(from Militant No. 372)
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: “The Address of the Central Committee
to the Communist League”, written by Marx and Engels in March, 1850, is full of
valuable lessons for today.
The Communist League was formed in 1847, and its leading
members, Marx and Engels in particular, played an outstanding role in the
mighty revolutionary wave that swept the German states, together with the rest
of continental Europe, in 1848-49.
There is not space here, unfortunately, to go into the
history of the League or the energetic activities of Marx and Engels in this
period. This has been recounted by Engels himself in his History of the
Communist League (1885) and vividly described in Karl Marx: Man and Fighter, by
B Nicolalevsky and O Maenchen-Hellen .
But whereas the Communist Manifesto, written for the
League by Marx and Engels in 1847, brilliantly expounded the fundamental ideas
of scientific socialism and predicted the revolutions that were to break out
only days after its publication, the Address, written after the great upheavals,
provided a political balance sheet of the revolutions from the point of view of
the working class.
Although now less well known than the Manifesto, the Address,
from the point of view of the strategy and tactics of the socialist revolution,
provides historical and theoretical lessons of equal value.
At the beginning of 1848, Marx and Engels, who recognised
that at that stage the struggle against absolutism would be to the fore, still expected
Germany’s rising capitalist class, the bourgeoisie, to take the initiative in
the revolution. In the Manifesto they wrote that the communists should
"instil into the working class the clearest possible recognition or the hostile
antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat", while at the same time
mobilising the workers to "fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in
a revolutionary way."
But in the course or the events, it soon became clear
that fear or the working class movement threatening its rear was killing the
revolutionary zeal of the bourgeoisie. In particular, the June Days in Paris,
which for the first time in history raised the spectre of proletarian revolution,
drove all the exploiting classes in Germany over to the side of reaction. The
various democratic assemblies established in Germany in the first flush of
victory were ignominiously abandoned by the liberal bourgeoisie, and the
remaining forces of the revolution were quickly routed by the reaction.
From this experience, Marx and Engels drew new theoretical
and tactical conclusions. They had always envisaged that in Germany the proletarian
revolution would follow hard on the heels of the bourgeois revolution. But now
that the bourgeois revolution had been deserted by its natural leader, the task
or destroying feudalism and absolutism fell on to the working class and its
allies, and Marx therefore concluded that the bourgeois revolution would now merge
directly into the first stages of the socialist revolution.
Thus, in the March Address, Marx and Engels first
formulated the idea of the "permanent revolution". While they fully
expected the petty-bourgeois democrats to take the initiative in the next
revolutionary outbreak, Marx and Engels called on the working class to provide
its own independent leadership and to advance baldly its class demands.
They were unfortunately wrong, however, in expecting the
next phase of revolution to follow very shortly. With the benefit of hindsight,
Engels wrote (in 1895): "History has proved us ... wrong. It has made clear
that the state of economic development of the Continent at that time was not,
by a long way, ripe for the elimination of capitalist production; it has proved
this by the economic revolution which, since 1848, has seized the whole of the Continent...”
But this mistake in estimating the tempo of developments
does not in the least detract from the validity of the strategy and tactics
laid down for the working class in the event of a new revolutionary upheaval.
In fact, the ideas of the Address were a brilliant anticipation of the policies
adopted by Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership in the 1917 Russian revolution
(although Lenin was to develop further Marxist policies on the land question and
the oppressed nationalities in relation to the conditions of the Russian
empire).
The ideas of the Address also quite clearly form the original
theoretical basis of the perspective of permanent revolution advanced by Leon Trotsky
in I905, 1917, and after.
It is noticeable today, moreover, that the ideas of the Address,
particularly its insistence on a careful class analysis of every situation, its
call for the complete political and organisational independence or the working
class, and its stress on the need for the working class to fight energetically
for its own aims regardless or the disapproval of its temporary allies,
provides devastating criticisms of the ideas of the present day Communist
Parties which still claim to stand on the basis of Marxism.
This is not the place for a detailed criticism of the
ideas of "advanced democracy", "historic compromise" (with
the "liberal capitalists") or "popular unity" advanced by
the "Eurocommunist leaders of the French, Spanish, Italian and other CPs.
But readers may compare for themselves the strategy and tactics advocated by Marx
and Engels, when the working class was still an extremely weak force compared
to today, with the class-collaborationist policies now defended by the leaders
of Europe's mass communist parties.
From the following version of the Address, a few
sentences giving details of unsuccessful attempts to reorganise the League have
been cut, while a few explanatory comments, which appear in square brackets,
have been inserted. We have also supplied the subheadings and new paragraphing.
The full text, in various translations, and with more background material, may
be found in (various) collections.
THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE TO THE LEAGUE:
Brothers,
In the two revolutionary years of 1848-49 the League
proved itself in two ways. First, its members everywhere involved themselves
energetically in the movement and stood in the front ranks of the only
decisively revolutionary class, the proletariat, in the press, on the
barricades and on the battlefields.
The League further proved itself in that its
understanding of the movement, as expressed in the circulars issued by the
Congresses and the Central Committee of 1847 and in the Manifesto of the
Communist Party, has been shown to be the only correct one, and the
expectations expressed in these documents have been completely fulfilled. This
previously only propagated by the League in secret, is now on everyone’s lips
and is preached openly in the market place.
At the same time, however, the formerly strong
organization of the League has been considerably weakened. A large number of
members who were directly involved in the movement thought that the time for
secret societies was over and that public action alone was sufficient. The
individual districts and communes [branches of the League] allowed their
connections with the Central Committee to weaken and gradually become dormant.
So, while the democratic party, the party of the petty bourgeoisie, has become
more and more organized in Germany, the workers’ party has lost its only firm
foothold, remaining organized at best in individual localities for local purposes;
within the general movement it has consequently come under the complete
domination and leadership of the petty-bourgeois democrats. This situation
cannot be allowed to continue; the independence of the workers must be
restored. [ ...]
This reorganisation [of the League] can only be achieved
by an emissary, and the Central Committee considers it most important to
dispatch the emissary at this very moment, when a new revolution is imminent,
that is, when the workers’ party must go into battle with the maximum degree of
organization, unity and independence, so that it is not exploited and taken in
tow by the bourgeoisie as in 1848.
We told you already in 1848, brothers, that the German
liberal bourgeoisie would soon come to power and would immediately turn its
newly won power against the workers. You have seen how this forecast came true.
It was indeed the bourgeoisie which took possession of the state authority in
the wake of the March movement of 1848 and used this power to drive the
workers, its allies in the struggle, back into their former oppressed position.
Although the bourgeoisie could accomplish this only by entering into an
alliance with the feudal party, which had been defeated in March, and
eventually even had to surrender power once more to this feudal absolutist
party, it has nevertheless secured favourable conditions for itself.
In view of the [Prussian (and other German)] government’s
financial difficulties, these conditions would ensure that power would in the
long run fall into its hands again and that all its interests would be secured,
if it were possible for the revolutionary movement to assume from now on a
so-called peaceful course of development. In order to guarantee its power the
bourgeoisie would not even need to arouse hatred by taking violent measures
against the people, as all of these violent measures have already been carried
out by the feudal counter-revolution.
But events will not take this peaceful course. On the
contrary, the revolution which will accelerate the course of events is
imminent, whether it is initiated by an independent rising of the French
proletariat or by an invasion of the revolutionary Babel [i.e. France] by the
Holy Alliance [the Russian and Austro-Hungarian monarchies].
THE COMPOSITION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PETTY BOURGEOISIE
The treacherous role that the German liberal bourgeoisie
played against the people in 1848 will be assumed in the coming revolution by
the democratic petty bourgeoisie, which now occupies the same position in the
opposition as the liberal bourgeoisie did before 1848. This democratic party,
which is far more dangerous for the workers than were the liberals earlier, is
composed of three elements:
1) The most progressive elements of the big bourgeoisie,
who pursue the goal of the immediate and complete overthrow of feudalism and
absolutism. This fraction is represented by the former Berlin Vereinbarer, the
tax resisters [left-wing members of the Prussian National Assembly who called
for a tax boycott when the Assembly fell in November, 1848];
2) The constitutional-democratic petty bourgeois, whose
main aim during the previous movement was the formation of a more or less
democratic federal state; this is what their representative, the Left in the
Frankfurt Assembly and later the Stuttgart parliament, worked for, as they
themselves did in the Reich Constitution Campaign [in May 1848 the German
National Assembly had to flee Frankfurt after inaugurating the Reich
Constitution Campaign; its left wing reconvened in Stuttgart, but were soon dispersed
by the Prussian troops];
3) The republican petty bourgeois, whose ideal is a
German federal republic similar to that in Switzerland and who now call
themselves ‘red’ and ’social-democratic’ because they cherish the pious wish to
abolish the pressure exerted by big capital on small capital, by the big
bourgeoisie on the petty bourgeoisie. The representatives of this fraction were
the members of the democratic congresses and committees, the leaders of the
democratic associations and the editors of the democratic newspapers.
After their defeat all these fractions claim to be
‘republicans’ or ’reds’, just as at the present time members of the republican
petty bourgeoisie in France call themselves ‘socialists’. Where, as in
Wurtemberg, Bavaria, etc., they still find a chance to pursue their ends by
constitutional means, they seize the opportunity to retain their old phrases
and prove by their actions that they have not changed in the least.
Furthermore, it goes without saying that the changed name of this party does
not alter in the least its relationship to the workers but merely proves that
it is now obliged to form a front against the bourgeoisie, which has united
with absolutism, and to seek the support of the proletariat.
The petty-bourgeois democratic party in Germany is very
powerful. It not only embraces the great majority of the urban middle class,
the small industrial merchants and master craftsmen; it also includes among its
followers the peasants and rural proletariat in so far as the latter has not
yet found support among the independent proletariat of the towns.
THE DEMANDS OF THE PETTY-BOURGEOIS DEMOCRATS
The relationship of the revolutionary workers’ party to
the petty-bourgeois democrats is this: it cooperates with them against the
party which they aim to overthrow; it opposes them wherever they wish to secure
their own position.
The democratic petty bourgeois, far from wanting to
transform the whole society in the interests of the revolutionary proletarians,
only aspire to a change in social conditions which will make the existing
society as tolerable and comfortable for themselves as possible. They therefore
demand above all else a reduction in government spending through a restriction
of the bureaucracy and the transference of the major tax burden into the large
landowners and bourgeoisie. They further demand the removal of the pressure
exerted by big capital on small capital through the establishment of public
credit institutions and the passing of laws against usury, whereby it would be
possible for themselves and the peasants to receive advances on favourable
terms from the state instead of from capitalists; also, the introduction of
bourgeois property relationships on land through the complete abolition of
feudalism.
In order to achieve all this they require a democratic
form of government, either constitutional or republican, which would give them
and their peasant allies the majority; they also require a democratic system of
local government to give them direct control over municipal property and over a
series of political offices at present in the hands of the bureaucrats.
The rule of capital and its rapid accumulation is to be
further counteracted, partly by a curtailment of the right of inheritance, and
partly by the transference of as much employment as possible to the state. As
far as the workers are concerned one thing, above all, is definite: they are to
remain wage labourers as before. However, the democratic petty bourgeois want
better wages and security for the workers, and hope to achieve this by an
extension of state employment and by welfare measures; in short, they hope to
bribe the workers with a more or less disguised form of alms and to break their
revolutionary strength by temporarily rendering their situation tolerable.
The demands of petty-bourgeois democracy summarized here
are not expressed by all sections of it at once, and in their totality they are
the explicit goal of only a very few of its followers. The further particular
individuals or fractions of the petty bourgeoisie advance, the more of these
demands they will explicitly adopt, and the few who recognize their own programme
in what has been mentioned above might well believe they have put forward the
maximum that can be demanded from the revolution.
THE INTERESTS OF THE WORKING-CLASS
But these demands can in no way satisfy the party of the
proletariat. While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution
to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims already mentioned,
it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the
more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions,
until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of
the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but
in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the
proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of
production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. Our concern cannot
simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class
antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to
found a new one.
There is no doubt that during the further course of the
revolution in Germany, the petty-bourgeois democrats will for the moment
acquire a predominant influence. The question is, therefore, what is to be the
attitude of the proletariat, and in particular of the League towards them:
1) While present conditions continue, in which the
petty-bourgeois democrats are also oppressed;
2) In the coming revolutionary struggle, which will put
them in a dominant position;
3) After this struggle, during the period of
petty-bourgeois predominance over the classes which have been overthrown and
over the proletariat.
MARCH SEPARATELY, STRIKE TOGETHER
1. At the moment, while the democratic petty bourgeois
are everywhere oppressed, they preach to the proletariat general unity and
reconciliation; they extend the hand of friendship, and seek to found a great
opposition party which will embrace all shades of democratic opinion; that is,
they seek to ensnare the workers in a party organization in which general
social-democratic phrases prevail while their particular interests are kept
hidden behind, and in which, for the sake of preserving the peace, the specific
demands of the proletariat may not be presented.
Such a unity would be to their advantage alone and to the
complete disadvantage of the proletariat. The proletariat would lose all its
hard-won independent position and be reduced once more to a mere appendage of
official bourgeois democracy. This unity must therefore be resisted in the most
decisive manner. Instead of lowering themselves to the level of an applauding
chorus, the workers, and above all the League, must work for the creation of an
independent organization of the workers’ party, both secret and open, and
alongside the official democrats, and the League must aim to make every one of
its communes a centre and nucleus of workers’ associations in which the
position and interests of the proletariat can be discussed free from bourgeois
influence.
How serious the bourgeois democrats are about an alliance
in which the proletariat has equal power and equal rights is demonstrated by
the Breslau democrats, who are conducting a furious campaign in their organ,
the ‘Neue Oder Zeitung’ [founded in 1848, this passed in the 1850s as the most
radical German newspaper], against independently organized workers, whom they
call ‘socialists’.
In the event of a struggle against a common enemy a
special alliance is unnecessary. As soon as such an enemy has to be fought
directly, the interests of both parties will coincide for the moment and an
association of momentary expedience will arise spontaneously in the future, as
it has in the past. It goes without saying that in the bloody conflicts to
come, as in all others, it will be the workers, with their courage, resolution
and self-sacrifice, who will be chiefly responsible for achieving victory.
As in the past, so in the coming struggle also, the petty
bourgeoisie, to a man, will hesitate as long as possible and remain fearful,
irresolute and inactive; but when victory is certain it will claim it for
itself and will call upon the workers to behave in an orderly fashion, to
return to work and to prevent so-called excesses, and it will exclude the
proletariat from the fruits of victory.
It does not lie within the power of the workers to
prevent the petty-bourgeois democrats from doing this; but it does lie within
their power to make it as difficult as possible for the petty bourgeoisie to
use its power against the armed proletariat, and to dictate such conditions to
them that the rule of the bourgeois democrats, from the very first, will carry
within it the seeds of its own destruction, and its subsequent displacement by
the proletariat will be made considerably easier.
Above all, during and immediately after the struggle the
workers, as far as it is at all possible, must oppose bourgeois attempts at
pacification and force the democrats to carry out their terroristic phrases.
They must work to ensure that the immediate revolutionary excitement is not
suddenly suppressed after the victory. On the contrary, it must be sustained as
long as possible. Far from opposing the so-called excesses – instances of
popular vengeance against hated individuals or against public buildings with
which hateful memories are associated – the workers’ party must not only
tolerate these actions but must even give them direction.
During and after the struggle the workers must at every
opportunity put forward their own demands against those of the bourgeois
democrats. They must demand guarantees for the workers as soon as the
democratic bourgeoisie sets about taking over the government. They must achieve
these guarantees by force if necessary, and generally make sure that the new
rulers commit themselves to all possible concessions and promises – the surest
means of compromising them. They must check in every way and as far as is
possible the victory euphoria and enthusiasm for the new situation which follow
every successful street battle, with a cool and cold-blooded analysis of the
situation and with undisguised mistrust of the new government.
Alongside the new official governments they must
simultaneously establish their own revolutionary workers’ governments, either
in the form of local executive committees and councils or through workers’
clubs or committees, so that the bourgeois-democratic governments not only
immediately lost the support of the workers but find themselves from the very
beginning supervised and threatened by authorities behind which stand the whole
mass of the workers.
In a word, from the very moment of victory the workers’
suspicion must be directed no longer against the defeated reactionary party but
against their former ally, against the party which intends to exploit the
common victory for itself.
ARM THE WORKERS
2. To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this
party, whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory,
the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at
once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the
old-style citizens’ militia [i.e. like the French National Guard, based on
property-owning volunteers], directed against the workers, must be opposed.
Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented,
the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian
guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must
try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the
revolutionary local councils set up by the workers.
Where the workers are employed by the state, they must
arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a
part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be
surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if
necessary.
The destruction of the bourgeois democrats’ influence
over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the
rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as
difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and
therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching
uprising.
FOR THE INDEPENDENT MOBILISATION OF THE PROLETARIAT
3. As soon as the new governments have established
themselves, their struggle against the workers will begin. If the workers are
to be able to forcibly oppose the democratic petty bourgeois it is essential
above all for them to be independently organized and centralized in clubs.
At the soonest possible moment after the overthrow of the
present governments, the Central Committee will come to Germany and will
immediately convene a Congress, submitting to it the necessary proposals for
the centralization of the workers’ clubs under a directorate established at the
movement’s centre of operations.
The speedy organisation of at least provincial
connections between the workers’ clubs is one of the prime requirements for the
strengthening and development of the workers’ party; the immediate result of
the overthrow of the existing governments will be the election of a national
representative body.
Here the proletariat must take care:
1) that by sharp practices local authorities and
government commissioners do not, under any pretext whatsoever, exclude any
section of workers;
2) that workers’ candidates are nominated everywhere in
opposition to bourgeois-democratic candidates.
As far as possible they should be League members and
their election should be pursued by all possible means. Even where there is no
prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own
candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to
bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention.
They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the
democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the
democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All
such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled.
The progress which the proletarian party will make by
operating independently in this way is infinitely more important than the
disadvantages resulting from the presence of a few reactionaries in the
representative body. If the forces of democracy take decisive, terroristic
action against the reaction from the very beginning, the reactionary influence
in the election will already have been destroyed.
The first point over which the bourgeois democrats will
come into conflict with the workers will be the abolition of feudalism as in
the first French revolution, the petty bourgeoisie will want to give the feudal
lands to the peasants as free property; that is, they will try to perpetrate
the existence of the rural proletariat, and to form a petty-bourgeois peasant
class which will be subject to the same cycle of impoverishment and debt which
still afflicts the French peasant.
The workers must oppose this plan both in the interest of
the rural proletariat and in their own interest. They must demand that the
confiscated feudal property remain state property and be used for workers’
colonies, cultivated collectively by the rural proletariat with all the
advantages of large-scale farming and where the principle of common property
will immediately achieve a sound basis in the midst of the shaky system of
bourgeois property relations. Just as the democrats ally themselves with the
peasants, the workers must ally themselves with the rural proletariat.
The democrats will either work directly towards a federated
republic, or at least, if they cannot avoid the one and indivisible republic
they will attempt to paralyze the central government by granting the
municipalities and provinces the greatest possible autonomy and independence.
In opposition to this plan the workers must not only
strive for one and indivisible German republic, but also, within this republic,
for the most decisive centralization of power in the hands of the state
authority. They should not let themselves be led astray by empty democratic talk
about the freedom of the municipalities, self-government, etc.
In a country like Germany, where so many remnants of the
Middle Ages are still to be abolished, where so much local and provincial
obstinacy has to be broken down, it cannot under any circumstances be tolerated
that each village, each town and each province may put up new obstacles in the
way of revolutionary activity, which can only be developed with full efficiency
from a central point.
A renewal of the present situation, in which the Germans
have to wage a separate struggle in each town and province for the same degree
of progress, can also not be tolerated. Least of all can a so-called free
system of local government be allowed to perpetuate a form of property which is
more backward than modern private property and which is everywhere and
inevitably being transformed into private property; namely communal property,
with its consequent disputes between poor and rich communities.
Nor can this so-called free system of local government be
allowed to perpetuate, side by side with the state civil law, the existence of
communal civil law with its sharp practices directed against the workers. As in
France in 1793, it is the task of the genuinely revolutionary party in Germany
to carry through the strictest centralisation. [which does not contradict “local
and provincial self-government”, Engels commented later, which in turn has
nothing to do with “narrow municipal selfishness”]. I
FOR THE PERMANENT REVOLUTION
We have seen how the next upsurge will bring the
democrats to power and how they will be forced to propose more or less
socialistic measures. it will be asked what measures the workers are to propose
in reply. At the beginning, of course, the workers cannot propose any directly
communist measures. But the following courses of action are possible:
1. They can force the democrats to make inroads into as
many areas of the existing social order as possible, so as to disturb its
regular functioning and so that the petty-bourgeois democrats compromise
themselves; furthermore, the workers can force the concentration of as many
productive forces as possible – means of transport, factories, railways, etc. –
in the hands of the state.
2. They must drive the proposals of the democrats to
their logical extreme (the democrats will in any case act in a reformist and
not a revolutionary manner) and transform these proposals into direct attacks
on private property. If, for instance, the petty bourgeoisie propose the
purchase of the railways and factories, the workers must demand that these
railways and factories simply be confiscated by the state without compensation
as the property of reactionaries. If the democrats propose a proportional tax,
then the workers must demand a progressive tax; if the democrats themselves
propose a moderate progressive tax, then the workers must insist on a tax whose
rates rise so steeply that big capital is ruined by it; if the democrats demand
the regulation of the state debt, then the workers must demand national
bankruptcy.
The demands of the workers will thus have to be adjusted
according to the measures and concessions of the democrats.
Although the German workers cannot come to power and achieve
the realization of their class interests without passing through a protracted
revolutionary development, this time they can at least be certain that the
first act of the approaching revolutionary drama will coincide with the direct
victory of their own class in France and will thereby be accelerated.
But they themselves must contribute most to their final
victory, by informing themselves of their own class interests, by taking up
their independent political position as soon as possible, by not allowing
themselves to be misled by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty
bourgeoisie into doubting for one minute the necessity of an independently
organized party of the proletariat.
Their battle-cry must be: The Permanent Revolution.
London, March 1850
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