It is to be hoped that this book will provide Messrs, the orthodox economists with the opportunity of giving us closer explanations on this really surprising point. It will be appreciated that all the factual proofs that Marx gives are taken from the best sources, mostly official parliamentary reports. We take this opportunity of supporting the suggestion, made indirectly by the author in the Preface, that in Germany too a thorough inquiry into the condition of the workers in the various industries be made by government officials — who, however, must not be prejudiced bureaucrats — and that the reports be submitted to the Reichstag and the public.

The first volume ends with a study of the accumulation of capital. This point has often been written about, although we must admit that here too much of what is given is new and that light is shed on the old from new sides. The most original is the attempted proof that side by side with the concentration and accumulation of capital. and in step with it, the accumulation of a surplus working population is going on, and that both together will in the end make a social upheaval necessary, on the one hand, and possible on the other.

Whatever opinion the reader may have of the author's socialist views, we think that we have shown him that he is here in presence of a work which stands well above the usual Social-Democratic publications. To that we add that with the exception of the strongly dialectical things on the first 40 pages, the book, in spite of all its scientific rigour, is very easy to understand and because of the author's sarcastic manner, which spares no one, is even interestingly written.

Question Marx (1983)

'What did you put for question 7?'

From the January 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

The quotes below have been taken from some of the celebrated texts of the socialist movement and arranged in the form of a short multiple-choice quiz. Pit your wits against the forces of reaction and reformism, and discover in the process that not everything which labels itself (or is labelled) “Marxism”, actually is! Answers (with explanations) are found on a later page.

The first five questions all have to do with criticisms of the following passage:

The (...) workers' party, in order to pave the way to the solution of the social question, demands the establishment of producers’ co-operative societies with state aid under the democratic control of the toiling people. The producers' cooperative societies are to be called into being for industry and agriculture on such a scale that the socialist organisation of the total labour will arise from them.

1. To the ideas of which political figure does the following refer?

"In place of the existing class struggle appears a newspaper scribbler's phrase: ‘the social question , to the 'solution' of which one ‘paves the way’. Instead of arising from the revolutionary process of transformation of society, the ‘socialist organisation of the total labour’ ‘arises’ from the ‘state aid’ that the state gives to the producers’ co-operative societies and which the state, not the worker, 'calls into being'."

a) Mao Zedong

b) Joseph Stalin

c) Edouard Bernstein

d) Ferdinand Lassalle

2. To which country does this quotation make reference?

“From the remnants of a sense of shame, ‘state aid’ has been put - under the democratic control of the ‘toiling people’ [However,] the majority of the ‘toiling people* in consists of peasants, and not of proletarians."

a) Germany in 1875

b) France in 1848

c) Russia in 1917

d) China in 1950

3. The working class in which country is being indicated in the following passage?

“. . . ‘democratic’. . . means ‘by the rule of the people', but what does ‘under the control of the toiling people organised so as to rule themselves' mean? And particularly in the case of toiling people which, in making such demands on the slate, expresses its full consciousness that it neither rules nor is ripe for ruling!”

a) Russian workers before 1917

b) Russian workers after 1917

c) German workers in the third quarter of the 19th century

d) Spanish workers during the 1854 Revolution

4. What type of organisation is being indirectly criticised by the author?

“The chief offence does not lie in having inscribed this specific nostrum in the programme. but in taking, in general, a retrograde step from the standpoint of a class movement to that of a sectarian movement.”

a) Owenite communities (c. 1840)

b) National workshops (c. 1848)

c) An organisation of revolutionaries (c. 1902)

d) Workers’ soviets (c. 1917)

5. Who was the head of state in the regime referred to below?

“. . . a state which is nothing but a police-guarded military despotism, embellished with parliamentary forms, alloyed with a feudal admixture, already influenced by the bourgeoisie and bureaucratically carpentered . . . ”

a) Tsar Nicholas II

b) Kaiser Wilhelm I

c) Anton Novotny

d) Nikita Krushchev

6. “The indirect dependence of man on man, which is now the basic feature of conditions which are most fully developed economically, cannot be understood and explained from their own nature, but only as a somewhat transformed heritage of an earlier direct subjugation and expropriation."

Who made the above statement?

a) Hua Guofeng

b) Enrico Berlinguer

c) V. I. Lenin

d) Eugen Dühring

7. “Recently, however, since         adopted state ownership, a certain spurious socialism has made its appearance - here and there even degenerating into a kind of flunkeyism - which declares that all taking over by the State, even the Bismarckian kind, is in itself socialistic."

To which political regime was the writer of these lines addressing himself?

a) Bismarck’s Prussia

b) Mussolini's Italy

c) The Bolshevik state

d) The Popular Front in France

8. “The publicistic (ie, public] right of an economic commune in its instruments of labour is an exclusive right of property at least as against every other economic commune and also as against society and the State. But this right is not to entitle the commune ‘to cut itself off from the outside world, for among the various communes there is freedom of movement and compulsory acceptance of new members on the basis of fixed laws and administrative regulations . . .”’

Which sort of economic organisation do you think most closely fits this description?

a) A commonly owned and democratically controlled world-wide system of wealth production and distribution

b) A system based on New Lanark-style factory communities (as in 19th- century Britain)

c) A collective farm in a proletarian state (for example Russia)

d) An advanced co-operative or people's commune during a protracted period of socialist transition (China)

9. The “equality in principle of economic rights does not exclude the voluntary addition to what justice requires, of an expression of special recognition and honor . . . Society honors itself, in distinguishing the higher types of work by a moderate additional allocation for consumption."

To whose ideas does this statement allude?

a) Deng Xiaoping

b) V. I. Lenin

c) Eugen Dühring

d) Edward Gierek

10. “On the world market gold and silver remain world money, a general means of purchase and payment, the absolute social embodiment of wealth. And this property of the precious metals gives the individual members of the economic communes a new motive to the accumulation of a hoard, to getting rich, to usury; the motive to act freely and independently of the commune outside its borders, and to realise on the world market the private wealth which they have accumulated."

What kind of society, in your opinion, is being discussed here?

a) A society of free access to the means of life

b) A system under the thumb of bankers and financiers

c) One variety or another or state capitalism

d) A traditional capitalist economic system

11. “Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labour employed on the products appear as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labour no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of the total labour."

How would you describe the type of social organism implied in the above passage?

a) One in which the state regulates production, pays wages to workers and turns a profit on investment

b) A society reorganised as a proletarian state, in which capital is accumulated for the benefit of the workers

c) One in which the bourgeoisie has been forcibly subdued by the proletariat and which is evolving into a communist society

d) A communist society, not as it has developed on its own basis, but as it is just issuing out of capitalist society

Answers and explanation on page 16

Answer key and explanatory notes. Since a score doesn't really prove that you understand a subject, the purpose of this quiz is not to have you tally up points but only to induce you to think a little. And since the quotations were all taken from either Marx's critique of the Gotha Programme or from the second and third sections of Engels' Anti-Dühring, it would be automatically impossible for any of the choices referring to persons living or events taking place after 1878 to be correct. Apart from this little technical (and historical) detail, however, many of the ideas which were articulated by Lenin and his followers and which have long been considered as forming part of the heritage of Marxism turn out to be the same ideas for which Marx and Engels reserved their harshest criticisms!

The answers are as follows:

1-d. (Although if you answered a, b or c, we can’t blame you.)

2-a. Russia and China were manifestly not ready for socialism at the time of their respective revolutions. However, you will note that neither the goal of merely establishing a bourgeois republic nor of overthrowing it and setting up a proletarian state in its place (both of which were successively advocated by Lenin) differs essentially from the formula put forward in the Gotha Programme, since “producers’ co-operative societies" is just a fancy term for factories, farms and other forms of socialised labour.

3-c. In German, “democratic” is volks-herrschaftlich. Marx was critical of the suggestion (here) that trade-unions are capable of ruling a capitalist state. “Rule" in economic terms means “administration of wealth"; it is the owners of the means of production who rule. Faced with such a large rival constituency as the (reformed) peasantry of Russia, the workers of Russia were in a poor position in 1917 to claim ownership of the means of production on behalf of society as a whole. Given that not even Lenin supported common ownership of the means of production for the Russian working class during his lifetime, and given also that he dismissed workers in general as being incapable of class-consciousness “by their own unaided efforts", both a and b are logically as well as historically impossible. (Spain, on the other hand, is a somewhat problematical case, with which we need not concern ourselves here.)

4-b. This refers, of course, to the 1848 Revolution in France and to Philippe Buchc in particular, a religiously oriented democrat who advocated the slogan (which Leninists have borrowed and called “socialist”) to the effect that “he who will not work shall not eat”. Marx, in other words, was raking the architects of the Gotha Programme over the coals for confusing economic with political objectives. “Sectarian" in this context means “parochial”; Marx was claiming that the Socialist Workers' Party —product of the uniting of Lassalle’s General German Workers’ Union and the Marxist Social-Democratic Workers' Party — ran a serious risk of losing its way in a labyrinth of economic projects — of becoming no more than a trade-union lobby. Robert Owen's efforts may have been amateurish, but —especially in his later years — he was certainly no glib-talking lobbyist. On the contrary, in Lenin's proletarian state, workers' soviets must necessarily serve only as a lobby for the “armed proletariat", while the “organisation of revolutionaries” (a euphemism for the Bolshevik Party) could only be promoted to a management position.

5-b. Like the Second French Republic, which could not break free of its Napoleonic, Orleanist and Legitimist inheritance, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic of Nikita Krushchev was (and remains) moulded along fundamentally Tsarist lines, so that in many respects this dictatorship of the secretariat promotes a kind of industrial neo-feudalism — as do its enthusiasts in Czechoslovakia. naturally.

6-d. If “political power springs from the barrel of a gun” (Mao Zedong), as a result of having “smashed” the “bourgeois state” (Lenin), then what have you got but a “somewhat transformed heritage” of state-administered capitalism, whether by force (Dühring) or by compromise (Berlinguer)? A revolution whose immediate effect is other than to abolish the wages system is not a socialist revolution.

7-a. All four regimes demonstrate some tendency toward state capitalism, to one degree or another. Lenin himself identified state ownership and management of the means of production with socialism, proving only that if you run a capitalist system, then you must be a capitalist — either that, or you're some kind of flunkey.

8-d. Herr Dühring’s federation of economic communes bears an uncanny resemblance (on paper) to Chairman Mao’s people's communes. Since, on the other hand, common ownership (communism, or socialism) gives you the moneyless, worldwide community of producers, it would be economically impossible for any one locality to live in isolation. By the same token, remaking capitalism in the image of Owen’s New Lanark experiment would spell ruin for production based on profit. (As for the proletarian state, see below. No. 11.)

9-c. Quoted by Engels, the statement might easily have come right out of one of the platitude-filled speeches of either Deng Xiaoping or Edward Gierek; whereas Lenin’s concession to “reality” (the New Economic Policy, state capitalism) conceals the emergence of a new class of bureaucrat-capitalists, who decidedly believe society should honour itself by honouring them.

10-b. “Free access" means exactly that: no money. You cannot get rich in a socialist society; you are already born that way. If, conversely, “economic commune” is just a glorious nickname for “city" or “town", or even for agrarian state capitalism, then we already have them (choices c and d).

11-d. The first three choices respectively describe aspects or consequences of a proletarian revolution according to Lenin. First of all, wages, prices and profits signify commodity exchange; secondly, a “proletarian state" is a chimera — capital can only be accumulated for the benefit of capitalists; and thirdly, the working class cannot “subdue” the capitalist class without by the very fact abolishing its own status and becoming itself transformed into “society as a whole". Marx and Lenin very obviously disagree on whether a communist society can simply “issue out of capitalist society" or must first “develop on its own basis”. What Lenin describes as a "higher” phase, that is, developed communist society, Marx specifically mentions as pertaining rather to its merely having come into existence. He saw it as a political decision which cannot be put off until some remote future date or made by anyone else except the working class — in contrast to Lenin, who gave this “task” to the Party as part of its "leading role" and spoke of it as requiring decades to carry out.

Ron Elbert

(World Socialist Party of the United States)

* Questions 1, 2, 4 and 5 are quoted from Selected Works. International Publishers, 1969 ed.; question 3. because of the inadequacy and awkwardness of the translation, has been here reworded so as to bring out the sense of the passage, which otherwise degenerates into a meaningless conundrum. Question 11 is taken from the same source.

** Questions 6 to 10 are taken from the 1972 ed. of the International Publisher's version.

Letter: Distorting Marxism (1967)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Sirs,

While not in any way wanting to associate the beliefs of our group with those of the SPGB, we are deeply amused at your efforts to emasculate Marxism. Your hatred of Lenin and Bolshevism rather stands in contradistinction to your espousal of Marxism. Most of all, quoting from the works of Kautsky and Bukharin in your literature, as if to prove your Marxism by the choice of books you quote from, is also most humorous. Take any Marxist conception and there the SPGB will be found revising and distorting it. It is perhaps paradoxical that the two works of Marx you base your policies on, Value, Price and Profit and the Critique of the Gotha Programme, are the very works in which Marx exposes and smashes present SPGB policy, in his attack on Lassalleanism. Nevertheless, we are not as sectarian as your Party, and are prepared to listen to any quasi-Marxist group.

M. E. Therrien,

Secretary, Exeter China Policy Study Group.

Reply

The theory and practice of the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain is based on Marxism; that is, we accept as valid the main theories put forward by Marx about history, political economy and politics. We accept that the materialist conception of history is a very useful method for examining and understanding social and historical events and changes. We accept that Capital is a brilliant analysis of the workings and historical tendency of capitalism and exposition of how the working class are exploited. We accept too that the working class can be freed from wage-slavery only by its own efforts, by taking class-conscious democratic political action to get Socialism. We were unaware that in so doing we were “emasculating” Marxism and we are not prepared to consider the allegation that we have distorted Marx’s views until and unless Mr. Therrien, or anyone else, produces some evidence.

As a matter of fact it was Lenin and the Bolsheviks who twisted Marx’s theories. For Marx the emancipation of the working class had to be the work of the working class itself. Lenin rejected this. In What Is To be Done? he says, contemptuously, of the working class that “exclusively by its own effort” it can only reach a trade union consciousness. Socialist understanding, Lenin argued, must be brought to them from outside—in Russia by a band of professional revolutionaries organised as a vanguard party. In other words, Lenin and the Bolsheviks held that a vanguard party could free the working class rather than the working class, through it own class-conscious democratic political action, free itself.

Before trying to pin labels on us Mr. Therrien really must make up his mind which one he is going to use. Kautsky (foremost thinker of European Social Democracy) and Bukharin (Bolshevik thinker and leader, later murdered by Stalin) were both opposed to Lassalle (a nineteenth century playboy who did some pioneer work in organising workers, of Iron Law of Wages fame). And of course Kautsky and Bukharin were opposed to each other. We, in the Socialist Party, have serious criticisms to make of all three. In fact, we would say that Lassalle had nothing to contribute to Socialist theory and Bukharin next to nothing.

The policy of the Socialist Party is not based on two works of Marx. It is based on the interests of the working class in the modern world. Value, Price and Profit is a basic work of Marxian economics always worth reading. The Critique of the Gotha Programme, some marginal notes written by Marx on the programme adopted by German Social Democrats at a unity congress held in Gotha in 1875, has certain defects precisely because it was not written for publication. It is odd that we should be accused of basing our policy on these since the Stalinists use them to try to justify their theory that Socialism and Communism are two separate societies. The notes don’t bear this interpretation anyway and Marx used the two terms interchangeably to refer to the classless society of the future, based on the social or common ownership of the means of life.

Finally, may we express the hope that Mr. Therrien’s group’s study of the policies of state capitalist China is conducted on somewhat more scientific lines than their study of Socialist Party policy appears to have been.

Editorial Committee.

Socialists and the Left (2022)

From the December 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many people don’t realise that not only does the Socialist Party deny being part of ‘the left-wing’, it actively opposes it.

During the last century capitalism saw many profound economic and political convulsions and these gave birth to countless political movements which claimed to either be able to ‘fix’ the system or to have transcended it in the name of socialism. For various ideological reasons many journalists, historians and other cultural commentators accepted this self-identification by such groups without considering the definition and history of socialism. The upshot was that any ‘radical’ movement, from the Labour Party to the Bolsheviks and from the Khmer Rouge to the Social Democrats, could call themselves socialist. The term socialist and/or communist had lost its meaning in a swamp of Orwellian double speak. Not that this was the only word to suffer such a fate, as the terms democratic, scientific, freedom, liberation, justice, equality and countless other progressive ideas were also gobbled up and spat out by capitalist culture and its ideologues.

What was left was a choice between so-called right-wing capitalism and left-wing capitalism or, in other words, no choice at all. Through all of this one organisation obstinately stayed outside of this ‘mainstream’ political consensus – the World Socialist Movement (WSM). It continues to be dismissed for being ‘sectarian’, impossibilist’, ‘elitist’, ‘purist’ and other even less flattering names. The fact remains, however, that despite the Left’s mass following and success in attaining power, both constitutionally and through violent coups, it has changed nothing and in many parts of the world has made things worse for the working class.

Back to 1789

Anyone who thinks our opposition to the term ‘left-wing’ is merely semantic should remember the origins of the battle between socialists and the Left. The political designations of left and right go back to the events of the French Revolution of 1789. The French National Assembly was composed of those who supported the king (who sat on the President’s right) and those who supported the revolution, who sat on the left. Ever since that time political analysts have tried to fit all ideologies into these binary categories of ‘reactionary’ (right) and ‘progressive’ (left).

From the beginning this was not a very helpful tool for understanding political perspectives and developments as the ferocious debate between the Marxists and anarchists of the First International illustrates, since they were both supposed to be members of the left-wing. It is only recently that mainstream political commentators have started to give up on this simplistic fiction, because of the development of ‘populism’ and ‘environmentalism’, both of which refuse to fit neatly within the old categories. The WSM have long since regarded both the left and right as being merely different ways of supporting capitalism and have always opposed both.

Initially most groups calling themselves socialist shared an understanding that the concept referred to ‘the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.’ Eventually some groups, unwilling perhaps to abandon capitalist features like money, authoritarian institutions and national identity etc., began to talk of reforming the current system rather than a revolutionary abolition of it. Their elevation of the state as an institution that could serve the working class instead of oppressing it was at the root of the divergence between socialists and the Left. Such was the way that the ultimate political oxymoron was conceived: ‘state socialism’ .

Bismarck’s ‘welfare state’

The first champion of ‘state socialism’ was Ferdinand Lassalle, who was prominent in organising the first socialist party (Social Democratic Movement) in Germany but came to believe, in contrast to Marx, that the state was a politically neutral organisation that could continue to exist in socialism. Ironically it was Otto Von Bismarck (German Chancellor and bitter opponent of socialism) who, after meeting Lassalle, instituted some of his ideas by creating a welfare system in Germany in the 1880s. He did this to try to stall the growing popular support for the Social Democrats.

Ever since that time the capitalist state in various countries has organised welfare systems (pensions, health care, unemployment benefit, etc.) not because they are an expression of socialism but because they are beneficial to a modern capitalist economy. However, any benefit to the working class is undermined because of the capitalist’s hatred of taxation and the chronic underfunding this always causes. The same is true of the state ownership of various businesses mainly connected with infrastructure. To prevent the rise of monopolies within services and production vital to all the parts of the bourgeoisie, state ownership (nationalisation) was and still is a widespread economic necessity for many capitalist states.

The term ‘public ownership’ suggests that the state is politically neutral and can be associated with some form of socialism when, in fact, the very opposite is true. Those who work in the ‘public sector’ will be the first to tell you that their wages and conditions are always in the firing line when the frequent calls to curb public spending are heard. What further compounded the Left’s misunderstanding of the political role of the state were the events unfolding in Russia in 1917.

Lenin’s state capitalism

The Communist Manifesto proposed the state ownership of key industries in order to accelerate the levels of production to those required to establish socialism, but this was never understood by Marx to be socialism itself. When the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917, this was their main economic strategy to transform the country into an industrial powerhouse. Lenin announced that state ownership was ‘socialist’ and argued that it represented a transitional stage to something else called ‘communism’. He went further in declaring that his party’s coup d’état represented a socialist revolution that had swept away capitalism. To add to the confusion he used Marx’s phrase ‘the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat’ to justify his autocratic regime. Lenin was being dishonest since he knew that the establishment of socialism in Russia was impossible at that time and that what he was creating was state capitalism.

All the crimes and suffering caused by the Bolsheviks continued to be ideologically justified in the name of socialism. Because of the rise of the reformist Left (which had backed the financing of the First World War in Germany) socialist consciousness had already been fatally eroded, so that many of Europe’s intelligentsia hailed the Russian Revolution as ‘socialist’.

To this day many still believe that socialism means the state ownership of the means of production. It remains a key ideological feature among the Left, who continue to insist that it will help bring about the reform of capitalism, which will benefit the majority (and even lead to socialism). But it’s a fantasy that’s detrimental to human happiness and even to the planet. Since 1914, when the Left betrayed the working class and supported the Great War which led inexorably to the Second World War and then the ‘Cold War’, we have witnessed the constant failure of leftist policies.

In the 21st century the working class are still producing the whole cake while having to beg the rich for a few crumbs. The state exists to prevent the working class from accessing the product of its own labour. This organised theft is legitimised by governments, both left and right, who go through the motions of democracy insofar as this is tolerated by their capitalist masters (as long as their interests are not threatened). The left put on their suits and support business and war to further their political careers whilst leading the world to catastrophe.

Socialists will continue to attack the delusional cul-de-sac of reformism which has failed so miserably, and state capitalism, which usually leads to the gulag.

Wez.

What is Marxism? (2023)

Book Review from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Critique of the Gotha Programme (translated and annotated by Kevin B. Anderson and Karel Ludenhoff, with a new introduction by Peter Hudis and an afterword by Peter Linebaugh, PM Books, 2023)

References to Marxists and Marxism are legion. China claims to be a Marxist state. So does North Korea. In the US many left-wing writers, academics and others say they are Marxists. Movements that don’t claim allegiance to Marxism, for example ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Me Too’ are nevertheless said by their right-wing opponents to be Marxist. The act of ‘taking the knee’ by professional footballers is deemed by some to be a ‘Marxist’ gesture. And Jeremy Clarkson is fond of using ‘Marxist’ as a term of abuse for just about anyone who disagrees with him on anything. So what do Marxist and Marxism really mean?

It surely stands to reason that such terms should at least have some connection to the individual from whom they derive, the nineteenth-century political philosopher and socialist revolutionary Karl Marx. But in reality, of course, it’s impossible to stop them being thrown around at random either as an insult or a beacon of pride, just as it’s impossible to stop terms like ‘communism’ and ‘socialism’ being used willy-nilly, often in ways far removed from their original meaning. Despite this, it still has to be worth carrying on doing what the Socialist Party and the Socialist Standard have been doing for well over 100 years – that is attempting to shed clear light on Marxism in terms of the ideas formulated and laid down by Marx himself in his writings.

In this connection a recent edition and new translation from the original German of one of Marx’s lesser known works is a useful aid, since it helps us to identify a particularly important aspect of Marx’s thought. The Critique is a short work, not much more than 20 pages long, written by Marx in 1875 as a confidential response to a ‘Unity Programme’ issued by the German Workers Party. Dating from close to 30 years after what is probably Marx’s best known work, the Communist Manifesto, it sheds light on the thought of the ‘mature’ Marx, in particular his ideas about the kind of society that he saw as replacing the capitalist system, which he analysed in detail in the three volumes of his famous work of economic theory, Capital. So what we have in the Critique is ideas about future society from Marx’s own pen, undisturbed by the later plethora of interpretations by commentators and critics, many of whom read little or nothing of what he wrote.

What stands out clearly from the Critique is Marx’s concept of ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’. As everyone knows, there have been and continue to be endlessly varying interpretations of what these terms mean. But here Marx describes as either ‘communism’ or ‘socialism’ (without making any distinction between the two) a future society based on the common ownership of the means of production and the consequent end of working for wages and producing for sale. This echoes his interchangeable use of both terms in his other writings, so thoroughly belying later attempts by commentators or regimes declaring themselves ‘Marxist’ to argue that Marxism propounds two stages of post-capitalist development, a ‘lower’ one called ‘socialism’ and a ‘higher’ one called ‘communism’.

A second important element that emerges from the Critique (and one that continues to be entirely relevant today) is Marx’s complete rejection of reformism, nationalism, and attachment to state institutions. He pours scorn on reformist demands such as ‘direct legislation’ and ‘popular rights’ and accuses the framers of the Gotha Program, the followers of Ferdinand Lassalle, of having ‘conceived the workers’ movement from the narrowest national standpoint’. All such positions, Marx declares, are ‘remote from socialism’.

The editor of this new translation, American academic Peter Hudis, who calls himself a ‘Marxist-Humanist’, prefaces it with an introduction and some notes, while Peter Linebaugh adds an ‘afterword’ to the text. Most of what they both write is helpful and difficult to fault. Hudis, for example, makes short work of ‘fake’ political Marxism by stating: ‘Neither the reformist social democratic version of socialism nor its revolutionary variant that was taken over by various forms of Stalinism and Marxist-Leninism succeeded in posing a viable alternative; instead, each morphed into some version of capitalism (in the case of Russia ‘state-capitalism’, elsewhere ‘a more equitable or efficient way of organizing exchange).’ Furthermore, he points out, the insistence of many in seeing the socialism talked about by Marx as referring to an earlier phase of social development, distinct from a later final form, communism, has meant that ‘the idea of freedom is pushed off to a far-distant future that never comes, while divesting the idea of socialism of its liberatory content’.

In this connection Hudis also explains that, though Marx avoids entering into the specific details of a future socialist/communist society other than seeing it as a moneyless global system of free access (‘the free and spontaneous allocation of goods and services’) and democratic self-organisation, he does this ‘on the grounds that communism is not a utopian ideal that one tried to impose upon the masses but is instead the result of the self-activity of the masses’. Above all, the editor goes on, ‘Marx aimed to show that capitalism is not an immutable part of human existence but a transitory phenomenon’ and ‘makes it clear throughout his writings that socialism or communism is incompatible with the state’.

There is, however, one area where we would call into question the views put forward by Hudis. This relates to his apparently unquestioning acceptance of the labour time voucher system Marx suggested might have been needed in 1875, even once capitalism had been transcended, the market system got rid of, and commodity exchange, alienated labour and classes eliminated, (until, in Marx’s words, ‘all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly’). In other words that society would have had to wait until the means of production had been built up sufficiently to allow the operation of a complete free access society of ‘from each according to ability to each according to need’,

Hudis fails to take into account that Marx was writing at a time which, compared with what came later and above all what exists today, was relatively undeveloped in terms of the resources and technology available. Clearly that has changed radically since Marx’s lifetime and there can be little doubt that there will be the means to establish very rapidly a complete free access society once the majority of workers decide to join together collectively to bring it about on a world scale. So no longer any need to go through a period of ‘labour-time vouchers’ (which, in any event, would have had drawbacks even in 1875).

No need either to spend time on the ‘reformist’ activities which Marx scorns in the Critique and which the editor too seems to agree is unnecessary. After all any such ‘in the meantime’ activity can only be time wasted, delaying if not putting off forever the ultimate objective, Given this, it is somewhat surprising that in spite of apparent agreement with and encouragement of the views expressed by Marx in the Critique, Hudis (also author of the 2012 book Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism) is on record in a recent essay (‘Democratic Socialism and the Transition to Genuine Democracy’) as supporting reformist activity, referring to such as ‘a political project that fights for and secures needed reforms while focusing on the long-term need to transcend capitalism’ (reviewed in this journal, April 2021). While we would argue that ‘long-term’ is effectively equivalent to never, at the same time, with respect to the kind of society to be aimed for, we do agree with Hudis that socialism, once established, will, as he puts it, ‘provide the space for individuals to discover themselves and freely pursue their destinies, now that such external impediments as class domination, statist control, and abstract forms of domination no longer stand in their way’.

Howard Moss

Evolution and Revolution. (1905)

From the July 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “New Method” is evolutionist. The “New Method” is reformist. The “New Method” stands above all for legality. In order to fully understand it in all its beauty, in all its power, we must first study its conceptions of evolution, reform, and legal revolution. Let us proceed in this order and commence with evolution.

The partisans of the “New Method”, quite honestly, without doubt, put certain stupidities into the mouths of revolutionists, which naturally appear to them quite in order. The revolutionists, they say, believe that the social revolution will be the result of a coup, a struggle with the police, or, better, to employ the favourite expression of (is it necessary to name the minister?) “the stroke of a magic wand”. The revolutionists are travestied as social magicians or miracle-workers; and the realists of state Socialism — in theory very idealist — never miss an occasion of showing their sovereign contempt for these dreamers of impossible catastrophes. They alone are in complete agreement with modern science, founded on the principle of evolution. The revolutionists are romanticists, Utopians. Has not Bernstein himself said that Marx even was but a common Blanquist?

What is the truth?

Let us first point out that all the great masters of contemporary Socialism, those very men who introduced into it the idea of evolution, and who have in some measure saturated the spirits of man with their ideas, Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Ferdinand Lassalle, Peter Lavroff, were throughout their entire lives convinced revolutionists. It is an incontrovertible fact, and we will prove it.

The social work of Marx has been compared with that of Darwin in the domain of Nature. In fact, his classic work, the "Manifesto," which alone perhaps, of all books of our time, contains in a small space (some thirty pages) so many great and fertile ideas, develops quite a system of evolution in capitalist society. In the "Manifesto" we see Socialism burst forth, as the very consequence of things, from the very entrails of capitalist society. It is capitalism itself which fashions its own “grave-digger”, the proletariat organised as a class party.

The Manifesto concludes with the ultra-revolutionary declaration which follows:

  “The communists consider it beneath them to cloak their ideas and designs. They declare openly that their end cannot be realised but by the violent destruction of the existing social order. Let the ruling classes tremble before a communist revolution. The workers have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to gain”.

Here we are very far from the theory “take care to make fear” (“Ayons peur de faire peur”) which has conducted its author to the ministry of commerce. Yet, Marx put to flight all the miracle-workers, all the manufacturers of little projects put forward as so many panaceas guaranteed to save society from the misery of capitalism. It is true that he had not foreseen the project for the participation of socialists in the central power of the bourgeois state, which renders the revolution altogether unnecessary, and, above all, dangerous. A revolutionary party which does not inspire its adversaries with fear is ripe for government. But, it will never “conquer the world”.

The idealist, Peter Lavroff, was in complete agreement with Marx, the materialist, on the question of violent revolution. Throughout all his glorious life he preached the Revolution in the name of reason, “justice and humanity”. He sought to establish scientifically that “every Socialist who thinks logically must be a revolutionist”. And he always added that the Revolution cannot be brought about without violence. Peter Lavroff introduced scientific philosophy into Russia, thus contributing more than anyone else to the overthrow of metaphysical and theological ideas in his country. He was the sworn enemy of miracles, and understood the miracle of social transformation by the word participation.

The partisans of legality are often pleased to quote a Preface of Engels where he traces a magnificent picture of the growth of the Socialist Party during the legal period. But the rascals forget to add that Engels himself protested against the publication, declaring that his ideas had been falsified through the omission of a conclusion containing an affirmation thoroughly revolutionist.

The statement of Marx is likewise invoked, that in England the Revolution could be achieved pacifically and legally. In his preface to the English translation of Capital, Engels, on including the words of his great friend, wrote: “But he never omitted to mention that he doubted very much if the ruling classes in England would ever accede to a pacific and legal revolution” (Capital. Introduction. 1887). Otherwise stated: the revolution will be superfluous if the dominant classes are in humour for committing suicide. It is perfectly evident that Marx, who thoroughly understood the economic condition of England, wished to say nothing more than that all the material and technical conditions were at hand.

In order to accomplish the Revolution nothing was wanted but the revolutionary lever. “Force is the midwife of every new society”. The pains and violence of birth cannot be overlooked on the grounds that the embryo should be allowed to develop in an easy and regular manner. One might as well overlook volcanic eruptions on considering that modern geology has abandoned the catastrophic theory of the formation of the earth. The new-born will develop pacifically, “legally”, but he comes into being revolutionary. The subterranean forces accumulate slowly, invisibly, but once arrived at a certain degree of intensity, they explode. “Revolutions in history are as necessary as tempests in nature”, writes Malon, whom our good evolutionists do not qualify as “sectary”. In truth, this class of “tempest” does not agree with ministerial combinations. But, since when do the phenomena of nature and history rest on the decrees of ministers, being “out of control”.

In 1887 at the Congress of Saint-Gall, Bebel, who of course is nothing but a romantic dreamer, declared:

“He who says that the final end of Socialism will be realised in a pacific manner does not know the final end, or, mocks us”.

Further. It is only during its scientific period that, based on the principle of evolution, Socialism becomes revolutionary. The great Utopians, Fourier, Owen, Saint-Simon were pacific in their methods. They preached the social transformation to make the “revolution” needless.

It was exactly at the time that the social reformers addressed the monarchs, assembled at Aix-la-Chapelle, soliciting their “Collaboration” in social reform in the name of “social conservation”. That was also the good old time when the noble dreamer Fourier used to look daily for his “millionaire”, pacific redeemer of suffering humanity.

The triumph of the truly realistic spirit was at the same time that of the revolutionary spirit. None but empiric minds who see no farther than the tips of their noses or who have some interest in cloaking historic truth, believe that revolution is contrary to evolution of which it is, in reality, only the fatal and irresistible outcome. Thus, the Utopian period of Socialism was pacific. The scientific period adopts revolutionary tactics.

Ferdinand Lassalle, who was the promoter of universal suffrage in Germany, a man of immediate action and pacific par excellence, recognised the revolution as a means of achieving any serious reform. He pointed out that many great reforms were brought about only by revolution. For him, as well as for every modern Socialist, revolution is but a moment, a period of crisis in the “normal” evolution of society, an evolution which comes to a head.

The abyss which our ministerialists seek to find between evolution and revolution under its sudden and violent form exists but in their imagination. But there exists an insuperable abyss between revolution and ministerialism.

Translated from the French of Charles Rappoport by P. J. Tobin

Further meanderings of G. B. Shaw (1945)

Book Review from the June 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Shaw insists periodically on exhibiting his lack of knowledge of socialism and his poverty of ideas regarding it. He is at it again in “Everybody’s Political What’s What.”

Much of what he says may best be described as sheer waste of paper; the tragedy is, however, that although it got very poor notices from the critics the Shaw fans, i.e., admirers of his excellent and witty plays, carry their adoration of him into his other fields. It is apparently hard to conceive that an individual capable at his particular job albeit a difficult one may be a hopeless duffer at others; Oliver Lodge, a scientist, believed avidly in spiritualism!

He devotes whole chapters to how money should be paid under “socialism” (as he calls it) stating what is recognised under the present system, that it costs more to produce an admiral, doctor, lawyer, etc., not even admitting the possibility that the world could go round without money and would not therefore require either lawyers or admirals. Mr, Shaw's socialism is a thinly disguised nationalization in which compensation though not so called would be administered to the erstwhile possessors of capital, land, etc..

He is an admirer of Soviet Russia and hopes to model other countries on similar lines and comments naively “Although the Country (Britain) is up to the waist in Communism because there are so many vitally necessary public services out of which the capitalists can make no profit. . . .” Mr. Shaw should enquire a little more deeply into where the interest comes from paid on Government Bonds, with an eye on the Post Office. How Lord Ashfield lives, with an eye on the L.P.T.B., and also enquire if sewers, etc., are supplied to local authorities on a non-profit basis. Incidentally he does our case a service in pointing out the differences of income in the U.S.S.R., the varying types of workers and bureaucrats, and the recent changes in the educational system. To Mr. Shaw it is all in order, he explains it away as a cognisance of things as they are, not perceiving them as retrograde and necessary to modern capitalism albeit a state variety.

He ranks the works of Stanley Jevons and Ferdinand Lassalle as more correct than Marx, without however, one real word of proof. Stanley Jevons' followers it may be remembered were challenged to debate on Marx by Hyndman, and did not accept the challenge! He also talks of “Post Marxism” coupled with the wisdom of the Fabians and recommends that his other works should be read: as a consumer of royalties this may perhaps be justifiable, not however to those who value their spare time.

It would be better for Mr. Shaw’s reputation with coming generations, if he would now quietly die; his plays will keep his name alive for many years, but not his so-called political writings as they serve to illustrate bow foolish a “practical socialist ” can be.

W. P.

The Critique of the Gotha Programme (1952)

From the July 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Gotha programme was drawn up to unite the two sections of the German working class movement. One party, the General Association of German Workers, was founded by Lassalle, hence called the Lassalleans—the other party was the Social Democratic Workers’ Party, led by William Liebknecht and Bebel, and was known as the Eisenachers. They combined to form the Socialist Workers* Party of Germany at the Gotha Congress in 1875.

The “Critique of the Gotha Programme” consisted of marginal, comments made by Marx on the draft of this party programme.

To-day the “Critique” is popular among Communist Party sympathisers because in certain passages Marx has referred to a transitional period between Capitalism and Communism during which there will be an exchange economy. Of course, the Communists claim that Russia at present is passing through this transitional period.

Undue importance is placed on these passages. As Marx has pointed out in the above mentioned work just after dealing with the transitional period:—

  "I have dealt more at length with the 'undiminished proceeds of labour' on the one hand, and 'equal right' and ‘fair distribution' on the other in order to show what a crime it is to attempt. . . . to force on our Party again, as dogmas, ideas which in a certain period had some meaning but now have become obsolete verbal rubbish." (Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx Engels' Selected Works, p. 23., published Lawrence and Wishart.) 

And in the next paragraph he wrote that—

  "It was in general a mistake to make a fuss about so-called distribution and put the principal stress on it.
   "Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of non-workers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal conditions of production, of labour power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of, the means of consumption different from the present one." (P. 23.)

In Russia, we have millionaires (see “Soviet Millionaires,” by Reg Bishop published for Russia Today Society in 1943) drawing interest on State Loans—“property in capital" while the masses are only owners . . .  of labour power.”

The view that there would be a transitional period between'Capitalism and Communism or Socialism (they are realty interchangeable terms) as envisaged by Marx was understandable 75 years ago, when the machinery of production had not attained the tremendous productive capacity it has to-day and it wasn’t realised that it was absolutely necessary that the majority of the working class must understand what Socialism means. With the present knowledge of the pre-requisites for the establishment of a Socialist society, the “transitional period ” has become “ obsolete verbal rubbish.”

The real value of the “Critique of the Gotha Programme ” lies in the attack Marx makes on the vague loose phraseology of a political party programme seeking to attract a working class ignorant of its real interests.

Communist Party sympathisers should read the “Critique” and ask themselves what Marx would have had to say about a party which talks about “people’s states,” “people’s democracies,” “people’s governments,” and whose aim, to quote from a Communist Party document, is as follows:—

   "To achieve a Socialist Britain in which the social ownership of the means of production and exchange shall replace the existing capitalist system and the exploitation of man by man. By transforming man and creating abundance. Socialism creates the conditions for the ultimate goal of Communism, based on the principle: From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
   "Only a Socialist Britain co-operating with all other peoples of the world in close, friendly, free and equal association, will be able so to plan the use of all Britain’s material, productive and scientific resources, that every citizen will be guaranteed security, the right to work and leisure, a steadily rising standard of living, liberty and equal opportunity to enjoy a full and happy life”— (Draft Rules of the Party, 22nd National Congress, issued by .Communist Party.)

They might then agree that Engels' words to Bebel when writing about the Gotha Programme would be most apt. He wrote, “Almost every word in this programme . . .  could be criticised. It is such a character that if adopted Marx and I can never give adherence to the new party established on this basis.” (Engels to Bebel, March 18-28, 1875, Marx Engels' Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 39.)

Read the “Critique” for yourself and see. It is published by Lawrence and Wishart and can be bought for half-a-crown or you can buy Marx and Engels' Selected Works. It is included in volume two. The two volumes are priced at six shillings and sixpence each.

Jim Thorburn

Marx the journalist (1983)

From the March 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the first two years of his exile in England Marx actively involved himself in German refugee politics. He was still a member of the central committee of the Communist League and was in contact with the League's members who had stayed in Germany. His English contact was Harney whom he met again at a banquet organised by the Society of Fraternal Democrats at the end of 1849. In April 1850 Harney, for the Fraternal Democrats, together with Marx. Engels and Willich for the German Communist League and Adam and Vidil for the French Blanquists signed a declaration setting up a “Universal League of Revolutionary Communists" committed to “the overthrow of all privileged classes, their subjection to the dictatorship of the proletariat under which the revolution shall be maintained sine die until the communist society, the final organisation of the human family, has been realised". In June Harney started to publish his own paper The Red Republican, in whose November issue was published the first English translation of the Communist Manifesto, identifying Marx and Engels as its authors.

Throughout 1850 Marx and Engels contributed a regular column to the Revue of the Neue Rheinische Z'eitung which was published in Hamburg. Among the things they commented on was the political scene in Britain, such as the death of Sir Robert Peel and the prospects of the Chartist movement, but the bulk of the material they sent on Britain concerned the economic situation there. Some time in the autumn of 1850 Marx came to the conclusion that there was a direct connection between economic crises and revolution. He read through the back numbers of the economist and a volume of Thomas Tooke’s History of Prices which had just been published to try to understand the economic crisis of 1847 which had preceded the revolutionary outbreak of 1848. The result was the detailed account of the course of this crisis which appeared in the Revue.

Marx's position about there being a direct link between crises and revolution led him to a further conclusion: that in the then period of prosperity there was no immediate prospect of revolution; the revolutionary wave sparked off by the 1847 crisis was over and it was pointless to continue to try to provoke an immediate revolutionary uprising. This was a revision of the view Marx had expressed as recently as April 1850 in the statement he had signed with the Blanquists and Harney and it led to a split in the Communist League. It also led Marx to break with Harney who, as a romantic revolutionary, sympathised with those, including Marx’s opponents in the Communist League, who wanted to continue plotting a more or less immediate insurrection. When Harney's position became known, Engels at Marx's request immediately stopped contributing articles to his paper, which had in the meantime changed its name to The Friend of the People. Their other pre-1848 contact, Ernest Jones, was released from prison in 1850 and was soon involved in an acrimonious dispute with Harney over the use of the title of O'Connor’s paper The Northern Star, which ceased publication in 1852. Marx and Engels took Jones's side in this dispute and in 1851 Engels was contributing instead to Jones's Notes to the People which later became The People's Paper.

The split in the Communist League occurred at a meeting of its central committee held on 15 September 1850. According to the Minutes. Marx explained his opposition to the policy of plotting immediate insurrection on the grounds that workers must be told that "if you want to change conditions and make yourselves capable of government, you will have to undergo fifteen, twenty or fifty years of civil war", by which he meant many years of intense class struggle, certainly involving occasional violent confrontations with the state, rather than "civil war" in what has become the literal sense. This was to remain Marx's view for the rest of his life and represented a return to the pattern for the evolution of working class political consciousnss which he had outlined, on the basis of experience of the English Chartist movement, before the bourgeois-revolutionary interlude of 1848-9. He first acted on this when he participated, through Jones's People's Paper, in the English working class movement between 1852 and 1856.

But Marx's immediate concern was to earn a living. If he can be said to have had a profession it was journalism. He had been the editor of a democratic newspaper in Germany in 1842-43 and again in 1848-9. It was as editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung that he had met in 1848 an American journalist. Charles Dana, who was touring Europe. Dana was the editor of the New York Daily Tribune, one of America's leading newspapers. It had been founded in 1841 by Horace Greeley and took up a generally democratic position on the issues of the day. Three years later Dana, who was anxious to increase the paper's circulation among the German immigrants (and refugees) who had come to America after the final failure of the German bourgeois-democratic revolution in 1849. wrote to Marx asking him to contribute a scries of articles on this revolution. Marx gladly accepted this offer but. although it was submitted in Marx's name, this series — later published as Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany — was in fact written by Engels, partly because Marx had not yet acquired the confidence to write directly in English. Dana was very pleased with the contributions Marx had sent him and Marx became the regular London and European correspondent of the New York Daily Tribune for the next ten years. The first article written by Marx — an introductory article on the political parties in Britain in the context of the then impending General Election appeared on 21 August 1852. The last article appeared in March 1862. Marx's first articles were written in German and translated into English by Engels — indeed, Engels throughout this whole period continued to write articles in Marx’s name — but later Marx began to write in English himself; which explains the peculiar grammar and vocabulary of some of the earlier articles.

The sub-editors of the New York Daily Tribune felt free to alter the articles as they considered appropriate. Marx eventually objected to this, since not all of the changes were of a purely editorial nature. One of the sub-editors was pro-Russian and often toned down the anti-Russia views expressed by Marx in his articles on the Eastern Question and the Crimean War. As a result of Marx’s protests, it was agreed that his articles should no longer be published with his signature. The last article signed by Marx (though ironically in fact mainly written by Engels!) was “Prospect in France and England" which appeared on 27 April 1855. Even before that date, Dana had used some of Marx’s articles as unsigned editorials.

Marx was a conscientious journalist who always read up a subject before writing an article on it. But his main source of information was inevitably the London daily and weekly papers. Apart of course from The Times, the main dailies Marx relied on were the Daily News, The Globe, The Morning Advertiser, The Morning Chronicle, The Morning Herald and The Morning Post. Marx also occasionally, through his contact with Engels who was living there, used the Manchester Guardian. Marx gives a useful run-down on the London dailies and their polities in an article published in Die Presse of Vienna on 31 December 1861. The article describes the press scene at that time rather than in the early and middle 1850s, when Marx did most of his writing for the New York Daily Tribune, but it had not changed all that much during this period. As to weeklies, Marx relied on The Economist, The Leader, and Jones's People's Paper.

But Marx also did some direct reporting himself, especially for the articles he wrote in 1855 for the Neue Oder Zeitung. He attended political meetings and rallies in London and was present in the Visitors’ Gallery for some of the debates in the House of Commons which he reported.

Marx came to be the London correspondent of the Neue Oder Zeitung through Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864). whose cousin. Max Friedlander (1829-1872). became one of the paper’s owners at the end of 1854. This paper had been published under this name since 1849 in Breslau on the river Oder (now Wroclau in present-day Poland) and, like the New York Daily Tribune, took up a generally pro-democratic position, though Marx had not agreed with the line it had taken during the German revolution when it had attacked workers’ organisations and “socialists". Marx contributed articles, some again written by Engels, some translations or German versions of articles he had sent to the New York Daily Tribune, throughout 1855. Marx's last article appeared on 8 October and the paper ceased publication soon afterwards. Marx seems to have felt freer to express his pro-working class position in the Neue Oder Zeitung than in the New York Daily Tribune, though this position is evident in the latter too, even if not so pronounced.

When collected together Marx’s articles do indeed provide an analysis of British politics and society in the 1850s by the same journalistic pen which wrote the much more widely known analyses of French politics over a shorter period, in the Class Struggles in France and The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon.

The other paper for which Marx regularly wrote paid articles was Die Presse in 1861 and 1862. This was the leading liberal daily published in Vienna, indeed one of the leading papers in the Austrian Empire. Marx had had opportunities to write for it earlier than 1861, but had turned them down on political grounds. The contact was again Lassalle's cousin, Max Friedlander, who had in the meantime become the paper's editor. In 1861 and 1862 Marx contributed a number of articles to Die Presse, a large number of them dealing with the American Civil War. especially about relations between Britain and the United States but also covering other subjects.

Marx's work as a paid journalist came to an end with the publication of his last article in Die Presse on 4 December 1862.

Adam Buick

"The Mixture as Before" (1955)

From the September 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

German Social Democracy Today 

We are in receipt of the “Action Programme” of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, adopted at the Party Conference at Dortmund in 1952, and revised by the Party Conference at Berlin in July, 1954.

If the date had not been appended to the title page nobody outside would have known.

The Social Democratic Party of Germany has not changed.

It remains what it was, a nationalistic capitalist outfit, peddling a typically Labourite programme of reforms, while professing to be Socialist.

Indeed, without the vague introductory references to Socialism in the foreword to the programme, it would hardly differ from its opponents at all.

Those with knowledge of the facts will read with amusement that

  “The Social-Democratic Party of Germany commits itself more definitely than ever to file great ideas of Socialism and Democracy."—(p. 7).
  “It remains for ever committed to . . .  its great leaders from Karl Marx Frederick Engels, Ferdinand Lassalle and August Bebel down to Kurt Schumacher, Hans Boeckler and Ernst Reuter."—(p. 8).

Nobody would be more amazed at the cool effrontery of this than Marx and Engels themselves, who were so angry with their friends in Germany for having anything to do with Lassalle’s “Union of German Workers” (which they amalgamated with in 1875 at Gotha) that they warned them that they would publicly break with official German Social-Democracy, and denounce it

Marx’s language was so strong that when publishing his “Criticism of the Gotha Programme,” 15 years later, Engels had to insert dots for some of the more unparliamentary expressions.

Why was it that a man of Marx's calibre should be so incensed at what the Social-Democrats in Germany were doing?

After all, he had endured outrageous slander and calumny for years without complaint.

Examination of the facts shows that they started then, what they are still doing now, supporting capitalism by advocating reforms.

Marx wrote a detailed criticism (which he said was more than the doctor had allowed) to W. Bracke, saying that the reason he was so annoyed was because the tale was spread about Europe (especially by Bakunin) that he and Engels secretly ran the Eisenach (or Social Democratic) Party from London, and were therefore personally responsible for a collection of daft rubbish which was actually quite meaningless.

This rubbish was the stock-in-trade of Ferdinand Lassalle, a romantic figure of the day who became an agitator, before being killed in a duel, at an early age.

He was a Malthusian and advocated State regulation of Labour to operate the “Iron Law of Wages.”

F. Engels, in his letter of protest, wrote to Bebel

“Our people have allowed the Lassallean iron law of wages to be foisted on them, a law based on a quite antiquated economic view, namely, that the worker receives, on the average, only the minimum of the labour wage, because, according to Malthus theory of population there are always too many workers. Now, Marx has proved in ‘Capital' that the laws regulating wages are very complicated, that sometimes one predominates and sometimes another, according to circumstances, that therefore they are in no sense iron, but very elastic.” “Karl Marx” Selected Works Vol. II p. 589. Adoratsky, Moscow.

In Marx’s own view, 

   “since Lassalle’s death the scientific understanding has made progress in our party, that wages are not what they appear to be, namely, the value, or price of labour, but only a masked form for the value, or price of labour power. Thereby the whole bourgeois conception of wages hitherto, as well as all the criticism hitherto directed against this conception was thrown overboard once for all, and it was made dear that the wage-worker has permission to work for his own life, i.e. to live, only in so far as he works a certain time gratis for the Capitalist, that the whole capitalist system of production turns on the prolongation of this gratis labour by extending the working day, or by developing the productivity, or the greater intensity of labour power, etc., that consequently the system of wage-labour is a system of slavery, and indeed a slavery that becomes more severe as the social forces of labour develop, whether the worker receives better or worse payment.
   And after this understanding has made more and. more progress in our party, one returns to Lassaile's dogmas although one must have known that Lassalle did not know what wages are, but following in the wake of the bourgeois economists, took the appearance for the essence of the matter.” (“Karl Marx,” page 574, Moscow, 1933.)

Apart from the dangerous ideas he advocated everything in Lassalle’s character and actions made Marx detest him.

Both Marx and Engels smelt a rat when Lassalle wrote offering them editorial posts on his Berlin paper. If Marx would return to Germany, hinting that he might negotiate an amnesty for Marx.

It was not until 1928 that the truth was finally revealed that Lassalle, in fact, was a paid secret agent of Bismarck. (See “Bismarck and Lassalle” by Mayer, Berlin 1928, page 60.)

We have recalled a few facts to show how preposterous is the claim of the modem German Social-Democrats that Marx was one of “their leaders,” alongside Lassalle.

Those interested or sceptical are referred to the “Critique of the Gotha Programme” (Volume II, “Karl Marx Selected Works.” Adoratsky, Moscow, 1933), to verify the facts for themselves.

Everything in the “Unity” programme made Marx furious. Even the first clause—which ran—

“(1) Labour is the source of all wealth and all culture, and since useful labour is only possible in society and through society, the proceeds of labour belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society,” nearly drove him up the wall.

This is what he had to say about this mish-mash.

   “In proportion as labour develops socially and becomes thereby a source of wealth and culture, poverty and neglect develop among the workers, and wealth and culture among .the non-workers.
   “This is the law of all history, hitherto. What had to be done was to prove that capitalist society had created the material conditions enabling the workers to lift this social curse.” (Gotha Programme).

Is there any sign that modern German Social-Democracy has any intention of trying to lift this social curse of growing poverty with increasing wealth? Not the slightest.

This latest programme contains 50 pages of resolutions on nearly every conceivable subject except abolition of capitalism. On the contrary, they all concern its maintenance and improvement, including Tax and Penal Reform.

In this “Action Programme” we have the classic vote-catching Bill-of-Fare. Something for Everybody. Just like the I.L.P. Hitler, Mussolini, etc., etc., nobody has been forgotten.

The German Social Democrats are going to help the individual workers, civil servants, small business men, women, scientists, young people, the middle-classes, farmers, small farmers, “those in receipt of public relief” and refugees. (See Action Programme 1954.)

They want a Free Republic, increased production, increased public assistance “for the millions who suffer poverty,” wages to be assured of a reasonable relation to profit (page 25), more credits to the middle-class (page 28) and “the Social-Democrats will sustain small and medium scale Private-Property” (page 26). Healthy Housing for Everybody, Tax Reforms, more equitable distribution of Wealth, a social Security scheme on Beveridge lines for Unemployed or Sickness, Public Ownership of Coal, Iron, Transport and Power, Prison Reform, more Schools, Youth Hostels, and Judicial Reform, are a few more of the plums which the German Jack Homer is promised, if only he will stick in his thumb into the electoral pie for the Social Democratic Party.

What has all this to do with Socialism? Nothing. 

Study the actual record of the Social-Democrats in power in Prussia and it becomes obvious that the election phrases are but the cloak for the Capitalist policies.

Zorgiebel, Social-Democrat Chief of Police in Berlin, mowed down unruly workers with the ferocity of a Cavaignac.

Like Labour Governments everywhere the Social Democrats in Germany were just as active in running capitalism whatever the consequences to the worker, because that was their mandate.

After years in power, they spawned—Hitler.

If the German workers had any idea of the real meaning of Marx’s writings, they would reject the Social-Democrats.

When they learn more about the matter they will organise a Socialist Party.

Messrs, Ollenhauer, Schumacher, Boeckler, Reuter, crooks in the true tradition of Ferdinand Lassalle.

The German Philosopher, Nietsche (an anti-Socialist), called them “clambering apes.”

Horatio.