Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The princes are nothing but tyrants who flay the people; they fritter away our blood and sweat on their pomp and whoring and knavery.’ These were the words of Thomas Müntzer at the head of the massed ranks of a peasant army in the year 1525. Ranged against him was the might of the princes of the German Nation. How did Müntzer, the son of a coin maker from central Germany, rise in just a few short years to become one of the most feared revolutionaries in early modern Europe? 

(Penguin Random House)

Like many of Myanmar’s young men and women, Ko Naing said he had no intention of answering the call and would instead do whatever it takes to avoid the draft. ‘The one sure thing is I won’t serve. If I’m drafted by the military, I will try to move to the remote areas or to another country,’ Ko Naing told Al Jazeera from Myanmar. ‘Not only me, I think everyone in Myanmar is not willing to serve in the military under the conscription law’, he said. 

(Al Jazeera)

The ‘one land, two peoples’ analysis of the situation is nonsensical. The land does not belong to the people [proletariat], anywhere in the world. It belongs to those [bourgeoisie] who own it. This might seem very theoretical, but the mere existence of social relations on the ground shows to whom the idea of two camps belongs, ie, the ruling [bourgeois] class.

(libcom.org)

South Africa’s Western Cape is known for its dramatic coastlines and acres of wineland. But behind the blue skies and rolling hills, the province is grappling with a heartbreaking health crisis. The area has the highest rate of foetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) in the world – a group of debilitating and life-long disabilities caused when a mother drinks during pregnancy. Whilst FASD affects about 0.7 per cent of the world’s population, in the Western Cape rates are as high as 31 per cent, and across South Africa, it’s estimated that 11 per cent of all newborns are affected each year.

(The Telegraph)

As BBC Ukraine reported in November, 650,000 Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 years old have left Ukraine for Europe since the start of the war. Zelensky’s former adviser Alexey Arestovich recently claimed that 4.5 million Ukrainian men, nearly half of the Ukrainian male population, had fled abroad to avoid military service, and that 30 to 70 percent of military units consist of ‘refuseniks’ who have gone absent without official leave (AWOL) .

(WSWS.ORG)

‘And if they’ve refused three offers of a job, or whatever the number would be, and they say ‘I’m sorry, I’m not doing any of that’, you then say – in which case you must go and do two years in the Armed Forces’. 

(Daily Express)

‘Universities should be havens for robust debate, discussion, and learning—not sites of censorship where administrators, donors, and politicians squash political discourse they don’t approve of’ said the head of the NYCLU.

(Common Dreams)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

The Power of Words (2022)

Book Review from the February 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Burning the Books: a History of Knowledge Under Attack. By Richard Ovenden. John Murray £10.99.

Probably the best-known case of book-burning was on 10 May 1933, in Berlin and other German cities. The Nazi authorities consigned many books, by Marx and Freud among others, to the flames. This was, however, only the first step in the Nazi attack on learning and scholarship, which led to over 100 million books being destroyed. Jewish culture was a specific target, of course.

This is one of many examples discussed in Richard Ovenden’s wide-ranging study, which also deals with efforts to rescue or replace destroyed works. For instance, the YIVO archives in Vilnius, and later in New York, were able to preserve many Jewish books and documents. In many other instances, too, people have risked their lives to rescue books and other documents.

Loss has sometimes been a matter just of neglect, and the removal (theft) of texts has on occasion been an unintended consequence of war. The German Peasant War of 1525 was a rare example of documents being destroyed by those who lacked power: feudal charters and tax rolls that kept peasants in servitude. But in most cases the destruction of works has been a deliberate policy by power-holders, as a means of controlling the past and hence the present and future. The sixteenth-century Reformation, for instance, ‘was in many ways one of the worst periods in the history of knowledge’. In England, tens of thousands of books were burned or broken up, especially in monasteries and other religious communities, and an Act of 1549 provided state sponsorship for this. It was all part of Henry VIII’s declaration of independence from the rule of Rome. As another example, the destruction of Bosnian archives by Serb forces in the 1990s was in particular aimed at removing records of the presence of Muslims.

Oppressive regimes tend to keep massive amounts of information on their ‘subjects’. In South Africa, officials in the apartheid regime destroyed large numbers of documents, making it difficult for subsequent inquiries into the oppressive system. Around the time Malaysia became independent in 1957, British colonial officials destroyed countless archives and documents, in order to conceal their racist and prejudiced behaviour. In East Germany, many files held by the Stasi were disposed of, though many citizens were still able later to view the files and see what information the state held on them. In 2019, the Turkish government began to destroy books associated with one of its opponents.

The web has resulted in a major change to how knowledge is recorded and preserved, but that does not mean written texts are redundant. Websites often disappear or change their address, and web archiving is a challenging task. Ovenden’s book shows clearly the importance of recording information, how the powerful have often tried to manipulate this in their own interests, and how some people have managed to resist this.

Paul Bennett

Past Class Struggles. (1919)

From the April 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the last article we gave an outline of the English Peasants' Revolt and its consequences. In the meantime conditions in Germany had brought about a similar revolt there.

The break-up of the Roman Empire left Germany cut up into feudal territories with a feudal lord over each. Then came the growth of commerce which developed the wealth and importance of the city burghers. The luxuries of the East were brought West and enjoyed by the townsmen into whose hands gradually centred all the handicraft, art and luxuries of the times. This placed the feudal lord at a disadvantage and aroused his envy. He, who looked down from the superior height of traditional regality upon the lowbred townsman, found himself the townsman's inferior in wealth and splendour. He consequently looked around for means to increase his wealth.

In those days the nobility lived in fortified castles and surrounded themselves with trained bands of retainers and soldiery. Their usual method of increasing the worldly possessions was by issuing from their castles on marauding expeditions, and lying in wait and robbing the travellers that passed through their territories. Wm. Jacobs, in his "History of the Precious Metals," writes of the internal conditions of Germany at this time as follows: —

  "Those countries under a rigid feudal system were divided into various independent and petty sovereignties, all jealous of their neighbours, and frequently embroiled with them. The roads and rivers were insecure, and the protection either to property or persons passing along them, dependent upon the interest, the caprice or the cupidity of the various princes or nobles who ruled the several minor dominions … No protection was afforded to intercourse, and commerce was consequently almost unknown." (Vol. II., pp. 23-24.)

As time went on, however, lying in wait for travelling merchants became less profitable, more dangerous, and but a slow and doubtful way of acquiring the necessary wealth to obtain the delicious luxuries enjoyed by the rich merchants. Consequently the feudal princes and lords had to cast about for other methods of raising the money to purchase the good things of the new life. Right at their hands lay the weapon of conquest—the further exploitation of the peasantry.

Karl Marx, in "Capital," Vol. 1., p. 220, says of these peasants :

"In the I5th Century the German peasant was nearly everywhere a man who, whilst subject to certain rents paid in produce and labour, was otherwise at least practically free. The German colonists, in Brandenbourg, Pomerania, and Silesia and Eastern Prussia, were even legally acknowledged as free men."

These peasants had not sunk to the same level of serfdom as the English peasants of this period, although the degradation was soon to be accomplished. They had stretches of common lands, and under the system of corvee (statute labour) they owed a comparatively small amount of labour and produce to the lords.

With the growth of the lords' appetite for luxury, however, the oppression of the peasantry and the seizure of their common lands developed into a system of bare-faced robbery. Their rents were steadily converted into money rents and increased. Documents were forged whereby the rights of the peasants were curtailed and their duties increased.

From the end of the 15th Century there were sporadic revolts on the part of the peasantry, but these were easily crushed. Eventually (1525) there was a general and extensive rising of the peasantry throughout Southern Germany.

The German Peasants' War was, unfortunately for the peasants, a disunited and badly organised affair. In spite of the fact that the rising was general throughout Germany, each territory fought out its own individual battles, and, although there were numerous peasant armies in the field, instead of forming a united plan of action, they all aspired to be self-sufficient and acted locally only. Not so the nobles. They formed a league (the Swabian League) to raise and equip an army for the purpose of putting down the rising everywhere. While they momentarily concluded peace with one army they fell upon and destroyed another. And in this manner, by bribery, chicanery, fraud, and force, they destroyed the peasant forces peacemeal.

Each group of peasants formulated their demands in the shape of a number of articles, but eventually the twelve articles adopted by the Swabian peasantry became generally accepted as the basis of the movement. The principal demands in these articles were

1. Right of Electing their own Ministers.
2. Reduction of Tithes.
3. Abolition of Villeinage.
4. Liberty to Fish and Kill Wild Game.
5. Restoration of Woods.
10. Restoration of Common Lands.
11. Abolition of Death Dues.

Here, as in England, the lords pursued their time-dishonoured methods of dodgery, promising redress until the simple peasants had been put off their guard, and then falling upon and slaughtering them unmercifully.

Throughout the war the peasants were remarkable for their forbearance, and the lords for their ferocity. In spite of extreme provocation only two cases of alleged barbarity could be quoted against the peasantry. In one case a Baron von Helfenstein, who had achieved notoriety by his cruelty, and who had massacred peasants by the dozen in cold blood, was captured at the town of Weinsberg. The leaders of the United Contingent (the peasant army that captured the place) gave orders that he was to be kept prisoner, but a section of the peasantry (some of whom had suffered personally at his hands) had resolved upon his death, and he was executed. This act was used as an excuse for the atrocities that followed.

The United Contingent, making the same mistake as the modern workers, appointed as commander a dissatisfied hanger-on of the ruling class, a knight Gotz von Berlichingen, and after his appointment the articles originally formulated were gradually watered down. Like the modern labour leader, he played the game of the ruling class, and his vaccilating and treacherous policy largely conduced to the early defeat of the peasants in the quarter where he commanded.

Eventually the lords succeeded, with the aid of mercenary soldiery and a quantity of artillery, in crushing the peasantry. Then the wholesale execution of men, women, and children became the order of the day.

The majority of the leaders of the insurrection were captured, tortured, and wasted to death, or died in prison. It is estimated that not less than 130,000 peasants were slaughtered during and immediately after the revolt. "At least 100,000 were killed," says the ultra-conservative "Harmsworth Encyclopoedia," p. 4623.

It is worth noting that Martin Luther, the apostle of revolt (for early capitalism) against Roman Catholicism, opposed the peasants' rising with all his power, and suggested that the best way to deal with the insurrection was to exterminate the peasantry! He is reported to have written the following sublime exhortation: "Crush them, strangle them, and pierce them, in secret places and in sight of men, he who can even as one would strike dead a mad dog." ("Encyclopedia Brittanica," 9th edition, article "Luther.")

The German Peasants' War, like the English Peasants' Revolt, was but a reactionary movement, an incident and an accompaniment of the gradual rise to a share in political control of the wealthy burghers of the towns.

The crushing of the peasantry in the war fixed the bonds of servitude still more securely upon their backs, and degraded them to the lowest depths of villeinage. Many decades elapsed ere they could rise from their prostrate position, and then it was only to be precipitated into a still worse servitude—the servitude of the wage slave.

In the evolution of society only movements that are logical sequences of social development can
succeed. The writer recommends this point to the consideration of the Anarchist Communist, who mournfully moans for the return to peasant-proprietorship or small ownership, disregarding 
economic development and the results of the scientific examination of society. The conclusions
 of the Socialist are correct and safe because they are based on, and harmonise with, the normal
 development of society.

Gilmac.

Socialism and Christianity. (1923)

From the April 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

The famous Doctor Samuel Johnson once said, “Two contradictory ideas may inhere in the same mind; they cannot both be correct.” And one is reminded of this obvious truth when reading the correspondence recently published in the "Daily Herald” on the subject of "Christianity and Labour.” Of the letters published the majority convey the view that there is a similarity between what the various writers call Socialism and Christianity. To the Socialist, however, those who hold this view betray an ignorance of both sets of ideas. For not only are Socialism and Christianity not identical; they are irreconcilably opposed. The antagonism between Socialism and Christianity is fundamental, as will be seen in the different methods employed to explain social conditions, and also in the totally different concepts of life. To find an explanation of present social conditions the Socialist analyses society and discovers therein two distinct social classes, separated from each other by clearly marked political and economic characteristics. One class, the capitalist class, own and control the means of wealth production, but take no part in the process of producing the wealth. The analysis of the Socialist shows that the capitalists, who own an enormous mass of wealth, are able to obtain this wealth by the robbery of the other class in society—the working class.

Having no property in the means of wealth production the members of the working class are compelled to sell their energy to those who own the various tools of production, in order to obtain the wherewithal to live. It is by means of the workers applying this energy to nature given material that the wealth necessary to human existence is produced. But the great bulk of this wealth is appropriated by the capitalists who have control of political power and consequently use that power to legalise their robbery of the working class.

There is little need to stress the fact that, contrary to the wealthy position of the capitalists, the position of the workers is one of poverty and insecurity of existence. In an earlier stage of social development man endured privation through his lack of knowledge of the forces of nature, but in modern society, with man having gained a greater control over natural forces, wealth can be produced in abundance. Starvation or a lack of the means of subsistence, although unavoidable in earlier times, is now quite avoidable. There are ample means at the disposal of modern society for all to live in economic security, free from the yoke of servitude and the exploitation and poverty it entails for the working class. The poverty and the general degradation within society we trace directly to the class ownership of the means of life.

Thus it is in the roots of society itself that the Socialist discovers the core of the "social problem”.

The Christian, however, if he is consistent with his creed, alleges that the explanation of all things, including social conditions, is to be found in that metaphysical abstraction "God”—an abstraction aptly described by Spinoza as the "asylum of ignorance.” To the Christian this world is ”God’s world." He created it, and everything in it, including man. The affairs of the world are supposed to be controlled by this supernatural power, whose activities it is blasphemy to question.

In contrast with the scientific determinism of the Socialist philosophy, which points out the overwhelming influence of material conditions in shaping human conduct, the Christian asserts that man is endowed with a free will, and he expects human conduct to take on any particular form regardless of whatever conditions are prevailing. Hence, while the Socialist relies upon a change of political and economic conditions for human improvement, the Christian calls for "a change of heart.’’ In contrast with the policy of the Socialist, who urges the workers to resist the tyranny of their exploiters, and to organise themselves for the overthrow of class domination, the Christian urges the policy of class conciliation. The poverty stricken worker is to shake the hand of his wealthy exploiter, and “Capital and Labour” are to live in harmony. Instead of the end of classes we are to have their continuance under the cloak of “Christian brotherhood.”

The method of the Socialist—i.e., the method of explanation through natural causes is therefore in striking contrast with the method of the Christian, who seeks the explanation through the mistiness of super-naturalism. It is claimed by many who attach little or no importance to the supernaturalism of Christianity that the ethics now associated with that religion are of the essence of Socialism, but only ignorance or deliberate misrepresentation can give rise to the claim.

Throughout the history of societies composed of classes the various ethical codes have been those best suited to the interest of the particular ruling class, and imposed upon the lower orders as a means of government. The ethics of Christianity form no exception to this rule; they are slavish ethics, and as such have been an assistance to government in the hands of rulers throughout Christendom.

It is fairly obvious that for any religion or ethical code to be adopted by the ruling class it must conform to its interest, and the fact that Christianity, with its slavish ethical code, has been a State religion for centuries, is in itself sufficient to merit the serious attention of the student of sociology. Christianity first became a State religion in the slave conditions of the decaying Roman Empire, in an age that is described by Professor Seeley as a religious age, "because it was an age of servitude.” Many historians concur in the view that it was the cardinal ethic of submission which influenced Constantine, the Roman Emperor, to embrace Christianity.

After its recognition by the head of the Roman Empire, the progress of Christianity proceeded apace throughout Western Europe, and its progress can be explained largely by its utility as an aid to government.

The student of history will find that Christianity, like all other religions, has been utilised against the lower orders whenever they have rebelled against the tyranny of their rulers The scriptural 'injunction of “Servants obey your masters,” has always been ready to hand to encourage submissiveness, and the “great” Martin Luther, who is held up by the Protestants as a light of liberty, demonstrated how this injunction serves against the subject class. When the peasants of Germany rose in revolt against their exploiters in 1525, Luther addressed the nobles and princes as follows :

  “Inasmuch as they are evil minded and brazenly refuse to obey, and furthermore, resist their masters, they have forfeited life and soul as do all faithless, perjured, mendacious, disobedient knaves and villains. Therefore it becomes the duty of all here to strangle and stab, secretly or publicly, all such, and remember that there is nothing so poisonous, injurious and fiendish as a rebellious person. Just as you would kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him he will strike you, and with you the whole country.” (Quoted, by Gustav Bang in his ‘‘Crises in European History.”)

It is useless for our Christian apologists to claim that Luther and his like acted in contravention of "true Christianity.” For in every case of the votaries of Christianity using their influence to crush rebellion they stood upon the "authority of the Holy Bible.” The doctrine of non-resistance to evil is one of the chief tenets of the Christian religion, and was taught by its titular founder and his chief apostle Paul. The latter, in his various epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, Ephesians, etc., at all times enjoined the slaves to be obedient to their masters "in fear and trembling,” and to give them the same submission as they gave to Christ. Thus it is clear that the ethics of Christianity with their slavish characteristics are utterly out of harmony with the revolutionary principles of Socialism. Even the much lauded "Golden rule," although no monopoly of Christianity, since it was preached centuries prior to the advent of that religion, and is to be found in most ancient religions and philosophies, is useless to the workers as a means of their social advancement. Those who dominate society cannot be removed from their social position by the preaching of ethics; they can only be removed as all other ruling classes have been removed, i.e., by the reins of government being taken from their control by another class gaining power.

With regard to the different concepts of life between the Socialist and the Christian. The latter can only regard the world as a “vale of tears,” and this life as a painful preparation for a life we are supposed to live hereafter. It is an essential part of Christian teaching that the affairs of this life are as nought compared with the promised life beyond the clouds, and consequently we are enjoined to despise earthly things, to reap our reward in heaven. Of course, the Christian in practice treats earthly things much in the same manner as do non-Christians, but we are concerned here not with his actions but with his teaching. To the Socialist, the affairs of this life, the only life we know of, are of the utmost importance, and our concern is to make it as pleasurable as possible. As indicated above, there are ample means at the disposal of mankind to-day for all to live, in economic security and in healthy social surroundings. But such a condition of affairs will not be accomplished by preaching ethics, whether religious or secular, it will only materialise by the waging of the class struggle in which the workers must be backed up by a sound knowledge of the forces that lead to their emancipation from wage slavery. The workers must realise the fact that, in the words of Marx, "Religion is the opium of the people”; it has been the chloroform in the hands of parasites, throughout the history of class domination, and inasmuch as it has any influence in modern society, it acts as it is its nature to act, as a conservative force, aiming to preserve the traditional illusions of the dead past, as obstacles to the needs of the living present, and the future. Christianity, like all religions, has been driven from every field of science, and since Socialism in philosophy is science applied to society, Christianity can find no logical place in the Socialist philosophy. We Socialists take our stand upon the firm basis of positive science explaining social conditions, and, in fact, all things within the scope of our knowledge, by purely natural causation. Thus, the materialistic movement of Socialism is seen to be utterly opposed to the false idealism and supernaturalism of Christianity. Socialism alone, with its recognition of the supreme importance of material things, can accomplish for the workers what Christianity and its slavish morality assists to retard. We know that economic evolution and the self- interest of the working class are inevitably preparing the path for that great social change, when the workers of the world will enjoy the fruits of their labour in a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution by and in the interest of the whole community; a system of society known as Socialism.

Robert Reynolds.

Early Christianity and Communism (2017)

From the June 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

When our representative was interviewed on BBC2’s Daily Politics Show in the context of the general election, Polly Toynbee commented that socialism seemed like early Christianity (see: LINK). But there is a difference: they were only concerned with communism in consumption while modern socialism is about common ownership of the means of production.

Omnia sunt communia (‘all things in common’) is attributed to Thomas Müntzer, a radical theologian who during the German Peasants’ War, in February 1525, took control of the town of Muhlhausen where he imposed a ‘communist’ community in the name of Christianity. It was an epoch where itinerant preachers preached ‘the Kingdom of God on Earth’ which was biblical language demanding that the common lands the nobility have taken for themselves be restored to the community and the end of serfdom. Omnia sunt communia expressed the idea that everything belongs to everyone or in modern parlance, common ownership.

Some, such as James Connolly in Labour, Nationality and Religion, argued that early Christianity was originally ‘communist’-inspired, citing some of the church fathers.

• “What thing do you call ‘yours’? What thing are you able to say is yours? From whom have you received it? You speak and act like one who upon an occasion going early to the theatre, and possessing himself without obstacle of the seats destined for the remainder of the public, pretends to oppose their entrance in due time, and to prohibit them seating themselves, arrogating to his own sole use property that is really destined to common use. And it is precisely in this manner act the rich”. – St. Basil the Great.
• “The use of all things that are found in this world ought to be common to all men. Only the most manifest iniquity makes one say to the other, ‘This belongs to me, that to you’. Hence the origin of contention among men.” – St. Clement.
• “Nature furnishes its wealth to all men in common. God beneficently has created all things that their enjoyment be common to all living beings, and that the earth becomes the common possession of all. It is Nature itself that has given birth to the right of the community, whilst it is only unjust usurpation that has created the right of private poverty.”   and “The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich.”   St. Ambrose
• “The earth of which they are born is common to all, and therefore the fruit that the earth brings forth belongs without distinction to all”. – St. Gregory the Great.

These ideals re-surfaced in the Middle Ages when John Ball, a preacher in the Peasant’s Revolt, was reported as declaring:

  When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman? From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. For if God would have had any bondmen from the beginning, he would have appointed who should   be   bond, and who free. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may (if ye will) cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty

In the 15th century, in the town of Tabor in Bohemia, there arose a religious sect, the Taborites, who tried to put these ideas into practice. They went one step further than most, ‘Everything will be common, including wives; there will be free sons and daughters of God and there will be no marriage as union of two — husband and wife.’ Historians describe how ‘Every one who came was ‘brother’ or ‘sister,’ as all social distinctions were unrecognised. The priests shared the work among themselves; some preaching in designated places (men and women being kept apart), others hearing confessions, while a third part communicated in both kinds. Thus it went on till noon. Then came the consumption in common of the food brought by the guests, which was divided among them, the want of one being made good by the superabundance of another; for the brothers and sisters of Mount Tabor knew no difference between mine and thine.’

The Taborites taught that ‘In these days there shall be no king, ruler, or subject on the earth, and all imposts and taxes shall cease; no one shall force another to do anything, for all shall be equal brothers and sisters. As in the town of Tabor there is no mine or thine, but all is held in common, so shall everything be common to all, and no one own anything for himself alone. Whoever does so commits a deadly sin.’

Any layman might become a priest. The members of that order were chosen from the community, and they, in turn, elected the bishops; but they were financially dependent on the community. Their functions, like those of the medieval priesthood in general, were in the main similar to those of the present state and municipal officials and teachers in Germany. Their duties were to organise and manage the various institutions of the Brotherhood, and regulate the connection between the several communities, as well as the relations of these with the outer world.

During the Reformation, various religious sects arose that advocated equality ‘in the sight of God’. Karl Kautsky in his History of Christianity described the Anabaptists as ‘the forerunner of the modern socialism.’ An Anabaptist advocate, Jan Matthys, took control of the town of Munster. Since the New Testament said money was the root of all evil these Christians abolished private ownership of money. Instead, it was collected and put in the hands of the Church which used it to hire ‘outside’ workers. The food was also collectivised and rationed out by the Church. Communal dining-halls were created and private homes were declared public property open to the countless poverty-stricken seeking God’s kingdom. Another sect at the time, the Hutterites said, ‘private property is the greatest enemy of love.’

When the English Civil War erupted, it was the custom of the times for the Bible to be quoted on every occasion with meanings read into the text and the political writings were cloaked in religious phrases. The Digger, Gerrard Winstanley, used the ‘Good Book’ to advocate a socialistic society.

  ‘Every tradesman shall fetch materials… from the public store-houses to work upon without buying and selling; and when particular works are made… the tradesmen shall bring these particular works to particular shops, as it is now the practice, without buying and selling. And every family as they want such things as they cannot make, they shall go to these shops and fetch without money…The earth is to be planted, and the fruits reaped and carried into barns and store-houses, by the assistance of every family. And if any man or family want corn or – other provision they may go to the store-houses and fetch without money. If they want a horse to ride, go into the fields in summer, or to the common stables in winter, and receive one from the keepers; and when your journey is performed, bring him where you had him, without money. If any want food or victuals, they may either go to the butchers’ shops, and receive what they want without money; or else go to the flocks of sheep or herds of cattle, and take and kill what meat is needful for their families, without buying and selling.’, (The Law of Freedom) 

‘ . . . buying and selling is the great cheat that robs and steals the earth from one another. It is that which makes some lords, others beggars, some rulers, others to be ruled; and makes great murderers and thieves to be imprisoners and hangers of little ones, or of sincere hearted men.’, (A Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England.)

Another Leveller, William Walwyn, explained that the only true religion consisted in helping the poor:

  ‘What an inequitable thing it is for one man to have thousands and another want bread! The pleasure of God is that all men should have enough, and not that one man should abound in this world’s goods, spending it upon lusts, and another man (of far better deserts and far more useful to the commonwealth) not to be worth twopence.’

He said that ‘ the world shall never be well until all things be common’.

Then, there were the Ranters. ‘Have all things in common, or else the plague of God will rot and consume all that you have.’ declared Abiezer Coppe while Thomas Tany maintained that all religion was ‘a lie, a fraud, a deceit, for there is but one truth and that is love.’ He demanded that the people’s lands were rendered to the people.

Had these movements succeeded they may well have become themselves some sort of theocracies such as the puritanical state the religious radicals of the English Revolution imposed, for as Engels pointed out in The Peasant War in Germany, talking about Thomas Müntzer, ‘The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government at a time when society is not yet ripe for the domination of the class he represents and for the measures which that domination implies…Thus, he necessarily finds himself in a unsolvable dilemma. What he can do contradicts all his previous actions and principles, and the immediate interests of his party and what he ought to do cannot be done. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whose domination the movement is then ripe. In the interest of the movement, he is compelled to advance the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with talk and promises, and with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests. He who is put into this awkward position is irrevocably lost.’

There are two essential aspects of socialism. One involves the common ownership of the means of production. The other involves the distribution of the means of consumption according to their needs. In was the latter ‘consumption communism’ which prevailed in those early social movements and they were unconcerned with common ownership in the sphere of production. The Taborite ‘communism’, for instance, was based on the needs of the poor, and not on production. While the needs of the poor engendered the struggle for ‘communism’, there existed the persistence of private proprietorship in production and these owners grew less willing to relinquish their surplus for the benefit of the poor.

What was lacking for a fully functioning socialist society was the capacity to provide for the needs of individuals and the community. But today we have the technology to supply everyone and as Sylvia Pankhurst explained, ‘Socialism means plenty for all. We do not preach a gospel of want and scarcity, but of abundance . . . We do not call for limitation of births, for penurious thrift, and self-denial. We call for a great production that will supply all, and more than all the people can consume.’

Modern socialism is concerned with who owns the means of production and distribution. The answer is everybody and nobody.

ALJO

Why We Commemorate The Commune. (1909)

From the March 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

M. Yves Guyot, in the first number of that most amusing journal, the Anti-Socialist, says that “Socialists celebrate, without much conviction, the anniversary of the Commune which, in 1871, added the horrors of fire and shooting to those of the siege of Paris. As a matter of fact, however, they have forsaken the so-called revolutionary methods.” The wish is probably father to the thought. Or perhaps M. Guyot is misled by the clamour of the middle-class place-seekers, who try to use the working-class movement as a means of inducing the ruling clique to admit them to the feast. The would-be leaders of the workers are usually ready to sell out or become reasonable "when the ruling class shows a disposition to purchase them. But with the rank and file this cannot be—and that is why the real and the sound movement, the movement that counts, is that of the rank and file, and is neither more advanced nor more backward than this is. Socialism is a class movement, a mass advance, and not a movement of demagogues. And there is a steady growth of Socialist knowledge and determination among the workers, who, far from abandoning the revolutionary method, become more truly revolutionary in the scientific sense of the word. They are gaining in consciousness of their class interest, and learning, slowly it is true, how fundamental is the truth that for their emancipation they must rely upon themselves alone.

This, indeed, is one of the great lessons of the Commune of Paris, and its annual celebration helps to bring vividly home to the Socialist worker the deep meaning of the class struggle and the ruthlessness of the master class when its interests are threatened. It is by no means the only valuable lesson afforded by that historic tragedy, but it is one that will repay a moment’s attention. On the heads of the Communards mountains of calumny have been heaped. The hireling literature of the bourgeoisie has attempted to bury the Commune under falsehoods, suppression of facts, and misrepresentation. The capitalist squint is manifest all through, and the workers are assiduously trained by preceptors in the hire of the masters to look at all things with their masters’ squint. That which is just and legitimate when done by the master class in defence of their interests is the blackest of crime when done by the workers in defence of theirs. That which is heroism and gallant conduct on the part of the capitalist class becomes murder and abominable misdeeds when resorted to by the workers in their own defence. Therefore, while so many of our fellows are taught to look upon the Communards as the worst of criminals, it is our duty to vindicate the memory of those brave men.

The history of the Commune, as recounted by many bourgeois historians, presents a glaring example of that falsification of history of which the capitalist class is guilty; of the shameless slandering of heroic workers, in spite of existing trustworthy documents and evidence, and of the reliable histories which have been written. There is no need to repeat the story, to refute one by one the lies of prostitute historians—Lissagaray and others have done that —but it is worth while emphasising here the fact of the class calumny. Thus a writer in the Times “Historian’s History of the World” recklessly accuses the Commune of having committed monstrous crimes, and goes on to say, “For more than two months the Commune ruled supreme over one of the greatest capitals of the world, and to this day the collectivists, the anarchists, the unruly, and the lawless of every country on the globe celebrate that brief triumph as the most splendid manifestation of the power of the people that the world has ever seen.” And against the fact that while supreme the Commune ruled well and peacefully, and kept Paris remarkably free from disorder or crime, this person, Rambaud by name, says, “In reality a few audacious men, both within and without the committee, such as Rossel, Flourens, the ‘generals’ Duval and Bergeret, Raoul Rigault and Delescluze, arrogated to themselves the greater part of the power and abused it shamefully . . . So long as the Commune lasted the conditions under which men governed, tyrannised, fought, killed, and themselves found death were those of pure anarchy." Such specimens of class misrepresentation are by no means rare in this “history,” yet in spite of class bias, they are compelled to admit in speaking of the “ re-conquest ” of Paris after the Commune, that “From the beginning it was evident that the conquerors would lie implacable. Hardly had the army entered the city than the executions began. . . At the barracks people were shot down by the dozen. Whole districts were depopulated by flight, arrests, and executions. . . Meanwhile long processions of prisoners (forty thousand had been taken) were journeying with parched throats, blistered feet, and fettered hands along the mad from Paris to Versailles, and as they passed through the boulevards of Louis XIV.’s town, they were greeted with yells and sometimes with blows. They were crowded hastily into improvised prisons, one of which was merely a large court-yard where thousands of poor wretches lived for weeks with no lodging but the muddy ground, . . and whence they were dispatched with a bullet in the head when desperation led them to rebel. . . The punishment inflicted on the insurgents was so ruthless that it seemed to be a counter- manifestation of French hatred for Frenchmen in civic disturbance rather than a judicial penalty applied to a heinous offence. The number of Parisians killed by French soldiers in the last week in May 1871 was probably twenty thousand, though the partisans of the Commune declared that thirty-six thousand men and women were shot in the streets, or after summary court-martial.”

It is a bourgeois refinement to represent the capitalist hatred of the workers as “French hatred for Frenchmen in civic disturbance.” No struggle is so bitter as the class struggle, for on their supremacy in this depends the capitalists’ power, wealth, influence, indeed, everything that springs from their ability to exploit the workers; and they will in this struggle go to lengths of savageness which make ordinary warfare pale its ineffectual fires. After the Commune slaughter gave place to wholesale deportation to New Caledonia only when the heaps of dead threatened the conquerors with pestilence. Such was the punishment of the Commune for its “crimes,” of which the greatest was its weak sentimentalism and mistaken moderation in face of the tiger that was attacking it.

The Commune is by no means the only example of the vindictive ruthlessness of the ruling class and the folly of washy sentiment on the part of the workers, but it is nearer to us because it illustrates clearly that the working class in revolt within the capitalist system almost instinctively turn towards industrial democracy. Of the bitterness of class struggles, and their ruthless prosecution by ruling classes, history abounds in examples, from the massacre of the soldier-helots of Sparta to the street slaughters of our own times. And in every social revolt calumny has been the accompaniment of the massacre of those who revolted. The peasants in Germany, driven to revolt by misery and ill-treatment, were accused of every known crime, yet the “Cambridge Modern History” tells us that “The worst of their deeds was the ‘massacre of Weinsberg,’ . . (1534) for which the ruffian Jacklein Rohrbach was mainly responsible. In an attempt to join hands with the Swabian peasants, a contingent of the Franconian army commanded by Metzler attacked Weinsburg, a town not far from Heilbronn held by Count Ludwig von Helfenstein. Helfenstein had distinguished himself by his defence of Stuttgart against Duke Ulrich of Württemberg, and by his rigorous measures against such rebels as fell into his power. When a handful of peasants appeared before Weinsberg and demanded admission the Count made a sortie and cut them all down. This roused their comrades to fury: Weinsberg was stormed by Rohrbach, and no quarter was given until Metzler arrived and stopped the slaughter. He granted Rohrbach, however, custody of the prisoners, consisting of Helfenstein and seventeen other knights; and against Metzler's orders and without his knowledge the Count and his fellow prisoners were made to run the gauntlet of the peasants' daggers before the eyes of the Countess.” The author further adds “These bloody reprisals were not typical of the revolt.” On the other hand we are told in the same chapter that “the suppression of the movement was marked by appalling atrocities . . the Bavarian chancellor reports that Duke Anthony of Lorraine alone had already destroyed twenty thousand peasants in Elsass; and for the whole of Germany a moderate estimate puts the number of victims at a hundred thousand. The only consideration that restrained the victors appears to have been the fear that, unless they held their hand, they would have no one left to render them service. ‘If all the peasants are killed,’ wrote Margrave George to his brother Casimir, 'where shall we get other peasants to make provision for us ?’ Casimir stood in need of exhortation ; at Kutzingen, near Wurzburg, he put out the eyes of fifty-nine townsfolk, and forebade the rest to offer them medical or other assistance.” The writer justly adds “When the massacre of eighteen knights at Weinsberg is adduced as proof that the peasants were savages, one may well ask what stage of civilisation had been reached by German princes.”

The peasants’ revolt in England is another case in point. The poll tax and the attempt to re-enforce feudal services roused revolt all over England. The men of Kent, Essex and Hertfordshire, though they attacked the houses of the more obnoxious nobles, and ransacked the prisons, did not plunder or steal, but simply asked for their freedom. This Richard II. promised, and set thirty clerks to write out charters, upon receipt of which the peasants began to disperse. The next day Wat Tyler, their leader, was murdered by the Mayor of London; and when the peasants had returned home their charters were annulled and the King marched through Essex and Kent at the head of a large army and put hundreds of peasants to death.

Another instance was Kett’s rebellion in the reign of Edward VI. Twenty thousand men defeated the royal troops at Norwich and demanded redress of grievances. Kett proclaimed a rude communism, and admittedly kept perfect order in his camp and consented to no violence. His humanity, however, cost him dearly. The Earl of Warwick at the head of an army of foreign mercenaries defeated the peasants, and then proceeded with a cold-blooded massacre which ceased only because Warwick feared that the “gentlemen would have to be plowmen themselves, and harrow their own lands.”

There is, indeed, no lack of modern instances pointing the same moral and emphasising the fact that the savage crushing of the Commune, far from being an isolated case, is but the expression of the real feeling of the ruling class for those beneath. The worker who in the face of these lessons becomes the dupe of the sentimental humbug and humanitarian professions that cloak capitalist interests, is guilty of treachery to his fellows. The lesson most be taken to heart that on his own class alone can the worker rely, for the capitalist must ever remain the bitterest enemy of the working-class movement; and bourgeois honour, justice and humanity are but empty words to lure the worker astray. In all war sentiment is weakness, and nowhere more so than in the class war, and for the workers to be the dupes of bourgeois sentiment in the inevitable struggle with the capitalist interest, is to place themselves entirely at the mercy of the enemy.

It is not, perhaps, pleasant to find things so. It would doubtless be more agreeable if the tiger would peaceably lie down with the lamb, and fools may abuse us for pointing out that this cannot be. Well, let those who nurse such illusions ignore the facts if they will — the facts will not ignore them, and will find them unprepared. Let those who will not face reality soothe themselves with falsehood—though they shut their eyes the truth remains. The very harshness of reality makes him worthy the name of man but the more determined that it shall alter, and he finds that he must know rightly the nature of the society about him before he can take any effective step toward the change on which so much human well-being depends Moreover, in emphasising a harsh truth—a truth to which so many wilfully blind themselves we are but doing our bare duty by our fellows, for it is on the knowledge of things such as these that the speedy emancipation of humanity from slavery and the possibility of real human brotherhood depends; and that, indeed, is one of our reasons for commemorating the Paris Commune of '71.

F. C. Watts

Backwaters of History - 8 (1954)

From the June 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Münzer and the Thuringian Revolt

Eight thousand men were on a hill near Frankenhausen listening to a speech from their leader. They had fortified themselves behind a barricade of farm waggons and carts and, during the period of a truce arranged with their foes, they were debating the terms of surrender offered them.

At the foot of this hill, the Schlachberg, was encamped a well-armed and disciplined army, also of eight thousand men, led by the Duke of Saxony, the Duke of Brunswick and the Landgraf of Hesse. On the 15th of May, 1525, the dukes had granted the truce to the army of ill-armed peasants and workers on the hill-top, to give them time to consider the terms offered, unconditional submission and the surrender of the peasants' leaders, particularly Thomas Münzer.

Some of the insurgents on the hill were for accepting the terms in the face of the formidable opposition lined up against them. Münzer had the two foremost advocates of surrender beheaded and then proceeded to harangue his following. He denounced the enemy with more than his accustomed vehemence, he made rousing allusions to Biblical heroes, how small forces of chosen people had conquered hosts and he concluded by pointing to a rainbow that appeared, just at the moment, as an omen of success.

Before the period of the truce had expired, and whilst the peasant army was still unprepared, the enemy opened cannon fire on their camp and charged through the barricade, mowing down the defenceless peasants left and right, pursuing those who escaped into the town of Frankenhausen where the massacre continued. Münzer was discovered in hiding and, after a period of imprisonment and a letter of "confession" to his followers, he was beheaded. So ended the most significant battle of the German Peasants' War.

The Middle Ages closed on a scene of economic transformation. Commercial activity was shaking the foundations of the feudal system. The feudal peasant and the feudal lord had obligations to one another and the peasant had a measure of security together with a limitation to the degree of exploitation to which he was subject. This was changing to a system of merciless exploitation where taxes, tithes, etc., were continually increased and new methods ever being devised to extract more surplus wealth from the peasantry, which the feudal lord could change into florins, guilders or ducats. Common land was seized and tenant farms confiscated thus giving rise to a class of proletarian cotters.

This increase in exploitation and oppression gave rise to the great peasant revolts throughout Europe at the end of the Middle Ages. The peasants, armed with spears and axes, rose against their tormentors in France in the 1350's, in England in the 1380's, in Germany throughout the fifteen century culminating in the Peasants' War of 1525, and later in Sweden and Denmark.

The economic changes gave rise to a confused mass of conflicting interests. The nobility, the peasantry, the merchants, the artisans, the proletarians, the wealthy priesthood and the poor wandering priests, all had interests peculiar to their own grouping. But through these various oppositions there was a dividing line that gave the majority of the people a mutually common enemy—the Catholic Church. The wealthy, grasping Catholic Church, centralised at Rome, was regarded by all strata of society as the exploiter par excellence, sucking wealth from all the sections of the community and pipe-lining it over the Alps to the Papal headquarters.

On the 31st of October, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church at Wittenburg and gave impetus to a movement which took him and others along with it. Luther started by fighting only against the excesses of the Catholic Church but was carried along by the current to urge violence and the use of fire and iron for the extermination of the cancer that he said was destroying the world.

The struggle that developed was between the Catholic conservatives on the one hand and an alliance of middle-class reformers and revolutionary peasants and proletarians on the other. The peasants at the outset aimed at a re-establishment of their feudal liberties. The famous twelve points around which most of the German peasant revolts centred are evidence of the outlook. Condensed they were:

1. Religious toleration.
2. Abolition of tithes.
3. Interest to be limited to 5 per cent.
4. All water to be free.
5. All woods and forests to be free.
6. All game to be free.
7. Abolition of villeinage.
8. No obedience to a lord, only to the emperor.
9. Re-establishment of old-time justice.
10. The right to elect persons in authority.
11. Abolition of death dues.
12. Re-establishment of the common lands that had been appropriated.

As the revolt grew, large sections of the peasants accepted and supported the communistic reachings of men like Thomas Münzer and Nicolas Storch. The middle-class allies drew away from these communist groupings and Luther turned on them ferociously, urging the nobles and merchants to strangle the peasants as they would mad dogs.

Münzer's teaching, like all teaching of the time, was cloaked by religion. Freedom and Equality must reign on earth. The princes and the nobles denied freedom and equality to the poor, so they must be overthrown and the "common man" must be raised in their place. This was the kingdom of God and all who would not become citizens must be killed or banished. The great barrier to a real awakening of the inward light was the riches of the world. So, in the kingdom of God, there must be no private wealth. All things must be held in common. That was the essence of the teaching that caused thousands of peasants to flock around Münzer.

After a brief and adventurous career (he was only 28 years of age when he was executed) Münzer made his headquarters in Muhlhausen, where he joined forces with Heinrich Pfeiffer, an ex-monk who was the preacher and leader of the local merchant guildsmen and artisans. Pfeiffer and Münzer with their joint forces overthrew the patrician council that governed Muhlhausen and established themselves as benevolent dictators of the town and surrounding districts. Münzer proceeded to put his communist teachings into practice. He took over the Johanniterhof, the monastery of the monks of St. John, and established an equalitarian organisation holding its wealth in common. Thousands of peasants from the surrounding countryside flocked to the town where Münzer preached to them from the Marienkirche, sending out missionaries to the districts around. The communist agitation spread to Erfurt, Coburg and into Hesse and Brunswick.

During the two months of Münzer's regime in Muhlhausen, Pfeiffer with a large section of the twon population, concerned themselves not with communist ideas but with their own local revolt and establishing their own power in the local government. When word was received that the armies of the Dukes were marching against the town and Münzer took his force out to meet them, Pfeiffer remained inactive inside the walls of the town.

A body of Münzer's followers were encamped on the hill outside Frankenhausen and he marched his poorly armed and untrained force to support them. It was here that he met the military defeat that ended his career and his life. The Dukes then turned on Muhlhausen where most of Pfeiffer's supporters deserted him in terror and surrendered the town. Pfeiffer was pursued, captured and, with Münzer, tortured and beheaded.

Münzer had visions of a universal social revolution and he was one of the few leaders of the Peasant War who tried to bring unity into the German peasants' movement by establishing communications between centres, His teachings expressed the vague desires of a vital section of the society of his day. Through him they were given a certain definiteness and in every great social convulsion since his days those ideas arise until they merge into the ideas of the working class of to-day.

History abounds with examples of revolutionary classes seeking and using the support of workers and peasants to gain their ends then turning ferociously on them when they start to voice aspirations of their own. Martin Luther offers an outstanding example. His words when the peasant revolts were being suppressed show his spite and viciousness.

" . . . the murderous and plundering hordes of the peasants. They should be knocked to pieces, strangled and stabbed, secretly and openly, by everybody who can do it, just as one must kill a mad dog. Therefore, dear gentlemen, hearken here, save there, stab, knock, strangle them at will, and if thou diest thou art blessed; no better death canst thou ever attain."

(The Peasant War in Germany, by F. Engels.)

Books to Read:

The Peasant War in Germany by Frederick Engels.

The Peasants' War in Germany 1525-26 by E. Belfort Bax.

Essay, "The Reformation" in "Crises in European History" by Gustav Bang.

W. Waters